New Releases by Ken Macleod

A bishop is dead. As Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson picks through the rubble of the tiny church, he discovers that it was deliberately bombed. That it''s a terrorist act is soon beyond doubt. It''s been a long time since anyone saw anything like this. Terrorism is history ...After the Middle East wars and the rising sea levels - after Armageddon and the Flood - came the Great Rejection. The first Enlightenment separated church from state. The Second Enlightenment has separated religion from politics. In this enlightened age there''s no persecution, but the millions who still believe and worship are a marginal and mistrusted minority. Now someone is killing them. At first, suspicion falls on atheists more militant than the secular authorities. But when the target list expands to include the godless, it becomes evident that something very old has risen from the ashes. Old and very, very dangerous ...

Conflict: a basic human instinct, helping humankind evolve even while threatening the very existence of the species . . . an instinct that will be as much a part of the future as it is now and always has been. For all the glories of war-the defeat of evil, the promise of freedom, justice, protection of the innocent, the righting of wrongs, technological innovation, heroism-there are also the horrors: individual grief, mass destruction, the elimination of entire cultures and great achievments, injustice, villainy, the annihilation of the innocent, and pain beyond bearing. War and Space offers the ultimate speculation on the future of warfare-stories of insectoid anguish, genetically-engineered diplomats who cannot fail, aliens plundering humanity, a weaponized black hole-scenarios of triumph and defeat, great heroism and vile depravity . . . and more.

There is no such place as Krassnia. Lucy Stone should know—she was born there. In that tiny, troubled region of the former Soviet Union, revolution is brewing. Its organizers need a safe place to meet, and where better than the virtual spaces of an online game? Lucy, who works for a start-up games company in Edinburgh, has a project that almost seems made for the job: a game inspired by The Krassniad, an epic folk tale concocted by Lucy’s mother, Amanda, who studied there in the 1980s. Lucy knows Amanda is a spook. She knows her great-grandmother Eugenie also visited the country in the 1930s and met the man who originally collected Krassnian folklore, and who perished in Stalin’s terror. As Lucy digs up details about her birthplace to slot into the game, she finds the open secrets of her family’s past, the darker secrets of Krassnia’s past—and hints about the crucial role she is destined to play in The Restoration Game. Combining international intrigue with cutting-edge philosophical speculation, romance with adventure, and online gaming with real-life consequences, this book delivers as science fiction and as a sharp take on our present world from the viewpoint of a complex, engaging heroine who has to fight her way through a maze of political and family manipulation to take control of her own life. From the Trade Paperback edition.

There are ever so many ways to conduct a war. Only a few of them look like war. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ranging from a gritty near-future Earth to a distant alien world, Ken MacLeod''s Cosmonaut Keep is contemporary science fiction at its highest level.A visionary epic filled with daring individuals seeking a place for themselves in a vast, complex, and enigmatic universe. Matt Cairns is a 21st-century outlaw Programmer who takes on the shady jobs no one else will touch. Against his better judgment, he accepts an assignment to crack the Marshall Titov, a top-secret orbital station operated by the European Space Agency. But what Matt will discover there will propel him on an extraordinary and quite unexpected journey. Gregor Cairns is an exobiology student and descendant of one of Terra Nova''s first families. Hopelessly infatuated with a lovely young trader''s daughter, he is unaware that his research partner, Elizabeth, has fallen in love with him. Together, Gregor and Elizabeth confront the great work his family began three centuries earlier-to rediscover the secret of interstellar travel. Cosmonaut Keep is a 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

This volume comprises The Cassini Division and The Sky Road. The Cassini Division: In the 24th century, post humans, god-like descendents of humans who transformed themselves with high technology, have warped the very fabric of the solar system for unknowable reasons. Ellen May Ngewthu has a plan to rid humanity of these beings, but she must first travel the entirety of the Solar Union, convincing others that post-humans are the threat she knows they are... The Sky Road: Her rockets redundant, her people rebellious, and her borders defenseless against the Sino-Soviet Union, Myra Godwin appeals to the crumbling West for help as she faces the end of the space age. And, centuries in the future, as humanity again reaches into space, a young scholar could make the difference between success and failure. For his mysterious new lover has seduced him into the idea of extrapolating the ship''s future from the dark archives of the past.

With visionary epics like The Stone Canal, The Cassini Division, and Cosmonaut Keep, award-winning Scottish author Ken MacLeod has led a revolution in contemporary science fiction, blending cutting edge science and razor-sharp political insights with pure, over-the-top interstellar adventure. Now MacLeod takes this heady mix to a new level with a stunning new SF masterwork--Newton''s Wake. In the aftermath of the Hard Rapture--a cataclysmic war sparked by the explosive evolution of Earth''s artificial intelligences into godlike beings--a few remnants of humanity managed to survive. Some even prospered. Lucinda Carlyle, head of an ambitious clan of galactic entrepreneurs, had carved out a profitable niche for herself and her kin by taking control of the Skein, a chain of interplanetary star-gates left behind by the posthumans. But on a world called Eurydice, a remote planet at the farthest rim of the galaxy, Lucinda stumbled upon a forgotten relic of the past that could threaten her way of life. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Consists of poems, stories, reports, essays, and articles.

The weather has gone crazy and the war has spread to China. Jase, Euan and Murdo are laggers: forced workers in a future Scotland. The laggers are helping to lay a new power line in the Highlands. Ailiss, a young woman from a secret settlement in the frozen hills, is going to strain their loyalties to breaking point - and beyond.

An ambitious, stand-alone epic of far-future SF, from the acclaimed author of The Stone Canal

The Concluding Volume of the Engines of Light With Cosmonaut Keep and Dark Light, both finalists for science fiction''s Hugo Award, Ken MacLeod launched a new interstellar epic with all the engaging characters and ingenious SF inventiveness of his earlier Fall Revolution novels. Now MacLeod delivers the culmination of his epic of a human future crammed with innumerable varieties of intelligent alien life, and in which humans find themselves involved in the politics of aliens as powerful and inscrutable as gods...and entangled in their wars. For ten thousand years, Nova Babylonia has been the greatest city of the Second Sphere, an interstellar civilization of human and other beings who have been secretly removed, throughout history, from Earth. Now humans from the far reaches of the Sphere have come to offer immortality—and to urge them to build defenses against the alien invasion they know is coming. As humans and aliens compete and conspire, the wheels of history will lathe all the players into shapes new and surprising. The alien invasion will reach New Babylon at last—led by the most alien figure of all. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In humanity''s future, intelligence thrives from the Oort-cloud fringes of star systems to the furnaces beneath planetary crusts--not on the surfaces. There are differences among the powerful intelligences on how to deal with surface life-forms such as human beings. When humans finally achieve space travel, they become involved in the politics of the gods.

Science fiction-roman.

Science fiction-roman.

Centuries after the catastrophic Deliverance, humanity is again reaching into space. And Clovis, a young scholar working in the spaceship-construction yard, could make the difference between success and failure. For his mysterious new lover, Merrial, has seduced him into the idea of extrapolating the ship''s future from the dark archives of the past. A past in which, centuries before, Myra Godwin faced the end of a different space age--her rockets redundant, her people rebellious, and her borders defenseless against the Sino-Soviet Union. As Myra appealed to the crumbling West for help, she found history turning on her own strange past--and on the terrible decisions she faces now. The Sky Road is a fireworks display, a bravura performance, and the most amazing novel yet by one of the powerful new voices in science fiction.

"Now Ellen has a plan to rid humanity of this threat once and for all. But she needs to recruit the right people to her cause - and convince them to mistrust the post-humans as much as she does."--BOOK JACKET.

Dave and Louise are arch rivals in Crisis Crater, the new combat game on the Web but when they fall foul of the shadowy conspirators and paranoid webcops who are all drawn to the Cydonia conspiracy on the Web, they soon find that the only way to survive is to trust someone else and join forces. Arrested by the Webcops, threatened by Scots Nationalists and American Militiamen, things apparently couldn''t get worse. But they can. Why are some of the phases in the web acting so strangely? What has got into them? The answer is out of this world. And by comparison any of the mysteries in Cydonia are just kids stuff.