Steve Aylett

'Savage talked about his life as a re-offender. How could someone be offended by the same thing twice? Was nothing learnt?'[/i]Beerlight, the city of all of our futures, is not a safe place. Weaponry, rather than fast cars or designer clothes, is the ultimate status symbol. The populace is dedicated to law-breaking, politically incorrect views and hurling abuse and hand grenades at each other. Combining elements of surrealism, film noir and punk rock ethos, Aylett creates a darkly...

‘“Hundreds of famous brains,” beamed the newsgirl … “What. A. Mess.”’ Even Atom, a detective who harasses anyone who comes near him, wants to get to the bottom of what happened on the night the City Brain Facility blew up. Blince, Benny, mobster Eddie Thermidor and the other denizens of Beerlight wonder what the hell he’s doing. Bugs, brain-stealing and inevitable thermonuclear disaster are all given due consideration in this close-wired novel, where even the president’s penchant for bestiality...

&apos;Beerlight was a blown circuit, where to kill a man was less a murder than a mannerism … Crime was the new and only artform.&apos;<br> <br> A book with its own nervous system, Slaughtermatic follows Dante Cubit through the streets of Beerlight as he hunts for a crime mentor, tangling with Chief Henry Blince and the hitman Brute Parker on the way.<br> <br> Real satire amid the bomb zombies, scary clowns and needle bars of the city. Gun karma navigated....

‘Smithereens are hard to aggregate. Penguins can slide on their bellies but the humour is wasted on those stiff-billed bastards – yet put a paper hat on an owl and it’s you who feels like a fool.’Corpses rain down from the sky as punishment for the massacres of the last century. A teacher solves the behavioural problems of a young girl by installing a nest of black spiders in her brain cavity. A police chief and his trooper unravel the twisted suicide of an ex-mobster by rehydrating a raisin....

21st-century revolutionary Leo finds himself at the End of Time, surrounded by decadent sorcerers whose childlike incomprehension is his worst nightmare. How to be effective when consequence is removed? What can have meaning when everything is transformed into fashion? Can love exist here? Leo storms through this lurid land in search of meaning, a cause and a meal he can recognise. A new adventure in Michael Moorcock&apos;s &apos;End of Time&apos; Universe

Smithereens gathers 19 stories of misfortune, madness and malady, including ‘The Man Whose Head Expanded’, set in a world where it is ‘undisputed’ that ‘if you tape the average man’s mouth shut he’ll lie through his nose’. Heads are no longer fashionable and are instead encased in ‘headgloves’, which turn out to have undesirable effects, as Brank realises when one day his head expands exponentially … that is, until a train shoots up his nose.Meet ‘Download Syndrome’: ‘Symptoms: 1. Constant...

&apos;To those who know that the inhabitants of heaven and hell are political prisoners, that the law is as preventative as next year&apos;s weather, that the post-human&apos;s too predictable, South London has always been a playground.&apos;<br> <br> What if god were found to exist? What if revenge were possible? Competing groups of assassins race to exterminate the creator, with young gun Alix the favourite.<br> <br> But conflict among the Edgemen sends...

After strangling a mime in the King’s court, Fain encounters a crazy old man who offers to grant him three wishes. What will Fain ask for?‘Fain knew at once what had happened – he had travelled back in time as he had wished, but his clothing hadn’t. «I’ve read about how tricky this wishing game can be. Genies seem to revel in deliberately misunderstanding the simplest orders.»&apos;Looping through his own past and offending kings and leaders throughout the world, Fain searches for the means to...

‘“Here’s one you won’t get – a paradox. ‘A’ states that everything ‘B’ says is a lie. ‘B’ states that everything ‘A’ says is true.” … “Easy. A and B are lying and mistaken, both and simultaneously. Happens all the time.”’About to quit the failed experiment of civilisation, fake detective Taffy Atom is detained by one last case – a boy with a bomb in his mind. But what’s the trigger?Against a backdrop of buildings the colour of dried blood and a formaldehyde sky above streets filled with cars on...

Bigot Hall is the nightmare home of a family that most people would prefer to forget, but which Steve Aylett chooses to celebrate. Uncle Burst believes his face is made of pasta; the violent, grill-mouthed Uncle Snapper is confined to a treehouse; Uncle Blute is drowned in the lake at the wheel of his Morris Traveller where he remains perfectly preserved listening to classical music on the car radio; and Nanny Jack strikes terror into the community as she abandons yet another grave to return...