The year is 2096. Earth’s climate has irrevocably changed (sea-levels have risen to the mountain-tops; the sky is always covered in cloud, the moon and stars are never visible). Instead of countries, we now have floating cities named after varieties of cheese. And what’s more, Earthlings now know that intelligent life exists beyond Earth – amongst a group of planets in the Milky Way.
The story begins with an invitation from these planets asking Earth to send 5 children (the Five) to a training school in the centre of the MilkyWay, known as IGGY. 25 children from all over the Milky Way are being sent to IGGY for initial training. At the end of training, 5 of these ‘IGGY Cadets’ will be selected for a mission that is “too secret and too dangerous to divulge”.
Earth’s Grand Council decides to accept the invite and send the best five kids it can find. However, a member of the Council, who ‘hates’ aliens and wishes to sabotage the IGGY expedition, chooses the biggest loser he can find to be one of the Five – Tommy Storm.
Tommy Storm, an orphan, is 11¼. He has a stutter, he’s a mongrel-mix of races and he’s the only boy on Earth whose hair won’t spike. Tommy is ranked last of the Five in terms of ability and so, when he reaches IGGY, he’s placed into the Dream5s’ dorm with 4 other alien kids who, like him, are all ranked fifth – or last – in terms of their abilities.
But if Tommy is a fish out of water on Earth, he becomes a fish in water on IGGY. He blossoms, learning extraordinary new skills and, in his new dorm-mates, he makes the first real friends he’s ever had. He also learns a new take on Earth’s history and sees old footage of the planet from 2009 – a time when the planet had a wondrous variety of tress and flowers and valleys and lakes and animals (before sea-levels soared). For the first time he feels a deep love for his planet.
This is a mixed blessing because Tommy learns that the universe ‘is almost definitely’ going to be destroyed by a Terrible Future Calamity (the TFC) and that the mission of the 5 chosen IGGY Cadets will be to prevent the TFC. Even worse, to enable this mission, Earth will have to be obliterated.
As Tommy and his fellow Dream5s struggle – in a series of outlandish contests – to overcome the other dorms and be chosen as the five IGGY Knights to save the universe, Tommy is compelled to find a way to save his planet, and has to contend with his first feelings of romance and has to break all the rules of IGGY to find out the truth about his dead parents.
Finally, against all the odds, the Dream5s are chosen as the IGGY Knights and Tommy manages to save Earth. The story ends with the Dream5s leaving the Milky Way – possibly forever – on their far-flung journey to save the universe from the TFC.