Coming soon: 3 for June from Eric Brown, Garry Kilworth and James Everington

June will be a big month for us at infinity plus, with three big titles to be published in paperback and a variety of electronic formats.

 

Salvage by Eric Brown

When Salvageman Ed saves Ella Rodriguez from spider-drones on the pleasure planet of Sinclair’s Landfall, he has no idea what he’s letting himself in for. Ella is not at all what she seems, as he’s soon about to find out.

What follows, as the spider-drones and the Hayakawa Organisation chase Ed, Ella and engineer Karrie light-years across space, is a fast-paced adventure with Ed learning more about Ella – and about himself – than he ever expected.

The Salvageman Ed series of linked stories – four of which appear here for the first time – combine action, humour and pathos, from the master of character-based adventure science fiction.

“Eric Brown’s modest, slightly retro, extremely charming and very human voice has been a distinctive, indeed unique, presence in British SF for many years. Here he offers another interlinked selection of stories which, as is typical of Eric Brown, manage to be small scale, close-up, and completely free of heroic posturing, in spite of the galactic scale of their setting. There is something restful about them, something comforting. Yet while they gently entertain, they also, very quietly, deal with big questions about identity, love, and the relationship between body and soul.” Chris Beckett

 

The Fabulous Beast by Garry Kilworth

A set of beautifully crafted tales of the imagination by a writer who was smitten by the magic of the speculative short story at the age of twelve and has remained under its spell ever since.

These few stories cover three closely related sub-genres: science fiction, fantasy and horror. In the White Garden murders are taking place nightly, but who is leaving the deep foot-prints in the flower beds? Twelve men are locked in the jury room, but thirteen emerge after their deliberations are over. In a call centre serving several worlds, the staff are less than helpful when things go wrong with a body-change holiday.

Three of the stories form a set piece under the sub-sub-genre title of ‘Anglo-Saxon Tales’. This trilogy takes the reader back to a time when strange gods ruled the lives of men and elves were invisible creatures who caused mayhem among mortals.

Garry Kilworth has created a set of stories that lift readers out of their ordinary lives and place them in situations of nightmare and wonder, or out among far distant suns. Come inside and meet vampires, dragons, ghosts, aliens, weremen, people who walk on water, clones, ghouls and marvellous wolves with the secret of life written beneath their eyelids.

‘Kilworth’s stories are delightfully nuanced and carefully wrought.’ Publishers Weekly

‘A bony-handed clutch of short stories, addictive and hallucinatory.’ The Times

‘Here is a writer determined and well equipped to contribute to the shudder-count.’ The Guardian

 

Falling Over by James Everington

Sometimes when you fall over you don’t get up again. And sometimes, you get up to find everything has changed:

An ordinary man who sees his face in a tabloid newspaper. A soldier haunted by the images of those he has killed from afar. Two petty criminals on the run from a punishment more implacable than either of them can imagine. Doppelgängers both real and imaginary. A tranquil English village where those who don’t fit in really aren’t welcome, and a strange hotel where second chances are allowed… at a price.

Ten stories of unease, fear and the weird from James Everington.
“Good writing gives off fumes, the sort that induce dark visions, and Everington’s elegant, sophisticated prose is a potent brew. Imbibe at your own risk.” – Robert Dunbar, author of The Pines and Martyrs & Monsters

“The horror angle in the stories is almost always a metaphor for other things – loneliness, fear, isolation, regret. The word “haunting” really does double duty here… Beautifully written, evocative, masterful…what shines through these stories is the author’s love of language.” Red Adept Reviews, 2011 Indie Awards Short Story category

“Everington is excellent at evoking a mounting sense of unease, turning to dread, that close, oppressive feeling when everything is still and ordinary, but the whole world is filled with the sense that something huge and terrible is just about to happen.” Iain Rowan, author of One Of Us and Nowhere To Go

New titles by Garry Kilworth, Eric Brown and James Everington due from infinity plus

I’m delighted to announce three new titles due soon in paperback and ebook format from infinity plus.

First up is The Fabulous Beast, a new collection from Garry Kilworth. This includes 18 stories, from Anglo-Saxon tales to fantasy, science fiction and horror, by an author described by Punch as “a master of his trade” and by New Scientist as “arguably the finest writer of short fiction today, in any genre.” Some of the stories in this book also featured in Garry’s ebook-only collection Phoenix Man (no longer available). Already available from infinity plus is Garry’s book of memoirs, On my Way To Samarkand, crammed with anecdotes about his farm worker antecedents and his rovings around the globe, as well as his experiences in the mid-list of many publishing houses.

James Everington‘s Falling Over is a wonderfully gritty and compelling collection of stories that tread the fine line between crime, horror and just downright strange. “Beautifully written, evocative, masterful…what shines through these stories is the author’s love of language” (Red Adept on James’s The Other Room).

And infinity plus stalwart Eric Brown returns with a book of the Salvageman Ed stories, rewritten as a single novel. Previously, we’ve brought out eight of Eric’s books, including early novels such as Meridian Days and Penumbra, his landmark collection The Time-Lapsed Man and other stories, the horror and ghost story collection Ghostwriting (which I think contains some of his best writing), and more.

These titles are due to appear from May to July, 2013.

In Transit – an extract from the novella by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown

The White Swan left the war zone and burst through the Jehovah wormhole with an actinic explosion of supercharged particles.

Abbott clutched the arms of his seat and closed his eyes as the swirling fire of the membrane swallowed the shuttle and spat it out the other side, five hundred light years along the galactic rim. The transition seemed to twist him inside out and wring his soul dry. It left him light-headed and nauseous, his head fizzing with static.

When he opened his eyes, he was amazed to see the crew going about their business as if nothing had happened. They hung in their slings, slaved to the shuttle’s smartware nexus, hands drifting across touchpads and parallel sensors with the dreamy grace of narcoleptic ballerinas. The pilot was setting course from the Jehovah wormhole to its twin, a thousand parsecs across the star system, while an engineer and a smartware specialist communed with the shuttle as if in comas.

Abbott’s head still reeled.

Through the forward viewscreen, a delta strip above the command slings, he made out the main sequence primary, its lone planet in transit across the sun’s fiery disc. Ahead, a mirror image of the wormhole they had just left, its twin was a coruscating oval interface through which they would pass in six hours en route to Earth.

At least, he thought with relief, they were out of Kryte-controlled territory now. This intermediate system was technically in no-man’s land, strategically important and sporadically fought over.

“… though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” a woman’s voice intoned to his left.

He turned. Some neurological side-effect of the transition had blitzed his short-term memory.

“…I will fear no evil.”

He fingered his crucifix, where it rested on an inflamed area on his chest. Memory started to kick in… The smartware implant, fed in through his chest wall, from where it had infiltrated his entire body. The slave device.

He’d been in conversation with Major Travers, he recalled. Just before the jump. Something about a briefing…

“…For thou art with me.”

It came back to him now. Travers, a blocky grunt who did nothing to disguise her disdain of civilians in general and xeno-psychologists in particular, had been filling him in about the captured Kryte in the shuttle’s hold.

“You okay, Abbott?” Travers looked across at him now, her superior expression putting him in his place. She was an uncompromising-looking woman, with the look of a street-fighter, only accentuated by the reconstructive surgery that left half her face composed of n-gel – so nearly natural-looking, but not quite. Responses on that half of her face lagged a split second behind so that an expression would start on one side of her face and migrate to the left, a peristalsis of the self. “You look rough.”

“I’m fine. Where were we?” He sat up, attempting to look competent.

Travers smiled, her time-lagged smile that Abbott tried hard not to find disturbing. “I was telling you about the Devil,” she told him. “I was telling you about your Devil…”

Abbott held up a hand. “Please. I know they’re the enemy, but demonising them like that does nothing to foster understanding.”

Travers sneered. “I don’t want to understand the bastards, Abbott. I want to eradicate them.” As she said this, she ran a finger across the crucifix tattooed on her left forearm.

“The best way to win the war, or even to contain it, will be to come to some understanding of how the enemy works, how it thinks. Reducing a dangerous foe to stereotypes is self-defeating and foolhardy.”

Something flared in Travers’ eyes, a fighter’s response, an unthinking, uncomprehending reflex. “Listen, Abbott. I lost an entire platoon capturing that fucker back there. Twenty-five fine men and women, blitzed in an instant. If you think I give a damn about what I call the…”

Something in Abbott’s expression halted her tirade.

He reached out and laid a hand over hers. The touch froze her. He wondered at the last time she’d felt the contact of human flesh.

“Major, ten years ago an advanced strike of the Kryte’s rim division killed five thousand colonists on New Hampton. My wife and two year-old son were among the fatalities. Please don’t doubt my enmity towards the Kryte.”

She had the good grace to looked away, cowed.

Abbott went on, “So… where did you say we’d got to?”

“I was describing the… the Kryte. We’re of the opinion that it wasn’t a combat soldier.”

“I thought all Krytes in the forward sector were militia?”

She shook her head. “Not this one. It didn’t have battle armour, and wasn’t equipped with phase array nucleonics. It was in a sub-light shuttle, grounded behind the front line. It was attempting to get away when we broke through and disabled the ship.”

“So what do you think it was doing there?”

“Beats me,” Travers said. “Anyway, it didn’t have time to kill itself. We took it by surprise. It put up a hell of a fight, but we quelled the bastard. We contacted the sector base unit immediately. The rest you know.”

“This is our big chance, Major,” Abbott told her. “Our big chance to understand.”

He saw in her eyes that she knew that this time his use of the word understand had a more specific meaning. The Kryte were known to be extremely long-lived, under normal circumstances – perhaps even immortal. Humankind had never even come close to understanding the secret of this longevity until now. Only three Kryte had ever been captured alive before, so badly wounded that they’d died a few hours later without yielding their secret.

Travers was looking at him, her lop-sided expression unfathomable. “Do we really want to understand?” she asked, her tone even, controlled.

(…continues)

In Transit: in a future war-torn universe in which human expansion has come up against implacable alien enemies, Xeno-psychologist Abbott finds himself the guardian of a deadly Kryte, so that it can be taken to Earth to be studied. When they crash-land on the fortress planet of St Jerome, the alien prisoner turns the tables and takes Abbott into terrible custody. What follows is a terrifying journey across a hellish landscape towards a finale that might change the destiny of the Kryte and humanity, forever…

In Transit: included with six other collaborations in Parallax View by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown, both of whom have novels shortlisted for the 2012 Philip K Dick Award.

In Transit: ”The stories in this collection are among the best science fiction. These are stories imbued with a rich intelligence and a deep sense of humanity. These are mature stories, tales of love and loss, of pleasure and pain. Cherish them.” —from the foreword by Stephen Baxter

Parallax View is available as an ebook from:
…Barnes and Noble
…Apple
…Kobo
…Amazon.com
…Amazon.co.uk
…and as a paperback from:
…Amazon.co.uk
…Amazon.com
…Createspace

Cover by Dominic Harman.

New: Parallax View by Keith Brooke & Eric Brown

“The stories in this collection are among the best science fiction. These are stories imbued with a rich intelligence and a deep sense of humanity. These are mature stories, tales of love and loss, of pleasure and pain. Cherish them.”
- from the foreword by Stephen Baxter

Both authors shortlisted for this year’s Philip K Dick Award. Cover by Dominic Harman.

Parallax View showcases ‘In Transit’, written specially for this collection, a novella set in a future war-torn universe in which human expansion has come up against the implacable Kryte. Xeno-psychologist Abbott finds himself the guardian of a deadly Kryte on a mission to study it on his return to Earth. When they crash-land on the fortress planet of St Jerome, the Kryte prisoner turns the tables and takes Abbott into terrible custody. What follows is a terrifying journey across a hellish landscape towards a finale that might change the destiny of the Kryte and humanity, forever…

Plus six other stories that examine the interface between human and alien – a parallax view from two of Britain’s top science fiction writers, both shortlisted for the 2012 Philip K Dick Award.

“Individually, Keith Brooke and Eric Brown purvey SF of the highest order: their stories have epic scope and a huge heart. The fusion of their talents is a sublime alchemy, a seamless pageant of humanity and wonder, eloquently expressed.”
–James Lovegrove

“A stunning cluster of sf parables … Brooke and Brown possess the world-building ability of Frank Herbert, the same capacity for extrapolation and black humour that marked Philip K Dick’s work and a social conscience to rival that of Orwell’s …to view this book is to view science fiction at its very best.”
–Paul Kane, Terror Tales

Parallax View is available as an ebook from:
…Barnes and Noble
…Apple
…Kobo
…Amazon.com
…Amazon.co.uk
…and as a paperback from:
…Amazon.co.uk
…Amazon.com
…Createspace

Garry Kilworth: an extract from On My Way To Samarkand – memoirs of a travelling writer

Here’s a traveller’s tale set in Thailand. We wanted to journey by train from Bangkok to Chang Mai on an overnight sleeper train. Just obtaining the ticket turned the clock back to a time when Rudyard Kipling was in his youth. First we obtained a number at a kiosk. We took that number, just a simple figure like 8 or 9, to an office where a man wrote our names in a great ledger. We then went to another office where we were assigned seats and canvas bunk beds that unrolled from the side of the carriage. Finally, we went to the last office, where we were issued with tickets for the 6 pm train to Chang Mai.

We were excited. This was our first long rail trip in the Far East.

At quarter-to-six that evening we boarded a train which said ‘Bangkok to Chang Mai’ on the side in big letters. The platform from which it was leaving was registered on both our tickets. We stowed our luggage, sat in our seats and were delighted to be served curry from a man who had a portable paraffin stove set up in the linked bit between the next carriage and ours. We had especially opted for no air conditioning, because we like the climate of Thailand and don’t like to freeze.

The train pulled out at precisely 6 pm.

Once out in the countryside we would stop only at the odd station, but on the edge of Bangkok there were a number of suburban halts where people could board. At about 7 pm a Thai family entered our carriage. There was dad, mum and two children. The mild-looking man confronted us, inspected his own tickets, and said politely, ‘Madam and sir, you are in our seats.’

I took out our tickets, looked at the seat numbers, checked the carriage number, and shook my head.

‘I’m sorry, you’ve made a mistake. These are our seats.’

He shrugged and showed me his tickets. I showed him mine. They were identical. Damn railway clerks, I thought. They’ve either sold the seats twice, or made a stupid error. All those ledgers too! You would think the system infallible with so much bureaucracy.

‘I must fetch the ticket inspector,’ said the Thai gentleman. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

‘Good idea,’ I replied, safe in the knowledge that possession was nine tenths of the law. ‘He’ll sort it out.’

In the meantime I offered my seat to the man’s wife and Annette chatted to the two children.

The ticket inspector turned out to be a corpulent official covered in gold lanyards, medals and scrambled egg. He looked like an amiable general in Thailand’s army. However, he was accompanied by a lean narrow-eyed lieutenant who wore a gun at his hip. This one looked like an officer in the Vietcong, the one from the movie The Deerhunter who keeps yelling, ‘Wai! Wai! Wai!’ or some such word into the ear of Robert de Niro. This man’s hand never left his gun butt as he stared at me from beneath the slanted peak of his immaculate cap.

Neither of these rail officials spoke English.

The ticket inspector studied all the tickets on show and then spoke softly to the gentleman with the nice family.

‘He wants to know,’ said the gentleman, turning to me, ‘why you are on the wrong train?’

We were nonplussed. Stunned.

‘What wrong train?’ I argued. ‘This is the 6 pm from Bangkok to Chang Mai, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ came the calm reply, ‘this is the 3 pm from Bangkok to Chang Mai, running late as usual.’

‘What? You mean…’

‘All trains run late here, sir. The 6 pm will still be standing in the station. The ticket inspector says you will have to get off at the next station and wait for your right train.’

Annette and I stared out of the window at the blackness rushing by. The jungle stations we swept through had no lights whatsoever. They were deep pits of darkness in a world of slightly lesser darkness. I had visions of standing on one of those rickety wooden platforms trying to flag down an express. It was scary. Too scary to contemplate. I’m sure the people who lived near those stations were perfectly respectable citizens, but the night-time jungle does things with the imagination. There was no way we were going to get off our train, now that we were rattling towards Chang Mai.

Through our gentleman translator we managed to persuade the inspector to let us stay on the train. At first he wanted to sell us first class tickets to the air conditioned compartments. When that didn’t work – Annette digging in her heels – he found us similar seats to the ones we already had. It occurred to me he could have done that in the first place, but since all was well that ended well, I really didn’t care.

There is a post script to this short tale.

To avoid any repetition of this near horror story, we chose to return to Bangkok by a reliable bus. Annette and I boarded the coach to find our booked seats occupied by two young men in orange robes. Conscript monks. It seems that Thai men are expected to spend one year in the army and then one year as a Buddhist monk. During that latter year they are apparently entitled to all sorts of privileges, such as nicking booked seats with impunity. They are untouchable in that sense. These two refused even to make eye contact with us.

They wouldn’t budge. They knew their rights.

A fierce woman conductor intervened. She told Annette and me to ‘get off the bus’. We informed her we had tickets for the seats these two oranges were occupying. We were not going to leave. Other passengers began to get restless. The driver started looking panicky. Finally he came to us with his hands clasped as if in prayer and said, ‘Sir, Madam, I beseech you. I implore with you to understand my problem and leave the bus.’ We sighed, gave up and got off the vehicle. It’s a tough man who can withstand a Thai beseeching, I can tell you. Tougher than me, anyway. We collected our luggage from underneath the bus and waited for another coach. Hopefully Chang Mai had run out of monks and we could get back to Bangkok on the next one. And where do Thai bus drivers learn English words like ‘beseech’? I guarantee half the population of the English-speaking world doesn’t use that word. He had probably read Chaucer and Piers Ploughman, while all I know of the Thai language is ‘Good day’.

On My Way To Samarkand is available in ebook and print editions:

ebook:
…amazon.com
…amazon.co.uk
…kobo
…Smashwords
print:
…amazon.com
…amazon.co.uk
…createspace.com

Hell’s a Good Joke: Jason Erik Lundberg on the inspiration behind The Alchemy of Happiness

It all started with a sculpture.

In 1999, when I was still an unpublished newbie, I attended the World Horror Convention in Atlanta, where some of the notable writer guests included Neil Gaiman, John Shirley, Michael Bishop, Caitlín R. Kiernan, and Ramsey Campbell. At that point, I thought that I might still be a horror writer, even though my innate squeamishness for violence and terror was beginning to win the battle for my chosen subject matter, and I attended very much because of the writers there. However, on the second day of the convention, at the urging of several new friends, I made my way into the art show, and beheld the gloriously dark and whimsical sculpture work of Lisa Snellings, who was the Artist Guest-of-Honor. Her smaller pieces made me smile and her larger kinetic works (including the moving Ferris wheel that inspired the anthology Strange Attraction, edited by Edward E. Kramer) filled me with wonder, but it was her largest piece on display that literally stole the breath from my lungs.

Named “If Love’s a Fine Game, Hell’s a Good Joke,” the sculpture consisted of two life-sized harlequins, one balancing on the knees of the other; the expressions that Lisa had so painstakingly crafted on their faces were so devilish and sly that, right there on that spot, I conceived of the siblings Blue and Dane: immortals, manipulators, elementals.

When I got home from the convention, I immediately cast these two characters in a novelette called “Wicked Game” (which can be found in my ebook collection The Curragh of Kildaire). The story examined the shifting balance of control that comes with power both earned and taken; it also established the borstal plane, a dimension of existence that both acts as a prison and as the source of all the magic in the world, a locale I would visit again in my prose. I later returned to the siblings in a middle-grade story called “Watersnake, Firesnake,” but this time put them in a distinctly Asian setting, as the antagonists of a young boy who has found a phoenix egg.

Several years passed, and I grew as a writer, and Blue and Dane refused to go away, insisting that I hadn’t yet finished telling their story. It took time, but three substantial works of fiction came into existence that further explored the power dynamics of their relationship, and the consequences of their long-term meddling in human affairs.

The Alchemy of Happiness is the result, an interwoven tripartite narrative collecting “Reality, Interrupted,” “In Jurong,” and “Always a Risk” for the very first time.

The collection’s title riffs on that of the ancient Islamic text Kimiya-yi Sa’adat by the Sufi philosopher Abu ?amid Mu?ammad ibn Mu?ammad al-Ghazali, as well as the science of alchemy that sought to harness the four classical elements (two of which my characters physically embody). However, whereas al-Ghazali’s text was designed as a moral guide toward a more fulfilling spiritual life, mine is open-ended, a question rather than an answer. Through their constant searching, will Blue and Dane ever find that existential bliss toward which all of us are striving? Or will their millennia of manipulation and destruction leave them forever in a state of metaphysical suffering?

The Alchemy of Happiness is available now from infinity plus book. Also included in this ebook volume is a hybrid-essay called “Embracing the Strange,” which looks at my own personal journey for happiness and fulfillment through the lens of speculative fiction, as well as a wide-ranging interview by Singaporean author and editor Wei Fen Lee.

And as a special bonus, anyone who buys the ebook gets a link to download the expanded second edition of my collection Red Dot Irreal completely for free.

Snapshots: Robert Freeman Wexler interviewed

What kind of writer are you?
Geologic. Words, thoughts, ideas materialize slowly and find their way to the page.

What are you working on now?
A novel, tentatively called Recollections of a Malleable Future, but I also call it New Springdale Novel, because it’s set in Springdale.  I’m around a third of the way through it, but I’ve put it on hold to work on a novella.  The novella is a historical/Western-ish thing set around the Gulf Coast of Texas in 1888.  It’s a crime/detective story with strangeness.  I’m about halfway through and still trying to think of a title.

What’s recently or soon out?
This is the longest period I’ve had without new things out.  I’m looking for a publisher for a short story collection.  The Western novella is supposed to come out from PS at World Fantasy in Brighton…assuming I finish in time.

In Springdale Town is one of those stories that plays with the boundaries between the weird and the very real. Tell us about the story’s origins and why it became something you had to write.
It really started when I went to a movie theater and no one was there (I describe that situation in the Afterword; that doesn’t mean it really happened—I fabricate many things—but in this case it’s true). I had been thinking about writing a Jonathan Carroll-type of story in which the people from a television drama are actually real. After writing a bit about a man who can’t find other people, I realized that I had found the television program story. And had hooked myself, so I had to finish it.

Describe your typical writing day.
I write for twenty to thirty minutes Monday through Thursday during lunch breaks at work, then longer on Fridays. Rarely on the weekends. I wish I had more time, but I’ve learned to be efficient with the time I have.

What would you draw attention to from your back-list?
Besides In Springdale Town, newly released in ebook from Infinity Plus…? I’m still (after all these years) looking for a U.S. publisher for The Painting and the City. It came out in 2009 from PS, in French translation from now-defunct Zanzibar Editions, audiobook from iambik audiobooks…but no U.S. publisher.

Which other authors or books do you think deserve a plug?
I recently posted on my blog about a fine contemporary noir novel called Robbers, by Christopher Cook. Older writers, Robert Aickman and Arthur Machen, newer writers, Michael Cisco, Brendan Connell, Kaaron Warren, Sébastien Doubinsky, other writers available from Infinity Plus, Iain Rowan, Neil Williamson, Anna Tambour.

Who are the people who’ve made a real difference to your writing career?
Teachers from Clarion West: Lucius Shepard, Michael Bishop, Nicola Griffith, people who’ve published me, mainly Peter Crowther of PS—without him the world would be a sadder place of fewer books.

If you were to offer one snippet of writing advice what would it be?
Don’t write what you think will sell. Write what comes from yourself, in a way that only you can write it. Otherwise you’ll sound like everyone else. There’s a market for people who sound like everyone else, so you’ll sell a lot more books than me, but that’s my advice.

So… the easy one: what’s the future of publishing? How will writers be making a living and publishing in five or ten years? What will readers be reading?
I can’t tell you. I figured it out, but it’s a secret. No one else has figured it out. Just me. All will be revealed at the proper moment. No sooner.

Any other questions you’d like to have been asked? Feel free to add and answer them, and I’ll pretend to have asked them.

I’d like to say thanks for putting this new Springdale ebook together. It’s great to give new life to the story, send it out to find new readers.

More…

Robert Freeman Wexler’s latest novel is The Painting And The City, PS Publishing 2009. His new infinity plus novella, In Springdale Town, originally came out in 2003 from PS Publishing and was reprinted in Best Short Novels 2004, SFBC, and in Modern Greats of Science Fiction, iBooks; his other work includes a novel, Circus Of The Grand Design (Prime Books 2004 and infinity plus ebooks, 2011), and a chapbook of short fiction, Psychological Methods To Sell Should Be Destroyed (Spilt Milk Press/Electric Velocipede 2008). His stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Polyphony, The Third Alternative, Electric Velocipede, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. He lives at Sanity Creek, Ohio with his wife, the writer Rebecca Kuder, and daughter Merida Kuder-Wexler.

Buy stuff:

• In Springdale Town
  amazon.com | amazon.co.uk
• Circus Of The Grand Design
  amazon.com | amazon.co.uk
  

 

Phew…

So, just to summarise, then:

The latest books from infinity plus include two collections from Eric Brown in their first e-editions, the first e- and paperback editions of Keith Brooke’s Genetopia, and e- and paperback editions of Garry Kilworth’s memoirs.

Details at: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/books/new.htm

The full line-up is:

infinity plus: quintet
by Garry Kilworth, Lisa Tuttle, Neil Williamson, Stephen Palmer and Eric Brown (edited by Keith Brooke) (ebook) [Dec 2012]
Five stories from top writers of speculative fiction: science fiction, fantasy and the downright strange, stories from the heart, stories to make you think and wonder.

Genetopia
by Keith Brooke (ebook & print) [Nov 2012]
Searching for his missing sister, Flint encounters a world where illness is to be feared, where genes mutate and migrate between species through plague and fever. This is the story of the struggles between those who want to defend their heritage and those who choose to embrace the new. “A minor masterpiece that should usher Brooke at last into the recognized front ranks of SF writers” (Locus)

Blue Shifting
by Eric Brown (ebook) [Dec 2012]
A novella and seven stories from the two-times winner of the British Science Fiction Award for Short Fiction. Take a journey into an extraordinary universe… where life and love face the demands of mortality …where mankind has become Augmented or Altered, where zebra-men talk with unicorn-women …and where you can break the chains of physics in the cobalt glory of the Nada-continuum.

The Time-Lapsed Man and other stories
by Eric Brown (ebook) [Dec 2012]
In Eric Brown’s landmark first collection of stories, fear, desire, love and redemption are forged with an innovative and stunning science-fiction imagination, creating eight exotic tales of tomorrow.

The Emoticon Generation
by Guy Hasson (ebook) [Dec 2012]
In this collection you’ll find a man who, after losing his fiancée to a terrible accident, seeks to learn if true love really exists; a girl, hardly a teen, who searches for her father only to learn a terrible truth about herself; a man who wants to immortalize his genius but ends up tricking himself out of it; an old hero whose entire life unravels when the truth about his heroic act is revealed; a harmless birthday gift that triggers a profound search into the depths of a young couple’s relationship; and more.

On my way to Samarkand – memoirs of a travelling writer
by Garry Kilworth (ebook & print) [Dec 2012]
Garry Kilworth is a varied and prolific writer who has travelled widely since childhood, living in a number of countries, especially in the Far East. His books include SF and fantasy, historical novels, literary novels, story collections, children’s books and film novelisations. This autobiography covers family history, travels and his experiences in publishing. ‘a master of his trade’ (Punch)

The Alchemy of Happiness
by Jason Erik Lundberg (ebook) [Dec 2012]
A triptych of stories rooted in Asian myth and legend, literary fantasy at its very best from the author of Red Dot Irreal. This volume also features a hybrid essay on the transformative power of speculative fiction, and a wide-ranging interview with the author. And as a special bonus, anyone who purchases a copy of this book gets a link to a free copy of Red Dot Irreal.

Red Dot Irreal – Equatorial Fantastika
by Jason Erik Lundberg (ebook) [Dec 2012]
Travel to Southeast Asia to meet pirates and shamans, wise fish and mystical storytellers, living monuments and paper animals, time travellers, stone taxi drivers, floating dental patients, and a sentient bird park. Once you enter the surreal worlds of Lundberg’s equatorial fantastika, a part of you will never leave. “A fine meal for the mind awaits you in Lundberg’s collection” (Jonathan Carroll)

In Springdale Town
by Robert Freeman Wexler (ebook) [Nov 2012]
Springdale appears to be a quiet village, unblemished by shopping mall or mega-store. But some say Springdale exists only on the contoured highways of our collective imagination. Others point to references dating back to Colonial Boston, to multiple versions of a ballad telling a story of remorse and disgrace. For two people, Springdale is where their lives will intersect with devastating force.

The Love Machine & other contraptions
by Nir Yaniv (ebook & print) [Nov 2012]
What happens when every wish you make is immediately granted by God? If you could use the power of music to travel through time? If your body was the battleground for a strange, alien invasion? In turns humorous, lyrical, profound – but always entertaining – these are the haunting tales of an author at the height of his power.

New: Blue Shifting by Eric Brown

“The blue light thickened, blotting out Janner’s surroundings, and he existed in a displaced void-like limbo. Then the blue light vanished. Christ, he cried to himself, where the hell now?”

It begins with a feeling of euphoria, then the light, lapis lazuli, leaking from your body, intensifying, a blinding nimbus, then it’s gone. And so are you… somewhere, anywhere.

And it is happening to you every day.

This collection contains the novella Blue Shifting, plus seven other stories from the two-times winner of the British Science Fiction Award for Short Fiction.

Take a journey into an extraordinary universe…

…where life and love face the demands of mortality on planets as far flung as Nova Francais, Earth and Henderson’s Fall.

…where mankind has become Augmented or Altered, where zebra-men talk with unicorn-women.

…and where you can break the chains of physics in the cobalt glory of the Nada-continuum.

Available from:

• amazon.com
• amazon.co.uk
• kobo
• smashwords

New: infinity plus quintet

stories by Garry Kilworth, Lisa Tuttle, Neil Williamson, Stephen Palmer and Eric Brown
edited by Keith Brooke

Five stories from top writers of speculative fiction: science fiction, fantasy and the downright strange, stories from the heart, stories to make you think and wonder.

The stories in this volume are:

“Filming the Making of the Film of the Making of Fitzcarraldo” by Garry Kilworth

“Flying to Byzantium” by Lisa Tuttle

“Arrhythmia” by Neil Williamson

“Dr Vanchovy’s Final Case” by Stephen Palmer

“The Girl Who Died for Art and Lived” by Eric Brown

Available from:

• amazon.com
• amazon.co.uk
• kobo
• smashwords