Transformers franchise director/producer Michael Bay is set to direct the feature film adaptation of Wesley Chu’s upcoming sci-fi adventure novel Time Salvager. The dystopian tale is set during an era when humans have been forced to abandon a toxic Earth for the outer solar system and are struggling to survive on other planets and their moons.

The story centers on James Griffin-Mars, a convicted criminal, who despite his troubled past, has been selected for an important but extremely dangerous job—to be a chronman traveling through time to the Earth’s past to recover treasure and resources without altering the timeline.

On his final mission, James meets scientist Elise Kim, who is destined to be killed during the destruction of an oceanic rig. James breaks the chronmen’s highest law and saves Elise by bringing her back to the future, making them both fugitives. As Chu’s website explains: “Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, somehow finding allies, and perhaps discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity’s home world.”

Bay is currently at work on the film 13 Hours, starring Pablo Schreiber and John Krasinski, which chronicles the terrorist attack on the U.S. State Department Special Mission Compound and CIA station in Benghazi, Libya in 2012.

Wesley Chu’s novel is scheduled to be released July 7.