The Deep Field – the title comes from astronomy – is set early in the next century. Pakistan and India have fought a brief but devastating nuclear war. A large earthquake has destroyed much of Tokyo and with it most of the global economy. In Hong Kong, the Japanese disaster provoked civil unrest and brutal repression. Sydney experiences random acts of terrorism and the hellish effects of atmospheric warming. Otherwise, apart from a few technological marvels, the world remains much the same as it is now.

None of this is particularly original. The approach of the millennium has prompted several writers into entertaining such mildly futuristic fantasies. Indeed, a recently released English novel, Adrian Mathews’s Vienna Blood, follows a trajectory remarkably similar to Bradley’s. Yet (unlike Vienna Blood and most of the millennial brood) The Deep Field does not rely solely, or even predominantly, on its politico-sociological preoccupations. The achievement of this fine novel rests on far more ‘writerly’ interests and accomplishments.

The central character is Anna, a photographer who has recently returned to Sydney from Hong Kong. She becomes fascinated by ammonites, voluptuously shaped fossils of primitive life forms. Her fascination brings her into contact with Seth, a blind palaeontologist, and Seth’s sister Rachel. In a steamy, polluted summer, when fires circle the city and the temperature always stays above forty for days on end, love of a kind develops between Seth and Anna.

Little by little we come to learn of Anna’s past: of her affair with Jared, a Hong Kong based financier, and above all about her twin brother Daniel, who disappeared in the upheavals when unrest and rebellion broke out in Hong Kong. We catch glimpses of her with friends and colleagues from earlier years – in particular, Jadwiga, an (improbably named) Hungarian gallery owner, and also Lewin, an artist Anna had known by repute, who, everyone believes, had died or else disappeared.

One of the most attractive qualities of this novel is Bradley’s careful and sensitive representation of ambiguous, of ten tentative relationships. So, Anna finds herself drawn to the austere, enigmatic Seth and yet she is disturbed by his reticence, which she suspects might mask coldness. Similarly, the affection she comes to feel for Rachel, Seth’s sister, must transcend impressions of possessiveness she detects in that staunchly independent-minded woman, who has dedicated herself to the care of derelicts and other victims of a cruel society.

It is in such areas that the chief strengths of The Deep Field lie. Bradley has the true novelist’s ability to get inside his characters and to observe how their attitudes and responses change and develop. He knows, too, that holding back is frequently more effective than full disclosure. There are several apparent loose ends. They do not represent carelessness, however. On the contrary, numerous small, delicately introduced (and abandoned) details enrich the novel’s texture. One instance occurs early in the narrative. Anna catches up with Jadwiga, the gallery-owner. She learns that Jean-Paul, her friend’s husband, had died of the leukemia that is reaching epidemic proportions in many parts of the world. We catch a hint or two about the difficulties Jean-Paul and Jadwiga had experienced in their marriage. Then the matter is dropped, but not before it has added something imprecise but nevertheless significant to the emotional and also thematic scope of this admirable work.

Such strategies are equally successful with preoccupations that lie closer to the heart of Bradley’s concerns. I admired in particular the tactful and oblique way in which he depicts Anna’s relationship with Jared. There, as elsewhere, hints and insinuation achieve telling effects. Jared’s British arrogance is nicely conveyed through the odd, almost casual remark. Daniel, Anna’s brother who becomes enmeshed in the political turmoil that swept Hong Kong after the Tokyo earthquake, remains a shadowy figure, apprehended, by and large, through Anna’s flickering memories and anxiety. Here too, an essential (and to my mind highly impressive) vagueness does much to enhance the novel’s impact.

These subtle touches are given substance and validity by Bradley’s frequently outstanding ability to evoke mood, atmosphere and place. Some of the descriptions of a heat-oppressed Sydney or of a febrile Hong Kong, where the political climate is as unpredictable as the meteorological, possess an evocative power not often encountered in contemporary fiction. From time to time, it is true, Bradley tends to overload his diction. I noticed a few excessively ‘poetic’ expressions – ‘gibbous moon’ for instance. In the same vein, he sometimes tries to endow ammonites and other fossils with a somewhat portentous sensuousness. These are minor blemishes, nevertheless, though a tendency towards pretentiousness must, in all fairness, be acknowledged in these places.

Pretentiousness is also apparent in the one element in the novel that Bradley could have profitably omitted. This is a framing first-person narrative by Rachel’s daughter who (thanks to third-millennium medical wizardry) has attained the age of several hundred years. Thematically, it seems to me, the second Rachel’s narrative complements Bradley’s central concern. It hints at renewal – though never without telling ironies or ambiguities. Here Bradley is working, I think, with his head and his intelligence, both considerable yet both a good deal less impressive than his novelist’s instincts. When those instincts lead him to engage with his characters and their world (no matter how strange some of it may seem to us), The Deep Field reaches imaginative heights not often encountered in novels these days.