A GWYNEDD author has enlisted the voice of a former Spitting Image impressionist to bring his latest science-fiction to life.

Stephen Llewelyn, who lives in Snowdonia, published ‘Dinosaur’ as the most recent episode in his New World Series last April. The classic ‘whodunnit’ plot with a sci-fi spin, in which an advanced but fledgling human society on Earth millions of years ago must navigate alien attacks and dinosaurs.

During the coronavirus lockdown he recruited the vocal talents of actor Chris Barrie, perhaps best known and beloved as the hologram Arnold J Rimmer in the hit sitcom Red Dwarf, to reach a wider audience as audiobooks have boomed over the last year.

“Mr Barrie’s genius for impressions and portrayal of multi-faceted characters, along with his longstanding interests in science, the military and engineering, made him the natural choice for this audiobook,” said Mr Llewelyn.

“He has been a pleasure to work with at every level. I’m delighted and honoured to have him on board.

“It was also a pleasure to write a Gwynedd born and bred character into a major international sci-fi series. Private, and later Corporal Dewi Jones, is a permanent and often amusing presence throughout the series and great fun to write for.”

Mr Llewelyn spent much of his career working within the construction industry with a nine-year interlude in IT and marketing, but it is his lifelong passion for history, archaeology and palaeontology that most influence his works of fiction.

His IT skills came in handy as he and Chris Barrie collaborated online to put the 500-page publication to sound, with Mr Barrie following coronavirus restrictions by working at his studio near London. The project gave him a perfect opportunity to stay safe and keep busy.

“We are living through truly unprecedented times and as things stand it is very difficult to identify a viable route back to what we used to call normality. Recording Dinosaur has given me the chance to get really creative during this time,” said Mr Barrie, who also starred as Gordon Brittas in the Brittas Empire and Lara Croft's butler, Hillary in the Tomb Raider franchise films.

“There is no denying that the prospect of recording a 500-plus page novel with a very broad range of characters and some hellish pronunciations was initially quite daunting, but the more we recorded, the more I relished the challenges of ‘owning’ the characters and bringing Mr Llewelyn’s fantastic descriptions and observations off the page.”

Dinosaur is available in hardback, paperback and Kindle formats. The full and unabridged audiobook of Dinosaur performed by Chris Barrie is available to order in downloadable and CD formats at www.fossil-rock.com/dinosaur-uk or visit www.fossil-rock.com/dinosaur-uk