Matthew de Abaitua – författare

Could there be another way of life? Can I survive with less stuff? Should I run for the hills?These are all good questions that people have asked before, throughout history, and which have inspired people to set up camp. But now camping is part of the drive for self-sufficiency, a reaction against mass tourism, a chance to connect with the land, to experience a community, to leave no trace . . . From packing to pitching, with hikes into the deep history of the subject and encounters with the great campers and camping movements of the past, this is the only book you'll need to pack when you next head off to sleep under the stars.IF THERE IS ONE THING THAT CAMPERS LIKE MORE THAN CAMPING, IT'S DREAMING ABOUT THEIR NEXT TRIP

A dazzling work of science fiction to which Dune, the Foundation trilogy, and 2001: A Space Odyssey owe a major debt.Narrated telepathically by one of the Last Men, Olaf Stapledon’s epic history of the future caused a literary sensation when it first appeared in 1930. Over the course of two billion years, it seems, ever more alien versions of humankind will rise and fall — developing every sort of utopian and dystopian civilization only to descend into savagery again and again, until eventually the Earth’s resources are depleted.This abridged edition takes us from the fall of the First Men to the initial efforts of the Fifth Men, the “last Terrestrials,” to colonize other planets!

James has a scar in the back of his head. It’s where he was wounded in the Battle of Suvla Bay on August 1915. Or is the scar the mark of his implant that allows the Process to fill his mind with its own reality?In IF, the people of a small English town cling on after everything fell apart under the protection of the Process, the computer system that runs every aspect of their lives. But sometimes people must be evicted from the town. That’s the job of James, the bailiff. While on patrol, James discovers the replica of a soldier from the First World War wandering the South Downs. This strange meeting begins a new cycle of evictions in the town, while out on the rolling downland, the Process is methodically growing the soldiers and building the weapons required to relive a long lost battle. In THEN, it is August 1915, at the Battle of Suvla Bay in the Dardanelles campaign. Compared to the thousands of allied soldiers landing on this foreign beach, the men of the 32nd Field Ambulance are misfits and cranks of every stripe: a Quaker pacifist, a freethinking padre, a meteorologist, and the private (once a bailiff) known simply as James. Exposed to constant shellfire and haunted by ghostly snipers, the stretcher-bearers work day and night on the long carry of wounded men. One night they stumble across an ancient necropolis, disturbed by an exploding shell. What they discover within this ancient site will make them question the reality of the war and shake their understanding of what it means to be human…

In the near future, after the collapse of society as we know it, one English town survives under the protection of the computer algorithms of the Process, which governs every aspect of their lives. The Process gives and takes; it allocates resources, giving each person exactly what it has calculated they will need. Human life has become totally algorithm-driven, and James, the town bailiff, is charged with making sure the Process’s suggestions are implemented. But now the Process is making soldiers. It is readying for war — the First World War. Mysteriously, the Process is slowly recreating events that took place over a hundred years ago, and is recruiting the town’s men to fight in an artificial reconstruction of the Dardanelles campaign. James, too, must go fight. And he will discover that the Process has become vastly more sophisticated and terrifying than anyone had believed possible.

Theodore Drown is adestructive. A recovering addict to weirdcore, he’s keeping his head downlecturing at the university of the moon. Twenty years after the appearanceof the first artificial intelligence, and humanity is stuck. The AIs or, asthey preferred to be called, emergences have left Earth and reside beyond theorbit of Mercury in a Stapledon Sphere known as the university of the sun. Theemergences were our future but they chose exile. All except one. Dr Easyremains, researching a single human life from beginning to end. Theodore’slife.Oneday, Theodore is approached by freelance executive Patricia to investigate anarchive of data retrieved from just before the appearance of the firstemergence. The secret living in that archive will take him on an adventurethrough a stunted future of asylum malls, corporate bloodrooms and a secretoff-world colony where Theodore must choose between creating a new future forhumanity or staying true to his nature, and destroying it.File Under: Science Fiction [ Fatal Loop | Emergent See | Lunar Lunatics | Dr Easy ]

Theodore Drown is a destructive. A recovering addict to weirdcore, he’s keeping his head down lecturing at the university of the Moon. Twenty years after the appearance of the first artificial intelligence, and humanity is stuck. The AIs or, as they preferred to be called, emergences have left Earth and reside beyond the orbit of Mercury in a Stapledon Sphere known as the university of the sun. The emergences were our future but they chose exile. All except one. Dr Easy remains, researching a single human life from beginning to end. Theodore’s life.One day, Theodore is approached by freelance executive Patricia to investigate an archive of data retrieved from just before the appearance of the first emergence. The secret living in that archive will take him on an adventure through a stunted future of asylum malls, corporate bloodrooms and a secret off-world colony where Theodore must choose between creating a new future for humanity or staying true to his nature, and destroying it.File Under: Science Fiction [ Fatal Loop / Emergent See / Lunar Lunatics / Dr Easy ]From the Paperback edition.

The boundaries between the real and the virtual break down in this literary SF thriller from the author of If Then and The Destructives Once, Nelson was a radical journalist, but now he works for Monad, the corporation that makes the Dr Easys, the androids which police London’s streets. They also make the Red Men, versions of real people imagined by a shadowy artificial intelligence… and they’re looking to expand the program.Nelson creates Redtown, a digital version of a suburb, where the deepest secrets and desires of its citizens can be catalogued and studied. But the project’s goals are increasingly authoritarian and potentially catastrophic. As the boundaries between Redtown and the real world break down and revolution against the Red Men is imminent, Nelson is forced to choose between the corporation and his family.File Under: Science Fiction [ Welcome to Redtown | Singularity Satire | You Are Data | Dr Easy ]

‘A moving lament for a vanished age’ – Financial TimesSHORTLISTED: New Angle Prize The scene is a remote cottage in Suffolk in the 1990s.Will Self, newly divorced, is the in-demand enfant terrible of the British literary scene. Matthew De Abaitua, an eager young writer fresh out of Malcolm Bradbury's Creative Writing course at the University of East Anglia, is excited to be hired as his ‘amanuensis’.It’s not obvious what that intriguing job title will entail. In this unique, frank and often very funny portrait of one of our most talked-about and controversial literary figures, Self & I charts the highs and lows of the experience.It is a compelling account of a remarkable time in Britain and British literature.