The Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod, Volume 2

“MacLeod is a brilliant writer.” —Tim Powers

“Ian MacLeod writes like an angel. He strings together ideally chosen words into sentences that are variously lush, sparse, subtle, bold, joyous, mournful, comic and tragic.” —Paul Di Filippo

Welcome to the second half of the collected worlds of one of fiction’s great myth-makers. Blending naturalistic settings with real—and unreal—histories, dark presents, strange pasts and star-flung futures, Ian R. MacLeod’s multi award-winning stories defy easy classification, but are always vividly elegant, compelling, and filled with wonder.

In “The Chop Girl,” a young working at a World War Two RAF bomber airbase discovers the true meaning of luck, whilst “The Discovered Country” projects a world in which the dead enjoy an endless afterlife whilst the merely living struggle to survive, and “The Visitor from Taured” twists a modern urban myth into a tale of one man’s search for a Theory Of Everything, and Snodgrass tells a very different version of the Beatles’ rise to fame.

Nothing in MacLeod’s visions is ever quite what it seems, yet they remain deeply real and involving. If you haven’t read MacLeod before, you can expect to be moved and surprised. If you have, then you need no further introduction other than to say that Nowhere—and its companion volume Everywhere, which features many of his best longer stories—represent a generous and wide-ranging summary of his work, along with many insights into the creative process which are provided by the fresh introductions and afterwords.

A 2018 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST HORROR NOVEL

In the aftermath of the last great battle of the American Civil War, a disillusioned Union medic stumbles across a strange figure picking amid the corpses, and his life is changed forever . . .

In the cathedral city of Strasbourg in the years before the French Revolution, a church restorer is commissioned to paint a series of portraits that chart the changing appearance of a beautiful woman over the course of her life, although the woman herself seems ageless . . .

In Prohibition-era New York, an idealistic young Marxist is catapulted into the realms of elite society, and forced to assume the identity of someone who never existed . . .

Red Snow is a novel of love and violence, ideas and dreams, and revolves around the mystery of a monster drawn from humanity's darkest myths which still somehow survives, and thrives, and kills, in this modern age.

Praise for Red Snow:

“… always manages to take us somewhere unexpected… by turns western adventure, Renaissance horror, political intrigue, dysfunctional family drama, and more.” —Locus

“By turns horrifying and hauntingly beautiful, this epic vampire story is the stuff of real nightmares.” —Tim Powers

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke and the John W. Campbell Memorial awards for Best Science-Fiction Novel

Song of Time begins with an old woman discovering a half-drowned man on a Cornish beach in the furthest days of this strange century. She, once a famous concert violinist, is close to death herself—or a new kind of life she can barely contemplate. Does death still exist at all, or has finally been extinguished? And who is this strange man she's found? Is he a figure returned from her own past, a new messiah, or an empty vessel?

Filled with love, music, death and life, and spanning the world from the prim English suburbs of Birmingham to the wild inventions of a new-Renaissance Paris to a post-apocalyptic India, Song of Time tells the story of this century, and confronts the ultimate leap into a new kind of existence, and whatever lies beyond . . .

Praise for Song of Time:

“MacLeod’s quiet, meditative novels and stories have been winning critical acclaim for years, and Song of Time sees him at the height of his powers. At the end of a long and eventful life, celebrated violinist Roushana Maitland orders her memories before she passes from the world of the flesh to a virtual afterlife. When she finds a mysterious stranger washed up on the beach of her Cornish retreat, he facilitates the process of remembrance. In flashback chapters we follow Roushana’s turbulent life through the cataclysmic events of the 21st century, taking in the deaths of loved ones, marriage to a conductor-entrepreneur, and a final heartbreaking revelation, Song of Time is a slow, sensitive first-person account of what it means to be human and vulnerable, and confirms MacLeod as one of the country’s very best literary SF writers.” —The Guardian

Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel

This prescient and ground-breaking novel is set in a near-future where the privileged citizens of Europe shelter behind immense physical and biotechnical barriers from a world ravaged by climate change and disease. Beyond this safe existence of harvest fairs, uncomplicated religion and high tech crops lie the overcrowded souks, teeming streets and exotic religions of the vast sprawl of the Endless City which now encompasses most of North Africa.

Father John, a doubting missionary from the futuristic yet bucolic shires of the Welsh Marches, finds he must leave his ministry and the clamour of the Endless City to search across the dangerous wastelands beyond for the source of a lethal radioactive pollutant. There, in the company of a witchwoman and a young Borderer, he confronts not only his faith but also his own past, and the near-death of Hal, his comatose brother.

Lyrical and evocative, The Great Wheel tells the story of a half-wrecked Eden, and all too possible tomorrow.

Praise for The Great Wheel:

“A voyage into the midnight garden of the human soul, and a dangerous extrapolation of the days to come.” —Michael Swanwick

“A smooth, sinuous trip in the hands of a writer who knows just about everything there is to know about giving joy, and telling the truth, too.” —John Clute

“A beautiful book. It breathes, as a true novel of experience should. It's expansive and layered and real... It transcends the genre.” —Jack Dann

“A richly portrayed future world quite unlike any other, and yet, somehow, with the feeling of exotic familiarity.” —Norman Spinrad

Aether Universe, Book 2

“A major work by a master writing at the top of his form.” —Publishers Weekly

In the ninety-ninth year of the Age of Light, Alice Meynell has fought her way up to Greatgrandmistress of the Guild of Telegraphers, and is determined not to let even the consumption which is ravaging her son stand in the way. What follows, through a long, hot summer in the great house of Invercombe overlooking the Bristol Channel, changes not only their lives but those of everyone in England, and perhaps the whole known world.

The House of Storms follows on from double World Fantasy Award-winner Ian R MacLeod's The Light Ages in creating a vividly three-dimensional vision of a landscape and a society both very like, but also wonderfully different from, our own. Part fantasy and part history, and filled with compelling characters and a deep sense of place, the story he tells is uniquely powerful and strange.

Aether Universe, Book 1

“MacLeod is set to become a writer of the magnitude of Dickens or Tolkien.” —The Guardian

Aether is industry, industry is magic and the Great Guilds rule the known world.

Raised amid the smokestakes, terraced houses and endless subterranean pounding of the aether engines of the Yorkshire town of Bracebridge, Robert Borrows is nevertheless convinced that life holds a greater destiny than merely working endless shifts for one of the Lesser Guilds. Then, on a day out with his mother to the strange gardens and weirdly encrusted towers of a remote mansion, he encounters a wizened changeling, and the young girl in her charge called Anna, and glimpses a world of wonder, mystery and surprise.

From then on, as he flees to London in the hope of escape and advancement, and explores its wide streets and dark alleys, and all the tiers of society from the lowest to the highest, he comes to realize that he holds the keys to secrets far bigger than even he imagined.

A dazzling melange of Dickens and Peake, flavored with steampunk and magical realism, yet seen through a kaleidoscopically individual gaze, in The Light Ages, double World Fantasy Award winner Ian R MacLeod has created a novel for this and every age.

Winner of the World Fantasy Award and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.

What would have happened if Britain and its allies had lost the Great War? From this premise, and through the compelling story of an outsider forever struggling to make sense of, or even change, the world, The Summer Isles takes a journey into the darker side of British nationalism.

Geoffrey Brook, seemingly a successful and respected history don at a venerable Oxford college, feels his whole life is a fraud. Not only did he not go to the right schools, or attend university, but he cannot even understand Latin. That, and, in a country where intolerance and bigotry has become a national rallying cry, there's the issue of his supposedly deviant sexuality. Which, if it was discovered, would probably see him sent to a labour camp—or worse still, to the Summer Isles. It all goes back to a boy he remembers from his youth, who has now become the country's charismatic leader. But what can he do now, in a country that seems to be on the brink of cataclysm?

Praise for The Summer Isles:

“The Summer Isles is one of the most powerful, compelling and compassionate novels ever written in any genre.” —Gardner Dozois

“The Summer Isles combines the profound melancholy of Orwell with the precise observance of Graham Green.” —Lucius Shepard

“A poetic and fascinating alternate history that tells us much about how human beings think and act. At times, The Summer Isles reads like a political thriller, but, in the end, it is a story about the human heart told by a master of the form.” —Pat LoBrutto

“Projecting Nazi Germany onto the England of the ‘30s is a most effective counterfactual device: and in the opposition of the narrator, historian Geoffrey Brook, and Britain's Fuehrer, John Arthur, MacLeod sums up very neatly the division in the British psyche of the time, between Churchillian grit and abject appeasement.” —Locus

Winner of the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.

All failed actor and unlicensed private eye Clark Gable has to do is impersonate a wealthy scriptwriter for a few hours, and sign a contract for the biopic of the inventor of a device which has transformed the world of entertainment. What could go wrong? True, he’s seeing ghosts, but so’s everyone else these days, at least when they go to the Feelies. And Europe is devastated by war, and America is sleep-walking toward Fascism. But what’s that got to do with him? A great deal, it turns out, as he stumbles into a world of glamour, danger, preternatural forces and political intrigue.

A dazzling blend of mystery, fantasy and history, and by turns witty, eerie and romantic, Wake Up and Dream is film noir with Technicolor wraiths.

Praise for Wake Up and Dream:

“It’s 1940 and Hollywood is dominated by the feelies, movies that use the mysterious Bechmeir Field to transmit emotions into the minds of viewers. Clark Gable, a movie star turned private detective, is hired by April Lamotte to briefly impersonate her reclusive screenwriter husband, who’s about to sell a biopic based on the inventor of the Bechmeir Field. After everything is signed, someone tries to kill Gable and pass it off as suicide. Gable’s investigation into the incident draws him into a sordid conspiracy involving Hollywood’s elite, far too many of whom are turning up dead. It all leads back to something called Thrasis, and a secret worth killing for. MacLeod (Journeys) expertly hits all the hard-boiled beats, delivering the creepy, fascinating, strange, and wholly enjoyable story with a noir melancholy, a keen eye for detail, and plenty of snappy dialogue.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Set in an antisemitic US drifting towards collusion with Nazi Germany, Wake Up and Dream slowly picks at the artifice of Hollywood to reveal its morally rotten core. MacLeod won the Arthur C Clarke award in 2009, and on the strength of this novel should do so again.” —The Guardian