The title, Existence is Elsewhen, paraphrases the last sentence of André Breton’s 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism, perfectly summing up the intent behind this anthology of stories from a wonderful collection of authors. Different worlds… different times. It’s what Elsewhen Press has been about since we launched our first title in 2011. Here, we present twenty science fiction stories for you to enjoy. We are delighted that headlining this collection is the fantastic John Gribbin, with a worrying vision of medical research in the near future. Future global healthcare is the theme of J A Christy’s story; while the ultimate in spare part surgery is where Dave Weaver takes us. Edwin Hayward’s search for a renewable protein source turns out to be digital; and Tanya Reimer’s story with characters we think we know, gives us pause for thought about another food we take for granted. Evolution is examined too, with Andy McKell’s chilling tale of what states could become if genetics are used to drive policy. Similarly, Robin Moran’s story explores the societal impact of an undesirable evolutionary trend; while Douglas Thompson provides a truly surreal warning of an impending disaster that will reverse evolution, with dire consequences. On a lighter note, we have satire from Steve Harrison discovering who really owns the Earth (and why); and Ira Nayman, who uses the surreal alternative realities of his Transdimensional Authority series as the setting for a detective story mash-up of Agatha Christie and Dashiel Hammett. Pursuing the crime-solving theme, Peter Wolfe explores life, and death, on a space station; while Stefan Jackson follows a police investigation into some bizarre cold-blooded murders in a cyberpunk future. Going into the past, albeit an 1831 set in the alternate Britain of his Royal Sorceress series, Christopher G. Nuttall reports on an investigation into a girl with strange powers. Strange powers in the present-day is the theme for Tej Turner, who tells a poignant tale of how extra-sensory perception makes it easier for a husband to bear his dying wife’s last few days. Difficult decisions are the theme of Chloe Skye’s heart-rending story exploring personal sacrifice. Relationships aren’t always so close, as Susan Oke’s tale demonstrates, when sibling rivalry is taken to the limit. Relationships are the backdrop to Peter R. Ellis’s story where a spectacular mid-winter event on a newly-colonised distant planet involves a Madonna and Child. Coming right back to Earth and in what feels like an almost imminent future, Siobhan McVeigh tells a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of using technology to deflect the blame for their actions. Building on the remarkable setting of Pera from her LiGa series, and developing Pera’s legendary Book of Shadow, Sanem Ozdural spins the creation myth of the first light tree in a lyrical and poetic song. Also exploring language, the master of fantastika and absurdism, Rhys Hughes, extrapolates the way in which language changes over time, with an entertaining result.

Presents a novel of hope, love, and redemption.

On a world he doesn’t yet know is doomed, Lije, an astrophysicist, sits at a radar tracking station, tracking boring space junk. One night, he notices a satellite veering off course before disappearing into the darkness. Curious, he investigates and discovers a small black hole—and it’s getting closer. The Earth has maybe two weeks before it is swallowed. Years before, Lije’s life took a dark turn when Laura Bess, the love of his life, was lost in a plane crash. Little does he know, but this seemingly random discovery in the night sky holds the key to a happiness he never dared to dream he could know again. After his shift, as he’s grabbing a bite in a coffee shop, his lost love walks up and says hello. Laura Bess, it turns out, is alive—and living in an alternate reality. After Lije gets over his shock, Laura Bess explains that, using a skill she’s had since childhood, she was able to “step aside” from the crashing plane into one of the alternate universes she calls elsewhens—but she was trapped. In her new life, she finds work at a top-secret teleportation program, hoping to make her way back to Lije. When she finds the key, she bolts, and the elsewhen authorities think that she has stolen the technology. Now, Lije must rescue Laura from a sadistic security agent from her alternate universe. With the black hole closing in on his world, can they find a way to cross over to a third elsewhen before it’s too late?

Collecting Defenders (1972) #126-137, Iceman (1984) #1-4 And Beauty And The Beast (1984) #1-4. The Defenders, Marvel’s weirdest non-team, have a new roster, a new headquarters and a new leader — they’ve evolved into a New Defenders! Their adventures are some of the most far-out trips Marvel has ever presented, but what more could you expect from a group consisting of a Valkyrie, a gargoyle, a cosmic psychic, a sentient cloud and a pair of ex-X-Men? Together they’ll take on an all-new Secret Empire, killer nuclear spores in human form, the deadly Manslaughter and towering disembodied demons! Guest-starring Nick Fury, Odin, the New Mutants and more! Also featuring two limited series starring the Defenders’ Iceman and Beast in solo action — plus rare articles from Marvel’s 1980s behind-the-scenes magazine, MARVEL AGE!

A deceptively quiet story of suburban lives and second chances, this book follows Harry and Louisa, who are both in their second marriage. Each harbors failure and pain from the first; it seems that stasis is safest. Each gets by on the minutiae, rather than facing up to the shadows of violence, loss, and failure that still haunt them; a life half-lived is a life undisturbed. Celebrating the beauty of the ordinary, this novel asserts that hope and love can heal pain.

What was existentialism? At its heart, Noreen Khawaja argues, existentialism was an effort to translate Protestant piety into a secular philosophy. While there have been many attempts to define existentialism from within as a coherent philosophical program and even as a movement, Khawaja s book is the first study of existentialism from the standpoint of intellectual history and the first to look systematically at the role that Christianity played in the development of existential thought. Focusing on Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Khawaja illuminates the key moments in existentialism s reconstruction of Protestant piety within the confines of secular philosophy. Heidegger once described his work as an exercise in the piety of thinking. Khawaja s book shows the historical and systematic truth behind this metaphor. Notwithstanding Heidegger, thinking has not always been a pious act. But for a certain group of European intellectuals in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became so. "The Religion of Existence "will appeal to scholars of modern Christianity, philosophers, and historians of European philosophy, as well as those engaged with the theoretical and historical problems of secular and post-secular modernity. "

Richly emotive and darkly captivating, with elements of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and the imaginative depth of Margaret Atwood, Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin conjures a community in which girls become wives, wives become mothers and some of them, quite simply, disappear. Vera grows up in a small town, removed and isolated, pressed up against the mountains, cloud-covered and damp year-round. This town, fiercely protective, brutal and unforgiving in its adherence to tradition, faces a singular affliction: some mothers vanish, disappearing into the clouds. It is the exquisite pain and intrinsic beauty of their lives; it sets them apart from people elsewhere and gives them meaning. Vera, a young girl when her mother went, is on the cusp of adulthood herself. As her peers begin to marry and become mothers, they speculate about who might be the first to go, each wondering about her own fate. Reveling in their gossip, they witness each other in motherhood, waiting for signs: this one devotes herself to her child too much, this one not enough—that must surely draw the affliction’s gaze. When motherhood comes for Vera, she is faced with the question: will she be able to stay and mother her beloved child, or will she disappear? Provocative and hypnotic, Alexis Schaitkin’s Elsewhere is at once a spellbinding revelation and a rumination on the mysterious task of motherhood and all the ways in which a woman can lose herself to it; the self-monitoring and judgment, the doubts and unknowns, and the legacy she leaves behind.