Two heads are better than one! This collection brings together two of the brightest stars in the science fiction, slipstream short story firmament. The combined talents of Allen Ashley and Andrew Hook have produced fourteen delicious, yet subtle, seamless stories full of wit, imagination, invention and emotion. What is the secret behind the gated community of "Xanadu Springs"? Will the online pharmaceutical "Vitamin X" really guarantee you fifteen minutes of fame? What is the best strategy to ensure victory at "Air Hockey 3000"? And can Lynsey the lowly "Abattoir Girl" successfully lead the resistance against the alien invasion? Pass along Pohl and Kornbluth; move over Maynard and Sims; forgetski the brothers Strugatski. Ashley and Hook are the new noises on the block

Greetings, player, and prepare yourselves for a journey unlike any other - a journey through the world of games. Enter a realm where a man falls in love with a playing card and a game of Scrabble has deadly consequences, a place where reality and virtual reality blur into one and the same. In these pages, the moves of a chess piece can signal the difference between life and death, rioting has become a huge national sport and the players lose themselves in games of their own devising. Featuring stories by Allen Ashley, Adam Craig, Charlie Fish, Diotima Sophia, Sandra Unerman, Jay Wilburn, Jason D Wittman and many more.

Allen Ashley (The Elastic Book of Numbers, Subtle Edens, Catastrophia) returns to the anthology format with an ambitious themed collection of stories based on the idea that the world we live in is still something of an unknown planet, with spectacular encounters, adventures and mysteries still very much possible. The result is a collection of tales of urban decay and angst - jaunts to unexpected and unexplained kingdoms - holidays and excursions to strange and unnerving destinations. A familiar earth that's slightly skewed - or maybe never was. This is a collection of journeys of the imagination from some of the best authors in modern Slipstream, SF, Fantasy and Horror.

Allen Ashley (The Elastic Book of Numbers, Subtle Edens, Catastrophia) returns to the anthology format with an ambitious themed collection of stories based on the idea that the world we live in is still something of an unknown planet, with spectacular encounters, adventures and mysteries still very much possible. The result is a collection of tales of urban decay and angst - jaunts to unexpected and unexplained kingdoms - holidays and excursions to strange and unnerving destinations. A familiar earth that's slightly skewed - or maybe never was. This is a collection of journeys of the imagination from some of the best authors in modern Slipstream, SF, Fantasy and Horror.

Allen Ashley's tales of Urban Fantasy are intensely surreal, savagely satirical, subtly subversive and despairingly funny. Possessed of a unique vision and a distinctive prose style, Allen Ashley exposes the absurdities of modern British society like no other writer. Every waking moment is a struggle for continued sanity and survival as we muddle thoughtlessly through this surrealist joke called civilisation. The challenges - factual, fictitious, mythical, eminently plausible - just keep on coming. Ashley demonstrates that, if you have the nose for it, apocalypse can be smelled everywhere - in the latest media circus; in the latest dubious laws or government measures; in celebrity culture or the surveillance state; in the mindsets and prejudices of the population and in the tiniest actions we all perform.

Allen Ashley's tales of Urban Fantasy are intensely surreal, savagely satirical, subtly subversive and despairingly funny. Possessed of a unique vision and a distinctive prose style, Allen Ashley exposes the absurdities of modern British society like no other writer. Every waking moment is a struggle for continued sanity and survival as we muddle thoughtlessly through this surrealist joke called civilisation. The challenges - factual, fictitious, mythical, eminently plausible - just keep on coming. Ashley demonstrates that, if you have the nose for it, apocalypse can be smelled everywhere - in the latest media circus; in the latest dubious laws or government measures; in celebrity culture or the surveillance state; in the mindsets and prejudices of the population and in the tiniest actions we all perform.