Satire Science

Take a space-pirate, inspired by a long-ago Dark Lord. Take a long period of quarantine within the tiny confines of a stolen starship. Now, take 42 busted, broken, or overbearing tropes of fantasy and science fiction. One by one, the Dark Lord twists each into a strange shape and uses it to tell a new story - many of them disgracefully funny, some rather dark, and none of them suitable for vulnerable minds such as yours. Jeff Mach brings tight, interesting, usually satirical, often quite twisted stories, to light a fire in your belly like whiskey, and light a whiskey on fire.

Inception meets Black Mirror for the YouTube generation. The idea behind MindCast is simple. We insert a small chip into your skull and then every thought, every feeling, every memory is streamed live, 24 hours a day. Trust me - within a few months you'll be the most talked about person on the planet. When David Callow is offered the lead role in a revolutionary new online show, he snatches the opportunity. Rapidly becoming a viral sensation, David is propelled to stratospheric levels of celebrity. However, he soon realises the downside of sharing every secret with the world....

Daisy is turning 40. To make the crises worse, her five sisters pray over her unmarried status, and then her cat begins speaking English with a British accent! Well, no wonder the cat quotes William Shakespeare sometimes! Daisy did name the cat Shakespeare after all.

In near-future America, film critic Noah Body uploads his reviews to a content aggregator. His job is routine: watch, seethe, pan. He dreams of making his own film, free from the hackery of commercial cinema. Faced with writing about lousy movies for a website that no one reads, Noah smuggles into his work episodes from his trainwreck of a life. We learn that his apartment in Miniature Aleppo has been stripped of furniture after his wife ran off with his best friend - who Noah believes has possessed his body.

David Hall is 30 years old, divorced, and a self-proclaimed wine connoisseur. He has no business venturing into a world of flesh-hungry monsters. But when a phone call from his diabetic sister gets disconnected, he knows he's the only one who can provide her the care she needs. Seeking help from his gun-toting survivalist brother-in-law and his ex-wife, David must make a dangerous journey across the city of Asheville. But the real danger isn't the zombies he'll have to face, or the threat of certain death; it's what kind of man he'll become if he survives the trip.

The adventures of Thad Snaco, Jacoby Dove, and the rest of our heroes as they take on the evil forces of Quezalcorp continue in Quezalcorp Risen, the sequel to Moore's 2016 novel. Joined by new friends and forced to face new enemies, how will the heroes handle this new world they find themselves in?

By the time Nick Morris realizes the grave error he made in leaving his wife Jessica, not only has she happily moved on but, unfortunately, Nick dies. Nevertheless, because of the manner Nick passes from this earth, he is given a grand opportunity and afforded the chance to be Jessica's guardian angel until he earns his wings. Nick believes that hanging around Jessica just a little bit longer isn't that bad of a deal until he realizes Jessica can see him and things get complicated.

When Jaine Andersen proposes a new marketing role to the local amusement park, general manager Dylan Callahan charms her into filling Cinderella's glass slippers for the summer. Her reign transforms Jaine's ordinary life into chaos that would bewilder a fairy godmother. Secretly dating her bad boy boss, running wedding errands for her ungrateful sisters, and defending herself from the park's resident villain means Jaine needs lots more than a comfy pair of shoes to restore order in her kingdom.

In the 1980s, a man is pulled up out of the Indian Ocean in Port Pallid, South Africa, claiming to have been kidnapped as a baby. So begins the odyssey of Jimfish, who defies the usual classification of race that defines the rainbow nation. His journey through the last years of Apartheid will extend beyond South Africa to the wider world, where he will be an unlikely witness to the dying days of the 20th century.

Hell's too full, so the Devil hires ad man Dirk Quigby to pen a travel guide enticing travelers to different afterlives: Hindu, Catholic, Protestant (that one's got a lot of subdivisions), Scientologist, and more. Instead of writing a boffo best seller, Dirk unites all religions in a common goal: kill Dirk. E. E. King grew up in one of those tolerant households that don't force religion down kids' throats. This is the result.

A hard-hitting and no-holds-barred broadside, from the anchorman of the Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor - what's good about America (plenty), what's bad (plenty still), and what's completely ridiculous (most everything else).

This novel is Shakespeare's worst nightmare. It takes two of the bard's most famous plays, Hamlet and Othello, and recasts them with fantasy characters in a place called Gundarland. Hamlet is a dwarf and Othello is a dark elf. Iago and his wife, Emilia, are trolls. If that isn't bad enough, these two tragedies are now comedies with Falstaff, Shakespeare's most popular rogue, thrown in as a bonus. Not familiar with Shakespeare? No problem. You'll still enjoy this romp.

In Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why, acclaimed satirist Alexandra Petri offers perfectly logical, reassuring reasons for everything that has happened in recent American politics that will in no way unsettle your worldview. In essays both new and adapted from her viral Washington Post columns, Petri reports that the Trump administration is as competent as it is uncorrupted, white supremacy has never been less rampant, and men have been silenced for too long. The "woman card" is a powerful card to play! Q-Anon makes perfect sense!

In this, the penultimate tale of the Circles in Hell comedy series, Charon, ferryman for the dead, and his paramour, the succubus Lilith, adopt an infant girl and settle in the suburbs of the Second Circle. Bringing up the first baby in Hell will test the parenting skills of the stalwart skeleton and his demonic partner, for Mona is no ordinary child. She soon exhibits powers that would make a devil blanch. The First Baby has her own set of firsts—from words to steps to a hospital visit—and they all unfold in madcap fashion.

Over My Dead Body is the ultimate talk show featuring the most interesting and compelling guests who have ever lived. The fact that our guests are dead won't stop them from sharing the highlights of their lives and giving us their take on current events.

In Max Barry's twisted, hilarious vision of the near future, the world is run by giant American corporations; employees take the last names of the companies they work for; The Police and The NRA are publicly-traded security firms. Jennifer Government is a Catch-22 for the New World Order, a satire both broad and pointed, deeply funny and disturbingly on-target.

After locating the man who betrayed AB, and uncovering the mystery of the Alternants, Kallie's happy to only think of never being Fatgirl ever again when Zeus is captured. She has no choice but to save him, and with the help of her friends, family, and allies, Kallie vows to just that—but even with all their resources, it's still not enough to prevent devastating loss.

When the mysterious zookeeper of Clarendon Zoo grants his animals freedom to govern themselves, the creatures create a new land founded upon life, liberty, and happiness for all animals. Though the land seems to function well, each species soon realizes they have differing visions for how the land should be governed. With the help of Eagle and Owl’s propaganda, the traditional wolves and the progressive sheep quickly emerge as leaders. The two species fight to spread their contradictory visions, pitting the animals against one another, and inadvertently throw the zoo into chaos.

Imagine a world where everyone knows everything about everybody. Where what a person "feels" and "truly believes" is protected under the law, while what is rational, even provable is condemned as heresy. A world where to question ignorance and intolerance is to commit a Crime against Faith. Imagine it. Or just wait until After the Flood.

On the face of it, this is the story of Dave Smart, business studies lecturer, as he leads a group of three colleagues on a tour of discovery to the Smiling Disc star system, 19 light years from home. Their main purpose is to investigate business practice on Kalista-mm, the larger of the system's two planets, and gather material for Dave's new book, 'Doing Business on Other Planets'.