by Sam Smith
The fourth, Not Now: Death, Dreams & Reasons for Living, is an SF exploration of desire, dreams and self-deceit. A clever and conceited young poet, Okinwe Orbinson, is recruited from his artificial city world - part of a moribund space civilisation - by a small mysterious stranger calling himself Leon Reduct. Only when Okinwe has accepted Leon's challenge is he told that his mission is to save a, by now, rumoured hybrid-human race, Talkers, from self-extinction…. (All who have read 'Not Now: Death, Dreams & Reasons for Living' have said that it has left them feeling weird for days after.)
The fifth is The unMaking of Heaven. and is told in 3 strands, The Recent Present, A History, and The Reconstituted Part-Memory of the Shining Knight Compiled Here as Narrative. All of the characters are post-organic beings, minds become machines, calling themselves Synths or Eternals. Some Synths - led by the Shining Knight - decide that all Synths, including Sexthetes and Puzzlers, are Abominations, themselves included, and they set out to destroy them all. The survivors are those who hid. As did the Shining Knight…