Michael Coney Books

Call them the spare parts of people. They chose the risk - jail for convicted crimes or semi-freedom as someone's bonded servant for the same term. The price was that they were body insurance. If their master lost a leg or an internal organ, they would have to supply the missing part. That was the risk. Sagar used bondsmen in his other-world farm where he raised exotic alien pelts to sell to the rich. He had no thoughts on the bondsmen problem, pro or con. But when Carioca Jones, 3-V star, visited him he met her bonded companion, the lovely girl with the musical talent. It's dangerous to fall in love with a bondsmaiden. Doubly so when her mistress is in love with you. Triply so when it might set off the social explosion that had been smouldering beneath the delicately balanced surface of their post-cataclysmic Peninsula.

The planet Arcadia was on the verge of economic collapse. Its human colony had been decimated by the strange Relay Effect; in the aftermath, still more colonists were leaving for other worlds. The Hetherington Organisation promised to change that. If the remaining colonists put themselves entirely in their hands for a five-year period, they would transform Arcadia into the most prosperous planet settled by mankind, while preserving its great natural beauty. It was an offer the Arcadians could not possibly refuse, for the alternative, after all, was an accelerating slide into poverty and, eventually, savagery. Only when the Hetherington Organisation's first cargo ships arrived, unloading a huge stream of brontomeks - huge robot agricultural machines, heavily armoured - and an army of amorphs, aliens who were capable of moulding themselves into human form, did the colony begin to realise what it had committed itself to. Brontomek! is a sequel to two earlier books, Syzygy and Mirror Image. Like it's predecessors it is an ingenious, adventurous tale of the type which has rapidly made Coney one of SF's foremost entertainers.

Author's Note: An impossibly perfect young woman appeared in my novels Charisma and Brontomek and generated a lot of fan mail. People asked if she was based on a real person; and if she was, what a lucky guy I was to know such a woman. Well, unfortunately she was not real, and I emphasized this point by having her disappear into nothingness at the end of each novel. She was an impossible male dream. Her physical appearance was based on the movie star Susanna York (a clue to that is her fictional name Susanna Lincoln) but her personality was all my own erotic imaginings. She puts in a guest appearance in Flower of Goronwy, the story you are, I hope, about to download. It is not my usual kind of story and the basic premise gives rise to possibilities that require a much longer book - which I don't have time to write. I feel there are too many issues arising, too much conflict and there are parts of it that are much creepy for my taste. It also has a strong sexual theme, unlike my usual writing which tends to have a strong love theme. One thing hasn't changed. I'm still a sucker for a happy ending.

A young boy's life is upended after the arrival of his grandfather, who is hiding a terrifying secret in this sweltering southern gothic horror, perfect for fans of Cassandra Khaw and John Langan.

Zunächst scheint es ein ganz normaler Sommerurlaub zu sein, wie er ihn bisher jedes Jahr mit seinen Eltern in Pallahaxi am Mittleren Ozean verbrachte. Zuerst die aufregende Fahrt mit dem Dampfwagen quer durch den Kontinent zur Küste, Ausflüge mit dem Boot, das Warten auf die „Grume“, das unter der unbarmherzigen Sonne eingedickte Meerwasser, das durch den Mittleren Ozean quillt, die Fische an die Oberfläche drückt und gefährliche einheimische Lebensformen mit sich schwemmt, während die Fischer mit ihren Windgleitern über die Oberfläche des sirupdicken Wassers schießen, um die Schätze des Meeres einzuheimsen. Doch dann fallen seltsam drohende Schatten über den nicht enden wollenden Tag der Sommermonate. Ein Krieg ist entbrannt, die Front rückt bedrohlich näher, Kriegsschiffe beschießen die Ferienidylle, Militär zieht auf, es kommt zu blutigen Auseinandersetzungen mit der Zivilbevölkerung, die Regierung hortet Vorräte und verbarrikadiert sich in einer unterirdischen Festung. Der Sommer geht, und die Regenzeit beginnt. Der Winter wird ihm folgen, doch die wenigsten haben genug astronomische Kenntnisse, um zu ermessen, welch ein Winter kommen wird, denn die Bahn, die dieser Planet in einem Doppelsternsystem beschreibt, ist äußerst kompliziert. Mit Illustrationen von Janos Fischer