Bøger udgivet af Brain Lag

Open wide... and pray for your life.Middle-aged, middle-income and lapsed Mormon Arthur Percy felt his life lurch from a difficult normality onto the rails of a carnival ride heading somewhere too much like the Twilight Zone for his liking. Perhaps it is more the "Anti-Twilight Zone" that Arthur enters-where vampires, shape shifters and ghouls are not gorgeous or glamorous but genetic parasites from a hideous communal intelligence known as the Hive. Who will save the human race? And what does all this have to do with Dr. Calvin Stewart, Arthur's new dentist?Aurora Award-nominated author Hugh A. D. Spencer weaves a hilarious tale of sarcasm, Mormonism, and oral hygiene that spans the globe. From Singapore to Germany and back to Toronto, Extreme Dentistry explores love and loss, terrible workplaces, babysitting, and those seediest centres of monstrous activity both human and inhuman-shopping malls.Praise for the writing of Hugh A. D. Spencer"Hugh's work never fails to crack me up and make me think." ~ Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and Homeland"Lucid, lyrical, and savvy." ~ Paul Levinson, author of Unburning Alexandria and The New New Media"If you like to laugh and cower at the same time-if you like science fiction that is simultaneously progressive and retro-then you need to read this... Like nothing I've ever read before. Highly recommended." ~ Dale Sproule, author of Psychedelia Gothique

The Sword.Kina Ukiel enjoys a life that few would dare to brave. She's found her home amidst crumbling ruins, delving into their mysteries with little more than stories for guidance. Protected by mercenaries and tasked only with finding lost treasures, Kina has begun exploring the truths lost to history.Her latest adventure, however, turns up a strange sword which has been long lost since the time of Gods and Magic - an event in which the gods themselves waged war upon each other. A sword of such power is no small treasure and Kina finds herself contending with her former allies, an angered duke and the power of the gods themselves.With Kina's world rapidly changing, she's forced to face not only the dangers that she has returned to the world, but perhaps rediscover who she is.

From a technological dystopia to small town Canada, this collection of short fiction explores themes of change, memory, and things hiding in the shadows. These tales, previously-published and new, take classic space opera, pest problems, and the recent past in new and fresh directions.Will electric light cast a world into darkness? Do you remember 1971, when Kennedy was in the White House, Hendrix sang about space, and the extraterrestrials returned? Has the invasion of the live nude aliens already begun? When you look at the world and see things slightly askew-our reality tilted just a few degrees-then you get stories like these.

The world changed when aliens, taking the form of God from the Bible, arrived on Earth and took twenty-four thousand people away with them. After they left, the believers left behind flocked to the countryside and took up simple, agrarian lives, while the high-tech cities walled themselves off and braced themselves for the aliens' inevitable return.A hundred and sixty years have passed. While prejudice between Puritans and Citizens persists in the United States, peace has reigned for three generations. However, when doctors in Chicago discover exactly what the aliens were looking for on their last visit, President Worthia Amster knows that their time to prepare is over.The Citizens have decided that they will no longer be subservient to the aliens, their crop to be farmed as they please. But is Earth truly ready to rebel against the EO-AY, especially when half the population supports them?

When math meets aftermath, all Hell will break loose.A near-death experience gives Dalton McGovern an epiphany-through a combination of computer programming and neurotechnology, he will create a virtual afterlife. With support from his unflappable but flighty twin sister and his stoic and secretive ex-boyfriend, he gets the University of Liverpool to green light the project.However, when his work catches the interest of an unconventional Pope and a nasty spirit attached to an unrepentant murderer, control of the project starts slipping from his hands. It turns out Dalton's unleashed something far more significant on the world than even he thought.Dalton may not have merely created an afterworld-he may have ended this one.

All Mallory needs to do to get home is travel across Toronto in a straight line-how hard could it be?But in this genderbent retelling of Homer's Odyssey set in the 2003 Northeastern Blackout, nothing so simple can ever go according to plan.Before even boarding the shuttle bus in the east end, she manages to piss off the supernatural, getting a mystical bounty placed on her head. Before long, she's navigating a haunted department store that exists out of time and space, giving dating advice to the lord of the underworld, dodging Russian mobsters and Toronto raccoons, and staging acoustic battles of the bands. All while in a broken pair of heels, just trying to hail a ride--or even find a working pay phone--before the hussy across the hall makes a play for her boyfriend Dylan's affections (and home-cooked meal).

All things must die. If death will come regardless, then we do not need to fear it or to run from it. We can live instead.The priests of Vatu are locked in an endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Their constant reincarnations are defined by service to the dark spirit, hatred for each other, and ruling the world of eternal night in which they live, broken only by a single day each year when Vatu releases the Sun. They have suffered and enjoyed this existence for millennia, for an eternity... until now.In the Tower of the Sun at the centre of the world, the reborn Utas returns to fulfill his destiny to become High Priest. He has scarcely completed his education, however, when a shocking secret of his resurrection emerges. Now questioning everything he knows, he takes a path never before followed in his long existence. Yet darkness and pain still shadow everything he does, and all his attempts at freedom seem only to lead back to Vatu.Can Utas ever escape hatred and death, or will darkness forever rule his heart as it does the shadowed land?

Fifty years ago, the sky tore open. Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds. Ever since Earth joined the Grand Narrative, a collective of alternate worlds with different types of humans and levels of technology, magic has been a part of life. However, while it's common enough, magical problems sometimes take an expert (or two) to resolve. Enter the Fixers, licensed magicians whose job is to help people with their arcane tech support. Ella Masterson is a high school freshman living in London. (London, Ontario. Not England. The other London.) She's grown up idolizing magical girl anime and developed a talent for her own magic. When she gets a job working for the town Fixer, adventures abound. Chasing an invisible, talking cat through downtown? Facing off against a water nymph drowning people in the Thames River? All in a day's work! But there's a bigger problem in southern Ontario than rogue fairies, and Ella might be caught right in the middle of it...

Life on the space station Sapphire is never dull!Mia Rey's biggest worry is how to collect money for the school fundraiser, until she finds an alien hiding on the station! Her parents never wanted a pet, but she loves the little creature at first sight.When it starts getting sick, however, keeping the alien hidden becomes the least of her problems. Not only that, but the alien is destroying her room! Can she figure out what's wrong before it's too late? And can she show her parents that she can care for a pet on her own?

Earth has attained world peace at last. Overseen by the World Council, based in Jerusalem, the planet has truly become a global community, and humanity has reached an age of enlightenment.This is the time when the visitors arrive.Wielding near-miraculous technology, they arrive claiming to have seeded Earth with humans, and have returned to claim "their own." Their claims and their appearance seem prophesied by the Bible, and religion and politics clash as arguments break out whether these visitors have the right to take people, even as it becomes apparent that humanity could do little to stop them.Arhus Gint is a lowly translator working for the esteemed World Council when he happens to catch the attention of an ambassador, and the visitors. Suddenly, a man with no political aspirations finds himself at the centre of negotiations between the World Council and the visitors. As tensions rise and people on both sides of the argument become more desperate, Arhus wonders less if he can keep his job throughout it all and worries more if he can even keep his head.