[Re]Awakenings

Expect a life-changing experience
[Re]Awakenings are the starting points for life-changing experiences; a new plane of existence, an alternate reality or cyber-reality. This genre-spanning anthology of new speculative fiction explores that theme with a spectrum of tales, from science fiction to fantasy to paranormal; in styles from clinically serious to joyfully silly. As you read through them all, and you must read all of them, you will discover along the way that stereo-typical distinctions between the genres within speculative fiction are often arbitrary and unhelpful. You will be taken on an emotional journey through a galaxy of sparkling fiction; you will laugh, you will cry; you will consider timeless truths and contemplate eternal questions.
All of life is within these pages, from birth to death (and in some cases beyond). In all of these stories, most of them specifically written for this anthology, the short story format has been used to great effect. If you haven’t already heard of some of these authors, you soon will as they are undoubtedly destined to become future stars in the speculative fiction firmament. Remember, you read them here first!

This is a collection of short stories from exciting new voices in UK speculative fiction, compiled by guest editor PR Pope. It contains the following stories: Alison Buck: Dreamers; Intervention; Mirror mirror; Podcast. Neil Faarid: The Adventures of Kit Brennan: Kidnapped! Gingerlily: The Dragon and the Rose. Robin Moran: The Merry Maiden Wails. PR Pope: Afterlife; Courtesy Bodies; On the Game. Alexander Skye: BlueWinter; Dreaming Mars; Exploring the Heavens; Worth it. Peter Wolfe: If you go into the woods today…

Like all of us, Alison Buck has led many lives. One as a sensible, hard-working type, employed in financial systems, graphic design and web site development. Another as a writer, scribbling away, committing her stories to disc and eventually publishing several to reasonable acclaim. Throughout all of them, the mother of two and wife of one.Skilled at exploring the psychology and interior lives of her characters, Alison delivers stories that range from chilling tales of horror through insightful contemporary drama to thought-provoking science fiction. Her empathy with her protagonists, her rich descriptive prose and her use of gentle humour serve to ensure that, whatever the setting, her stories are always a rewarding read.

Neil Faarid was born in the North of the UK, in a small town you've probably never heard of. He studied in Leeds but, after three years, decided he didn't like flat caps and moved away. Hoping to write a novel or two, Neil now lives in Oxford where he enjoys being unmarried and having no pets. Neil likes to write both sci-fi and fantasy, and has a few more stories he's working on, though The Adventures of Kit Brennan is the first to be published. He also likes to listen to music and doodle. Neil is not his real name.Gingerlily: So you want to know something about me? You nosy lot! Well what can I tell you... Age? - Old enough to know better by now (or so my Mum says). In fact old enough to be a grandmother if I had got around to having children at any stage. Work? - well I do some, but it's so boring you would fall asleep if I told you, so make something up yourself, it'll be much more fun. In fact - write and tell me about it to alleviate the boredom of my job! Interests? - reading, photography, reading, playing guitar, reading, Formula 1, Dragon taming, Underwater knitting... Are you still reading? Last life lesson learned - There is no such thing as a quick game of Angry Birds before I catch my bus. I will miss the bus. And probably the next one as well. And I can get by on 4 hours sleep.Robin Moran: The Merry Maiden Wails is Robin Moran's first published work. Born in Yorkshire she happily resides in Leeds after finally escaping the insanity and chaos of London although Cyberdog and South Bank are greatly missed. Horror is her comfort zone, having read twisted tales and bone chilling stories since she was young so it's no surprise it has warped her writing mind. By day she's a teaching assistant, watching over children who enjoy screaming 'TEACHER' in her face. By night she writes and occasionally gets distracted by her Draenei Shaman, Medua, who is not impressed by Robin's writing and desperately wants to reach level 85.Alexander Skye: Alexander Skye has been obsessed with sci-fi since before he was born. Since those early experiments with time travel, he has read and enjoyed every branch of science fiction; from the most realistic of hard SF, through the most cynical of cyberpunk and the most Victorian of steampunk, to the most exuberant of space opera. He's enjoyed other genres besides, most especially fantasy, with which he has had a long- running affair. It began as a child, reading The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Lord of the Rings, and has never really abated. His first and greatest love, however, will always be science fiction. Having spent so long merely reading and admiring, he decided that it was finally time to try and tell his own stories and hopefully you'll enjoy them as much as he enjoyed writing them; if not, he'll be forced to find a different job, which would be tragic since they're all so boring - after all, how many other professions let you stare wistfully at the stars on a cloudless night and call it research?Peter Wolfe: Peter Wolfe lives the life of a hermit, desperately trying to avoid the mysterious and terrifying 'Real World', preferring instead the varying realities that inhabit his bookshelf and his mind. Peter lives in Leeds with his girlfriend and their cat, who has the joint function of being Emperor of the Known Universe and Chief Editor. His Lordship seems to disapprove of Peter's writing, forever stealing his pens and or leaving indecipherable comments by walking across the keyboard. 'If you go into the woods today...' is Peter's first published work, though with luck many more Science Fiction and Fantasy stories will soon follow. On a more personal note Peter finds writing about himself in the third person quite peculiar and fears that if he doesn't stop soon he might do a Jack Torrance. After all, All Work and No Play...

PR Pope: Accidentally pushed through a time-space warp as a child, PR Pope found himself in our dimension. Lucky enough to find a surrogate family in his exile, he had a fairly normal upbringing: school, university, research institute, international prizes. Drawing on his innate technological superiority over earthlings, he proceeded to 'discover' many of the advances that we take for granted in a modern networked society - frequently passing the credit to others to avoid arousing suspicion. In the process he made and lost a fortune, but is nevertheless still happy. He has decided now is the time to commit to print some of the tales with which he was weaned on his home planet.