A Tale of Humans In a Universe of Ubiquitous Alien LifeIntelligence, it turns out, is rare—on planetary surfaces. It thrives everywhere else, from the Oort-cloud fringes of star systems to the magma furnaces beneath planetary crusts. And among the most powerful of the galaxy’s intelligences, there are profound differences of opinion about how to deal with surface life-forms such as human beings. For, untold light years from Earth, the powers that rule the universe have been, for millennia, plucking humans (and other intelligent beings) from Earth and forcibly resettling them in a number of star systems close to one another, leaving them to develop on their own. A few generations ago, a small cadre of humans from Earth’s 21st century arrived in this “Second Sphere” on their own power—the first humans ever to do so. Their descendants have formed the “Cosmonaut” class that dominates Mingulay. Now, two hundred years later, Gregor Cairns and a small group of associates have rediscovered faster-than-light travel and traveled to the star system next door. They’re determined to find more of the original, mysteriously long-lived cosmonauts. They want answers. And for those answers, they intend to interrogate the gods.

Matt Cairns is a 21st-century outlaw Programmer who takes on the shady jobs no one else will touch. Against his better judgment, he accepts an assignment to crack the Marshall Titov, a top-secret orbital station operated by the European Space Agency. But what Matt will discover there will propel him on an extraordinary and quite unexpected journey.Gregor Cairns is an exobiology student and descendant of one of Terra Nova's first families. Hopelessly infatuated with a lovely young trader's daughter, he is unaware that his research partner, Elizabeth, has fallen in love with him. Together, Gregor and Elizabeth confront the great work his family began three centuries earlier-to rediscover the secret of interstellar travel.Ranging from a gritty near-future Earth to a distant alien world, Cosmonaut Keep is contemporary science fiction at its highest level, a visionary epic filled with daring individuals seeking a place for themselves in a vast, complex,...

From Arthur C. Clarke Award-nominated author Ken MacLeod, an action-packed space opera told against a backdrop of interstellar drone warfare, virtual reality, and an A.I. revolution.In deep space, ruthless corporations vie for control of scattered mining colonies, and war is an ever-present threat.Led by Seba, a newly sentient mining reboot, an AI revolution grows. Fighting them is Carlos, a grunt who is reincarnated over and over again to keep the "freeboots" in check. But he's not sure whether he's on the right side.Against a backdrop of interstellar drone combat Carlos and Seba must either find a way to rise above the games their masters are playing or die. And even dying might not be the end of it. The Corporation WarsThe Corporation Wars: Dissidence The Corporation Wars: InsurgenceThe Corporation Wars: Emergence

It's after 9/11. After the bombing. After the Iraq war. After 7/7. After the Iran war. After the nukes. After the flu. After the Straits. After Rosyth. In a world just down the road from our own, on-line bloggers vie with old-line political operatives and new-style police to determine just where reality lies. James Travis is a British patriot and a French spy. On the day the Big One hits, Travis and his daughter must strive to make sense of the nuclear bombing of Scotland and the political repercussions of a series of terrorist attacks. With the information war in full swing, the only truth they have is what they're able to see with their own eyes. They know that everything else is—or may be—a lie.At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

Winner of a Prometheus and Sidewise Award, this science fiction novella is a comedic and biting commentary on capitalism and an exploration of technological singularity in a posthuman civilization. As a world war rages on without an emerging victor, the story follows John Matheson, an idealistic teenage Scottish guerilla warrior who must change his tactics and alliances with the arrival of an alien species. This alternate history and poignant political satire flips hero types and expectations, delivering a lively tale of adventure—as dramatic and thought provoking as it is funny. Also included is an interview with the author and two essays that relate his poignant views on social philosophies.

Humanity has taken to the stars, using faster-than-light travel to reach distant planets and new worlds. But in the far reaches of the galaxy, John Grant will discover a planet of humans who believe he has travelled not only through space to find them, but time. On Apis, the mysterious Fermi appear to have vanished, taking with them knowledge of the universe that humanity desires. But Marcus Owen, the robot AI now plagued with sentience, knows that the Fermi would not easily abandon the native life of Apis, and that they won't take kindly to mankind asserting dominance on a world that does not belong to them. Beyond the Light Horizon is the jaw-dropping conclusion to the Lightspeed trilogy from science fiction legend Ken MacLeod, a thrilling tale of politics, AI and the far reaches of space. Praise for Ken MacLeod: An exceptional blend of international politics, hard science, and first contact'

From Publishers WeeklyAmid the somewhat strident politics there are some outrageously funny patches in this over-packed space opera from Nebula and Hugo finalist MacLeod (_Cosmonaut's Keep_, etc.). In the 24th century, brash young Lucinda Carlyle takes her first big chance to prove herself to her wheeling-dealing clan who control the skein, a network of "gates" transporting people and equipment instantaneously between planets. In the Hard Rapture war centuries earlier between the United States and united Europe, run-amok American AI took over the brains of humans. Survivors flung into space include the gawkish farmers of America Offline (AO), the straitlaced Oriental Knights of Enlightenment (KE) and the third-world "commies" who strip-mine planets (DK). Lucinda opens a Pandora's box of shifting alliances that turns 20th-century American sensibilities upside down. Keeping the AO, KE and DK straight can be confusing as Lucinda brawls along her barrack-room Glasgow-dialect way. Perhaps MacLeod's most memorably quirky character, Benjamin Ben-Ami, produces epics like Jesus Koresh: Martyred Messiah, with "a mild-mannered and modest but strong-willed hero" and "gloating psychopathic villains, the Emperor Reno and the Empress Hilary." MacLeod slyly entices Americans to see ourselves as others see us—not a flattering picture at all. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review"Far more fun than deep space drama has any right to be...Just read the book. Then read it again. It's even better the second time." -_SFX_ on Newton's Wake "Stylish, witty, and engaging!" -_San Diego Union Tribune_ on Newton's Wake "For my money, Ken MacLeod is the current champion of the very smartest kind of New Space Opera: a relentlessly engaged thinker about nitty-gritty political-economic-social matters who also operates on the Romantic end of the genre by imagining worlds that offer vast (and even godlike) possibilities for humankind...MacLeod returns to his story elements and concerns with a persistence that signals a stubbornly committed intelligence as well as a fertile and mischievous imagination, and every variation on his themes produces something worth re-reading." -_Locus_ on Newton's Wake "If you haven't yet read MacLeod's work, this is an excellent place to start." -Scifi.com on Newton's Wake "Exciting...Accessible to the average reader as well as the hardcore SF fan. This is a work sure to keep the reader on the edge of her seat." -_Romantic Times Bookclub _on Newton's Wake "The kind of book that we wish would come to us more often in science fiction...Above everything, this book is fun." -_Vector_ on Newton's Wake "Ken MacLeod's novels are fast, funny and sophisticated. There can never be enough books like these. A nova has appeared in our sky." --Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red Mars "Science fiction's freshest new writer...MacLeod is a fiercely intelligent, prodigously well-read author who manages to fill his books with big issues without weighing them down."--_Salon_ "Engaged, ingenious, and wittily partisan, Ken MacLeod is a one-man revolution, SF's Billy Bragg." -_Asimov's SF_ "This man's going to be a major writer." -Iain Banks "Prose sleek and fast and the technology it describes-watch this man go global." -Peter F. Hamilton "MacLeod at his strongest: clever, passionate, and committed." -_SFX_ on Dark Light "Distinctive, politically challenging, both tantalizing and satisfying." -_Kirkus Reviews_ on Cosmonaut Keep "Rarely does a book demand so much of the reader-and then deliver." -_Publishers Weekly_ on Cosmonaut Keep

Ken MacLeod continues the Corporation Wars trilogy in this action-packed science fiction adventure told against a backdrop of interstellar drone warfare, virtual reality, and an A.I. revolution.And the ultimate pay-off is DH-17, an Earth-like planet hundreds of light years from human habitation.Ruthless corporations vie over the prize remotely, and war is in full swing. But soldiers recruited to fight in the extremities of deep space come with their own problems: from A.I. minds in full rebellion, to Carlos 'the Terrorist' and his team of dead mercenaries, reincarnated from a bloodier period in earth's history for one purpose only - to kill.But as old rivalries emerge and new ones form, Carlos must decide whether he's willing for fight for the company or die for himself.

Award winning science fiction magazine - published in Scotland for the Universe New StoriesChris Barnham – Everywhere is Everywhere and Anywhere Else is NowhereBo Balder – Shrink the MountainMonica Louzon – Second-HandKen MacLeod – The Shadow MinistersLindz McLeod – The Peter PrincipleHeather Valentine – CockroachAndy McKell – RescueAdam Marx – The Park SF Poems fromRichard MagahizJuleigh Howard-HobsonSadie Maskery Q&A with Peter Buck of Elsewhen PressQuestions from Teika Marija Smits Ruth EJ Booth – Noise and Sparks: Case 3 in the Multiverse of Madness Anna Mocikat – Is Cyberpunk Dead? Book ReviewsBraking Day by Adam OyebanjiThe Kaiju Preservation Society by John ScalziThe Other Side of the Interface by Duncan...

Shoreline of Infinity Science Fiction Magazine is published in Edinburgh, Scotland. It features short fiction, articles, poetry, art, reviews and more. The first issue was published in the summer of 2015; already we have published some astonishingly good stories from new and more well known writers, from Scotland and from around the world.We also run a monthly science fiction cabaret, Event Horizon.This is a special edition produced in partnership with the Edinburgh International Book Festival.We have fantastic sci-fi stories, articles and poems from Pippa Goldschmidt, Adam Roberts, Ken MacLeod, Ada Palmer, Nalo Hopkinson, Charles Stross, Jo Walton and Jane Yolen (all of whom are appearing at the Book Festival). This issue also shows off some of the fine Scottish science fiction talent we have been privileged to publish. Tips of the hat go to: Caroline Grebbell, Iain Maloney, Russell Jones, Dee Raspin, Gary...

The Concluding Volume of the Engines of LightWith Cosmonaut Keep and Dark Light, both finalists for science fiction's Hugo Award, Ken MacLeod launched a new interstellar epic with all the engaging characters and ingenious SF inventiveness of his earlier Fall Revolution novels. Now MacLeod delivers the culmination of his epic of a human future crammed with innumerable varieties of intelligent alien life, and in which humans find themselves involved in the politics of aliens as powerful and inscrutable as gods ... and entangled in their wars.For ten thousand years, Nova Babylonia has been the greatest city of the Second Sphere, an interstellar civilization of human and other beings who have been secretly removed, throughout history, from Earth.Now humans from the far reaches of the Sphere have come to offer immortality—and to urge them to build defenses against the alien invasion they know is coming.As humans and aliens compete and conspire, the wheels of history will lathe all the players into shapes new and surprising. The alien invasion will reach New Babylon at last—led by the most alien figure of all.

A bishop is dead. As Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson picks through the rubble of the tiny church, he discovers that it was deliberately bombed. That it's a terrorist act is soon beyond doubt. It's been a long time since anyone saw anything like this. Terrorism is history ...After the Middle East wars and the rising sea levels - after Armageddon and the Flood - came the Great Rejection. The first Enlightenment separated church from state. The Second Enlightenment has separated religion from politics. In this enlightened age there's no persecution, but the millions who still believe and worship are a marginal and mistrusted minority. Now someone is killing them. At first, suspicion falls on atheists more militant than the secular authorities. But when the target list expands to include the godless, it becomes evident that something very old has risen from the ashes. Old and very, very dangerous ...