-
Welcome to Tales From Beyond Tomorrow – Volumes One and Two!
What strange fate awaits you … beyond tomorrow?
This first collection of short stories and novellas includes visions of alternative history, where alterations of events and technology have produced worlds eerily different from our own.
From a traumatized Spiritualist medium trying to redeem himself in a bizarre Steampunk London, to sinister angels that haunt the trenches of World War I … from a team of super-powered vigilantes fighting to keep order in a seventies New York City gone mad, to a TV evangelist preaching to an environmentally devastated Europe … these stories will propel you from one reality to another, like a giant cosmic pinball machine!
Kindle and paperback available here.
August, 1885: Somewhere in Arizona. Ten people awake to find themselves in an isolated ghost town in the middle of the desert. How did they get there? Why were they abducted from their homes? What is the shadowy presence watching their every move?
February, 1937: Venice. The city is in the middle of Carnival festivities, but behind the masks, fireworks and gaiety, a nameless evil haunts the shadow-filled streets. The insane theories of the renegade scientist Professor Danilov are about to have a momentous effect on the rise to power of Adolf Hitler … and the mysterious Plague Doctors are waiting in the wings …
October, 1987: London. A British Army EOD unit is frantically trying to defuse an armed nuclear bomb in the center of the capital. Their best man, Senior Explosives Officer Christopher Owen, is on site. He is working without food, without rest, and without fear … because SEO Owen is no longer human …
ENTER THE MYSTERIOUS, MADDENING WORLDS THAT LIE “BEYOND TOMORROW” … TWELVE TALES OF FUTURES THAT NEVER WERE, AND YESTERDAYS THAT ARE YET TO BE …
BUY TALES FROM BEYOND TOMORROW, VOLUME TWO HERE!
The twelve stories are also available as ‘e-shorts’ on Amazon, under the series title of The Futurist Manifesto.
#1: “The Invention of God”
Mr. Gregory was the most renowned Spiritualist Medium in Victorian Britain – until the agents of the Ottoman Empire ordered him killed, and he was forced into a hunted, vagrant existence in the most squalid parts of London. Now Lady Florence Padbury, head of Imperial Counter Intelligence, wants to bring Gregory back to serve the Crown on one more mission: to contact the soul of a murdered inventor … a man who held the key to a revolutionary new technology that could give the British Empire’s airships and steam-walkers the winning edge in the Crimean War.
#2: “Dulce et Decorum Est”
Ypres, 1917: the height of the First World War. Captain Martin Blake and his squad are trapped in a nightmarish maze of flooded trenches and barbed wire on the Passchendaele Ridge. Amongst the bombs, bullets and gas, however, an unearthly menace is lurking, threatening reality itself. The Angels of Mons have returned … and they’re not Angels anymore.
#3: #The Elements of War”
December, 1940. Frank Cooper is working as a medical orderly at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, while trying to survive the London Blitz. It’s coming up to Christmas, and he’s saving up up his cash and coupons to buy an engagement present for his girlfriend, Liz – but bombs, blackouts and rationings are the least of his problems. The mysterious figures that haunt his dreams and nightmares have begun to invade his daily life, and are walking the streets of London … and they may be more powerful and terrifying than anything in Hitler’s war machine.
#4: “Jimmy Diamond and the Girl from Venus”
London, 1965. The city is a swinging, futuristic metropolis filled with Mods, Rockers, robots, moon rockets, laser pistols and flying scooters. Jimmy Diamond is a young Private Investigator struggling to make ends meet; when a gorgeous dolly bird walks into his office, asking him to find her missing scientist father, he jumps at the chance to take the case. He doesn’t know that soon he’ll be on the run from MI5 agents, British Venusian Society cult members, and a gang of killer robots.
Things they do look awful cold … seems like Jimmy’s going to die before he gets old!
#5: “Nightfall In Utopia”
July 13th, 1977: New York City is paralyzed by a mysterious blackout, cutting off all electrical power. NYPD Lieutenant Luke Cambridge and his men are trying to keep order in the streets, but lootings and muggings are the least of their troubles. Max Jankovitz, Director of E.A.G.L.E. (Executive Action Group – Law Enforcement) has ordered the NYPD to assist the city’s Over-Heroes … billionaire genius Lewis LeBeau has just kidnapped the Vice-President of the USA … and an eerie, impenetrable cloud has enveloped the top floors of the Empire State building.
The temperature is rising … the darkness is falling … after tonight, Manhattan will never be the same again!
#6: “Skin Condition”
The year is 1992 in an environmentally devastated, dystopian Britain. The wealthy and controversial TV evangelist Howard Hopgood lies in a London hospital, dying of a rare skin cancer. He is preparing to make a deal with the shadowy XPT-Meditech Coporation, who possess a dangerous new technology that can restore him to health … but at what cost?
# 7: “City of Reflections”
February, 1937; Venice. The city is in the middle of Carnival festivities, but behind the masks, fireworks and gaiety, a nameless evil haunts the shadow-filled streets. What are the insane theories of the renegade scientist Professor Danilov? How will they influence Hitler and the Nazi’s march to European supremacy? Who are the mysterious Plague Doctors watching Danilov’s every move?
#8: “Fast Falls The Eventide”
October, 1987. A British Army EOD unit is frantically trying to defuse an armed nuclear bomb in the center of London. Their best man, Senior Explosives Officer Christopher Owen, is on site. He is working without food, without rest, and without fear … because SEO Owen is no longer human …
#9: “A Coffin Full Of Stars”
Arizona, 1885. Ten people awake to find themselves in an isolated ghost town in the middle of the desert. They have no memory of how they got there, and no idea why they were abducted from their homes.
As they search the empty town for clues to the mystery, they gradually realize that a nameless evil force is watching them from the shadows and dogging their steps … something invisible, inhuman, and unstoppable …
#10: “Into The Valley”
East England, May, 1943: the turning of the tide of World War II. The seven crewmembers of the Avro Lancaster bomber “Resurgam” board their plane, ready for their final bombing mission. Their journey will take them beyond life … beyond death … and beyond the edge of reality itself …
#11: “Firewater”
Salt Lake City, 1924: Although prosperous and respectable on the surface, the state of Utah is home to a huge number of speak-easies, illegal hooch production, and racketeering. Brandon Stone, President of the Stone Industries Corporation, leads a double life as the vigilante known as The Pendulum, waging a private war against organized crime.
This uneasy balance of law and larceny is thrown into chaos as a new menace invades Salt Lake City. What fiery curse is striking down the city’s mobsters, turning them into human torches bursting into flames without warning? Why have the Skinwalkers, bestial creatures from ancient mythology, returned to haunt the Indian reservations? Who is the new vigilante that has appeared in the city, even more powerful and merciless than the Pendulum?
Brandon Stone and his allies must find the source of this new evil, before it spreads out from Utah to engulf the United States … and then the entire world …
#12: “The Martian Dialogues”
Mars, 1999: Mikhail Krylenko, Hero of the Soviet Union, leader of a multinational team exploring the red planet, has gone berserk, destroying the communication equipment and hiding in the habitation module’s sterile white corridors. Has he been infected by some unexpected Martian pathogen … or is he trying to save the expedition from something much stranger?