Steve Beard

Jeff Noon

From the highly celebrated and award-winning authors Jeff Noon and Steve Beard comes Gogmagog, the first book in adventurous duology, perfect for fans of Mervyn Peake. Gogmagog tells the story of an epic journey through the sixty-mile long ghost of a dragon. We travel by boat, a rickety steam launch captained by Cady Meade, a veteran taxi pilot on the river Nysis. In her heyday she carried people and goods from the thriving seaports of the estuary into Ludwich, the capital city. But that was years ago. Now she’s drunk, holed up in a rundown seaside resort, telling her bawdy tales for shots of rum. All that’s about to change, when two strangers seek her out, asking for transport, one of whom – a young girl – is very ill, and in great danger. The other, an artificial being of singular character, has secrets hidden inside his crystal skull. And so begins the voyage of the Juniper. The Nysis is unlike any other river. Mysteries unfold with each port of call. Not many can navigate these channels, not many know of its whirlpools and sandbanks, and of the ravenous creatures that lurk beneath the surface. Cady used to have the necessary knowledge, and the powers of spectral navigation. But her glory days are well behind her now. This might well be her final journey. File Under: Fantasy [ Peake Fantasy | Secret Mythologies | Take Me to the River | Another London ]

The First Chronicle of Ludwich

Gogmagog

A navigational aid to the apocalypse. Steve Beard's Six Concepts for the End of the World mixes scientific research with experimental fiction to produce a manual for the apocalypse. The author examines six disciplines—technology, sociology, geography, psychology, theology and narratology—and for each one creates a fictional scenario that both reflects and energizes the research, all under the guiding light of the philosopher Paul Virilio's theories. This approach allows Beard to create one surprising idea after another: Hollywood viewed as a research and development lab for the end times, a first-person account of a UFO abduction, a blog on the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines flight 370, a voice-over for an imaginary film by a doomsday cult member. Highly original in both form and content, the book surprises and delights in its scope. The approach is multidisciplinary and multidirectional, and Beard's exploration ranges over many areas and themes, always bringing distinctive insights to bear. Six Concepts for the End of the World is an expertly guided tour through the author's imagination, and toward the end of the world.

Six Concepts for the End of the World

D. Harlan Wilson

Jeremy Robert Johnson

Carlton Mellick III

Bruce Taylor

Gina Ranalli

Andre Duza

John Edward Lawson

Kevin L. Donihe

Vincent W. Sakowski

The Bizarro Starter Kit  (Orange)

Mappalujo is a shared dream set in the twilight realm of Lujo, a city dominated by the surreal cartoons and artificially bred toy creatures of the Zeno Entertainment Company. Since the company's founder died in mysterious circumstances, Zeno's visions have become darker and even more sinister. An identity-altering drug is leaking onto the streets. For a few brilliant, flickering moments users are transformed into famous or infamous celebrities, only to find that the other side of fame lies in the gutter, or in death. The novel follows a lowly salesman, an information gatherer, a private detective and a teenage psychic. Four stories, four people - each of them connected to the bizarre fate of Zeno, its bitter heir, and a hostile faery spirit named Mama Lujo. Here is one city's epic tale told in seventy-five chapters, each influenced by a different iconic figure. From Lewis Carroll to Patti Smith, from Sigmund Freud to Raymond Chandler and Sophie Calle - the ghosts haunting the streets of Lujo are all conjured from the collective unconscious of the modern media age.

Mappalujo

Beard presents a dark fantasy novel that starts from a weird idea: what if Jack the Ripper were a demon summoned by the black magician John Dee to steal Princess Diana's baby Allegra from the scene of the car crash in Paris? The novel follows Allegra's adventures as she quests to discover her true identity in a nightmare alternate England.

Meat Puppet Cabaret

Digital Leatherette is an ethno-techno cyberpunk novel about sex, drugs and drum'n'bass. Digital Leatherette is a London science fiction novel featuring the Rave at the End of the World in Battersea Power Station, UFOs over Heathrow Airport, street riots sponsored by fashion designers, MI6 agents running their own reality cop shows, a stock market crash triggered by a star in the sky, a dangerous new drug called Starflower and barcode tattoos. A surrealist narrative consisting of text fragments pulled down from invented internet web-sites by an imaginary intelligent agent, Digital Leatherette is a Clockwork Orange for the chemical generation.

Digital Leatherette

Voodoo Science Park started life as a poetic film about the science of accident investigation practised by the Health and Safety Laboratory in the Peak District of England. In the book of the film, Victoria Halford and Steve Beard reveal the thinking that went into the preparation of the script. The Health and Safety Lab is the place where large-scale accidents such as tunnel collapses, fires and rail crashes are recreated to examine their destructive pathways. Halford and Beard explore the connections with imitative magic, drawing on the secret histories of dissident religious sects, miners and shamans as well as the prophecies of William Blake. They rethink the lab’s industrial safety rigs as monstrous emblems of the state, as theorised by Thomas Hobbes, and retrace the steps of a journey the political philosopher took through the hollow lands of the Peak in 1626. Testimony from highwaymen, ramblers and urban explorers is collected along the way. The book is composed in a fragmentary style, which weaves together philosophy, travelogue, history of science, sociology and religious study.

Voodoo Science Park

Rachel's Children is the true story of a contemporary Ojibwa household and the woman and her children who are at its core. As their lives unfold, we understand how traditional beliefs help Rachel's family cope as they encounter racism in rural Michigan. Beardslee writes in a style that is a combination of ethnography, theatrical script, and novel, echoing the Ojibwa style of storytelling. Her book will be valuable for instructors in Native studies, multicultural education, and anthropology.

Stories from a Contemporary Native American Woman

Rachel's Children

Aftershocks: The End of Style Culture is a hybrid selection of popcult essays which mixes style-magazine think pieces, street- level cyber-theory and slipstream media memoir to offer a ready- made archive of tomorrow's strip-mall culture. Its postmodern approach to reportage allows subjects like new media art, Dianagate, slasher movies, New Puritan trans-sexuals, and the cult of the serial killer to bleed into each other. Aftershocks features interviews with Brian Eno, Michael Moorcock, Harvey Keitel, James Kelman, Hakim Bey, Stelarc and David Cronenberg.

The End of Style Culture

Aftershocks

In Not Far Away, a semi-fictional memoir, Lois Beardslee gives a chilling acount of racism, particularly that leveled against Native women, in language that is supple, evocative, often comical, and always incisive. Her fictional heroine, the teacher Ima Pipiig (pronounced 'buh-BEEG'), endures humiliating insults from school administrators, fellow teachers, students, and callous neighbors. For years, she suffers in silence, believing that opposing bigotry would only fuel its caustic flames—but then she begins to speak out. Scattered among the chapters chronicling Ima's experiences are essays and speeches written by the author herself, blurring the line between fiction and fact and creating a kind of resounding echo of resistance that is the author's response to racism.

Steve Beard

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