Zaïdmouth is a far-future paradise. Its five communities are intertwined by artificial flower networks so complex they combine to create the virtual realities through which Zaïdmouth is run. Yet into this vivid world a bad seed is about to be sewn.

Mansuruquyn, Priestess-Interpreter, has broken the rules of the Shrine of the Crone. Exiled, she is forced to live in Zaïdmouth for one season. But who are the two mysterious men who run the empty inn in which she shelters? And what is their connection with the metal beasts of the Cemetery?

Nuïy is a young man leaving the stifling home he hates. Making for the Shrine of the Emerald Man, he discovers a world of order and domineering wills. But what secret plan do the leaders of the Shrine foment? And why do they embrace Nuïy's unique skill with such enthusiasm?

It is the fate of Mansuruqyun and Nuïy to come together in a struggle to determine the future of Zaïdmouth. There will be battles covert and open, betrayal and loyalty, capture and escape. But after all this, which single person will provide the blueprint for the future? Who can make a good flower from a bad seed?

Set in a vibrant future world, Flowercrash is the new novel from the acclaimed author of Memory Seed and Glass.

Europe, 2049. Nulight, a Tibetan refugee and notorious underground record company owner, emerges from an obscure Berlin night club realising that an alien invasion is imminent. Or is he hallucinating? Contacting his ex-lover Kappa and the invisible man Master Sengel, he begins an investigation. Then he is abducted. Released. And soon the aliens invade. To save humanity, Nulight and his motley friends must decide if the aliens are real or not – and if they are, what to do about them. For Britain has become a land of pagan communities and wilderness, where the strength and resolve for the forthcoming struggle may not exist. Can music save Britain? Can it save the world?

Hallucinating is a unique vision of future invasion and future music, featuring cameo appearances from Ed Wynne of Ozric Tentacles, Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, Toby Marks of Banco De Gaia and many more. Michael Dog has written a foreword. This new edition contains an afterword written by the author and a never before published syntactic remix of the original story, also by the author.

Infinity Plus Stephen Palmer Sci-Fi bundle

Hallucinating

by Stephen Palmer

Flowercrash

by Stephen Palmer

Muezzinland

by Stephen Palmer

Glass

by Stephen Palmer

Memory Seed

by Stephen Palmer

The Accord, a virtual utopia where the soul lives on after death and your perceptions are bound only by your imagination. This is the setting for a tale of love, murder and revenge that crosses the boundaries between the real world and this virtual reality. When Noah and Priscilla escape into the Accord to flee Priscilla's murderous husband, he plots to destroy the whole Accord and them with it. How can they hope to escape their stalker when he can become anything or anyone he desires and where does the pursuit of revenge stop for immortals in an eternal world?

Genetopia is the story of a young man in search of his possibly abducted sister in a far future where nano- and biotechnology have transformed and accelerated the evolution of humans and their strangely altered surroundings. In this world, you can never take anything -- or anyone -- at face value. Illness and contact with the unknown are always to be feared, as viruses re-engineer genes and germ cells, migrating traits from species to species through plague and fever. Humankind lives in isolated communities, connected by trade routes, and always fighting to keep the unclean at arm's length.

But if Flint is to find his sister he must brave the fevers, the legendary beasts, the unknown. He must enter strange communities and seek help in the most unlikely places. He must confront both his own dark past and the future of his kind.

He must go into the wildlands.

Flint's story is the story of the last true humans, and of the struggles between those who want to defend their heritage and those who choose to embrace the new. But Flint doesn't see it like that: he just wants to find his sister.

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...

Five stories from top writers of speculative fiction: science fiction, fantasy and the downright strange, stories from the heart, stories to make you think and wonder.

The Angels of Life and Death collects ten science fiction stories from two times winner of the BSFA short story award Eric Brown. From cyberpunk visions of post-human futures to traditional tales of alien encounter and time travel, what connects these tales are Brown's storytelling ability and his concern for the human element. Whether he's writing about telepaths fleeing alien assassins on a vast spaceport city in the Bay of Bengal, or a woman reporter finding true love in the far, far future, Brown imbues his fictions with a concern for character and headlong narrative pace.

Infinity Plus Science Fiction Bundle

The Angels of Life and Death

by Eric Brown

Quintet

edited by Keith Brooke

The Time-Lapsed Man

by Eric Brown

Genetopia

by Keith Brooke

The Accord

by Keith Brooke

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.

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 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 philosophy. A key novel from one of the UK's favourite SF writers.

'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...

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.

//~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...

Parallax View showcases 'In Transit', written specially for this collection, a novella 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 they crash-land on the fortress planet of St Jerome, the Kryte prisoner turns the tables and takes Abbott into terrible custody. What follows is a terrifying journey across a hellish landscape towards a finale that might change the destiny of the Kryte and humanity, forever...

Plus six other stories that examine the interface between human and alien - a parallax view from two of Britain's top science fiction writers, both shortlisted for the 2012 Philip K Dick Award.

Infinity Plus Eric Brown Sci-Fi Bundle

Parallax View

by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown

Approaching Omega

by Eric Brown

Blue Shifting

by Eric Brown

Meridian Days

by Eric Brown

Penumbra

by Eric Brown

Salvage

by Eric Brown

The Gift of Music
by Sharon Lee The Aristocrat and the Free Man
by Robert Conroy Stealing Arturo
by William Ledbetter Magic and Other Honest Lies
by Robert Buettner Soft Casualty
by Michael Z. Williamson Songs of Waste and Wood
by P.C. Hodgell The Last Secret of Mary Bowser
by Steve White Low Arc
by Sean Monaghan Balance
by Marina J. Lostetter A Thing of Beauty
by Charles E. Gannon An Imperium Pursuit
by Jody Lynn Nye Picket Ship
by Brad R. Torgersen The Golden Knight
by K. D. Julicher Bare Snow Falling on Fairywood
by Wen Spencer Bait and Switch
by Ryk E. Spoor The night don't seem so lonely
by Sharon Lee Long Nights Moon
by David B. Coe

Listen to Bob Kruger discuss his essay, "Dungeons and Dragons: The 40 Year Quest for a Game that Breaks All the Rules," on the Baen Free Radio Hour: Part 1 | Part 2.

It’s just supposed to be an educational field trip to the Challenger Learning Center, but JJ Wren and her friends find themselves transported into the future, to a time when the human race is besieged by deadly alien invaders. The evil Kylarn have shifted the orbits of three asteroids, sending them on a collision course with Earth!

The Star Challengers, a group of talented young people bound together by a common interest in the space program, return to the Challenger Center for their next mission. Mysterious Commander Zota once again sends them into the future, and this time they will work aboard the International Space Station Complex. They will live without gravity, orbiting high above the Earth—and defend humanity against a ruthless alien invasion!