Titles

[Re]Awakenings are the starting points for life-changing experiences; a new plane of existence, an alternate reality or cyber-reality. This genre-spanning anthology of new speculative fiction explores that theme with a spectrum of tales, from science fiction to fantasy to paranormal; in styles from clinically serious to joyfully silly. Compiled by guest editor PR Pope, it contains the following stories:
Alison Buck: Dreamers; Intervention; Mirror mirror; Podcast.
Neil Faarid: The Adventures of Kit Brennan: Kidnapped!
Gingerlily: The Dragon and the Rose.
Robin Moran: The Merry Maiden Wails.
PR Pope: Afterlife; Courtesy Bodies; On the Game.
Alexander Skye: BlueWinter; Dreaming Mars; Exploring the Heavens; Worth it.
Peter Wolfe: If you go into the woods today…

[Re]Awakenings, an anthology of new speculative fiction was published by Elsewhen Press on 21st November 2011.

There is magic in the world, hiding in plain sight. If you search for it, you will find it, or it will find you. Welcome to the magical world.

Dizzy expected nothing from life, until she stumbled from the mundane world into the magical world, an alternate reality where dragons flew through the sky and the Great Powers watched over the world. Forgetting her old life, Dizzy became apprenticed to one of the most powerful magicians in all of reality and a bright future beckoned.

But powerful dark forces had their eye on the young and inexperienced magician, intending to use her for the ultimate act of evil – the apocalyptic destruction of all reality. Now, Dizzy must beat them. If she cannot, both the magical and mundane worlds will be consumed in fire.

A Life Less Ordinary, was published by Elsewhen Press on 10th May 2013.

Created as an experiment into the nature of time itself, the virtual world of Arteess exists, in the near future, as a private digital realm. A full-body virtual reality experience where the talented, the shrewd and the lucky are invited to participate in an international war zone of nomadic factions. The Shard squad, a group of friends specialising in Conflict arenas, playing as a cohesive unit led by Splint, are thrust into Arteess to serve under the Sapphire faction, an alarmingly casual outfit holed up in the middle of a metal mountain. Surrounded by sociopathic technicians, facetious pilots and a potentially insane commander, Splint and her squad must carve out a place for themselves within the virtual battlefield while surviving not only the onslaught of rivals but also the antics of their own teammates.


Arteess: Conflict, will be published by Elsewhen Press in June 2013.

Literary surrealism at its most profound, The Ascent of Isaac Steward follows one man’s journey into his own mind as he struggles to come to terms with the trauma that has reshaped his life.

A year on from the car crash in which his wife Rebekah and son Esau were killed and his other son Jacob left in a coma, Isaac Steward has suppressed every memory of that fateful day. Yet fate seems determined to make him remember, driving Isaac deeper and deeper into himself. Slowly, dysfunction builds on delusion, as childhood memories compete with a persona he has fabricated to regress to an earlier, happier time. Violence, death and destruction result as Isaac gradually loses his grip on reality. His half-brother Ishmael tells him that he must return to the wood at his childhood home, to a tree he called The Dandelion Tree, if he is ever to be reunited with Rebekah. But as he descends further, he starts to question his own existence.


The Ascent of Isaac Steward, the first book of the Dandelion Trilogy, was published by Elsewhen Press in a new revised edition on 19th April 2013.

Dystopian science fiction, Blue Friday tells of a future where many live in fear of the Family Protection Agency, a special police division enforcing the strict legislation that has been introduced to protect the family unit. Combining dark humour with a vision of the future that is almost an inverse of the classic dystopian nightmare of 1984, the latest novel from Mike French follows in the tradition of great Speculative Fiction satirists such as Jonathan Swift.


Blue Friday, the second book of the Dandelion Trilogy, was published by Elsewhen Press on 1st September 2012.

The Convergence Project is a covert military/governmental science project that uses prisoners on death row to explore what happens to people as they die.
   The experience of life flashing before your eyes just before death is a process called active retrieval where memories are being recalled and lived out again in the mind. As the amount of time before death decreases, the brain exponentially increases the speed of playback and starts looping: repeating over and over a lifetime’s worth of memories. Each playback making the memories stronger, retaining more detail. Finally the memories are replayed over and over in an infinitesimally small amount of time just before death to form a memory singularity called a Convergence Point. Subjects on death row are killed by lethal injection within an enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Core. This brings on active retrieval and the brain activity is imaged moments before the Convergence Point forms…

Convergence, the third book of the Dandelion Trilogy, will be published by Elsewhen Press in October 2013.

Elaine, an orphan girl in a world where magical ability brings power, triggers a magical trap and ends up with all the knowledge from the Great Library – including forbidden magic that no one is supposed to know – stuffed inside her head. If the senior wizards find out what has happened to her, they will almost certainly have her killed. Elaine is forced to struggle with the terrors and temptations represented by her newfound knowledge, all the while trying to stay out of sight of  the sinister Inquisitor Dread. But a darkly powerful figure has been drawing up a plan to take the power of the Grand Sorcerer for himself; and Elaine, unknowingly, is vital to his scheme. Unless she can unlock the mysteries behind her new knowledge, divine the unfolding plan, and discover the truth about her own origins, there is no hope for those she loves, the Golden City or her entire world.


Bookworm, was published by Elsewhen Press on 18th January 2013.

In 2180, travel to neighbouring star systems has been mastered thanks to quantum teleportation using the ‘entanglement’ of sub-atomic matter; astronauts on earth can be duplicated on a remote world once the dupliport chamber has arrived there. In this way a variety of worlds can be explored, but what humanity discovers is both surprising and disturbing, enlightening and shocking. Each alternative to mankind that the astronauts find, sheds light on human shortcomings and potential while offering fresh perspectives of life on Earth. Meanwhile, at home, the lives of the astronauts and those in charge of the missions will never be the same again. Philosophical science fiction, Entanglement explores our assumptions about such constants as death, birth, sex and conflict, as the characters in the story explore distant worlds and the intelligent life that lives there.

Entanglement, was published by Elsewhen Press on 1st August 2012.

An enthralling tale that revolves around a startlingly desperate reality: Jacey Jackson, a talented student destined for Cambridge, collapses with a brain tumour while sitting her final history exam at school. In her mind she struggles through a quasi-historical sixth century dreamscape whilst the surgeons fight to save her life.

Jacey’s Kingdom, was published by Elsewhen Press on 11th January 2013.

Literary science fiction, LiGa™ tells of a game in which the players are, literally, gambling with their lives. Sanem Ozdural’s debut novel is set in a near-future where a secretive organisation has developed technology to transfer the regenerative power of a body’s cells from one person to another, conferring extended or even indefinite life expectancy. As a means of controlling who benefits from the technology, access is obtained by winning a tournament of chess or bridge to which only a select few are invited. At its core, the game is a test of a person’s integrity, ability and resilience.


LiGa™, was published by Elsewhen Press on 31st July 2012.

In this allegorical tale, David Colón uses an alternate near-future to explore the boundaries of the human condition and the extent to which we are prepared to surrender our capacity for decisions and self-determination in the face of a very personally directed and apparently benevolent, authoritarianism.  Is it our responsibility to rebuke inherited ‘wisdom’ for the sake of envisioning and manifesting our own will?


The Lost Men, was published by Elsewhen Press on 30th March 2012.

Three young people are accidentally transported from their mundane lives to a new world, where they must find the strength to lead a revolution in order to make their way home. On the way they discover who they really are, where they belong and the enduring power of a bloodline.


Queens of Antares: Bloodline returned, the first volume in the Queens of Antares: Bloodline trilogy, was published by Elsewhen Press on 4th February 2012.

This steampunk, fantasy, alternate history, is set in 1830 in a Britain where the ‘scientific’ principles of magic were discovered sixty years previously, allowing the British to win the American War of Independence. The King’s Royal Sorcerer is ageing and must find a successor to lead the Royal Sorcerers Corps; the only candidate is perfect in all ways but one: The Royal College of Sorcerers has never admitted a girl before. But even before Lady Gwendolyn Crichton can begin her training, London is plunged into chaos by a campaign of terrorist attacks co-ordinated by Jack, a powerful and rebellious magician.


The Royal Sorceress, was published by Elsewhen Press on 6th October 2012.

After the uprising in London, Lady Gwendolyn Crichton is settling into her new position as Royal Sorceress and fighting the prejudice against her gender and age that seeks to prevent her fulfilling her responsibilities. But when a senior magician is murdered in a locked room and Gwen is charged with finding the culprit, her inquiries lead her into a web of intrigue that combines international politics, widespread aristocratic blackmail, gambling dens and personal vendettas… and some of her discoveries hit dangerously close to home.


The Great Game, will be published by Elsewhen Press on 16th August 2013.

A multi-planetary post-singularity society (the Confederation) desperately wants to know how to achieve transcendence into an Elder Race. When their scouts encounter Darius, a lost colony world whose inhabitants have apparently discarded the technology that brought them to the planet in order to adopt a virtually feudal culture, they are shocked to discover that the people who are in control exhibit abilities that defy the accepted laws of physics. The Confederation believe them to be using a technology sufficiently advanced to seem like ‘magic’. Is it a technology left behind by long-gone Elders, or are there still advanced races who are meddling in human affairs? Could this be the route to transcendence? The need to understand and control such a technology leads the Confederation Security Council to launch an urgent mission to investigate Darius. Protocol dictates that stealthy infiltration should precede initial contact, especially as much of the team’s technology seems to be unreliable or even inoperative on the planet’s surface. But these simple folk are not all that simple after all.


Sufficiently Advanced Technology, the first book in the Inverse Shadows universe, will be published by Elsewhen Press in July 2013.

Ira Nayman’s new novel is both an hilarious romp through multiple dimensions in a variety of alternate realities, and a gentle satire on fate, ambition and expectation. Welcome to the Multiverse (Sorry for the Inconvenience) will appeal to comedy fans who have been bereft of much good science-fiction fare these last eleven years. Ira’s style is at times surreal, even off-the-wall, with the humour flying at you from unexpected angles; he describes it as fractal humour. Anyone who has read his Alternate Reality News Service stories will know how funny Ira is. The characters we meet from around the multiverse deserve to become firm favourites with all fans of science fiction comedy.


Welcome to the Multiverse (Sorry for the Inconvenience), was published by Elsewhen Press on 9th November 2012.