Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in Albedo One #34 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, September 2013.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Rachel's boyfriend Frank is different from other people. His strangeness is part of what she loves about him: his innocence, his intelligence, his passionate immersion in the music of JS Bach. As a coder, Frank sees patterns in everything, but as his theories slide further towards the irrational, Rachel becomes increasingly concerned for his wellbeing. There are people Frank knows online, people who share his view of the world and who insist he has a unique role to play. In spite of Rachel's fears for his safety, Frank is determined to meet them face to face.

When Frank disappears, Rachel is forced to seek help in the form of Robin, a private detective who left the police force for reasons she will not reveal. Like Frank, Robin is obsessed with the music of Bach. Like Frank, she has unexplained connections with the criminal underworld of southeast London.

An obscure science fiction story from the 1950s appears to offer clues to Frank's secret agenda, but not to where he is. As Robin and Rachel draw closer in their search for the truth, they are forced to ask themselves if Frank's obsession with an alien war, against all logic, might have a basis in fact.

This novelette originally appreared in Interzone, #227 March-April 2010. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Microcosmos (2013).

Read the full story for free at Interzone (*.pdf).

Ruby tells the story of Ruby Castle told in snapshots and fleeting glimpses and secret histories, in tales repeated and reinvented by those who fall under the horror film actress's spell: her childhood sweetheart, an antiquarian bookseller with a passion for magical artifacts, the mistress of the poet who was once Castle's lover, a young girl in a future Russia who dreams of the stars. Worlds collide, and the boundaries between the real and the fantastic begin to break down.

Is Ruby Castle a living person or a collective fantasy? By the end, the world that Castle created through her films has become dangerously indistinguishable from our own.

This novelette originally appeared in Black Static, Issue 29 July-August 2012. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013, edited by Rich Horton.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Now We Are Ten: Celebrating the First Ten Years of NewCon Press (2016), edited by Ian Whates. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

Sturgeon and Hugo Award nominated novelette.

The Art of Space Travel by Nina Allan is a science fiction novelette. In 2047, a first manned mission to Mars ended in tragedy. Thirty years later, a second expedition is preparing to launch. As housekeeper of the hotel where two of the astronauts will give their final press statements, Emily finds the mission intruding upon her thoughts more and more. Emily's mother, Moolie, has a message to give her, but Moolie's memories are fading. As the astronauts' visit draws closer, the unearthing of a more personal history is about to alter Emily's world forever.

This story is included in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 11 (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Garder Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

INFORMATION WANTED ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF DOLLMAKER EWA CHAPLIN AND/OR FRIENDSHIP, CORRESPONDENCE. PLEASE REPLY TO: BRAMBER WINTERS.

Stitch by perfect stitch, Andrew Garvie makes exquisite dolls in the finest antique style. Like him, they are diminutive, but graceful, unique and with surprising depths. Perhaps that's why he answers the enigmatic personal ad in his collector's magazine.

Letter by letter, Bramber Winters reveals more of her strange, sheltered life in an institution on Bodmin Moor, and the terrible events that put her there as a child. Andrew knows what it is to be trapped; and as they knit closer together, he weaves a curious plan to rescue her.

On his journey through the old towns of England he reads the fairytales of Ewa Chaplin - potent, eldritch stories which, like her lifelike dolls, pluck at the edges of reality and thread their way into his mind. When Andrew and Bramber meet at last, they will have a choice - to remain alone with their painful pasts or break free and, unlike their dolls, come to life.

A love story of two very real, unusual people, The Dollmaker is also a novel rich with wonders: Andrew's quest and Bramber's letters unspool around the dark fables that give our familiar world an uncanny edge. It is this touch of magic that, like the blink of a doll's eyes, tricks our own...

BSFA nominated novelette. It originally appreaed in Clarkesworld, Issue 146, November 2018.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

The armistice is months past but the memories won't go away. A harlequin, leaning against a tree stump and with a goblet of ale clasped in one outstretched hand. Beaumont felt chilled suddenly, in spite of the fire... Most likely it was the thing's mouth, red-lipped and fiendishly grinning, or maybe its face, which was white, expressionless, the face of a clown in full greasepaint.

Dennis Beaumont drove an ambulance in World War One. He returns home to London, hoping to pick up his studies at Oxford and rediscover the love he once felt for his fiancee Lucy. But nothing is as it once was. Mentally scarred by his experiences in the trenches, Beaumont finds himself wandering further into darkness. What really happened to the injured soldier he tried to save? Who is the figure that lurks in the shadows? How much do they know of Beaumont, and the secrets he keeps?

Set in a future Great Britain scarred by fracking and ecological collapse, The Race is the first full-length novel from Nina Allan, winner of the 2014 BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction (Spin, TTA Press), and the prestigious Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire for Best Translated Work (Complications/The Silver Wind, Editions Tristram).

The Race opens in the coastal town of Sapphire, dominated by the illegal sport of smartdog racing: greyhounds genetically modified with human DNA. For Jenna, the latest Cup meet bears a significance far beyond the simple hunger for victory. Christy's life is dominated by fear of her brother, a man she knows capable of monstrous acts and suspects of hiding even darker ones. Desperate to learn the truth she contacts Alex, a stranger she knows only by name. Together they must face their demons, wherever that may lead. Raised at the Croft, a secret government programme focussing on smartdogs, Maree has to undertake a journey through shipping lanes haunted by the enigmatic and dangerous Atlantic whale. What she discovers en route will change her world forever.

The story of four damaged people whose lives are inextricably linked, The Race is a novel of tender nuances, brutality, insight and great ambition, a narrative that lays bare the fears and joys of being human, and, ultimately, offers hope to us all.

Selena and Julie are sisters. As children they were closest companions, but as they grow towards maturity, a rift develops between them.

There are greater rifts, however. Julie goes missing at the age of seventeen. It will be twenty years before Selena sees her again. When Julie reappears, she tells Selena an incredible story about how she has spent time on another planet. Selena has an impossible choice to make: does she dismiss her sister as a damaged person, the victim of delusions, or believe her, and risk her own sanity in the process? Is Julie really who she says she is, and if she isn't, what does she have to gain by claiming her sister's identity?

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #233 March-April 2011. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012, edited by Rich Horton.

Martin Newland is fascinated by time. Watches and clocks are for him metaphorical time machines, a means of coming to terms with the past and voyaging into the future. But was his first timepiece a Smith, given to him on his fourteenth birthday, or the Longines he received four years later? Was it the small brass travelling clock unearthed in the run-down house for which he is to act as estate agent? And who is the maker of these time machines?

Nina Allan's fiction has appeared regularly in magazines such as Interzone, Black Static and Albedo One and has featured in many anthologies including Gardner Dozois's Year's Best SF #28, Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year #2, and Rich Horton's Year's Best Fantasy and Science Fiction 2012. She has been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award twice, the BSFA Award three times, and was named the winner of Ireland's Aeon Award in 2007.

Microcosmos collects seven mini-masterpieces from one of most intelligent and interesting writers of genre fiction to emerge in recent years, including the BSFA Award shortlisted "Flying in the Face of God" and two brand new stories, "A.H." and "Higher Up", that are wholly original to this book.

"...does things with fiction, and the possibilities of fiction, that dazzle with their ambition." - Robert Shearman

"Beautifully written and paced and enigmatic, yet in an entirely lucid way." - Ian Watson

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay
• Microcosmos - (2009) - short story
• The Phoney War - (2010) - short story
• Chaconne - (2011) - novelette
• A. H. - (2013) - novelette
• Orinoco - (2010) - novelette
• Flying in the Face of God - (2010) - novelette
• Higher Up - (2013) - novelette