Rankin's far-fetched steampunk sequel to The War of the Worlds!  It's 1895; nearly a decade since Mars invaded Earth, chronicled by H.G. Wells in The War of the Worlds. Wrecked Martian spaceships, back-engineered by Charles Babbage and Nikola Tesla, have carried the Queen's Own Electric Fusiliers to the red planet, and Mars is now part of the ever-expanding British Empire. Professor Coffin has a problem: the pickled Martian's tentacles are fraying at the ends, and his Most Meritorious Unnatural Attraction (the remains of the original alien autopsy, performed by Sir Frederick Treves at the London Hospital) is no longer drawing the crowds. The less-than-scrupulous sideshow proprietor likes Off-worlders' cash, so he needs a sensational new attraction. Word has reached him of the Japanese Devil Fish Girl; nothing quite like her has ever existed before. But Professor Coffin's quest to possess the ultimate showman's exhibit is about to cause considerable friction among the folk of other planets. Sufficient, in fact, to spark off Worlds War Two.

Rankin's far-fetched steampunk sequel to The War of the Worlds!  It's 1895; nearly a decade since Mars invaded Earth, chronicled by H.G. Wells in The War of the Worlds. Wrecked Martian spaceships, back-engineered by Charles Babbage and Nikola Tesla, have carried the Queen's Own Electric Fusiliers to the red planet, and Mars is now part of the ever-expanding British Empire. Professor Coffin has a problem: the pickled Martian's tentacles are fraying at the ends, and his Most Meritorious Unnatural Attraction (the remains of the original alien autopsy, performed by Sir Frederick Treves at the London Hospital) is no longer drawing the crowds. The less-than-scrupulous sideshow proprietor likes Off-worlders' cash, so he needs a sensational new attraction. Word has reached him of the Japanese Devil Fish Girl; nothing quite like her has ever existed before. But Professor Coffin's quest to possess the ultimate showman's exhibit is about to cause considerable friction among the folk of other planets. Sufficient, in fact, to spark off Worlds War Two.

The Underhive of Necromunda Hive Primus is a urban nightmare, controlled by the savage gangs which battle over its hidden wealth. The suavest bounty hunter in the Underhive is Kal Jerico, a debonair desperado as fast with his guns as he is with his mouth.With only a pair of fully charged laspistols, an immaculate sense of style, and his sometime sidekick — the pustulent renegade ratskin Scabbs — to see him through, Kal's been outlawed, hunted down, shot at, blown up, nailed to a wall and almost burned alive, but then again he wouldn't have his life any other way!

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something wiped out the Amarantin. For the human colonists now settling the Amarantin homeworld Resurgam, it's of little more than academic interest, even after the discovery of a long-hidden, almost perfect Amarantin city and a colossal statue of a wingest Amarantin. For brilliant but ruthloess scientist Dan Sylveste, it's more than merelty intellectual curiosity - and he will stop at nothing to get at the truth. Even if the truth costs him everything. But the Amarantin were wiped out for a reason, and that danger is closer and greater than even Syveste imagines ...REVELATION SPACE: a huge, magnificent space opera that ranges acrioss the known and unknown universe ...towards the most terrifying of destinations.

trade edition paperback, new

Back on the farm, the pigs are restless, and pissed. Smoking, pork-eating, overweight and without any s**t to roll in, these pigs aren't your cuddly, oinking kind of farmyard brother. They are mean and they are angry. From the genius behind the bestselling BUNNY SUICIDES series comes a hilarious new collection of illustrations that confirms all our worst fears: the pigs won't take it lying down.

Paced like a cheetah and clever as anything, Justina Robson's second novel Mappa Mundi offers us a particularly scary take on the possibilities of technology, on what it is to be, and to remain. Half-Cheyenne FBI man Jude tracks down criminal masterminds who play with genetic perfection; his supposed partner Mary is there to stop him getting too close to those illegal experiments the US government wants to succeed. Disturbed psychologist Natalie is caught up with attempts to re-engineer sanity in human brains, horridly aware of the possibility that this new technology might be misused and anxious about her feckless drug-using flatmate and best friend.

This is a book that endlessly spins off intelligent ideas and keeps its momentum without ever bogging down in dumps of crude information. Justina Robson has a solid sense of where her characters come from, both geographically and emotionally, and even her villainess Mary is credibly motivated in every last shabby thing she does. Mappa Mundi asks some terrifying questions about technology—there are some things that cannot be uninvented, and, invented, are going to be used for good or ill. Justina Robson's first novel Silver Screen demonstrated her skill and intelligence; Mappa Mundi reveals her entire emotional and intellectual maturity. —Roz Kaveney

Mappa Mundi is joint winner of the Amazon.co.uk Writers' Bursaries 2000

In the far future, humanity has engineered itself into new forms capable of spaceflight, the terraforming of planets, and the exploration of the deepest oceans. Evolution has reached a new zenith, and it seems there is no environment we cannot conquer. But when intersteller voager meets apiece of alien technology in a head on collision, the results go to show that the synthesis of the human race and its own technology is not the first or the most advanced of its kind in the galaxy.