The Turing Test

The Turing Test

By Chris Beckett

Available for Pre Order

In that moment Lemmy suddenly understood. The house had no physical roof. It had no physical ceilings, no physical upstairs floor, nothing to keep out the physical rain that fell from the physical sky. In the physical world there was no TV here, no fire, no lights, no fluffy rug, no comfy chairs, no Mouser or Dorothy or Lemmy or John, just an empty shell of brick, open to the sky, a ruin among many others, in the midst of an abandoned city.

These fourteen stories, among other things, contain robots, alien planets, genetic manipulation and virtual reality, but their centre focuses on individuals rather than technology, and they deal with love and loneliness, authenticity and illusion, and what it really means to be human.

With an introduction from Alastair Reynolds, author of the Revelation Space series.

Praise for Chris Beckett’s fiction:

On "The Gates of Troy": Simply put, this is the best time travel story I've ever read - Lynda Moorhouse, Tangent Online

On "Snapshots of Apirania": A clever story, this is the gem of the issue - Jay Lake, Tangent Online

On "Karel’s Prayer": The clever layering and deep themes are a hallmark of Beckett at his best - mixed in with the clash of science and religion are questions of identity, of knowing who and what one is...this is a brilliant story... Beckett may run the risk of becoming (thematically, at least) Britain’s Philip K. Dick - Velcro City Tourist Board.

On "The Holy Machine": One of the very finest SF novels I have read in a long time - Gary Gibson

Price:- £5.99


The Last Reef

The Last Reef

By Gareth L Powell

Available for Pre Order

After word got out, every disaffected nut or neurotic within walking distance wanted to throw his or her self into the Reef, hoping to be transfigured, hoping to become something better than what they were. Some emergents reported visions of former times and places, of great insight and enlightenment. Others came out as drooling idiots, their brains wiped of knowledge and experience. Some came out fused together; others were splintered into clouds of tiny animals.

No two incidents were exactly alike.

Gareth L Powell’s first collection of short stories is stuffed with mind-bending ideas and unforgettable characters. Ranging from the day after tomorrow to the far-flung future, these fifteen stories are perfect for anyone with a craving for intelligent and thought-provoking adventure.

From noir-ish cops to disaffected space pilots, blind photographers and low-life hackers, everyone here is struggling to find a little peace amid the tumult of the future.

With an introduction from Interzone co-editor, Jetse De Vries.

Praise for Gareth L Powell’s fiction:

"Profound and unforgettable... I wholeheartedly give my highest recommendation" - sfreader.com

"A powerful torrent of invention... a fabulous read indeed." - Horrorscope

"Intensely rewarding" - SF Diplomat

"Just the way SF should work" - Warren Ellis

Price:- £5.99


Binding Energy

Binding Energy

By Daniel Marcus

When he came closer still, she saw the fine, radial scars around his eyes. A Void Dancer. A shudder passed through her. A Void Dancer. She’d never met one, but everyone knew what they did. Take a one-person jumpship and dive into the Wyrm at a velocity and angle of incidence nobody had ever tried before. Mapping the Universe by throwing darts, blindfolded, in an empty room.

In these nineteen stories Marcus maps out possible futures and theoretical pasts, crisscrossing reality with fantasy, and weaving intricate storylines in the process. His characters are frightened and fragile, facing brave new worlds whilst retaining their humanity. If you want to know what the future really looks like, then look here.

Love stories, every one. Dan Marcus knows the shape and sound of tomorrow. I ndeed , like Stross and Doctorow, he is one of its most literate creators. S eeing his edgy stories together, we discover that he's been working ancient ground with modern tools. This remarkable first collection from a veteran author is a treasure for readers. Terry Bisson, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards

This is Science Fiction of the highest level. The stores ring with authenticity. The language is sharp and funny and unflinching. The science crackles. The characters are you and me: bold, lost, loving, haunted. Marcus writes with an apocalyptic vision and a humanist's heart. Michael Blumlein, World Fantasy Award finalist and author of "The Healer" and "X,Y"

With an introduction by Carter Scholz

Price:- £5.99


Another Santana Morning

Another Santana Morning

By Mike Dolan

He was faced with undeniable reality, the way one is faced with the street outside a movie theater, when it is evening, the lights are on, and you thought it was still afternoon, after a particularly long and engrossing show... It was as though he could see her with increasing clarity while he spoke. The pale form kept changing, taking on color and texture, substance, weight, presence, until a real girl sat in front of him.

This is a book about magic. It is also about love... and other emotions. But mainly it concerns those moments when suddenly we become aware of the magical aspects of the world, when we catch a glimpse of reality’s other side, peering through ordinary barriers, past a split in the sky, into somewhere else, where we might find something wondrous.

"Santana Morning" was originally published in 1970, but a quirk of fate has given it a forgotten history. The author, Mike Dolan, once lauded by the likes of Ray Bradbury slipped back into obscurity, resurfacing over thirty-five years later to put a new spin on these tales. Elastic Press is delighted to present "Another Santana Morning", a revamped and updated version of the original book. Read it and rediscover that old magic.

With an introduction by Chaz Brenchley, the award-winning author of "The Books of Outremer".

Price:- £5.99


Other Voices

Other Voices

By Andrew Humphrey

"There’s no point giving a shit, you know. About anything. Ever."

"You keep believing that."

"I will."

Andrew Humphrey follows up his acclaimed first collection, "Open The Box", with another twelve stories of loss and abandonment, fear and greed. Moving through the genres of urban horror, science fiction, crime and slipstream, Humphrey examines the effects of the fantastic upon the personal, whether through future dystopias, a missing child, climatic change, or repeated infidelity. His characters live in edgy realities and shifting fantasies, their existence tied to the inevitability of fate: something they struggle against as much as they embrace.

The book features an introduction by Eric Brown.

Praise for "Open The Box":

Everyone's trying to escape their fate in some way - maybe through an affair or a drug deal or just another pint of lager. This is an often gripping debut collection - The Third Alternative

An impressive first collection - Ellen Datlow, Co-Editor of Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.

Unclassifiable, and often quite brilliant - Eric Brown, Infinity Plus

An astonishingly good writer - Mystery Scene

Price:- £5.99


The Cusp of Something

Other Voices

By Jai Clare

He stands at the threshold, feeling on the cusp of something and yet half empty and dizzy with visions and aromas. He feels solid and yet capable of flight. Hard and flimsy. There’s something here, there’s something he needs to know, to see. He steps forward.

Jai Clare’s stories are filled with the disaffected, those who kick against their everyday lives, who crave the mystic when seeking their spirituality, and who are desperate to be alone as much as they are desperate to be with someone. Whether in North Africa, Greece, or Britain her characters’ concerns remain the same. To find meaning in the universal and the personal, through transient sex or emotional depth. All told with a fluid intensity of prose that cuts to the heart of them, lays them bare to misfortune and fortune, and stands them waiting on the brink of discovery.

"Jai Clare is a courageously inventive writer whose short pieces are clever, ambitious, delightful and always surprising." - Jim Crace, author of The Pesthouse.

"Jai Clare has understood the secret of the short story: lyricism, brevity, consequentiality. She brings to her writing an easy and deep-reaching grasp of character and a lovely open eroticism. She is a serious writer whom we are lucky to have." Sebastian Barker, editor of London Magazine.

Price:- £5.99


That's Entertainment

That's Entertainment

By Robert Neilson

Available for Pre Order

“Superman was always a bastard.”
“You can’t say that.”
“It’s my autobiography. In my head, it’s always started with that line.”

In these fourteen short stories entertainment is explored in all its forms, subtly twisted into alternate realities where music, boxing, film, and television distort history to sometimes comic, sometimes tragic effect. In Neilson’s science fiction, fantasy lives just around the corner from reality.

What if John Lennon had been kicked out of the Beatles? What if Elvis’ twin brother had survived? What if we could go back in time to give reality TV a historical perspective? What if the Pope was Irish, a gambler, and needed to bet on a dead cert? Open this book and find out.

“Here you'll find some very gritty and atmospheric stories, grainy with detail, ranging from bittersweet ironies of missed chances in the past to a harrowing account of exploitative near-future pugilism. John Lennon: now who on Earth was he? Bob Neilson is a great story-teller.” Ian Watson

“A great new talent in storytelling” – Anne McCaffrey

A5, full colour cover, 200 pp.

Price:- £5.99


Going Back

Going Back Cover

By Tony Richards

After it happened, my marriage only lasted two more months. Janine? She would tell me that it wasn’t really my fault. But she never looked in my eyes once, each time she said it. And by mid-February, she was gone.

Time is of the essence, and in these fourteen stories from acclaimed horror writer Tony Richards the essence of time is the link that pulls his characters together. Richards explores the nature of reality and perception filtered through the conduit of time; examines how our decisions can lead us down unsettling paths, and however carefully we make our choices they can still contain strange consequences, often tragic ones.

A man becomes trapped within a never-ending day, another tries to prevent a child’s death by returning to the past. Nine rocks predict the end of the world, and a beautiful stranger continues to exist physically even though her time is at an end. Meanwhile non-existent cats play havoc with a bewildered couple’s life, as mortality nudges at our shoulders, drawing ever closer.

If only time wasn’t linear. Which way would you turn the clock, forward or back?

“A terrific story-teller” – Graham Joyce

“An amazing voice” – James A. Moore

Man, can this guy write. (He) has the power to introduce you all over again to the pleasures of reading good prose” – Ed Gorman

A5, full colour cover, 180 pp.

Price:- £5.99


So Far, So Near

so Far, So Near

By Mat Coward

My cat gets inside the TV and kills people. I know it does, I’ve seen it. But you just cannot argue with nature.

Killer cats. Just one of the extraordinary ideas spun into story by Mat Coward, a writer whose fiction is underpinned by an oblique sense of humour and infused with his wry take on life. Time travel, flying saucers, and little green men are often SF’s starting points, but rarely have they been given the affectionate twists that Coward bestows on them. If you believe science fiction is the fiction of ideas then this unique collection is for you.

Journey through these sixteen stories and unravel the mystery of dead ghosts, discover why fresh air is so clean, and understand why the Joke Squad is one of the busiest in the police force, whilst Coward’s characters deal with infestations of horses, witches running call centres, and ponder the eternal question: if time travel is possible then where are all the time travellers?

So Far, So Near. Worlds that are but a side step away from our reality.

I was thrilled to find 'We All Saw It' in this collection. It had stuck in my mind ever since I first read it. All the stories here have that distinctive tang, of the intrusion of the alien or fantastic on the ordinary, that we remember from some classic SF and are delighted to find again. Better yet, we find it fresh, and with a sharp philosophical and political mind behind observant eyes. Humanist SF with Martian cool! - Ken MacLeod

Even with extremely humorous booby-traps lurking for anyone with the ability to laugh, Mat Coward cannot disguise his basic humanity – nor can he hide his consummate skills at writing, damn fine story-telling, and dialogue to kill for. Read this book – Jon George, author of Zootsuit Black (Tor UK)

A5, full colour cover, 220 pp

Price:- £5.99


Photocopies of Heaven

Photocopies of Heaven

By Maurice Suckling

In Maurice Suckling’s debut collection slices of life react and interact against a consumerist background where expectations of what we are and where we should be going are frequently in conflict with reality. Combining traditional storytelling, vignettes, emails, text messages, and a cartoon, Suckling reinvents the short form for a society that has replaced its gods with technology, yet still prefers the permanency of love over a quick cyber fix.

“A collection of succinctly observed events, characters and phenomena which takes a fresh look at the world and our collisions with it. The style is spare, unexpected and funny, the reader calmly presented with astonishing quirks of fate, the profundity of common physics and disturbing visions of everyday objects possessed by powers unknown." – Dirk Maggs (director of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Radio Series)

“A book of stories and visions filled with masterly touches, light and dark, funny and disturbing, classic and avant-garde. And it even comes with experiments which one could so easily imagine a Vonnegut character urging us to attempt (at one’s own risk I must advise!). Bravo!” – Matthew Costello, best-selling author of Missing Monday and Unidentified.

Photocopies of Heaven is 230pp with a full colour cover

Price:- £5.99


Extended Play: The Elastic Book of Music

Extended Play

Edited By Gary Couzens

What does music do for you? Is it an art form, mood enhancer, or just something to jump around to? From the orchestra pit to the mosh pit music inspires our lives, is universal and personal, futuristic yet primordial. As the soundtrack trigger to a thousand memories it can be seductive yet soulful, energetic and prophetic. But the immediacy of music has rarely been exploited within literature. Until now…

In these stories writers use music as a springboard for their fiction, their characters lives entwined with the metaphorical music of the spheres as well as that played upon the stage.. Like the mid-length EP, Extended Play showcases work of longer length than the average story, allowing greater characterisation, depth of theme, and complexity of plot, whilst still benefiting from the conciseness of the short. This anthology brings new meaning to the phrase one hit wonders.

Accompanying the fiction some contemporary songwriters comment on how fiction has affected their music, looking at the influence from the other side of the coin.

Writers: Marion Arnott, Becky Done, Andrew Humphrey, Emma Lee, Tim Nickels, Rosanne Rabinowitz, Philip Raines, Tony Richards, Nels Stanley, Harvey Welles.

Songwriters: JJ Burnel (The Stranglers), Rebekah Delgado (Ciccone), Catherine and Susan Hay (The Tall Poppies), Lene Lovich, Gary Lightbody (Snow Patrol), Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak (Mercury Rev), Jof Owen (The Boy Least Likely To), Iain Ross (Bearsuit), Chris Stein (Blondie), Chris T-T.

Extended Play is 320pp with a full colour cover

Price:- £6.99


Unbecoming

Unbecoming Cover

By Mike O'Driscoll

In these – appropriately – thirteen stories, Mike O’Driscoll plays with our imagination and expectations, subverting the horror genre whilst embracing its conventions. What results is a strangely brewed cocktail of terror: dark, dangerous, and sometimes downright dirty, O’Driscoll’s stories get under your skin and into your head, where the freedom to prowl the peripheries of your consciousness becomes addictive. Uncompromising and unflinching, this is modern horror at its very best.

A man becomes obsessed by noise, another finds himself reduced to shadow, children are coveted by the perverse antithesis of loving parents, and artists stretch the limits of their capabilities. Acknowledging sensations that all is not right with the world, the characters twist and turn with each cut from life’s rusty knife: seeking redemption, finding none.

O’Driscoll writes horror from the inside out.

Identities in crisis, lives falling apart. Wherever Mike O’Driscoll’s stories are set – downtown LA, Soho medialand or the Gower Peninsula – the light is fading to a dusky noir but his characters are still recognisable as people you know. Compassion as real as the horror: O’Driscoll doesn’t do inauthentic. The monster within is pissed off . – Nicholas Royle, author of Antwerp (Serpent’s Tail)

Mike O’Driscoll writes mysterious, sometimes convoluted, utterly chilling stories. I’ve been reading - and sometimes publishing - his work for many years and am delighted that it’s finally available in this fine collection. – Ellen Datlow, Co-Editor of Year's Best Fantasy & Horror

A5, full colour cover, 260 pp

Price:- £6.00


Unbecoming