NOTE: sadly, Big Engine ceased trading early in 2003.
They will be missed.
Big
Engine exists to do what all publishers should be doing in a well-ordered
universe -- make good, well written science fiction and fantasy by new
authors available to the public.
Can anyone think of a good reason why deserving new writers should
languish in the slushpile just because they don't fit into the neatly
delimited classifications of the book trade? We can't.
We also rescue fondly remembered, deserving works from out-of-print
ignominy, and dare to defy the traditional wisdom that "anthologies
don't sell".
Titles
- Contact, samples, etc
Titles
Among Big Engine's first titles are works by John
Sladek, David Langford, Brian
Stableford, Molly
Brown, Gus
Smith, Chris
Amies, Tim
Kenyon, Tom
Arden and a new Interzone
anthology.
Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek, edited
by David Langford
Big Engine is proud to publish a final collection of the late John Sladek's
fiction, assembled by David Langford and a team of helpers with the
full co-operation of Sladek's estate.
Sladek's satire still bites, his stories still compel with their unique
mix of wit and melancholy, his obsessive inventiveness still amuses
and impresses. Langford has gathered all the major uncollected stories
and the best of the minor or forgotten ones -- the science fiction,
the mainstream (or what passed for it with Sladek), the unclassifiably
off-beat "non-fact" essays -- that have not appeared in any other Sladek
anthology, in a testimony to a hugely talented man who stood a little
aside from science fiction but who for two decades helped shape it,
because his achievement was impossible to ignore.
 The
Leaky Establishment, by David Langford, with a new introduction
by Terry Pratchett
Langford's 1984 comedy classic, not at all based on the author's work
at a nuclear establishment nowhere near Newbury, with a brand new introduction
by Terry Pratchett.
"A wonderfully intelligent and funny Civil Service defence research
establishment romp ... a bemused comedy of the blasé, the misguided,
the incompetent, the blundering ... the first publication from the
promising and enterprising Big Engine publishing company."
- Keith Brooke (an
infinity plus
review).
"It's either a gloriously absurd farce or a sober record of The Great
British System disguised as a gloriously absurd farce: whichever
way round it's the kind of book you can give to spouses/partners who
can't stand SF"
- Andy Sawyer.
"A comic novel with both verbal wit and comedy of situation, that
owes something to the tradition of Tom Sharpe, and a great deal more
to the Langfordian warped sense of humour"
- Mary Gentle.
"An agreeable romp."
- AWRE News, house journal of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment
(since renamed), Aldermaston, Berkshire, England
Swan Songs: The complete Hooded
Swan Collection, by Brian Stableford. With a new introduction
by the author
When first published between 1972 and 1975, this series -- Halcyon
Drift, Rhapsody in Black, Promised Land, The Paradise
Game, The Fenris Device and Swan Song -- redefined
the genre of space opera. Far from being a typical spacejock at the
helm of a suspiciously Freudian super-starship, Grainger -- narrator
and anti-hero -- is a cynical pacifist who is indentured against his
will as pilot of the revolutionary starship Hooded Swan. Each
novel pits Grainger and the Swan against new puzzles or menaces,
to be solved just as much mentally as physically, whilst all the while
he pays off his fine until he can call himself a free man again.
"A quirkily entertaining blend of space opera and hardboiled private
eye story."
- David Pringle, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, on
Halcyon Drift.
"For most of us, early Stableford means above all the Grainger
books ... In the Grainger books, he found himself having his cake
and eating it, taking a lot of standard space opera material and subverting
and deconstructing it like fury, while also enjoying it for its own
sweet sake."
- Roz Kaveney, Interzone
Bad Timing and Other Stories, by Molly
Brown
An Earthman's stranded spaceship is besieged by thousands of cuddly
aliens whose idea of war is to commit ritual suicide; a teenage princess
is kidnapped by an army of undead skeletons; a Chinese demon rides through
the streets of Soho; and Toni Fisher tells Joanna Krenski, "I'm working
on a calculation that will show density of shoulder pad to be in directly
inverse proportion to level of intelligence. I'm drunk by the way."
From the satire of the award-winning "Bad Timing" to the
horror of "Feeding Julie", via the mind twisting paradoxes
of "Women
On The Brink Of A Cataclysm" and the out-and-out comedy of
"Agents of Darkness," these stories from the first 10 years
of Molly Brown's writing career show her range and her versatility,
and never fail to enthrall. Several of the stories have been specially
updated for this collection.
"Not so much a short story collection as an explosion of parallel
universes and provocative ideas. Wow!"
- Connie Willis
"Molly Brown is the best company imaginable. If you can't get a date
with her (and you probably can't), the next best thing is reading
her stories - which are funny, creepy, sweet, touching and wicked
in equal parts. If you buy this book, you won't regret it in the morning."
- Kim Newman
"One of the most popular contributors to Interzone, Molly
Brown's short stories are extremely crisp, clever and a joy to read...
a collection is long overdue."
- SFX
Feather and Bone, by Gus Smith
Gus Smith's dark fantasy debut mixes the look and feel, the light
and air of the Northumberland moors with a force of evil that hits you
like a slap in the face. What connects BSE, an electively mute young
girl, some 21st century witches and a shapeless dark force at large
in the Border countryside? Gus Smith tells his story with the rhythm
and plausibility of a folk tale.
"The grey hills of Northumberland are pervaded by ancient evil and
modern sickness in Gus Smith's remarkable novel of occult and psychological
horror, Feather and Bone. A strong sense of place and some
fascinatingly complex characters are accompanied by a worldly knowledge
of everything from the BSE crisis to the workings of the tabloid press.
Convincingly, Smith shows us ultimate evil in conflict with flawed,
basically good characters, and makes us believe in both."
- Roz Kaveney
Dead Ground, by Chris Amies
A fantasy set in the South Pacific, with echoes of the dark worlds
of H.P. Lovecraft. The Condals are the smallest of the Pacific island
groups, a few hundred miles south of the sea lanes; the back end of
the British Empire. Centuries ago a civilisation flourished there, now
gone and leaving behind only mysterious stone statues and a half-buried
temple. Now it is the 1930s and an archaeological expedition is here
to open the temple -- and even before they begin, people start dying.
Sun, sea, palm trees and a modern feel of imperial exhaustion and decline
which merges seamlessly into the much darker forces at work.
Ersatz Nation, by Tim Kenyon
A debut novel by a new writer that will be enjoyed by anyone who thought
Philip K. Dick had the right idea. Patrick Dolan has been assigned to
abduct people from Earth into the Unation, a totalitarian yet strangely
familiar world lying parallel to present-day Earth, at the behest of
Mother Necessity, the Unation's supreme ruler. One day Mother requires
him to bring back three particular individuals -- three very different
children whose common point is that they have all killed someone.
Shadow Black, by Tom Arden
Rebecca in the House of Usher (with touches of Sunset Boulevard) ...
Shadow Black will appeal not just to fans of Tom Arden's five
volume fantasy series The Orokon but to anyone with a liking
for Golden Age Hollywood, 1950s pulp science fiction, contemporary fantasy,
social comedy and gothic horror. England, 1955, and Harriet Locke accepts
an invitation to the seaside mansion of Shadow Black where she looks
forward to joining her fiancé Mark Vardell, the handsome avant-garde
artist who is painting the reclusive Lord Harrowblest. Her life is about
to change, and change forever, in a household of bizarre characters
bound together by ties of deceit, lust and half-truths.
The Ant Men of Tibet and Other Stories,
edited by David Pringle
A brand new collection of ten stories originally published in Interzone:
flamboyant space opera, chilly thrillers, contemplation and comic fantasy.
- Stephen Baxter: "The Ant-Men of Tibet"
- Alastair Reynolds: "Byrd Land Six"
- Chris Beckett: "The Warrior Half-and-Half"
- Keith Brooke: "The People of the Sea"
- Eugene Byrne: "Alfred's Imaginary Pestilence"
- Nicola Caines: "Civilization"
- Jayme Lynn Blaschke: "The Dust"
- Molly Brown: "The Vengeance of Grandmother Wu"
- Peter T. Garratt: "The Collectivization of Transylvania"
- Eric Brown: "Vulpheous"
Does Interzone need an introduction? It is still Britain's best
selling SF short fiction magazine, and the only monthly one: all these
stories are by authors who had their first or near-first sales to the
magazine, and together they are a typical cross-section of Interzone
variety. Every new story opens up a completely new world with new visions
and ideas. Buy this book and bask in the diversity that is British SF.
"...plenty of good stories to read in this new Interzone anthology,
even for a cranky, biased, opinionated reader like me."
- Kit Reed (an
infinity plus
review).
Titles
- Contact, samples, etc
Contact,
samples, etc
Contact Big Engine at:
PO Box 185, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 1GR
Tel: 01235 204011
Fax: 01235 204012
E: info@bigengine.co.uk
Read sample chapters and find out more at the Big Engine website, www.bigengine.co.uk
Big Engine was founded by Ben
Jeapes. Ben has two novels and 18 short stories to his credit, spends
sleepless nights in contemplation of the present state of SF publishing,
and thinks he might as well put 12 years of academic publishing experience
to good use.
Titles
- Contact, samples, etc
Elsewhere in infinity
plus:
Elsewhere on the web:
- For the latest information, see the Big
Engine website.
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