Simon Ings – författare

Four writers. Four dictators. One world, changed out of all recognition. ENGINEERS OF HUMAN SOULS is an intimate and shocking shadow history of creative vanity in a time that turned writers - once the faithful servants of authority - into figures of political consequence.Maurice Barrès, who first wielded the politics of identity. Gabriele D''Annunzio, whose poetry became a blueprint for fascism. Maxim Gorky, dramatist of the working class and Stalin''s cheerleader. The Maoist Ding Ling, whose stories exculpated the regime that kept her imprisoned.All four nursed extravagant visions of the future, and believed they were vital to its realisation. Each was lured to the centre of political action. Each established a dangerous and damaging relationship with a notorious dictator. And when writers and rulers find a use for each other, the consequences can be shattering for us all. These stories - of courage and compromise, vanity and malevolence - speak urgently to the uncontrollable power of words.

The new novel from Simon Ings is a story that balances on the knife blade of a new technology. Augmented Reality uses computing power to overlay a digital imagined reality over the real world. Whether it be adverts or imagined buildings and imagined people, with Augmented Reality the world is no longer as it appears to you, it is as it is imagined by someone else. Two friends are working at the cutting edge of this technology and when they are offered backing to take the idea and make it into the next global entertainment they realise that wolves hunt in this imagined world. And the wolves might be them.A story about technology becomes a personal quest into a changed world and the pursuit of a secret from the past. A secret about a missing mother, a secret that could hide a murder. This is no dry analysis of how a technology might change us, it is a terrifying thriller, a picture of a dark tomorrow that is just around the corner. Ings takes the satire and mordant satirical view of J.G. Ballard and propels it into the 21st century.

Nominated for the 2019 Kitschie Awards for best novel, Simon Ings'' The Smoke is about love, loss and loneliness in an incomprehensible world. Humanity has been split into three different species. Mutual incomprehension has fractured the globe. As humans race to be the first of their kind to reach the stars, another Great War looms. For you that means returning to Yorkshire and the town of your birth, where factories churn out the parts for gigantic spaceships. You''re done with the pretentions of the capital and its unfathomable architecture. You''re done with the people of the Bund, their easy superiority and unstoppable spread throughout the city of London and beyond. You''re done with Georgy Chernoy and his questionable defeat of death. You''re done with his daughter, Fel, and losing all the time. You''re done with love. But soon enough you will find yourself in the Smoke again, drawn back to the life you thought you''d left behind. You''re done with love. But love''s not done with you.

An ambitious SF novel that is at once post-cyberpunk and post-modern. Complex, multi-layered, it combines hard science, tarot and images of late 20th-century Europe to make something utterly original. And introduces a memorable new heroine to the genre ...Malise has a problem. She''s come downwell to Earth, but years of space combat have ruined her: her muscles have wasted away, her past is a confused torture of events and her brain is wired to addictive military hardware that''s illegal on Earth.But with an AI mining probe returning to Earth, having bred and grown until it is hundreds of miles across, Malise is in the firing line again. The probe is indestructible and it is insatiable for more metals. No one knows how to stop it. Malise doesn''t know she has a blueprint for humanity''s survival wired into her head.

Simon Ings has written a surreal adventure probing the very fabric of existence, tearing it open to reveal a sometimes horrifying world within. It is a work that will delight any fan of China Mieville.Only a fool would question the strange magics that maintain the cool haven of the City of the Iron Fish in the middle of an inferno of scorching heat and splintered rock, for the well-watered streets of the city hide secrets in their shadows.Thomas Kemp is just such a fool ...And embarks on a journey that will take him to the limits of reality. It may kill him, worse, that may not be enough. Especially as it is his only friend, Blythe, who may discover the secret of the city''s isolation.

A fast-moving cyberpunk thriller set in a world of thinking cities, ruthless corporations and mad orbital AIs. A novel that links the groundbreaking works of William Gibson to the new generation of writers such as Charlie Stross and Hannu Rajaniemi.Ajay had a future once, birthing intelligent cities for the Haag Agency. First Delhi, then Milan. But then he is seduced into betraying his employers and finds himself working for a city that wishes to become human.Ajay must steal some rare technology from a long-dead wetware expert, a new Frankenstein called Snow, a man now alive in an AI. A man who wants a new toy for his manufactured daughter ...

Post-cyberpunk SF that recalls the darkness of M. John Harrison and the wild visual imagination of China Mieville and Hannu Rajaniemi, HEADLONG felt ahead of the curve when first published and now serves to show just why Simon Ings has remained on the cutting edge of genre fiction.Surgically connected to their swarming robotic workers, architects Christopher and Joanne Yale are turning the moon into a paradise. But now, without warning, the machines have pulled the plug and are building a new, insane future away from the control of human minds.

A mysterious box that he cannot open is all that might save Adam''s autistic son as they are plunged into a world of old corruptions and new terrors.In PAINKILLERS, Simon Ings deftly teases out his knotted story that, with its many conventional elements, could have run a risk of overfamiliarity: sinister Oriental Triad gangsters, their even more sinister wives, a speedy Hong Kong with its ruthless Brit yuppies and its nightlife ridden with drugs, strange sex and violence. Shooting back and forth between a glamorous Hong Kong, in 1990, and a straitened London, in 1998, Ings sustains suspense by dropping hints but never telling enough.Adam Wyatt and his wife Eva run a small café near Southwark Market. They bicker a lot, Adam drinks and visits to their autistic son Justin tend to go awry. But underneath Adam''s drinking are secrets from their previous life in Hong Kong, when he worked for the Independent Commission Against Corruption and got in with some very dubious local society types; one of whom includes ''Call me Jimmy'' Yao Sau-Lan, ''a big nasty man, in a big nasty suit'', whose father just happened to kill Eva''s grandfather. When Jimmy''s widow and sons come calling, Adam knows he''s in trouble.