Search Worlds Without End

Mid-list writer Daniel Ellis becomes obsessed with the life and work of novelist Vaughan Edwards, who disappeared in mysterious circumstances in 1996. Edwards' novels, freighted with foreboding tragedy and a lyrical sense of loss, echo something in Ellis's own life. His investigations lead Ellis ever deeper into the enigma that lies at the heart of Vaughan Edwards' country house, Edgecoombe Hall, and the horror that dwells there.

In a departure from his science fiction roots, Eric Brown has written a haunting novella that explores the essence of creativity, the secret of love, and the tragedy that lies at the heart of human existence.

Ed Bentley's wife has left him and he's been dropped by his publisher. Still, it's not the end of the world. All he has to do is ghost-write a science-fiction novel for Tuppy Cotton, a YouTuber young enough to be his daughter... When Ed uncovers an unearthly mystery at Tuppy's Yorkshire retreat, everything changes. The world might not be ending, but it will be turned upside down.

Ace Doubles is Eric Brown's dazzling and moving tribute to his heroes: the writers who captured his imagination in his youth, inspiring him to become an award-winning author; and the ordinary people who do extraordinary things.

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...
Request all drones and 'bots to medical units to begin experimentation...

"British writing with a deft, understated touch: wonderful" - New Scientist.

"SF infused with a cosmopolitan and literary sensibility... accomplished and
affecting" - Paul McAuley.

"One of the very best of the new generation of British SF writers" - Vector

"Eric Brown has an enviable talent for writing stories which are the essence of modern science fiction and yet show a passionate concern for the human predicament and human values" - Bob Shaw.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, January 2016.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

SURVIVAL IS ALL IN THE MIND

A downed terraforming ship. An ice planet. A hostile alien race. Delia Kemp has had better expeditions.

Stranded, alone and hunted by the native Skelt for her scientific knowledge, Delia is chased across the undiscovered world of Valinda as its long winter comes to an end and a blistering summer approaches.

Strange new companions, phantasmagorical landscapes, and a death-defying dash across Valinda's fiery equator lead Delia ever close to the valley of Mahkanda--where salvation just might be waiting...

"The blue light thickened, blotting out Janner's surroundings, and he existed in a displaced void-like limbo. Then the blue light vanished. Christ, he cried to himself, where the hell now?"

It begins with a feeling of euphoria, then the light, lapis lazuli, leaking from your body, intensifying, a blinding nimbus, then it's gone. And so are you... somewhere, anywhere.

And it is happening to you every day.

This collection contains the novella Blue Shifting, plus seven other stories from the two-times winner of the British Science Fiction Award for Short Fiction.

Take a journey into an extraordinary universe...

...where life and love face the demands of mortality on planets as far flung as Nova Francais, Earth and Henderson's Fall.

...where mankind has become Augmented or Altered, where zebra-men talk with unicorn-women.

...and where you can break the chains of physics in the cobalt glory of the Nada-continuum.

A bold new time-warping direction for a leading light in science fiction

In January 2017, something very strange happens to screenwriter Ed Richie. He wakes up one morning to find that he has been shunted back in time nine months and is now inhabiting the body of his younger self...

Worse is to come: the following day he jumps three years, to 2013, with all his memories of the intervening years intact. What is happening to him? Is he going mad? And where will his involuntary time-travel end?

Meanwhile, in 2030, journalist Ella Croft is investigating the life of screenwriter and celebrated novelist Ed Richie, who mysteriously vanished in 2025. She interviews friends, acquaintances, and old lovers - and what she discovers will change not only Ed Richie's life, but her own...

Buying Time is a time-travel novel like no other. No man is rich enough to buy back his past - unless that man is Ed Richie...

The debut collection of Eric Brown's short science fiction, featuring 'The Kings of Eternity' and many more. Foreword by Keith Brooke.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Foreword (Deep Future) - essay by Keith Brooke
• 13 - The Miracle at Kallithéa - (2000) - novelette
• 40 - The Phoenix Experiment - [Engineman] - (1991) - short story
• 51 - The Pharagean Effect - [Ben Henderson] - (1990) - short fiction
• 67 - Paramathea - (1993) - novelette
• 96 - Kathmandu Blues - (1999) - short story
• 108 - Downtime in the MKCR - (1994) - short story
• 118 - The Crimes of Domini Duvall - [Sapphire Oasis] - (2000) - short story
• 133 - Deep Future - (1998) - short story
• 142 - Onward Station - [Kéthani Stories] - (1998) - short story
• 157 - The Kings of Eternity - [The Kings of Eternity] - (2000) - short story

The Enginemen once pushed the Bigships through the Nada Continuum, using the power of their minds to propel the ships at faster-than-light speeds. Now the Kielor Vincicoff gates, which twist space and bring distant planets closer, have made both the men and their ships redundant.

Contains the novel and the following stories (other editions may vary):

• The Girl Who Died for Art and Lived
• The Phoenix Experiment
• Big Trouble Upstairs
• The Star of Epsilon
• The Time-Lapsed Man
• The Pineal Zen Equation
• The Art of Acceptance
• Elegy Perpetuum

Over the course of a career spanning twenty five years, Eric Brown has written just a handful of horror and ghost stories - and all of them are collected here. They range from the gentle, psychological chiller "The House" to the more overtly fantastical horror of "Li Ketsuwan", from the contemporary science fiction of "The Memory of Joy" to the almost-mainstream of "The Man Who Never Read Novels". What they have in common is a concern for character and gripping story-telling. Ghostwriting is Eric brown at his humane and compelling best.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Introduction (Ghostwriting) - essay
• 13 - The Man Who Never Read Novels - (2006) - short story
• 29 - Beauregard - (2000) - short story
• 48 - Li Ketsuwan - (2003) - short story
• 67 - Ghostwriting - (2008) - short fiction
• 87 - Taipusan - (2009) - short story
• 105 - The Memory of Joy - (2006) - novella
• 141 - The Disciples of Apollo - (1989) - short story
• 153 - The House - (2011) - short fiction

Global warming has taken its terrible toll. The seas have dried up and deserts cover much of the Earth's surface. Humankind has been annihilated by drought and the nuclear and biological conflicts following the Great Breakdown. Desperate bands of humans still survive. Some live far underground, away from the searing temperatures and ongoing conflicts on the surface; others scrape a living in the remains of shattered cities above ground.

In Paris, Pierre lives like an animal among the sand-drifted ruins of the once great city. Near death, he faces a choice: join the strangers heading south in search of water, or remain in the city and perish.

Guardians of the Phoenix tells the story of the last survivors on planet Earth, their desperate fight for survival and their last hope to save the world.

'I survive. I live from day to day -- a Meridian day which humanity has created from one eternal stretch of daylight.'

Meridian, twenty light years from Earth and with just a tiny scattering of inhabitable islands, seems the perfect place for Bob Benedict to escape the tragedy of his past.

Here he can live out his days in drug abuse, despised by and despising the self-obsessed community of artists who make up the population of the colony planet: the Altereds who have swapped human form for animal, and the Augmenteds who have boosted their minds with computers.

But when Bob meets Fire, the daughter of the formidable Tamara Trevellion, the most ruthlessly ambitious of the artists, he is drawn into a world of corruption and murder that is far darker than his past.

Soon it's all he can do just to survive...

Former pilot and planetary pioneer Jonathan James is tempted out of retirement by an offer he can't refuse. It means going back to the one place he vowed never to return to: Arcturus Seven. A Closed Planet; a hothouse world where every plant and animal is hell-bent on killing and consuming you; the place that cost him the life of the only woman he has ever truly loved.

Jonathan knows the wealthy tycoon seeking to recruit him cannot be trusted, but he has no choice. If he doesn't do it, someone else will, and Arcturus Seven has a secret, one which must never be disclosed, so Jonathan accepts the mission even though it means facing memories he has spent years denying.

On Arcturus VII is a fabulous slice of planetary romance from award-winning author Eric Brown. A sparkling tale of intrigue, adventure, and romance; traditional in style but wholly contemporary in its delivery.

When a young tug pilot's career is ruined by a collision in Earth orbit he has no choice but to accept a commission to fly an eccentric ship builder to a planet far from the trade routes. When they discover alien ruins on the planet and the hulk of a missing generation ship they are thrown into the centre of a conspiracy that reaches back centuries.

Meanwhile on earth a young Indian police officer is trying to track down a serial killer little suspecting that the killer is linked to what is happening on a planet light years away and that her own past holds the key to everything that is happening. Eric Brown has written a novel that brings together an extraordinary imagination, rare sensitivity to character and a love of Eastern philosphy. A key novel from one of the UK's favourite SF writers.

Rites of Passage gathers four long stories, one of which is original to the collection. "Bartholomew Burns and the Brain Invaders" features a Victorian London facing the threat of alien invasion and the mysterious 'Guardian' who saves the day. "Guardians of the Phoenix" is set in a near-future, post-apocalyptic world where water is in short supply and roaming bands will do anything to obtain it, while "Sunworld" is about a strange world where the sun is fixed eternally overhead and Yarrek Merwell makes a discovery that will change everything. The longest story in the collection, "Beneath the Ancient Sun" has never appeared before and is set on a far-future Earth where giant crabs and a swollen sun threaten humanity's very existence.

Eric Brown's stories combine memorable characters, fascinating settings, and a passionate concern for story-telling that has made this BSFA award-winning author one of the leaders of the field.

"Brown sketches a complex world full of bitter idealists and fantastic landscapes where nothing is as it seems" Publishers Weekly

"Eric Brown spins a terrific yarn" SFX

"This is the rediscovery of wonder" Stephen Baxter on Helix

"SF suffused with a cosmopolitan and literary sensibility" Paul McAuley

Table of Contents:

• 11 - Introduction (Rites of Passage) - essay
• 15 - Bartholomew Burns and the Brain Invaders - novelette
• 49 - Guardians of the Phoenix - (2010) - novelette
• 95 - Sunworld - (2008) - novelette
• 133 - Beneath the Ancient Sun - novella

When Salvageman Ed saves Ella Rodriguez from spider-drones on the pleasure planet of Sinclair's Landfall, he has no idea what he's letting himself in for. Ella is not at all what she seems, as he's soon about to find out.

What follows, as the spider-drones and the Hayakawa Organisation chase Ed, Ella and engineer Karrie light-years across space, is a fast-paced adventure with Ed learning more about Ella - and about himself - than he ever expected.

The Salvageman Ed series of linked stories - four of which appear here for the first time - combine action, humour and pathos, from the master of character-based adventure science fiction.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - The Angels of Life and Death, An Introduction - essay
• 2 - Venus Macabre - (1998) - short story
• 3 - The Frankenberg Process - (2001) - novelette
• 4 - Skyball - (1997) - short story
• 5 - Bengal Blues - [Bengal Station] - (2009) - short fiction
• 6 - The Nilakantha Scream - (1991) - short story
• 7 - The Thallian Intervention - (1996) - short story
• 8 - The Tapestry of Time - (2006) - short story
• 9 - The Frozen Woman - (2003) - short story
• 10 - Crystals - (1992) - short story
• 11 - The Angels of Life and Death - (2001) - novelette

THE DISCIPLES OF APOLLO collects Eric Brown's finest short fiction, from the contemporary title story, in which the victims of a terrible malaise retreat to a sequestered island to see out their final months, to the far future of Dark Calvary, set on the dying world of Tartarus Major whose sun is about to go nova. Whether set is space of the future, or Earth of the here and now, Brown s stories are imbued with a passionate concern for the human condition and the need to deliver compelling narratives. The Children of Winter and Hunting the Slarque won the BSFA Award for the best short story of 1999 and 2001 respectively, while Zarla s World is original to the collection.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The Disciples of Apollo) - essay
• The Time-Lapsed Man - [Engineman] - (1988) - short story
• The Disciples of Apollo - (1989) - short story
• The Death of Cassandra Quebec - [Sapphire Oasis] - (1990) - novelette
• Hunting the Slarque - [Tartarus - 7] - (1999) - novelette
• Dark Calvary - [Tartarus - 8] - (1999) - novelette
• Steps Along the Way - (1999) - short story
• The Miracle at Kallithéa - (2000) - novelette
• The Children of Winter - (2001) - novelette
• The Kéthani Inheritance - [Kéthani Stories] - (2001) - novelette
• Ulla, Ulla - (2002) - short story
• Thursday's Child - [Kéthani Stories] - (2002) - novelette
• Life Beyond... - (2005) - short story
• Salvage Rites - [Salvageman Ed] - (2009) - short story
• Laying the Ghost - [Salvageman Ed] - (2010) - short story
• Zarla's World - short fiction

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Destiny on Tartarus - [Tartarus - 1] - (2000) - novella
• 69 - A Prayer for the Dead - [Tartarus - 2] - (1995) - novelette
• 110 - The Eschatarium at Lyssia - [Tartarus - 3] - (1997) - novelette
• 136 - The Ultimate Sacrifice - [Tartarus - 4] - (2000) - novelette
• 178 - The People of the Nova - [Tartarus - 5] - (1999) - novelette
• 203 - Vulpheous - [Tartarus - 6] - (1998) - novelette
• 231 - Hunting the Slarque - [Tartarus - 7] - (1999) - novelette
• 280 - Dark Calvary - [Tartarus - 8] - (1999) - novelette

This collection gathers eight stories as varied in space and time as they are in theme, and features such tropes as alien visitors, space opera, near future satire, cloning, and even murder-mystery. Conway and the Aliens is set in his popular Starship Seasons future, while Dimensions of Deceit is the latest tale in the Salvageman Ed series. The Trees of Terpsichore Three is a collaboration with Michael Coney. Three stories are original to the volume.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The Ice Garden & Other Stories) - essay
• The Ice Garden - (2017) - short fiction
• Dimensions of Deceit - short fiction
• Targets - (2017) - short story
• Ten Sisters - (2016) - short story
• In Pursuit of Chuchunaa - (2011) - short fiction
• Running the Asylum - short fiction
• Going - short fiction
• Conway and the Almarans - short fiction
• The Trees of Terpsichore Three - (2002) - novelette by Eric Brown and Michael G. Coney

1999, on the threshold of a new millennium, the novelist Daniel Langham lives a reclusive life on an idyllic Greek island, hiding away from humanity and the events of the past. All that changes, however, when he meets artist Caroline Platt and finds himself falling in love. But what is his secret, and what are the horrors that haunt him?

1935. Writer Jonathon Langham and Edward Vaughan are summoned from London by their editor friend Jasper Carnegie to help investigate strange goings on in Hopton Wood. What they discover there - no less than a strange creature from another world - will change their lives for ever.

What they become, and their link to the novelist of the future, is the subject of Eric Brown's most ambitious novel to date. Almost ten years in the writing, The Kings of Eternity is a novel of vast scope and depth, full of the staple tropes of the genre and yet imbued with humanity and characters you'll come to love.

It's 2025 and the world is riven by war, terrorist attacks, poverty and increasingly desperate demands for water, oil, and natural resources. The West and China confront each other over an inseperable ideological divide, each desperate to sustain their future.

And then the Serene arrive, enigmatic aliens form Delta Pavonis V, and nothing will ever be the same again.

The Serene bring peace to an ailing world, an end to poverty and violence - but not everyone supports the seemingly benign invasion.

There are forces out there who wish to return to the bad old days, and will stop at nothing to oppose the Serene.

The Spacetime Pit Plus Two collects three collaborative stories by two of science fiction's finest writers. Never before published in one volume, the triptych showcases the authors' ability to create narratives on a vast scale, and yet never to lose sight of the all-important human element.

In the award-winning 'The Spacetime Pit', spacer Katerina Wake crash-lands on a primitive alien world and faces certain death unless she can harness her ingenuity, and technical know-how, to bend the destiny of an entire race to her will...

'Green-Eyed Monster' follows Richard as he wakes up after a night on the tiles to find himself inhabiting the body of a toad - and that's just the start of his troubles...

In 'Sunfly', Onara and her people live on a world very different from our own - a vast ribbon encircling a sun. But a change is coming to the land, a mysterious narrowing that threatens not only the stability of her world, but the very order of everything she has taken for granted.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Introduction (The Spacetime Pit Plus Two) - essay by Eric Brown
• 13 - The Spacetime Pit - (1996) - novelette by Stephen Baxter and Eric Brown
• 53 - Green-Eyed Monster - (2000) - short story by Stephen Baxter and Eric Brown
• 77 - Sunfly - (1995) - short fiction by Stephen Baxter and Eric Brown

He made a sound of pleasure as the hot water needled his tired skin. Yet he heard nothing. The silence was more absolute than any he had experienced before. After more than fifty shifts, a lifetime among the stars, this was his first rehabilitation problem, and he was not unduly worried...

In Eric Brown's landmark first collection of stories, fear, desire, love and redemption are forged with an innovative and stunning science-fiction imagination, creating eight exotic tales of tomorrow. Witty, original, imbued with a cyberpunk bleakness, this is the work of one of the UK's leading, and most loved, SF authors.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - The Time-Lapsed Man - [Engineman] - (1988) - short story
• 19 - The Karma Kid Transcends - (1988) - novelette
• 41 - Big Trouble Upstairs - [Engineman] - (1988) - short story
• 58 - Star-Crystals and Karmel - [Ben Henderson] - (1989) - novelette
• 83 - Krash-Bangg Joe and the Pineal-Zen Equation - [Engineman] - (1987) - novelette
• 110 - Pithecanthropus Blues - [Engineman] - short story
• 130 - The Girl Who Died for Art and Lived - [Engineman] - (1987) - short story
• 151 - The Inheritors of Earth - novella

This unique collection of science fiction stories focuses on the human emotions that have no place in a world made unrecognizable by science and technology. Three stories that deal with the Kethani aliens--a group that has come to present-day Earth offering life after death via technological resurrection--are included, as is "The Children of Winter," a lucid tale of doomed love between alien species on a far-off world in the distant future. As characters are pushed to their moral thresholds, they attempt to deal with the unforseen consequences contained in fascinating new technologies.

Table of Contents:

• ix - Foreword (Threshold Shift) - essay by Stephen Baxter
• 3 - The Children of Winter - (2001) - novelette
• 26 - Thursday's Child - [Kéthani Stories] - (2002) - novelette
• 50 - Ascent of Man - (2001) - short story
• 58 - Ulla, Ulla - (2002) - short story
• 82 - The Kéthani Inheritance - [Kéthani Stories] - (2001) - novelette
• 102 - Instructions for Surviving the Destruction of Star-Probe X-11-57 - (2001) - short story
• 110 - Eye of the Beholder - (1997) - novelette
• 132 - The Touch of Angels - [Kéthani Stories] - (2006) - novelette
• 158 - The Spacetime Pit - (1996) - novelette by Stephen Baxter and Eric Brown
• 182 - Hunting the Slarque - [Tartarus - 7] - (1999) - novelette

2110. Earth is suffering major resource shortages, and the impact of climate change is peaking, with much of the planet's equatorial regions turned to lifeless desert and populations displaced. Colonies have been established on Mars and the Moon, but these cannot hope to sustain any more than a scant population of hundreds of citizens.

Attention has turned to the need to discover an extra-solar colony world.

European scientists, using discoveries made at CERN, have identified the means of creating a wormhole in the space-time continuum, which would allow interstellar travel. However, to do so they must first physically transport one end of the wormhole to where they want it to be, so settingup a wormhole will always rely on physical travel first of all.

A ship is sent to Mu Arae, earth-like planet discovered 10 years before. It is a journey that will take 80 years, the crew, who will eventually set up the wormhole on the planet, kept in suspended animation. But only a few years into the trip, catastrophe strikes and the ship blows up en route, killing all aboard.

2190, eighty years after the starship set out.

Gordon Kemp is a detective working in the cold case department in London. Usually he works on cases closed ten, twenty-five years earlier. Now, however, he has been assigned a murder investigation closed, unsolved, over eighty years ago. What he unearths will change history and threatens everything we know about what the powers that be have planned for Earth. The tragedy that befell the ship 80 years before is not what it seems and the past and the present are radically different to what everyone on Earth believes. We made the journey. Why has it been kept a secret?

Jeff Vaughan, a world-weary telepath employed by the spaceport on Bengal Station, discovers a sinister cult that worships a mysterious alien god. The Church of the Adoration of the Chosen One uses drugs to commune with the ultimate - and murder to silence those who oppose their beliefs. Together with Indian cop Jimmy Chandra, Vaughan's investigations take him to the colony planet of Verkerk's World and the terrible secret of the extraterrestrial Vaith....

Meanwhile, in Thailand, street-girl Sukara dreams of being reunited with her long-lost sister on Bengal Station. She meets Osborne, a telepath posing as a businessman with his own secrets, who promises to take her away from her life of prostitution in Bangkok. They travel to Bengal Station, and there Sukara learns of her sister's fate, and unwittingly leads Osborne to his target - Jeff Vaughan. The story follows Vaughan as his mistrust of his fellow humans is overturned by his growing feelings for Thai street-girl Sukara, one of the few good people he's ever encountered in a life of reading cynical, jaded minds.

Science fiction meets crime noir, as Jeff Vaughan, jaded telepath, employed by the spaceport authorities on Bengal Station, discovers a sinister cult that worships a mysterious alien god. We follow Vaughan as he attempts to solve the murders and save himself from the psichopath out to kill him. This is Eric Brown's triumphant return to hard SF.

Working for a telepathic detective agency, Vaughan investigates a series of murders linked to the colony world of Mallory, and the slaughter of innocent aliens there by a colonial organization.

Having been sent to Canopus VII to find out what happened to a lost crew, Necropath Jeff Vaughan finds himself drawn into a deepening mystery not only as to the fate of the crew but also the intentions of his benefactor.

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 a more habitable, Earth-like world and come across strange races of aliens, and life-threatening perils, on their way.

The Helix: a vast spiral of ten thousand worlds turning around its sun. Aeons ago, the enigmatic Builders constructed the Helix as a refuge for alien races on the verge of extinction.

Two hundred years ago, humankind came to the Helix aboard a great colony ship, and the Builders conferred on them the mantle of peacekeepers. For that long, peace has reigned on the Helix. But when shuttle pilot Jeff Ellis crash-lands on the world of Phandra, he interrupts a barbarous invasion from the neighbouring Sporelli - who scheme to track down and exterminate Ellis before he can return to New Earth and inform the peacekeepers.

Helix Wars, sequel to the best-selling Helix, is a fast-paced adventure novel about the ultimate threat to the Helix itself.

Eric Brown has been writing first rate science fiction for more than a quarter of a century, with over a hundred and twenty short stories, twenty-odd novels, several collections and no few novellas to his credit. Here are nine of those stories, never previously collected, plus a brand new piece written especially for this collection. Sit back, put your feet up, and immerse yourself in the rich worlds of Eric's imagination...

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Eric Brown: An Introduction - essay by Ian Whates
• 11 - Life Beyond... - (2005) - short story
• 25 - Steps Along the Way - (1999) - short story
• 35 - The Sins of Edward Veron - [Sapphire Oasis] - (2005) - short story
• 47 - Myths of the Martian Future - (2002) - short story
• 65 - The Scribe of Betelgeuse V - (2012) - short story
• 79 - The Rest Is Speculation - (2009) - short story
• 99 - The Tragic Affair of the Martian Ambassador - (2013) - short story
• 117 - Bukowski on Mars, with Beer - (2011) - short story
• 127 - People of Planet Earth - (2008) - short story
• 133 - P.O.O.C.H. - short story

It takes an alien race to show us our humanity. When a mysterious alien race known as the Kéthani make contact with the people of Earth they bring with them the dubious gift of eternal life. These enigmatic aliens will change the course of the human race forever but also touch people's lives on a personal level, not least in a small town in the English countryside.

But do the Kéthani have a hidden agenda and will the human race choose to evolve or turn in on itself in the face of this momentous revelation?

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Prelude: The Coming of the Kéthani - [Kéthani Stories] - (2008) - short story
• 19 - Ferryman - [Kéthani Stories] - (1997) - short story
• 41 - Onward Station - [Kéthani Stories] - (1998) - short story
• 65 - The Kéthani Inheritance - [Kéthani Stories] - (2001) - novelette
• 95 - Thursday's Child - [Kéthani Stories] - (2002) - novelette
• 131 - The Touch of Angels - [Kéthani Stories] - (2006) - novelette
• 169 - The Wisdom of the Dead - [Kéthani Stories] - (2003) - short story
• 193 - A Heritage of Stars - [Kéthani Stories] - (2005) - short story
• 215 - Matthew's Passion - [Kéthani Stories] - (2008) - short story by Tony Ballantyne and Eric Brown
• 245 - A Choice of Eternities - [Kéthani Stories] - (2004) - short story
• 269 - The Farewell Party - [Kéthani Stories] - (2007) - short story
• 293 - Coda: Diaspora - [Kéthani Stories] - (2008) - short story

Project Kon-tiki, the world's first extra-solar colony expedition, is just weeks away from departure, and tension is mounting at Lakenheath Base. Psychologist Kat Manning is one of the eighteen specialist whose clone will be sent to the stars, and her job is to work with the original specialists, the 'left behind', to monitor and support them through their dislocation... But when Kat is kidnapped by the Allianz, a faction opposed to the colonisation program, more than just her safety is at stake. The entire mission is in jeopardy.

Humankind has at last sent a ship to the stars, leaving an Earth ravaged by environmental disaster and torn apart by competing sectarian interests.

Kat Manning is one of eighteen specialists aboard the starship Kon-Tiki, clones whose various areas of expertise will be crucial in the months and years ahead as they forge a new life on a strange alien world.

But what Kat finds on Newhaven is nothing she could have planned for, and every bit as surprising and challenging as the issues she left behind on Earth: mysterious aliens, political in-fighting, and someone willing to go to any lengths to keep a deadly secret.

On the colony world of Newhaven, biologist Travis Denholme has refined the drug by which the planet's alien species achieve telepathic contact. He has the means of bringing telepathy to the human race, and faces the dilemma of whether to make his discovery public knowledge - and risk changing everything. But before he and psychiatrist Kat Manning can decide on a way forward, an assassin attempts to kill them. As they flee for their lives, they must find out not only why they are being targeted by a ruthless killer, but why someone is trying to eradicate the planet's largest lifeform, the geosaurs.

In the concluding novella of the Kon-Tiki Quartet the action moves from the colony world of Newhaven back to Earth. Two hundred and fifty years have passed since Kon-Tiki I set off for the stars, and Earth is a very different place. The ravages of climate change have taken their toll, and humankind's depleted population struggles to survive at primitive, subsistence levels, with the majority ruled over by a desperate elite who cling to power by utilising old and failing technology.

But all this is about to change when returnees bring with them the means of restoring equality to the human race - though there are some who will stop at nothing, including murder, to maintain the status quo.

Eighteen-year-old Janisha Chatterjee, the Cambridge-educated daughter of an Indian government minister, is coming home to visit her father on his death-bed, when her airship is attacked and wrecked. Amid the debris, a stranger--monstrous but kind--saves her life and entrusts her with a mysterious device, which pitches her head-first into the "Greater Game," the ongoing stand-off between British, Chinese and Russian powers in the Indian subcontinent.

Dodging British officers, Russian spies, and the dangerous priest Durga Das, Jani must bring the device to the foothills of the Himalayas; to the home of Annapurnite, the secret power source on which British domination was built. There she will learn the truth about Annapurnite--a truth that will change the world forever...

Jani and her stalwart companions Lieutenant Alfie Littlebody and Anand Doshi find themselves chased from India, via Greece, to London by the British authorities, Russian spies and a Hindu priest -- who all want what Jani carries, the ventha-di: the key that will open the door to other worlds.

In London she attempts to rescue the imprisoned alien Mahran -- the only person who might help her save the Earth from the invasion of the merciless Zhell, the self-styled Masters of the Cosmos.

But will she escape London and reach Tibet before the forces of evil capture her -- and before she is betrayed by someone she considers loyal to her cause?

Jani and the Great Pursuit is the thrilling sequel to Jani and the Greater Game from best selling author Eric Brown.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #49 October 2010. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Five (2013), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace. The story is included in the collection Salvage (2013).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

On the backwater colony world of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis, all is not what it seems... All David Conway wants after the death of his daughter and the break-up of his marriage is a quiet life away from Earth and when he comes to Chalcedony he thinks he s found that. What he does find is a group of people whose friendship will change his life forever, as well as a haunted starship, extraterrestrials with an uncanny ability to read future events, and a conflict between alien races that has lasted for millennia... and is about to begin all over again.

In this wonderful series, Eric Brown gives us aliens, fabulous works of art, starships and teleportation... plus some of the most delightful characters ever to grace the printed page.

Table of Contents:

• Starship Summer - (2007) - novella
• Starship Fall - (2009) - novella
• Starship Winter - (2012) - novella
• Starship Spring - (2012) - novella

David Conway leaves Earth and settles on the backwater planet of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis IV, in search of a quiet life away from the haunting reminders of his past. Living aboard a derelict spaceship in the quiet coastal community of Magenta Bay, he meets artist Matt Sommers, beachcomber Maddie Chamberlain, and ex-starship pilot Hawksworth. Things seem about as perfect as he could hope... until he discovers that his ship is haunted by an alien spectre. What follows will change Conway and his friends and the future of humankind's destiny in space forever.

David Conway leads a quiet life in picturesque Magenta Bay on the colony world of Chalcedony. Nothing much has happened for five years, but all that is about to change. First he meets the mysterious holo star Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna, who regrets the lost loves of her past and dreams of learning what the future might hold. Then Conway's alien friend Kee heads inland to take part in an Ashentay ritual with potentially fatal consequences. What follows is a convoluted and poignant tragedy which entangles Conway and his friends.

In Starship Fall, Eric Brown has crafted a powerful, moving novella about love, friendship, and the consequences of learning one's destiny.

That winter David Conway was enjoying a quiet life with his friends, not especially looking for love, but finding it anyway. The artist Matt Sommers was due to stage an exhibition of Epiphany Stones from Acrab IV, a show which attracted the attention of one Darius Dortmund, the famous empathy. Dortmund could see into the minds of men 'some said into their very souls' and when he met David and his friends, and looked into their minds, what he found there would lead to murder...

Starship Winter, the third volume in the Starship Seasons sequence, continues the quiet adventures of Conway and his friends on the backwater colony world of Addenbrooke, Delta Pavonis IV.

'That year, a little over six years since meeting Hannah van Harben, life for me was just about as good as it could get.' David Conway is happily married with a young daughter, and wants for nothing. He has an idyllic life on the colony world of Chalcedony, with friends Matt and Maddie, Hawk and Kee - but things are about to get interesting when the friends holiday at Tamara Falls on the planet's equatorial plateau. Buried far beneath the Falls is a dormant alien army - the Skeath, ancient enemies of the Yall: an army which is threatening to come to life, if the evil Dr Petronious gets his way...

Ten years after events depicted in Starship Spring, David Conway is enjoying life on the idyllic world of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis V. Then he receives a communique from his ex-wife who reveals that she is undergoing a remarkable medical process. Not only that, but she is coming to Chalcedony and wishes to meet him. What follows will force Conway to look back at the tragic events of his past and face the mendacity of those seeking to gain from his fame as an Opener of the Way. Starship Coda is the moving epilogue to the successful Starship series.

When Matt Hendrick's daughter Sam is kidnapped by his ex-wife Maatje and the malign Dr Hovarth, Hendrick embarks on a quest to track her down and return her to Earth. His journey from planet to exotic planet takes him to...

Fomalhaut IV... What he finds on the easy going backwater world is a bizarre religion and a race of aliens whose rituals promise to bring to dead back to life...

Spica III... where Hendrick stumbles across a cult whose charismatic leader demands nothing less form his adherents as the ultimate sacrifice: suicide...

Alpha Reticuli II... On this world Hendrick meets an alien Effectuator who claims that he can bring Matt's dead daughter, Sam, back to life... but is the alien all he claims to be?

And finally to Bellatrix I... Maatje and Dr Hovarth have fled to the planet of Beltran, home of the advanced but reclusive alien race known as the Vhey. But on this sultry jungle world, at the end of his quest, a moving and horrific denouement awaits Matt Hendrick...

Thrilling and exotic, the TELEMASS QUARTET showcases four of Eric Brown's finest novellas.

Table of Contents:

• Famadihana on Fomalhaut IV - [The Telemass Quartet - 1] - (2014) - novella
• Sacrifice on Spica III - [The Telemass Quartet - 2] - (2014) - novella
• Reunion on Alpha Reticuli II - [The Telemass Quartet - 3] - (2016) - novella
• Exalted on Bellatrix 1 - [The Telemass Quartet - 4] - (2017) - novella

Jules Verne, one of the founding fathers of science fiction, was the author of such thrilling and perennial favorites as Around the World in Eighty Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, as well as more than sixty other novels of adventure and exploration. One hundred years after his death, this magnificent new collection celebrates Verne's amazing vision. A host of today's top science fiction authors pay homage to Verne's genius with a series of stories inspired by his groundbreaking imagination and original characters.

In this anthology are extraordinary voyages of discovery and adventure from the four corners of the globe, and even within it. Following the tradition of Verne's original tales, Ian Watson tells of a journey deep into the center of the Earth, where Verne himself does battle with occultist Nazis, and Adam Roberts takes us to latter-day California, where a descendant of Verne's character Hector Servadac is preparing for the end of the world as we know it. These and many more compelling adventures add up to an anthology that will introduce a new generation to the wonder of Jules Verne and delight readers already familiar with the master.

Contents:

• Introduction: Return to the Centre of the Earth - (2005) - essay by Mike Ashley
• A Drama on the Railway - (2005) - shortstory by Stephen Baxter
• Jehan Thun's Quest - (2005) - novelette by Brian Stableford
• Six Weeks in a Balloon - (2005) - shortstory by Eric Brown
• Londre au XXIe Siècle - (2005) - shortstory by James Lovegrove
• Giant Dwarfs - (2005) - novelette by Ian Watson
• Cliff Rhodes and the Most Important Journey: A Land at the End of the Working Day Story - (2005) - novella by Peter Crowther
• The True Story of Barbicane's Voyage - (2005) - novelette by Laurent Genefort (trans. of Le véritable voyage de Barbicane 1999)
• Columbiad - (1996) - shortstory by Stephen Baxter
• Tableaux - (2005) - novelette by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
• The Secret of the Nautilus - (2005) - novelette by Michael Mallory
• Doctor Bull's Intervention - (2005) - novelette by Keith Brooke
• The Very First Affair - (2005) - novelette by Johan Heliot
• Eighty Letters, Plus One - (2005) - shortstory by Kevin J. Anderson and Sarah A. Hoyt
• The Adventurers' League - novelette by Justina Robson
• Hector Servadac, fils - (2005) - novelette by Adam Roberts
• The Mysterious Iowans - (2005) - novelette by Paul Di Filippo
• Old Light - (2005) - shortstory by Tim Lebbon
• The Selene Gardening Society - (2005) - shortstory by Molly Brown
• A Matter of Mathematics - (2005) - novelette by Tony Ballantyne
• The Secret of the Sahara - novelette by Richard A. Lupoff
• The Golden Quest - (2005) - shortstory by Sharan Newman
• The True Story of Wilhelm Storitz - (2005) - shortstory by Michel Pagel
• The Shoal - (2005) - shortstory by Liz Williams

The year is 1907, the setting is Baker Street, London. When the Martian Ambassador arrives at Holmes' door seeking the Great Detective's help in solving a grisly murder, how can he refuse?

The case will involve a trip to the Red Planet, where few humans have been privileged enough to visit. Ever since the second wave of Martians arrived on Earth, inoculated against the germs that had halted their tripods the first time around, and humanity accepted the aliens as their overlords, Holmes has been curious... Soon he and Watson are boarding one of the great Martian spaceships, where they discover their old friend Professor Challenger has been invited along for the ride. What awaits them at their destination is a plot more dastardly than any of them could have imagined.

In The Martian Simulacra, award-winning author Eric Brown delivers a glorious mash-up of Sherlock Holmes and The War of the Worlds, seasoned with a dash of Conan Doyle's The Lost World for good measure.

Part of NewCon Press' Novella Set 3: The Martian Quartet.

New York in 2040 is a city of the lost. A good place to work in Missing Persons. But business is not quite good enough for Hal Halliday to forget his sister, burned alive when only child all those years ago. And now VR offers the chance of bringing her back, the future may yet allow Hal to live in the past. If he can survive the next job...

Hal Halliday runs a missing persons business in mid 21st century New York. It is a city that is drowning in refugees after terrorist outrages have left much of America a radioactive wasteland. People colour their grim lives with endless hours spent in VR. It is an addiction which has made VR magnate Sergio Mantoni a multi-millionaire.

But now Mantoni faces a threat from a guerilla group called VIREX, who are dedicating to ending the false promise of VR. And when Hal accepts a job to look for the missing sister of a Holodrama star, he find himself drawn into the complex world of VR and VIREX ...

In a futuristic variation upon the modern detective story, we follow Hal as he returns from retirement, seeking the answer to the mysterious disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, last seen with a child prodigy and an unknown older man. We accompany him during his encounters with the jaded individuals who now occupy sullied Manhattan, and share his anguish at the gradual realization of the devastating effects that Virtual Reality is having upon his fellow citizens, rapidly losing their abilities to interact in the real world.

Best-selling author Eric Brown has created a brand new shared world for Abaddon Books: Weird Space. This thrilling space-opera series will begin with the release of The Devil's Nebula. Brown will introduce readers to the human smugglers, veterans and ne’erdowells who are part of the Expansion – and their uneasy neighbours, the Vetch Empire.

When an evil race threatens not only the Expansion, but the Vetch too - an evil from another dimension which infests humans and Vetch alike and bends individuals to do their hideous bidding, only cooperation between them means the difference between a chance of survival and no chance at all.

Telepath Den Harper did the dirty work for the authoritarian Expansion, reading the minds of criminals, spies and undesirables, for years. Unable to take the strain, he stole a starship and headed into the void, a sector of lawless space known as Satan's Reach. For five years he worked as a trader among the stars -- then discovered that the Expansion had set a bounty hunter on his trail.

But what does the Expansion want with a lowly telepath like Harper? Is there something in the rumours that human space is being invaded by aliens from another realm? Harper finds out the answer to both these questions when he rescues a young woman from certain death -- and comes face to face with the terrible aliens known as the Weird.

Satan's Reach is the second volume in the Weird Space series, a fast-paced action-adventure that pits humanity against unimaginable terror from beyond.

The growing threat of the dimension-invading Weird has driven the Expansion government to outright paranoia. Mandatory telepathic testing is introduced, and the colony Braun's World -- following reports of a new Weird portal opening -- is destroyed from orbit, at an unimaginable cost in lives.

Delia Walker, a senior analyst in the Expansion's intelligence bureau and a holdout of the pragmatic old guard, protests the oppressive new policies and is drummed out. Sure there's a better way, she charters the decrepit freighter the Baba Yaga and heads into the lawless "Satan's Reach," following rumours of a world where humans and the Weird live peacefully side by side.

Hunted by the Bureau, Walker, her pilot Yershov, and Failt -- a Vetch child stowaway, fleeing slavery -- will uncover secrets about both the Weird and the Expansion; secrets that could prevent catastrophic war...