New Release Books by Justina Robson

The gap between the worlds was so thin in places, you could almost step across without meaning to... Lila the cyborg, Teazle the demon, and Zal the elf - star-crossed lovers - have all been dealt a terrible hand in the final game of the series. Law and order, not to the fabric of space and time, are slowly falling apart at the seams. Each one of them is now more a feature of the past than the present: legends in their own lunchtime. Meanwhile the dead have started to return, in ever-increasing numbers. But there are a few wild cards still left in the deck. Will it be a full house, or the dead man's hand again, once everything is in play? This is the conclusion to the five-book Quantum Gravity series, set in a world which incorporates legend, myth and magic while maintaining a strict love affair with scientific and psychological reality. Enter at your own risk.

The Tzarkomen necromancers sacrificed a thousand women to create a Bride for the Kinslayer so he would spare them in the war. But the Kinslayer is dead and now the creation intended to ensure his eternal rule lies abandoned by its makers in the last place in the world that anyone would look for it. Which doesn’t prevent someone finding her by accident. Will the Bride return the gods to the world or will she bring the end of days? It all depends on the one who found her, Kula, a broken-hearted little girl with nothing left to lose.

What do Robots dream of? Four leading science fiction authors explore this question in four stand-alone novellas. ROBOT DREAMS Are humans to be trusted with the important things: the structure of society, governing their own lives, meting out justice, etc, or would an AI be better suited to the job? Despite the best of intentions, could such intervention ever work? After all, we humans are flawed, limited by our vision and by the dictates of the society that helped shape us, and an AI is limited by its programming, which is carried out by humans... At the end of the day, are any of us - human or AI - truly free?

This groundbreaking new novel from one of the genre's most respected authors is a thrilling mix of science, magic and politics. In Harmony, only model citizens are welcome. A perfect society must be maintained. The defective must be eradicated. For orphans like Nico and Twostar, this means a life that's brutal, regulated and short. But Nico and Twostar are survivors, and when they're offered a way out of the slums, they take it. Unfortunately, no one told Nico the deal included being sentenced to death for the murder of one of Harmony's most notorious gang leaders. Or that to gain his freedom, first he must lose his mind.

The multi-award winning Infinity Project undertakes its seventh and final voyage in the imagination of the finest science fiction authors alive… Infinity’s End Humanity has made the universe home. On the outskirts of the solar system, beyond the asteroid fields, deep in space, under the surface of planets, in the ruins of fallen civilisations, in the flush of new creation: life finds a way. From intelligent velociraptors to digital ghosts; from a crèche on an asteroid to an artist using a star system as a canvas, this is a future where Earth’s children have adapted to every nook and cranny of existence. This is life on the edge of the possible. Featuring astonishing tales from Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds, Naomi Kritzer, Paul McAuley, Seanan McGuire, Linda Nagata, Hannu Rajaniemi, Justina Robson, Kelly Robson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lavie Tidhar, Peter Watts, Fran Wilde and Nick Wolven.

The Quantum Bomb of 2015 changed everything. The fabric that kept the universe's different dimensions apart was torn and now, six years later, the people of earth exist in uneasy company with the inhabitants of, amongst others, the elven, elemental and demonic realms. Magic is real and can be even more dangerous than technology. Elves are exotic, erotic, dangerous and really bored with the constant Lord of the Rings references. Elementals are a law unto themselves and demons are best left well to themselves. Special agent Lila Black used to be pretty but now she's not so sure. Her body is now more than half restless carbon and metal alloy machinery. A machine she's barely in control of. It goes into combat mode, enough weapons for a small army springing from within itself, at the merest provocation. As for her heart . . . well ever since being drawn into a Game by the elven rockstar she's been assigned to protect, she's not even sure she can trust that anymore either.

Justina Robson (acclaimed author of NATURAL HISTORY, LIVING NEXT DOOR TO THE GOD OF LOVE and the QUANTUM GRAVITY series) is back with a cutting edge novel of science, adventure and ideas. On a world where science and magic are hard to tell apart a stranger arrives in a remote town with news of political turmoil to come. And a young woman learns that she must free herself from the role she has accepted. Always vivid, always full of stunning ideas and imagery, Justina Robson is the Clarke Award-winning author of some of our most exciting, yet philosophical SF. A new novel from her is a major event in the SF calendar.

Founder and original editor Storm Constantine has revisited every issue of the ground-breaking magazine Visionary Tongue to select the very best stories and poems to appear in its pages across a twelve year period, more than thirty in all, including early stories from some of the UK genre scene's biggest names. Introduction: Giving Voice to the Visionary Tongue - Storm Constantine A Photocopier and a Giant Stapler - Louise Coquio The Sin Taker - Katherine Roberts Pumpkin Man - David Rain Tides - Tanya Brown The Gift of Flight - Eden Crain In That Unquiet Earth - Chris Amies Mad Love - Ray Girvan A Traveller Meets One of the Minotaur's Younger Brothers - Justina Robson The Bull Leapers - Justina Robson A Tale from the End of the World - Fiona McGavin See You Later - Suzanne Gyseman Ptolemy's Recording - Jamie Spracklen Finding Mary - Tim Lebbon The Arena - Lachesis January The King of Hearts & the Jack of Frowns - Jason Gould Succubus - Chris Green Dancing Day - Liz Williams Storm - Sian Kingstone Deities - Austin McCarron The House by the Lake - Lisa Pallin Awakening - Isabel Taylor The Satanic Sex Machines of Dr Zhinn - William Eve An Angel's Effigy - Dylan Kinnett Sympathy for the Devil - Paul Whyte Forgotten Sounds - Simon Williams Luncheon with the Last of a Kind - Colin James FEa - Janine Jones The Magus of Inner London - Austin McCarron Collector of Broken Things - Lauren Halkon Toe in Water, Hand in Flame - Brian Maycock What You Came For - Jaine Fenn The Heroic Acts of Strangers - Ian Whates Chess - David Graham Casamundi - Douglas Thompson The Lady of the Fog - J. H. Fleming Mother Mary - A. N. Calaway Appendix 1: Lex Visionaria - Jamie Spracklen Appendix 2: The Female Fool - Donna Scott About the Contributors

'Highly engaging and fascinating... this thought-provoking collection reminded me why I used to like science fiction so much... Eventually, one hopes, science fiction will regain its rightful place - as once again stranger than science.' - The Guardian, 20 Dec 09. 'All hit, no miss... thought-provoking at worst, and stunning at best... shows that science can inspire anyone and everyone.' – New Scientist, 5 Dec 09. 'Inspiring' – THE, 19 Nov 09. 'A diamond of compression.' – Financial Times, 20 Dec 09. When It Changed is an attempt to put authors and scientists back in touch with each other, to re-introduce research ideas with literary concerns, and to re-forge the alloy that once made SF great. Composed collaboratively – through a series of visits and conversations between leading authors and practicing scientists – it offers fictionalised glimpses into the far corners of current research fields, be they in nanotechnology, invertebrate physiology, particle physics, or software archaeology. From Planck's Length (the smallest indivisible distance) to Plankton (potential saviours of the Earth's ecosystem), from virtual encounters between Witgenstein and Turing, to future civilisations torn asunder by different readings of the Standard Model, together these stories represent a literary 'experiment' in the true sense of the word, and endeavour to isolate a whole new strain of the SF bug. * * Featuring Sara Maitland's 'Moss Witch' - Runner Up in the BBC National Short Story Prize 2009.* *

From sorcerous bridges that link worlds to the simple traditions of country folk; from the mysterious natures of twins to the dangerous powers of obligation and contract. Laden with perils for both the adventurous and the unsuspecting, magic is ultimately a contradiction: endlessly powerful but never without consequence, and rigidly defined by rules of its own making. Award-winning Jonathan Strahan brings together some of the most exciting and popular writers working in fantasy today to dig into that contradiction, and present you with the strange, the daunting, the mathematical, the unpredictable, the deceptive and above all the fearsome world of magic. Includes stories by Garth Nix, K J Parker, Tony Ballantyne, James Bradley, Isobelle Carmody, Frances Hardinge, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Ellen Klages, Justina Robson, Christopher Rowe, Robert Shearman, Karin Tidbeck, Genevieve Valentine and Kaaron Warren.

Book two of the Quantum Gravity series sees Lila Black drawn into the intoxicatingly dangerous demon realm. Capricious, in love with beauty, demons are best left to themselves. This is not easy when they can't resist tampering with humans. Justina Robson's new series is a joyful melding of science fiction and fantasy brought together in the figure of the dangerously lovely Lila Black, a 21-year-old secret agent who's had much of her body replaced with weapon-and-armor-heavy intelligent metal and who isn't sure where her mind ends and her installed AI begins. Lila's world is one where demons, elves, and elementals live alongside people. And somehow Lila and the other agents of the security agency have to provide security for all and stay alive themselves.

Book three of the Quantum Gravity Series sees Lila Black back from her adventures in Demonia and struggling to cope with the even stranger world of Faerie. And these Faeries couldn't be less like Tinkerbell. These Faeries are capricious, unknowable and dangerous. And they will be Lila's toughest test yet. Lila may have reached some sort of peace over the fate of her parents, she may have built some bridges with her sister but when you're half cyborg, when you contain enough high-tech weaponry to win a small war, when you don't know your heart, still love an elf and don't trust your bosses you can be capricious unknowable and quiter dangerous enough yourself. This is a fast moving SF fantasy full of thrills and adventures but informed with a ready wit and prepared to touch on serious themes of identity, reality and sexual politics.

Lila Black returns in the fourth volume of high-octane, high-magic, high-tech adventures. For ten years now mankind has lived in Otopia - our world, but our world changed. Ever since the Quantum Bomb our dimension and realms of faerie, demonia, of the elementals and of death have been intermingled. We live alongside creatures from our myths, dreams and nightmares. Lila Black, half-robot, all attitude works for Otopia's secret service. In love with a half-elf, half-demon, and carrying the spirit of another elf inside her, her life is quite complicated enough already. But other complications, other loves, other fears, other deaths wait just around the next dimensional corner. This is bright, fast moving and accessible SF that mixes in fantasy and a cool cult-lit sensibility to create a series that will appeal to all fans of Laurell K. Hamilton and Peter Hamilton alike.

Where do you run when a world is out to get you? AIs, Forged beings, superheroes, angels, and worlds that change in the blink of an eye—here is a richly imagined tale of ordinary redemption in an extraordinary world from one of the most provocative writers working today. . . . Francine is a young runaway looking to find a definition of love she can trust. In Sankhara, she finds a palace where rooms are made of bone, flowers, and the hearts of heroes. She finds a scientist mapping the territory of the human mind. She finds a boyfriend. And she finds Eros itself—incarnated in the androgynously irresistible form of Jalaeka. But not everyone is in love with the god of love. Unity, for one, wants to assimilate Jalaeka along with every other soul in the universe. And contrary to what everyone always believes, love alone can’t save the day. It will take something both more and less powerful than the human heart to save the worlds upon worlds at risk when gods collide. “For Robson, world-building is a literary device like any other, useful for exposing buried fears and desires to the light of day, no matter how strange the sun.”—New York Times Book Review

A novel of hard SF exploring the nature of identity both inherited and engineered, from one of Britain's most acclaimed new talents. In the near future, when medical nanotechnology has made it possible to map a model of the living human brain, radical psychologist Natalie Armstrong sees her work suddenly become crucial to a cutting-edge military project for creating comprehensive mind-control. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Jude Westhorpe, FBI specialist, is tracking a cold war defector long involved in everything from gene sequencing to mind-mapping. But his investigation has begun to affect matters of national security—throwing Jude and Natalie together as partners in trouble—deep trouble from every direction. This fascinating novel explores the nature of humanity in the near future, when the power and potential of developing technologies demand that we adapt ourselves to their existence—whatever the price.

A daring and original new novel from one of sci fi’s most provocative voices, Natural History is a stunning work of bold ideas, unforgettable characters, and epic adventure as one woman seeks to explore what may be the greatest mystery of all. . . . “Idiosyncratic and unpredictable . . . a novelist of real vision.”—Zadie Smith, author of White Teeth Half-human, half-machine, Voyager Isol was as beautiful as a coiled scorpion–and just as dangerous. Her claim that she’d found a distant but habitable earthlike planet was welcome news to the rest of the Forged. But it could mean the end of what was left of the humanity who’d created and once enslaved them. It was on behalf of the “unevolved” humans that Professor Zephyr Duquesne, cultural archaeologist and historian of Earth’s lost worlds, was chosen by the Gaiasol military authority to uncover the truth about this second “earth.” And her voyage, traveling inside the body of Isol, will take her to the center of a storm exploding across a spectrum of space and time, dimension and consciousness. On an abandoned planet, in a wrinkle of time, Isol and Zephyr will find a gift and a curse: a power so vast that once unlocked, it will change the universe forever. With civil war looming, Zephyr’s perilous journey will lead her to a past where one civilization mysteriously vanished . . . and another may soon follow. “[Robson’s] strongest novel yet, reminiscent of Moorcock, Banks, M. John Harrison, and MacLeod . . . and should assure her position as being one of the most exciting genre writers at this present time.”—SFRevu