E. Rick Jones was stoically living out his final days in an old folks' home when a young woman dropped a time-travelling device onto the tartan rug which encased his withered limbs. This did not surprise him because he had written about something of the sort in a short story. The opportunity to travel in time presented him with the chance to repair the injustices of a lifetime and revenge himself on the literary establishment which had ignored him. The only flaw in his plan was that the people to whom the device belonged wanted it back and the young woman who had stolen it kept reappearing at inopportune moments. The one chance he had of survival was to adjust time itself so that the story of his life reached a satisfactory conclusion. But if he did that the terrifyingly ruthless owners of the device would immediately know which timeline he was hiding in and come hunting for him. Given all the time in eternity there surely had to be a solution.

E.Rick Jones was a penniless author while Fred, his twin brother, was a successful inventor and entrepreneur. Fred's advice on how Rick could improve his life was never any use because Rick, although he dreamed of becoming like his brother, in reality was hobbled by his timidity. When Rick was accused of being a paedophile, he found himself being investigated by the police and hounded by the media. The evidence appeared conclusive. No one would believe him that he was being framed and everyone he knew (including his wife) seemed to have a reason for wanting him imprisoned or murdered. There was no one he could trust. The media were doing their best to stir up a lynch mob and the police weren't interested in offering him protection. His brother thought his predicament hilarious. One way or another it seemed that his sheltered life was about to come to a painful end.

Until he won a short story competition with a prize of £50,000, E. Rick Jones didn't have any problems or at least no more than any other neurotic writer who spent most of his life in his writing shed at the end of his garden. The problem was that in order to claim the prize Rick was required to be the British representative at the Digitalquill Freedom Conference in Argentina. Unfortunately, certain ruthless people (who denied they had anything to do with MI6) thought that he was not the right person to represent his country and were happy to use threats and violence to convince him of this. However, there was another group of equally ruthless people who believed it was in his country's interest for him to go to S. America which was the last place he wanted to go because there was a frightening amount of magic realism there and that was one genre of writing he couldn't stand. Both groups regarded Rick as expendable. All he wanted was his shed.

The present book assesses the multifaceted phenomenon of revenge and tries to open a hatch to the human comprehension of vengeance, its roots, role and functions in philosophy, history, societies and literature. It introduces studies as they were presented at the Inter-Disciplinary.Net's 2nd Global Conference on Revenge.

There are shortcuts through spacetime from one part of the universe to another. The trouble is you can never be sure what's at the other end of one or going to come through one to visit you. Suppose you make contact with aliens - can you be sure you can trust them? Or could they be tricking you into doing something which would be disastrous for you but which they'd find hilarious? Then there's the temptation of time-travel. It seems so simple to nip back into the past, alter a few things to make your present life exactly as you'd like it to be. Unfortunately there are always unforeseen consequences and things never turn out as you hope. Also space travel is more complicated than you expect because time goes at different speeds depending on how fast you are travelling. So your journey may only take a year but when you get back everyone else could be a century older. Nothing but problems - but entertaining for those who like sci-fi stories like the ones in this book. Have a good time...