The Shadow of Earth (History of the Galaxy, book 2)

The History of the Galaxy, Book II

The Shadow of Earth

by Andrei Livadny

Release - March 22, 2018

Pre-order here - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078KJFG25

Prologue.

Earth. Year 2606.

The short man stood in front of a panoramic window, listening to the report as he looked at the skyscrapers forming the famous Square of Five Corners, which was unfailingly repeated on the many levels of the urbanized anthill.

Earth was an eternal city. This was the name of a planet where the shell of the technosphere had completely enclosed it, uniting all the continents.

Ever since the problem of the industrial fog had been overcome using absorbents, transparent walls had again come into fashion. The megasuburbs soaring into the clouds looked like enormous terrariums, where millions of people hurried about their day.   

Looking at them, John Winston Hammer experienced intense and contradictory emotions.

"Everything could have turned out differently," he couldn't help thinking in moments like these.

Three hundred and fifty years ago, when the Great Exodus ended, humanity's fate seemed sealed. Thousands of colonial transports had vanished into the unknown. Hyperspace swallowed them up without a trace, and the rush to expand fizzled out, with even the most ardent optimists turning into sceptics, and the theory of the hypersphere thrown into doubt. Dozens of unfinished starships were left standing on the Moon's shipyards.

The Sublime Electricity - 4: The Dormant

The Sublime Electricity
book IV
The Dormant

by Pavel Kornev

release - February 19, 2018

preorder now - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0789HHCB5

New Babylon is the capital of the mighty Second Empire. Dirigibles drift over the city, steam trains race down its tracks, and the factory chimneys never stop billowing smoke, even for a moment. The hegemony of science is unquestioned, and yet magic hasn't disappeared from the world. It remains dissolved in the blood of those who are called illustrious. Hardline reductionists find that hard to accept, but it is not in their power to change the longstanding status quo.

Everything threatens to change with the death of the widowed Empress, and Leopold Orso, an illustrious gentleman, can sense the looming changes clearer than most.

He feels the draw of far-away lands, but a gloomy past holds him in place like a deadly snare. Will the whirlpool of coming events will pull our troubled illustrious hero to the very bottom or throw him up to unimaginable heights? And will anything remain to throw him up to? It's impossible to say. After all, there are highly placed conspirators willing to do whatever it takes just to get what's theirs.

Bullets from hired killers, anarchists' bombs, blood magic of Aztec priests and electroshock therapy in a psychiatric clinic. Leopold will have a difficult time overcoming everything fate has in store for him and remaining himself through it all.

  

A heart preserved in a tin can,

Begins to beat again.

Steamphonia (Russian Steampunk Band), Heart

Part One
Target. Silver Bullets and a Smokescreen

1

Any razor, in its essence, is akin to the ritual sickle of the Celtic druids on the holy day of the renewal of nature. A pull of the hand and the skin becomes clean, while the face grows younger as if, together with the stubble, the weight of many days is hewn away.

I appraised my reflection in the mirror and nodded, agreeing with my own judgements. After that, I shook the foam from the razor into the basin of warm water, led the blade along my soaped-up cheek, and again - a strip of clean.

For the last week, I hadn't bothered with shaving, so it was as if the sharpened metal was carrying away time itself. I was growing younger right before my very eyes.

By the way, there’s a good reason people say razors are dangerous: if you get distracted, you’re sure to cut yourself.

I didn't get distracted. Someone distracted me.