ebook, paperback (336pp)
visit bit.ly/EntanglementBook
Elsewhen Press
The Lost Men, an allegory
David Colón
A world where the human population has been decimated. For the few remaining people, the only human contact is their counsel, a mentor who guides them to find ‘the one’, their life mate as decreed by Fate. The only threats to this stable, if sparse, existence are the ‘lost men’ - mindless murderers, living outside the confines of counsel and Fate.
Is Fate a real force, or is it totally imagined, an arbitrary convention, a product of mankind’s self-destructive tendency? In this allegorical tale, David Colón uses an alternate near-future to explore the boundaries of the human condition and the extent to which we are prepared to surrender our capacity for decisions and self-determination in the face of a very personally directed and apparently benevolent, authoritarianism. Is it our responsibility to rebuke inherited ‘wisdom’ for the sake of envisioning and manifesting our own will?
ebook, paperback (192pp)
visit lost-men.com
Elsewhen Press
Dandelion Trilogy
Mike French
Literary surrealism, contemporary fantasy, biting satire, dystopian science fiction. The Dandelion Trilogy by Mike French is all of these and more. Starting with The Ascent of Isaac Steward, this is literary surrealism at its most profound. A contemporary fantasy that follows one man’s journey into his own mind as he struggles to come to terms with the trauma that has reshaped his life and starts to question his own existence. Moving forward to 2034 in Blue Friday, this biting satire warns of a Britain where overtime for married couples is banned, there is enforced viewing of family television (much of it repeats of old shows from the sixties and seventies), monitored family meal-times and a coming of age where twenty-five year-olds are automatically assigned a spouse by the state computer if they have failed to marry. Only the Overtime Underground network resists with the illicit Avodah drug to increase productivity. Finally Convergence delivers us into a truly dystopian future, where a covert military/governmental project uses prisoners on death row to explore what happens to people as they die, downloading the Convergence Point formed in the brain's memory at the point of death into clones. But when combined with Avodah they inadvertently trigger what may be the end of humanity – or a new beginning.
What does it have to do with dandelions? You'll have to read it to find out...
ebook, paperback
visit bit.ly/DandelionTrilogy
Elsewhen Press
Transdimensional Authority
Ira Nayman
Being a series of novels attempting to document the trials and tribulations of the Transdimensional Authority
If there were Alternate Realities, and in each there was a version of Earth (very similar, but perhaps significantly different in one particular regard) then imagine the problems that could be caused if someone, somewhere managed to work out how to travel between those Alternate Realities. Those problems are ideal fodder for the Alternate Reality News Service (ARNS). Consider, also, that if there were problems being caused by unregulated travel between realities, it’s not just news but a perfect excuse to establish an Authority to oversee such travel and make sure that it is regulated. You probably thought jurisdictional issues are bad enough within a nation between competing agencies of dubious acronym and even more dubious motivation, let alone between agencies from different nations. So imagine how each of them would cope with an Authority that has jurisdiction across the realities in different dimensions. Now, you understand the challenges for the investigators who work for the Transdimensional Authority (TA). But, perhaps more importantly, you can see the potential for humour.
Welcome to the Multiverse
(Sorry for the inconvenience)
Being the first
ebook, paperback (336pp)
You Can’t Kill the Multiverse
(But You Can Mess With its Head)
Being the second
ebook, paperback (320pp)
visit bit.ly/TransdimensionalAuthority
Elsewhen Press
Japanese Daisy Chain
Dave Weaver
In a journey around contemporary Japan, through a series of apparently unrelated incidents, we are given an exclusive insight into the consequence of contact with the paranormal. On each occasion, a minor character becomes the main protagonist in the next, creating a human daisy-chain. Just like a daisy-chain, what goes around comes around...
ebook, paperback (248pp)
visit bit.ly/JapaneseDaisyChain
Douglas Thompson’s short stories have appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, most recently Albedo One, Ambit, Postscripts, and New Writing Scotland. He won the Grolsch/Herald Question of Style Award in 1989 and second prize in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition in 2007. His first book, Ultrameta, was published in August 2009, nominated for the Edge Hill Prize, and shortlisted for the BFS Best Newcomer Award, and since then he has published four subsequent novels, Sylvow (2010), Apoidea (2011), Mechagnosis (2012), Entanglement (2012) and has two forthcoming in 2014, The Brahan Seer and Volwys. The Rhymer is his eighth novel and the second to be published by Elsewhen Press.
The Rhymer Page 19