The wealthy and powerful could buy any kind of companionship at the Dollhouses, where the Rossum Corporation paid young people to have their minds wiped clean and be imprinted with computer-enhanced personalities and skills-all according to a buyer's request. Now the technology has gone viral, wiping the minds of everyone it reached, turning them into mindless butchers. Those who've avoided the call must try to survive their friends and families if they hope to destroy Rossum and save the world. (via Amazon)

    Dick, and Jak Koke…Los Angeles: 2063David Stalin was one of the best detectives in the business, running head-to-head with data-jackers, organ thieves, and the tech-enhanced gangs who ruled the shadowy streets of Los Angeles. He could do no wrong, until what seemed like an easy case got out of control, and left his wife dead among the abandoned ruins of old LA.After four years of self-imposed retirement, David suddenly finds himself back on the job, struggling to unravel a crime far worse than murder. This time, he’s not the hunter. As he’s about to discover, the past isn’t finished with him yet.

    Except that someone, some unseen rival, seems set on using even the most old-fashioned of methods to stop him from succeeding.John Smith was successful once, if only for a fleeting moment. Now the documentary film maker is broke and jobless, and finds himself putting his life on the line as one of the new-breed of paparazzi – snapping celebrity video gamers in virtual worlds.And on the sun-bleached streets of Havana two young Cubans find themselves locked in a fierce struggle with one of the world’s most powerful organisations, as a seemingly innocent video game tournament becomes a fight for both personal and national pride.Paintwork is a collection of three stories from our imminent future by British science fiction author Tim Maughan, including the 2010 BSFA Short Fiction Award nominated ‘Havana Augmented’.

    This sourcebook details the inner workings of the different types of space habitats in Eclipse Phase, provides comprehensive information on surveillance and sousveillance technologies, and explores uplifts (animals raised to human-level sapience) and the sociopolitical challenges they face.

    

    Beautiful, sexy, totally obedient, and extremely expensive.Ex-law officer and now private eye Petr Tempest finds himself owing and totally dependent on Justine, his very own LiSA, after his life and sanity are destroyed by Blood War, a terrorist bio-hacker organisation. Made into a violent sex addict by his cure, Justine allows him to safely vent his need to regularly indulge in the wildest sadistic sex imaginable.But behind the LiSAs themselves is a terrible secret, and a new client soon has him and the faithful Justine involved in a wild ride of sadistic sex and murder on the planet of Baskerville, the galaxy's greatest Victorian Era resort, where kinky sex is the order of the day.

    From the publisher:"...SVK is a modern detective story, one that Ellis describes as “Franz Kafka’s Bourne Identity”.It’s a story about cities, technology and surveillance, mixed with human themes of the power, corruption and lies that lurk in the data-smog of our near-future."

    Who the gnome finds might be more interesting than he’d expected.(Timeline note: This free read takes place prior to Chapter Four in Hacked Investigations 2: Savage Bytes.)

    Dick was one of the most popular science fiction novelists of the 20th century, but the contradictory and wily writer has troubled critics who attempt encompassing explanations of his work. This book examines Dick's writing through the lens of ontological uncertainty, providing a comparative map of his oeuvre, tracing both the interior connections between books and his allusive intertextuality. Topics covered include time travel, alternate worlds, androids and simulacra, finite subjective realities and schizophrenia. Twenty novels are explored in detail, including titles that have received scant critical attention. Some of his most important short stories and two of his realist novels are also examined, providing a general introduction to Dick's body of work.