"Like Don DeLillo's Underworld, Simon Ings's remarkable new work delivers nothing less than a secret key, a counter-history, of the last sixty years."—Mark Costello, author of Big IfThe Weight of Numbers describes the metamorphosis of three people: Anthony Burden, a mathematical genius destroyed by the beauty of numbers; Saul Cogan, transformed from prankster idealist to trafficker in the poor and dispossessed; and Stacey Chavez, ex-teena...

Four writers. Four dictators. One world, changed out of all recognition. ENGINEERS OF HUMAN SOULS is an intimate and shocking shadow history of creative vanity in a time that turned writers - once the faithful servants of authority - into figures of political consequence.Maurice Barrès, who first wielded the politics of identity. Gabriele D'Annunzio, whose poetry became a blueprint for fascism. Maxim Gorky, dramatist of the working class and Stalin's cheerleader. T...

Four writers. Four dictators. One world, changed out of all recognition. ENGINEERS OF HUMAN SOULS is an intimate and shocking shadow history of creative vanity in a time that turned writers - once the faithful servants of authority - into figures of political consequence.Maurice Barrès, who first wielded the politics of identity. Gabriele D'Annunzio, whose poetry became a blueprint for fascism. Maxim Gorky, dramatist of the working class and Stalin's cheerleader. T...

Artificial intelligence in 100 stories.To ready us for the inevitable, here are 100 of the best short stories ever written – most of them by humans – about artificial intelligence. Simon Ings has assembled anthropomorphic cyborgs and invertebrate AIs, thuggish metal lumps and wisps of manufactured intelligence so delicate that if you blink you might miss them in the new overlord of all robot literary compendiums.It's Alive! is about inventors and their creat...

The new novel from Simon Ings is a story that balances on the knife blade of a new technology. Augmented Reality uses computing power to overlay a digital imagined reality over the real world. Whether it be adverts or imagined buildings and imagined people, with Augmented Reality the world is no longer as it appears to you, it is as it is imagined by someone else.Two friends are working at the cutting edge of this technology and when they are offered backing to take the idea and ma...

A conspiracy that dates from World War Two starts to unravel in the aftermath of an act of piracy: a genre-defying thriller from a critically acclaimed British author.Off the coast of Sri Lanka, a tramp steamer is seized by pirates. The captain has his wife and son aboard and knows that their survival depends on giving the pirates exactly what they want. But what can they possibly want with his worn-out ship and its cargo of junk?On the island of Bali a tsu...

Simon Ings has written a surreal adventure probing the very fabric of existence, tearing it open to reveal a sometimes horrifying world within. It is a work that will delight any fan of China Mieville.Only a fool would question the strange magics that maintain the cool haven of the City of the Iron Fish in the middle of an inferno of scorching heat and splintered rock, for the well-watered streets of the city hide secrets in their shadows.Thomas Kemp is just such a fool ......

Post-cyberpunk SF that recalls the darkness of M. John Harrison and the wild visual imagination of China Mieville and Hannu Rajaniemi, HEADLONG felt ahead of the curve when first published and now serves to show just why Simon Ings has remained on the cutting edge of genre fiction.Surgically connected to their swarming robotic workers, architects Christopher and Joanne Yale are turning the moon into a paradise.But now, without warning, the machines have pulled the plug and ...

An ambitious SF novel that is at once post-cyberpunk and post-modern. Complex, multi-layered, it combines hard science, tarot and images of late 20th-century Europe to make something utterly original. And introduces a memorable new heroine to the genre ...Malise has a problem. She's come downwell to Earth, but years of space combat have ruined her: her muscles have wasted away, her past is a confused torture of events and her brain is wired to addictive military hardware that's ill...

Winner of the O2 X Award'Dynamic'-- Daily Telegraph'Dazzling'-- Guardian'Ambitious and virtuoso'-- Financial Times'Unforgettable'-- The Times'Ingenious... shimmering'-- New StatesmanOn July 21, 1969 two astronauts set foot on the moon; far below, in ravaged Mozambique, a young revolutionary - hailed ...

**An astronaut returns to Earth after a 10-year mission to find a utopian society he hardly recognizes in this classic science fiction novel by the author of Solaris.“[Lem’s] marvelous, absorbing and often hilarious books make our weary universe seem pale and undistinguished by comparison.” —The Washington Post**Stanisław Lem’s Return from the Stars recounts the experiences of Hal Bregg, an astronaut who returns from an exploratory mission that la...

Nominated for the 2019 Kitschie Awards for best novel, Simon Ings' The Smoke is about love, loss and loneliness in an incomprehensible world.Humanity has been split into three different species. Mutual incomprehension has fractured the globe. As humans race to be the first of their kind to reach the stars, another Great War looms.For you that means returning to Yorkshire and the town of your birth, where factories churn out the par...