Once and Future Cities
Cities are the defining aggregation of modern humankind. Hate to live with them, hate to live without them.
Allen Ashley’s tales of Urban Fantasy are intensely surreal, savagely satirical, subtly subversive and despairingly funny. Possessed of a unique vision and a distinctive prose style, Allen Ashley exposes the absurdities of modern British society like no other writer. Every waking moment is a struggle for continued sanity and survival as we muddle thoughtlessly through this surrealist joke called civilisation. The challenges – factual, fictitious, mythical, eminently plausible – just keep on coming. Ashley demonstrates that, if you have the nose for it, apocalypse can be smelled everywhere – in the latest media circus; in the latest dubious laws or government measures; in celebrity culture or the surveillance state; in the mindsets and prejudices of the population and in the tiniest actions we all perform.
Contents:
- Beholders
- Black Forest Manoeuvres
- Canoe Boy
- Play the Pipes of Pan
- The Pamela Faction
- D-Leb
- Waving Not Drowning
- Flat Top
- Stoners
- Turbulent Times
- Petrified
- The Accidentalists
- The Spaces in Our Lives
- The Slot
- Murdoch Celeste
- Nine Views of the Light of the World
- The Short and the Long of It
- Slow Planes
- War Haven
- Shirts
- Future Cities
- Today We Were Astronauts
Readers also enjoyed
Allen Ashley
One of the most distinctive voices in modern literature, Allen Ashley has been published in dozens of books and magazines in the UK, USA, Canada and Spain and has now passed his first century of short story publications. Allen is a highly respected author equally adept at novels, short stories, poetry and lyrics. He is also well known for a wealth of critical commentary and non-fiction articles and, more recently, as an acclaimed and award winning editor.
Allen has run successful writing workshops in Newham and Tower Hamlets libraries. In October 2005 he gave two readings at the Norwich Fringe Festival. In November 2005 he was the special guest of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. In May 2006 he ran a writing workshop in Derby as part of the very first "Alt. Fiction Day". On 2nd June 2006 he was the Guest of Honour at The British Fantasy Society (BFS) Open Night at The Devereux Arms, London WC2. On 7th July 2006 he compered the annual BFS "Showcase" evening, also at The Devereux.. At Fantasycon 2006 he moderated a panel on "Independent Versus Mainstream Editing" and was also thrilled to receive the BFS Best Anthology award as editor of "The Elastic Book Of Numbers". At Fantasycon 2007 he moderated a panel entitled "The Small Press - Building and Maintaining an Audience".
More books by Allen Ashley
