Experiments at 3 Billion A.M.

Windblown wildernesses; celestial fire; women from the moon; inexplicable phenomena in sleeping counties and visions of blood amid mazes of urban sprawl; tales culled from subterranean depths, from the A.M. darkness and from stolen afternoons of nostalgic sunlight and weeping rains...

Zelenyj’s haunting and surreal stories range widely in style, stretching from lyrical flights of fantasy to gritty and painful realism to unsettling horror and the grotesque – from subtle slipstream with only the faintest sense of the otherworldly to vivid space fiction, and even light-hearted homages to the colourful and gleeful world of the pulps. Always unexpected, these stories remain bound together by a tone of universal sadness and gentleness, and an ever-increasing sense of wonder. This massive collection of forty stories and over 650 pages, covering 10 years of work, will remain as a companion for a long time to come.

Each story has an illustrated titleplate. The hardcover is available with two different artworks – one, with very different cover art, that can only be ordered direct from the publisher and a standard version that can be sold anywhere. This publisher-only version also introduces our first ‘barcode art’ – which seeks to improve on those annoying black and white blocks that have to be slapped on book covers everywhere.

Contents:

• Foreword by David Rix
• The Potato Thief Beneath Indifferent Stars
• Blue Love Maria
• Black Flies Inside
• Footsteps to Blacken the Drifts
• The Stealing Sky
• The Mighty Ones Listen to the Night
• Let the Firefly Men Remind You
• Just Right Under Moonlight
• Teenage Pirates and the Ghosting of Texas
• The Loneliness of Strangefire Dancers
• Onwards! To Memphis!
• The Prison Hulk
• Gladiators in the Sepulchre of Abominations
• Night Symphonies
• The Burning Sadness of Crash-Landed Sleepers
• Tara of the Wine Cats
• In the City Where Dreams Wander the Sidewalks
• I Humbly Accept This War Stick
• Lost in the Penguin Tunnel
• The Lilac Perfumes Between the Stars
• Dreams of the Rocket-Boy
• Love, Death, and Monsters at the Drive-In
• Letters From the Laboratory
• The Snow Robins Fly Between Heaven and Hell
• The Silly Significance of Running With Soda Fire
• Waiting for the New Reign of the Fire Ants
• Pining for the Lost Love of the Moon Creatures
• The Empty Hands of Alvin Calvin Rourke
• Salty Magic Balloon Trips for the Moon to Judge
• The Runners Among the Stars
• Captain of a Ship of Flowers
• Pigeons or Ashes, and the Final Gift of Jimmy Colley
• The Animals Have Seized the Diamond Sea Kingdom
• The Grey Tammy and the Living
• Christina the Bloomed
• I am the Stink Candle 
• Grandmother Mars and the Relentless Call to Arms
• Where the War Bird Leads
• Another Light Called 1-47
• Poppy, the Girl of My Dreams, and the Alien Invasion I Can Detect Like Radar Through My Braces