Adam Roberts

Frank Cottrell-Boyce

Sarah Schofield

Toby Litt

Lucy Caldwell

Julian Gough

Claire Dean

Sean O'Brien

Stuart Evers

Robin Yassin-Kassab

Martyn Bedford

Margaret Wilkinson

Zoe Lambert

Adam Marek

Joanna Quinn

Andy Hedgecock

K.J. Orr

Annie Kirby

Dinesh Allirajah

Computers are changing. Soon the silicon chip will seem like a clunky antique amid the bounty of more exotic processes on offer. Robots are changing too; material evolution and swarm intelligence are creating a new generation of devices that will diverge and disperse into a balanced ecosystem of humans and ‘robjects’ (robotic objects). Somewhere in between, we humans will have to change also… in the way we interact with technology, the roles we adopt in an increasingly ‘intelligent’ environment, and how we interface with each other. The driving motors behind many of these changes will be artificial life (A-Life) and unconventional computing. How exactly they will impact on our world is still an open question. But in the spirit of collective intelligence, this anthology brings together 38 scientists and authors, working in pairs, to imagine what life (and A-Life) will look like in the year 2070. Every kind of technology is imagined: from lie-detection glasses to military swarmbots, brain-interfacing implants to synthetically ‘grown’ skyscrapers, revolution-inciting computer games to synthetically engineered haute cuisine. All artificial life is here. Featuring scientific contributions from: Martyn Amos, J. Mark Bishop, Seth Bullock, Stephen Dunne, James Dyke, Christian Jantzen, Francesco Mondada, James D. O'Shea, Andrew Philippides, Lenka Pitonakova, Steen Rasmussen, Thomas S. Ray, Micah Rosenkind, James Snowdon, Susan Stepney, Germán Terrazas, Andrew Vardy and Alan Winfield. Supported by TRUCE (Training and Research in Unconventional Computation in Europe).

Stories From an A-Life Future

Beta-Life

Clive Barker

Ramsey Campbell

Margaret Murphy

Paul Farley

Brian Patten

Frank Cottrell Boyce

Beryl Bainbridge

James Friel

Tracy Aston

A baby blown out of an upstairs window by a WWII bomb lives to hear others tell the tale… A woman embarks on a long-term obsession with a city landmark, abandoning her lover for the Liver… A bricklayer working on the foundations of a never-built cathedral becomes its evangelist, its full splendour soaring only in his mind… Bringing together fiction from some of the city’s most celebrated writers, The Book of Liverpool traces the unique contours that decades of social and economic change can impress on a city. Set against key historical moments from the Second World War to the Capital of Culture year, these stories question what ‘belonging’ and ‘home’ mean in the Liverpudlian context, from the regenerated city centre to satellite suburbs, from the sparring cathedrals to the no-go concrete housing estates. Liverpool emerges in these short stories as a city in constant flux: haunted by ghosts, buoyed up by myths, and shifting with an ebb and flow like the Mersey itself. "A literary gem that will share a niche in my library with M.R. James and E. F. Benson..." - Metapsychology online Read review. "Words thrive here, carried on the saline breeze of the Mersey and twisted round agile tongues into sentences as resilient as the sandstone blocks in the Town Hall walls..." - The Liverpool Daily Post, 11 Jul 08 Read review.

The Book of Liverpool

Valeria Parrella

Alexei Sayle

Jean-Claude Izzo

Pawel Huelle

Murathan Mungan

Artur Becker

Christian Garcin

Peppe Lanzetta

Adam Kaminski

Hatice Meryem

Claudia Parman

The six European port cities known as the Cities on the Edge Liverpool, Bremen, Gdansk, Istanbul, Marseilles and Naples - share a history of dissent, diversity and economic reinvention. Once gateways to the world, bringing wealth and innovation to their respective nations, they've long been maligned and misunderstood by their compatriots, preferring instead to look outwards, towards the sea - to the possibilities of change, of travel and of rebirth. Featuring short stories by twelve acclaimed writers from the Cities on the Edge, ReBerth explores these landscapes of change - the social tensions, the scars of war and economic decline, the attempts at regeneration, and the startling and sometimes unsavoury secrets of how these cities inhabitants thrive and survive. ...In Gdansk, a German exile returns to his childhood home in search of a valuable coin collection left behind during World War II... ...In Naples, a young woman desperate to escape the slums by any means necessary rises from street kid, to Camorra moll, to political powerbroker... ...In Liverpool, a young Spanish footballer arrives to fulfil his dream of playing in the Premiership. But in the backstreets of Anfield he meets a local resident with a very different perspective on the beautiful game ...

Stories from Cities on the Edge

ReBerth

Before his untimely death at the age of 47, Dinesh Allirajah was one of the most versatile and accomplished writers working in the North of England. Whether as a performance poet, literary critic, wry social commentator or masterfully understated short story writer, his work was always international in scope, but local and personal in touch. Witty, irreverent, and intricately observed, his writing was informed by everything from raregroove jazz to experimental theatre, crime noir to stand-up comedy. Yet it always felt, and continues to feel, bespoke to us as readers. The short stories, in particular, allow us to eavesdrop on the most intimate, unattended moments in their characters’ lives. Here, we get to know outsiders – migrant workers, beleaguered mothers, old and unwanted regulars in a pub that’s facing a refurb – people being slowly ushered into the background, or kept at a distance. Yet it is on these peripheries – far from where everyone else is looking – that Dinesh finds his stories, here that identities are reconstructed and renegotiated, here that we learn the most about ourselves. Spanning over twenty years’ work, this definitive hardback volume presents a through-line of Dinesh’s compassion, activism, and literary perspicacity; a clarion call to find essential beauty - in art, music, sport, life - and to pass it on.

The Collected Works

Scent

Dinesh Allirajah

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