Simon Ings

Scientists throughout history, from Galileo to today’s experts on climate change, have often had to contend with politics in their pursuit of knowledge. But in the Soviet Union, where the ruling elites embraced, patronized, and even fetishized science like never before, scientists lived their lives on a knife edge. The Soviet Union had the best-funded scientific establishment in history. Scientists were elevated as popular heroes and lavished with awards and privileges. But if their ideas or their field of study lost favor with the elites, they could be exiled, imprisoned, or murdered. And yet they persisted, making major contributions to 20th century science. Stalin and the Scientists tells the story of the many gifted scientists who worked in Russia from the years leading up to the Revolution through the death of the "Great Scientist” himself, Joseph Stalin. It weaves together the stories of scientists, politicians, and ideologues into an intimate and sometimes horrifying portrait of a state determined to remake the world. They often wreaked great harm. Stalin was himself an amateur botanist, and by falling under the sway of dangerous charlatans like Trofim Lysenko (who denied the existence of genes), and by relying on antiquated ideas of biology, he not only destroyed the lives of hundreds of brilliant scientists, he caused the death of millions through famine. But from atomic physics to management theory, and from radiation biology to neuroscience and psychology, these Soviet experts also made breakthroughs that forever changed agriculture, education, and medicine. A masterful book that deepens our understanding of Russian history, Stalin and the Scientists is a great achievement of research and storytelling, and a gripping look at what happens when science falls prey to politics.

A History of Triumph and Tragedy, 1905-1953

Stalin and the Scientists

The new novel from Simon Ings is a story that balances on the knife blade of a new technology. Augmented Reality uses computing power to overlay a digital imagined reality over the real world. Whether it be adverts or imagined buildings and imagined people, with Augmented Reality the world is no longer as it appears to you, it is as it is imagined by someone else. Two friends are working at the cutting edge of this technology and when they are offered backing to take the idea and make it into the next global entertainment they realise that wolves hunt in this imagined world. And the wolves might be them. A story about technology becomes a personal quest into a changed world and the pursuit of a secret from the past. A secret about a missing mother, a secret that could hide a murder. This is no dry analysis of how a technology might change us, it is a terrifying thriller, a picture of a dark tomorrow that is just around the corner. Ings takes the satire and mordant satirical view of J.G. Ballard and propels it into the 21st century.

Wolves

Hot Head

the art and science of vision

A natural history of seeing

Gregory Benford

Aliette de Bodard

James S. A. Corey

Bruce Sterling

Ramez Naam

Nancy Kress

Ian McDonald

Sean Williams

Kameron Hurley

John Barnes

Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Yoon Ha Lee

Madeline Ashby

Gwyneth Jones

An Owomoyela

Meeting Infinity

Headlong

This sequel to "Hot Head" is at once a thriller and a tale of demented love. In a world shattered by rogue technology new creatures are emerging.

Hotwire

A novel of prodigious scope and ambition, ablaze with imaginative energy and rendered in mesmerizing prose—complete with polar bear attacks, tsunamis, modern piracy, airship crashes, Cold War intrigue, and a djinn May 25, 1928: Over the frozen seas of the Arctic, an airship falls out of the sky. Among the survivors is a young scientist on the verge of a discovery that will redefine physics. October 3, 1996: Through the dusty industrial towns of India's Great Trunk Road, a disgraced and disfigured female detective starts tracking a criminal syndicate whose tentacles spread from forgery to smuggling to piracy. Her life has been ruined, but she will have her revenge. December 26, 2004: On the island of Bali a tsunami washes up a rusting container. Locked within this aluminum tomb are the mummified remains of a shipping magnate missing for 29 years, and a hand-written journal of his last days. December 13, 2011: Off the coast of Sri Lanka, a tramp steamer is seized by pirates. The captain has his wife and son aboard, and their survival depends on following the pirates' every demand. But what can they possibly want with his worn-out ship and its cargo of junk? We know what they want. We know the ship was carrying a Dead Water cargo, and we know Dead Water is the key to everything. We could spin a thousand stories from this toxic Cold War secret but there's only one of them that can really make a difference. And this is it.

Dead Water

A mysterious box that he cannot open is all that might save Adam's autistic son as they are plunged into a world of old corruptions and new terrors. In PAINKILLERS, Simon Ings deftly teases out his knotted story that, with its many conventional elements, could have run a risk of overfamiliarity: sinister Oriental Triad gangsters, their even more sinister wives, a speedy Hong Kong with its ruthless Brit yuppies and its nightlife ridden with drugs, strange sex and violence. Shooting back and forth between a glamorous Hong Kong, in 1990, and a straitened London, in 1998, Ings sustains suspense by dropping hints but never telling enough. Adam Wyatt and his wife Eva run a small café near Southwark Market. They bicker a lot, Adam drinks and visits to their autistic son Justin tend to go awry. But underneath Adam's drinking are secrets from their previous life in Hong Kong, when he worked for the Independent Commission Against Corruption and got in with some very dubious local society types; one of whom includes 'Call me Jimmy' Yao Sau-Lan, 'a big nasty man, in a big nasty suit', whose father just happened to kill Eva's grandfather. When Jimmy's widow and sons come calling, Adam knows he's in trouble.

Painkillers

An epic story of courage, genius and terrible folly, this is the first history of how the Soviet Union's scientists became both the glory and the laughing stock of the intellectual world.Simon Ings weaves together what happened when a handful of impoverished and underemployed graduates, professors and entrepreneurs, collectors and charlatans, bound themselves to a failing government to create a world superpower. And he shows how Stalin's obsessions derailed a great experiment in 'rational government'.

A History of Triumph and Tragedy 1905–1953

Sara Maitland

Sarah Schofield

Toby Litt

Gregory Norminton

Sean O'Brien

Justina Robson

Jane Rogers

Jane Feaver

Adam Marek

Dilys Rose

K.J. Orr

Annie Kirby

Simon van Booy

Programmable memories, fatherless reproduction, nano-tech implants, amphibian-powered scar treatment, full body modification, brain-scanning lie-detectors, inter-species reproduction, self-determining synthetic ‘green goo’… Which of these would you wager is pure science fiction, and which currently being developed in the lab? Such is the speed and excitement of today’s bio-medical research – sprinting from the starting gun that was the Human Genome Project – it’s sometimes hard to tell. In a unique collaboration, fourteen short story writers have been invited to explore the increasingly grey area between the fantastical and that which is already within our reach. Closely collaborating with scientists and ethicists working at the forefronts of their respective fields, each writer has been tasked with predicting some of the potential ‘ethical side-effects’ of this ground-breaking work. Not all progress, after all, is progressive. And dark forces are afoot that threaten to hi-jack what many declared would be ‘the century of biology’. 'Fascinating reading.' - Financial Times 'An exhilarating read.' - The Short Review Toby Litt's Bio-Punk story 'Call it ''The Bug'' Because I Have No Time to Think of a Better Title' short-listed for the 2013 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.

Bio-Punk

City of the Iron Fish

A chilling literary dystopia for those who love Iain Banks and JG Ballard. Conrad is desperate for an escape after a devastating accident changes his way of life. When his childhood friend, Michel, invites him to come and see the boat that he and his partner are refurbishing, Conrad sees his chance to leave it all behind. But rekindling their friendship unearths old fears and dangerous secrets, and Conrad is soon desperate to flee again. Through it all, Conrad becomes ever more entrenched in Augmented Reality - living in worlds dreamt up by other people. But as the floodwaters rise, and he hits the limits of imagined worlds, he is forced to confront the new realities before him - a flooded country and a horrific secret buried in his own past. A searing mix of literary horror, murder mystery and dystopia, Wolves is a fierce and uncompromising look at greed, technology and climate collapse - and the wolves at the centre of it all.

Off the coast of Sri Lanka, a tramp steamer is seized by pirates. The captain has his wife and son aboard and knows that their survival depends on giving the pirates exactly what they want. But what can they possibly want with his worn-out ship and its cargo of junk? On the island of Bali a tsunami washes up a rusting container. Inside, the mummified remains of a shipping magnate missing for 30 years and a hand-written journal of his last days locked within his aluminum tomb. Through the dusty industrial towns of India's Great Trunk Road, a disgraced female detective tracks a criminal syndicate. Her life has been ruined, but she will have her revenge. In a backstreet Mayfair office, an automated distress signal is picked up on a private satellite network. A ship is missing. A Dead Water ship. Dead Water is the key to everything. A code name for a covert operation initiated during World War Two. But why is it unravelling now, and what will the consequences be?

Post-cyberpunk SF that recalls the darkness of M. John Harrison and the wild visual imagination of China Mieville and Hannu Rajaniemi, HEADLONG felt ahead of the curve when first published and now serves to show just why Simon Ings has remained on the cutting edge of genre fiction. Surgically connected to their swarming robotic workers, architects Christopher and Joanne Yale are turning the moon into a paradise. But now, without warning, the machines have pulled the plug and are building a new, insane future away from the control of human minds.

Věda a vědci v soukolí sovětského mocenského aparátu Bizarní příběh zbídačelých studentů, profesorů a šarlatánů, kteří se na počátku 20. století spojili se selhávající sovětskou vládou, aby vytvořili světovou supervelmoc. Od vědeckých oborů, sužovaných strachem z Velkého vědce Stalina, se očekávalo, že vyřeší kritickou situaci země: hlad, sucho, válku a bující alkoholismus. V roce Stalinovy smrti (1953) tak měl Sovětský svaz nejpočetnější a nejlépe financovanou vědeckou obec v historii, která byla jeho chloubou i terčem posměchu zbytku intelektuálního světa.

Stalin a vědci

We spend about one-tenth of our waking hours completely blind - only one percent of what we see is in focus at any one time. You don't need eyes to see - blind volunteers have been taught to see through their chests. Through a spellbinding mix of scientific research, mathematics, philosophy, history, myth, anecdote and language theory, Simon Ings brilliantly unravels the never-ending puzzle of how and why we see in the way that we do. With the help of a beguiling mix of illustrated visual conundrums and enigmas, Ings triumphs with a compelling dissection of the eye's age-old mysteries that is both seriously interesting and interestingly fun.

Simon Ings

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