Mind-expanding explorations of the future of the human formOur bodies and minds are malleable, and only the imagination is the limit to the possible improvements. From genetics to artificial enhancements, humanity will alter the course of its own evolution. Included here are more than twenty stor...
-Mission to locate Earth-temperate planet for colonisation: failed ... -1000 years out from Earth base, damage to colony sleeper hangars 1, 3 and 4 sustained ... all lives lost ... hangars 2 and 5 still operational ... -Mission parameters adjusted: Augmentation of colonists to commence ... -Reque...
reviews.metaphorosis.com2.5 starsA collection of speculative fiction stories, including some related to the Kethani universe.I first encountered Eric Brown via his novel Helix, which I thought was interesting in a Ringworld or Jack McDevitt kind of way - an intriguing alien artifact explored - wh...
Helix is a fast-paced action adventure novel following the plight of four humans when they crashland on what they think is a desolate, ice-bound planet. Daylight brings the discovery that the planet is one of thousands arranged in a vast spiral wound about a central sun. They set off to discover ...
Parallax View showcases the previously unpublished Novella `In Transit', set in a future war-torn universe in which human expansion has come up against the implacable Kryte.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...
I'm not much of a SF reader. I've always maintained I didn't do SF, until I started reading my husband's Kris Longknife books and loved them. Since then I've been trying to expand my reading and try more SF. After reading Mark's reviews of Eric Brown's books over at Walker of Worlds, I really wan...
This narrow stretch of land had been her father’s pride and joy, the place where he’d come to be alone with his thoughts, to remember his wife, who was buried beside the tree. The battlements were packed with mourners, and more stood in the courtyard below. Word of ...
I looked after Ella while Hannah was at work in Mackinley, and when Ella was at school I read or took long walks around the bay. In the evenings we had a meal on the verandah, and when Ella went to bed, Hannah and I chatted about her work—she was investigating a rare bank robbery that had occurre...
We kept a low profile in the aftermath—the last thing we wanted was for our quiet way of life to be interrupted by sensation-seeking tourists and scabrous media-hounds—but perhaps inevitably word leaked out that my friends and I had played a part in the opening of the giant pit on the site of the...
On the 33rd brightening of St Sarrian’s quarter, Yarrek passed from the portals of Collium College for the very last time. He paused on the steps, ignoring the crowd of students surging around him, and peered up into the sky. Kite-fish were taking advantage of the approaching dimming, spreading t...
The softscreen brochure remained on the kitchen table, waiting to be either considered or discarded along with all the other detritus of family life: notices of local events, bills, flyers from Hannah’s school... Sally went back to the surgery the day after seeing Kath, and Geoff worked in his st...
There is something instinctive about returning, a base desire of the heart, even though the head knows better. Never go back, but I was returning: I was driven by necessity. I was going back to Paradise after a year spent in Hell.I arrived in Bangkok on a direct flight from London. I left the cap...
Mirren was too drunk to pilot his flier; it would have detected the alcohol in his system and shut itself down. Otherwise, buoyed up as he was, he might have taken the risk. He considered the irony of dying in a flier accident mere days before he was due to flux again. They passed through the arc...
I had made my home on Nova Francais for almost two decades, the last few years a repetition of cafe-life, parties and second-rate exhibitions where even my best crystals failed to sell. I was getting old and lonely and my work was suffering, and some vague desperation drove me to Earth to experie...
He seemed to have gained strength since landfall, after the rigours of suspension. He was moving more easily, restored to his old ebullient self, as if looking forward to the exploration of Penumbra. Bennett packed the containers of food on the flat-bed. Ten Lee fas...
I shunned the vid-screen, even the entertainment channels; I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. In my isolation, I could almost persuade myself that what had happened that night on Trevellion's island was nothing more than an hallucination, a nightmare scenario far more terrible than reality co...
He sat up – or rather tried to. He was strapped into a couch on the flight-deck of an unfamiliar ship. The bounty hunters’ ship, of course. Through the triangular viewscreen he could see the clearing, with the blazing Ajantan ship in the foreground surrounded by dozens of dead aliens. Beyond was ...
To work, to create something solid which before had not existed, was a far preferable option than to submit to the nightmares which had haunted his nights of late. He reached out, felt the malleable wood begin to warm to his touch. He closed his eyes and concentrated, attempting to project the em...
I had my worst nightmare to date, and I saw something aboard the ship. I’d spent the day decorating the lounge, what in earlier times had been the ship’s control room. I’d installed a couple of sofas and chairs, a locally woven rug and a few wall hangings and pot plants—native things that intrigu...
IT WAS TEN o’clock in the morning when Jani slipped from the warehouse and hurried along the busy street. She felt as if everyone who glanced her way knew of her secret, and she wondered how long it might be before the authorities traced her from Delhi. As she left the warehouse behind her, h...
He considered the fact of the city beyond, the teeming millions packed into so little space. There had been a time, not so long ago, when the population of the capital, the sheer press of humanity, had filled him with claustrophobia. He smiled to himself now at the irony of the notion.He picked u...
Then she recalled the events of the day before and she experienced a quick surge of despair at what had happened to Charles. Her thoughts were interrupted by a tap on the door. Donald called, ‘Breakfast, Maria?’ ‘I would love some,’ she said. ‘Just give me a few minutes.’ She found the bathroom, ...
Much has happened since that day, and I will endeavour here to set down some record of the intervening years.In 1936, soon after completing my account of events in Hopton Wood and the subsequent happenings, I decided that I had had enough of London life, and looked around for a quiet place in the...
When we reached the crest I pulled off the road and braked the car.I laughed in delight. The sunlight picked out the village with great golden searchlights falling through low banks of cumulus. Highdale was a collection of tiny stone-built cottages and farmhouses set amid hunched pastures; I made...
She screamed again, not wanting to believe that she was thirty metres above the jungle floor and travelling at speed in the arms of... of what?She was like the rag-doll plaything of an ape, except that whatever had abducted her was supporting her back and head solicitously. She was aware of its g...
I’m freezing. Let’s... let’s do something. We’ve got to try...” Vaughan opened his eyes, aware that he’d been on the verge of sleep. He scanned: silence. He stood, his shoulder throbbing painfully. It was almost pitch black in the pit,...
No matter how alien the world he describes, there is always something hauntingly familiar about the situations that unfold there.” I wrote the above 5 years ago, for the introduction to the Spanish version of New York Nights, and I was reminded of it when I found it amongs...
He had a beer in his hand, the house behind him was silent and empty, and he found it hard to believe that just two days ago he’d been fleeing the Sporelli on Phandra. He drained his beer and moved through the house. Despite its familiarity, it felt like a stage-set, his possessions taking on an ...