This ingenious, multi-layered and often satirically witty volume is intended to introduce students to key perspectives and disputes in social philosophy through the medium of science fiction. As such it can be considered from several angles: as a novel, as one within a particular genre (and within that a sub-genre) or as a contribution to a long tradition of using fiction as a form of social commentary or pedagogic device (in this case supported by chapter annotations and a website). This review focuses on the last, though its effectiveness as a text depends on the way the issues addressed are woven into a storyline that engages the reader and provides a route into what students often perceive as a difficult area.

The plot centres on Zadie, a first year undergraduate trying to persuade her schoolboy brother, Jake, to follow her into university and their grandfather who, for reasons that emerge part way through, transports them to a series of other worlds, each governed by a different philosophy. Their navigation is provided by Virgil, a hand-held computer addicted to television and with an idiosyncratic line in humour. Although slow moving at first, the narrative becomes more intriguing as, in good sci-fi style, the dangers they face increase, Virgil grapples with the problem of returning them to their own world and the grandfather's motives become clearer. The consequent twists and graphic descriptions of the experience of transiting to new settings lure the reader into the author's evocation of what life might be like, firstly in a fully fledged Free Market regime and then in worlds dominated by Marxist-Communism, Conservatism and Egalitarianism. Visits to societies grounded in Culturalism and Identity Politics, different forms of Environmentalism and a ‘grouped’ world subject to Republicanism, Communitarianism and Deliberative Politics form the rest of their itinerary.

To conjure these up, the author uses a number of devices. Descriptions of land or cityscapes, socio-political structures and people's lives, cameos of their protagonists, guided tours and speeches by the ‘converted’ are juxtaposed with critiques in the form of questions from the voyagers and the dissenting voices they encounter. In quasi-Swiftian fashion, they also include extracts from newspapers (that from a fictional tabloid on the underclass in the portrayal of Conservatism is a gem), institutions such as the Remoralisation Centre, and the 26 floor Museum of Cultural Identity and modes of maintaining the status quo, notably the Egalitarian's ‘luck-o-meter’. Crucially the voyagers need to deduce a key word for Virgil to convey them to the next world (that to exit Free Market Liberalism for instance is ‘contract’; for Conservatism, ‘order’).

Despite the author's inventiveness, his mostly even-handed coverage becomes perhaps inevitably rather formulaic and the speeches and other explications of each set of governing principles place considerable demands on the reader. I also remained uncertain how far the humour used to leaven these abstract passages or indeed the characterisation would resonate with the intended readership and whether some of the irony or the many allusions to the wider literature might be missed.

Nonetheless, as a way of engaging students in the core issues and debates in social philosophy and those central to social policy, this ambitious venture has much to commend it. In particular, the format employed offers an innovative and thought-provoking springboard for workshop exercises and seminar discussions, enabling students to concretise often abstruse ideas and challenging them to assess the grounds for and implications of the main perspectives, including the ‘utopias’ presented in the novel. It also invites them to consider not only the differing connotations of such pivotal concepts as ‘freedom’, ‘personal responsibility’, ‘choice’ and ‘social justice’, but issues ranging from the varying trade-offs between them, the role of government and the balancing of individual and communal interests to the place of the media in policy-making. Most significantly, largely through Jake who regularly dismisses discussion of such matters as ‘boring’ and of little consequence, the book successfully opens up the underlying debates about the interconnections between theory and policy.

Overall, as a teaching aid this ‘fictional guide’ is well worth drawing on, as are the suggested reading, end notes and supporting website. It may not meet the author's possibly utopian goal of ‘making philosophy fun’, but, in many ways, it does meet his aim of facilitating philosophical and policy analysis and bringing it to a wider audience.