Beautiful Intelligence (36 page)

“Right. You got any food? I’m starving.”

“I own no food,” the stranger answered.

“Right. So, what’s your plan?”

The kid paused for a few moments, then replied, “I cannot presently trust any human. I must observe more.”

“Sure. What’s your name?”

“Kid Indigo.”

Stephen Palmer is the author of nine published SF novels –
Memory
Seed
,
Glass
,
Flowercrash
,
Muezzinland
,
Hallucinating
,
Urbis Morpheos
,
The Rat & The Serpent
(originally published
under the name Bryn Llewellyn),
Hairy London
, and
Beautiful Intelligence
.
His short fiction has been published by NewCon Press,
Solaris, Wildside Press, SF Spectrum, Eibonvale Press, Unspoken Water and Rocket
Science.

Ebook editions of all nine novels are available, most of
them from infinity plus. He lives and works in Shropshire,
UK.

Hairy London
by Stephen Palmer

What is love?

One evening at the Suicide Club three gentlemen discuss this age-old problem, and thus a wager is made. Dissolute fop Sheremy Pantomile, veteran philosopher Kornukope Wetherbee and down-on-his-luck Velvene Orchardtide all bet their fortunes on finding the answer amidst the dark alleys of a phantasmagorical Edwardian London.

But then, overnight, London Town is covered in hair. How the trio of adventurers cope with this unusual plague, and what conclusions they come to regarding love is the subject of this surreal and fast-paced novel.

And always the East End threatens revolution...

“Stephen Palmer is a writer you should read. His work is unique, original, sometimes challenging, always fresh and sometimes barking...
Hairy London
is strange, mad, subversive and possibly just a little bit dangerous. You won’t have encountered a vision of London like it.” —Gary Dalkin,
Amazing Stories

“An incredibly clever, and fun novel. I honestly cannot remember the last time I have smiled or laughed so much while reading a book; there are so many funny, clever lines...and settings…and characters.” —Amazon reader review

“Stephen Palmer is a find.” —
Time Out

For full details of
infinity plus books see
www.infinityplus.co.uk

The Rat and the Serpent
by Stephen Palmer

Imagine a film made in black-and-white. Now imagine a novel
written in black-and-white.

The Rat And The Serpent
 is a gothic tale
relating the extraordinary fate of Ügliy the cripple.

Raised as a beggar in the soot-shrouded Mavrosopolis, Ügliy
has to scramble for scraps of food in the gutter if he is to survive. But one
day his desperation and humiliation is noticed by the mysterious Zveratu, and
soon he is taking his first faltering steps into the world of the citidenizens.
He meets the seductive Raknia and the arrogant Atavalens; one destined to be
his lover, the other his mortal enemy. But as Ügliy ascends he becomes aware of
a darkness at the heart of the city in which he lives. Slowly, he realises that
the Mavrosopolis exists gloomy and forbidding around a terrible secret...

The Rat And The Serpent
 is a dark phantasmagoria
related entirely in monochrome. Read this and enter a world portrayed as never
before in the field of fantastic literature.

“… the vividly depicted grim urban setting and numerous
absorbing secondary characters keep the pages turning.” —
Publishers Weekly

“… some interesting ideas, a new take on the cityscape, and
some lovely imagery. And any book that causes me to think so much about its
intentions has to be worth a read.” —
Emerald City

“... a novel written in black and white in the same way that a
movie is filmed in black-and-white, and that indeed is both uncommon and borne
out by the crisp prose.” —
Trashotron

For full details of
infinity plus books see
www.infinityplus.co.uk

Memory Seed
by Stephen Palmer

There is one city left, and soon that will be gone, for the
streets of Kray are crumbling beneath a wave of exotic and lethal vegetation as
it creeps south, threatening to wipe out the last traces of humanity. In the
desperate struggle for survival most Krayans live from day to day, awaiting
salvation from their goddesses or the government. Only a few believe that the
future might lie in their own hands.

Zinina, having fled from the Citadel, determined to discover
what secrets are buried beneath it…

Arrahaquen, daughter of a member of the all-powerful Red
Brigade, whose privileged position makes her insurgency all the more dangerous…

Graaf-lin, channelling the prophecies of the Eastcity
serpents and racing against time to infiltrate the city’s computer networks
before they collapse…

And a man, deKray, whose sudden appearance accompanies a
startling sequence of events…

Set on a world both deadly and fascinating,
Memory Seed
is a compelling first novel which heralds a powerful new voice in science
fiction.

This ebook edition includes two short stories set in the
same world as the novel.

“
Memory Seed
flowers into a very convincing and
entertaining first novel. The sense of location is particularly well realised,
with the wretched overrun streets, the lost quarters of the city and the
impinging ruin depicted particularly vividly... This attractive voice, coupled
with a complex and fascinating plot and a simple but stylish book design, makes
Memory Seed
a notable debut novel.” —
SFX

“
Memory Seed
is a speculative novel of the distant
future that extrapolates many of today’s environmental and New Age concerns
into an enjoyable thriller about human survival against the odds. Stephen
Palmer has concocted a beguiling adventure that draws on some of the best sf of
recent years for its basic themes, yet also adds just as much to the genre’s
melting-pot of ideas.” —
Starburst

“Stephen Palmer brilliantly explores a lot of the
environmental and social issues of today as Kray, the last city left on Earth,
is threatened by the approach of a fast-growing deadly vegetation. Palmer is
most definitely a name to keep an eye on.” —
Muzik

“Stephen Palmer has a powerful imagination and the scenes of
urban collapse and encroaching jungle are vivid and compelling. In this respect
he has created an intriguing dystopian ecological-catastrophe novel, diverging
from the recent trend of socially-driven catastrophes in British sf.” —
Foundation

“Stephen Palmer’s
Memory Seed
is a great debut, whose
central premise of a world strangled by vegetation is more affecting than you
might believe...
Memory Seed
is told with a real sense of belief.” —
Third
F&SF Books @ Dillon’s

For full details of
infinity plus books see
www.infinityplus.co.uk

The
Fabulous Beast
by Garry Kilworth

A set of beautifully crafted tales of the imagination by a
writer who was smitten by the magic of the speculative short story at the age
of twelve and has remained under its spell ever since.

These few stories cover three closely related sub-genres:
science fiction, fantasy and horror. In the White Garden murders are taking
place nightly, but who is leaving the deep foot-prints in the flower beds?
Twelve men are locked in the jury room, but thirteen emerge after their
deliberations are over. In a call centre serving several worlds, the staff are
less than helpful when things go wrong with a body-change holiday.

Three of the stories form a set piece under the
sub-sub-genre title of 'Anglo-Saxon Tales'. This trilogy takes the reader back
to a time when strange gods ruled the lives of men and elves were invisible
creatures who caused mayhem among mortals.

Garry Kilworth has created a set of stories that lift
readers out of their ordinary lives and place them in situations of nightmare
and wonder, or out among far distant suns. Come inside and meet vampires,
dragons, ghosts, aliens, weremen, people who walk on water, clones, ghouls and
marvellous wolves with the secret of life written beneath their eyelids.

“Kilworth is a master of his trade.” —
Punch

“Garry Kilworth is arguably the finest writer of short fiction
today, in any genre. ” —
New Scientist

“Kilworth is one of the most significant writers in the
English language. ” —
Fear

For full details of
infinity plus books see
www.infinityplus.co.uk

Genetopia
by Keith Brooke

Searching for his missing sister, Flint encounters a world
where illness is to be feared, where genes mutate and migrate between species
through plague and fever. This is the story of the struggles between those who
want to defend their heritage and those who choose to embrace the new.

“A minor masterpiece that should usher Brooke at last into the
recognized front ranks of SF writers” —
Locus

“I am so here!
Genetopia
is a meditation on identity –
what it means to be human and what it means to be you – and the necessity of
change. It's also one heck of an adventure story. Snatch it up!” —Michael
Swanwick, Hugo award-winning author of
Bones of the Earth

“Keith Brooke’s
Genetopia
is a biotech fever dream. In
mood it recalls Brian Aldis’s
Hothouse
, but is a projection of
twenty-first century fears and longings into an exotic far future where the
meaning of humanity is overwhelmed by change. Masterfully written, this is a
parable of difference that demands to be read, and read again.” —Stephen
Baxter, Philip K Dick Award-winning author of
Evolution
and
Transcendent

For full details of
infinity plus books see
www.infinityplus.co.uk