UNOFFICIALLY THE BEST BOOK IN THE WORLDEVER!THE BOOK THAT N.S.A. SPIED ON FROM OUTER SPACE!EVEN THE POPE TRIED TO BAN IT!Not today, thank you. We have enough books. VATICANSPOKESMANGritty yet heart warming, like hot salty porridge on a wintersday, Scathing in his criticism of the mess that society is in. Itsnot his fault-its probably mine. THE NAZARENE.I liked the bit where th...

In Plankton Soup (Second Helpings) Sutton has fused recurring themes such as Life, death, religion, war, romance, sociology, sexual orientation, mythology, genitalia, science fiction, vaudeville theatre, politics (vaudeville theatre again), geography, medical ethics, philosophy, black magic, fashion, cinematography, art, music, history, quantum physics, chemistry, literature, micro-biology, comic fantasy, contemporary culture, foreign languages, archaeology, mental illness, umbrella stands...

“Horror opened me up to new possibilities for survival … I saw power in freakery and transgression and wondered if it could be mine.”The relationship between horror films and the LGBTQ+ community? It’s complicated. Haunted houses, forbidden desires and the monstrous can have striking resonance for those who’ve been marginalised. But the genre’s murky history of an alarmingly heterosexual male gaze, queer-coded villains and sometimes blatant homophobia, is impossible to ove...

Walking to Hollywood is a dazzling triptych - obsessive, satirical, elegiac - in which Will Self burrows down through the intersections of time, place and psyche to explore some of our deepest fears and anxieties with characteristic fearlessness and jagged humour.'Very Little' is ostensibly the account of a curative journey to Canada and the USA, but in fact the record of a nematode's progress, as the worm of obsession - with scale and packing and the 'stuff' of our lives ...

Answer Me This! (http://answermethispodcast.com/) is a weekly interactive comedy podcast, presented by Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann. In each show Helen and Olly answer listener-submitted questions, as diverse and fantastical as "Why does golf bring out the worst in people?", "Who invented the scotch egg?" and "Why do all girls hate me?"In the Answer Me This! Question Compendium, Helen and Olly bring their trademark irreverence to the page for the first ti...

Hancock has gathered thirty-seven of his ironic short stories. You will find them satirical and humourous.

Ian Watson's latest collection shows the same range and apparently inexhaustible fund of ideas that have characterized all his previous books. No other contemporary figure in SF is so prolific or inventive a writer of short stories. In the title story we immediately encounter a phantasmagoric vision of a society increasingly dependent on recycling its usable material; other brilliant inventions include a planet inhabited by lemur-like aliens who bafflingly produce marvellously finished sto...

In his first poetry collection for a decade, Craig Raine addresses themes of transformation in human nature and the natural world and confronts the quiddities of death and sex, memory and desire, commemoration and love. At the core of How Snow Falls are four long poems that explore the possibilities of the form; there are two ardent elegies, one for the poet's mother and one for a dead lover; a sparkling reworking of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's story In a Grove; last a 'film-poem', High...

A collection of science-fiction short stories by the author of "Lucky's Harvest". They feature dozens of characters, a new way of travelling between the stars, a strange planet, magical powers, bravura set-pieces, and manoeuvres of narrative.

The Vultures Are Circling. The Poet is Watching.When the world falls away, who is left to pick up the pieces? A Darker Soul is a relentless, high-octane collection that cuts through the noise of modern life with a razor-sharp critique.This is a world of Falling Away, where civilization is sophisticated in its technology but primitive in its soul. It is a place where the mentally ill and victims of violence are left to rot, ...

So there you are, gorgeous, gifted and a brain the size of a planet and what do you have to put up with? Idiots, morons and people so ugly they ought to have a license to go outside. What should you do? Smile sweetly and put up with them? Gaze into the middle distance and talk about the weather? No. Put them right, sort them out and let them know where they really stand in the food chain of life. Pick any of the pithy put-downs in this little book and you'll never need to be nice to anyone...

Each of the tiny tales in this collection takes its title headline from the BBC News Website. But this isn't reportage by any stretch of the imagination. The choice of headline provided a catalyst for a daily act of invention. They are stories of fleeting moments, high drama and pop culture mash ups, prose, lists and confessionals. Read individually or collectively the effect is similar to channel surfing - fuzzy logic and blurred connections appear and through this the collection finds it...