Chris Beckett

The genre of creative non-fiction has never been more playful with form, and so this issue of Hinterland celebrates the art of experimentation. Headlining the issue we have an epistolary essay from Jenn Ashworth (Ghosted, Notes Made While Falling) written to her younger self’s favourite author. We also sit down to chat with Doireann Ní Ghríofa about her hybrid work of non-fiction and auto-fiction, A Ghost in the Throat. Also featuring writing by Chris Beckett, Chris Cusack, Pune Dracker, Jacqueline Ellis, Jordan Harrison-Twist, Alice Kent, Laura Knott, Aaron Landsman, Carla Montemayor and Jon Paul Roberts.

A fascinating and unsettling anthology of 32 science fiction short stories in tribute to the prophetic dystopias of New Wave sci-fi pioneer, and literary titan of the twentieth century, J. G. Ballard-featuring Will Self, Iain Sinclair, Christopher Fowler, Chris Beckett, and a new Jerry Cornelius story from Michael Moorcock.Few authors are so iconic that their name is an adjective - Ballard is one of them.Master of both literary and science fiction, his novels such as Empire of the Sun, Crash and Cocaine Nights show a world out of joint - a bewildering, alienating and yet enthralling place. From his rapturously weird takes on contemporary reality to his classic dystopias like The Drowned World and High Rise, Ballard's legacy shaped the future of literature. This first-of-its-kind anthology, featuring our greatest literary and science fiction authors, including the pioneering Will Self, pays tribute to the unique visions of humanity's uncanny and uneasy clash with the future - our empires of concrete - seen through the warped lens of J. G. Ballard.Edited by renowned editors Maxim Jakubowski and Rick McGrath, this collection includes stories by:Will SelfIain SinclairChristopher FowlerChris BeckettMichael MoorcockJeff NoonPreston GrassmannToby LittChristine PoulsonDavid GordonHanna JamesonJames LovegroveRamsey CampbellBarry N. MalzbergPaul Di FilippoSamathan Lee HoweNick MamatasAdrian McKintyRhys HughesAdrian ColePat CadiganAdam RobertsGeorge SandisonGeoff NicholsonA.K. BenedictAndrew HookDavid QuantickLavie TidharJames Grady

We enjoyed our Robots and AI book so much that we’ve followed up by splitting these topics in two, particularly because in the world of Generative AI, Robots and Artificial Intelligence are moving rapidly in new directions. This new Robots anthology delves into the fascinating evolution of robots – from the mechanical marvels of the past to the imaginative possibilities of the future. Whether exploring the nostalgia of retro robotics, envisioning futuristic automatons, or unique stories that bridge the two, this exciting collection brings together classic fiction of robots from the past and combines them with new stories by modern authors. New, contemporary and notable writers featured are: Charlotte Brookins, Victoria Brun, Deborah L. Davitt, Calvin Demmer, Tianna Ebnet, Joshua James Jordan, Abigail Kemske, Simone King, Akis Linardos, Brian K. Lowe, Lorian Moore, Soumya Sundar Mukherjee, Lee Murray, Mariah Southworth, M.C. St. John, Nathanael K. Stottlemyer, Brian Trent, Anne Wilkins, Marissa Yarrow, and Ramez Yoakeim. These appear alongside classic work by Eando Binder, Ray Bradbury, Thea von Harbou, C.L. Moore and many others. The Flame Tree Gothic Fantasy, Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections bring together the entire range of myth, folklore and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure.

Our bestselling social work textbook is back again. Taking you right back to basics, this book explains and analyses key theories in a really accessible way before going on to discuss, in detail, how theory can be incorporated into every day social work practice. Each chapter contains activities with step-by-step commentaries for discussion, self-analysis and critical reflection. The book very loosely follows the shape of a human life, beginning with a birth and ending with a death, but many of the chapters deal with ideas and topics that are relevant at many different stages of life, such as bereavement, attachment and learning. Its focus throughout is on psychosocial development – so psychological development within a social context – rather than physical development. This book is by Chris Beckett, a social work academic and novelist who previously worked in child and family social work, and Hilary Taylor, a psychotherapist and former social work academic who used to work in the field of social work with adults. It is the go-to guide for anyone studying for careers in the helping professions, such as nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, teachers and counsellors. It's also supported by an online case study resource. Follow the lives of people living in the fictional London Borough of Bexford, with 12 extended case studies to help you explore key issues and themes raised in the book as well as develop the skill of linking theory to practice.

Our bestselling social work textbook is back again. Taking you right back to basics, this book explains and analyses key theories in a really accessible way before going on to discuss, in detail, how theory can be incorporated into every day social work practice. Each chapter contains activities with step-by-step commentaries for discussion, self-analysis and critical reflection. The book very loosely follows the shape of a human life, beginning with a birth and ending with a death, but many of the chapters deal with ideas and topics that are relevant at many different stages of life, such as bereavement, attachment and learning. Its focus throughout is on psychosocial development – so psychological development within a social context – rather than physical development. This book is by Chris Beckett, a social work academic and novelist who previously worked in child and family social work, and Hilary Taylor, a psychotherapist and former social work academic who used to work in the field of social work with adults. It is the go-to guide for anyone studying for careers in the helping professions, such as nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, teachers and counsellors. It's also supported by an online case study resource. Follow the lives of people living in the fictional London Borough of Bexford, with 12 extended case studies to help you explore key issues and themes raised in the book as well as develop the skill of linking theory to practice.

The fascinating new novel from Chris Beckett, the Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author.'Tomorrow I'm going to begin my novel...'A would-be author has taken time out from life in the city to live in a cabin by a river and write a novel.And not just any novel. A novel that will avoid all the pitfalls and limitations of other novels, a novel that will include everything. At first these new surroundings are so idyllic that it's hard to find the motivation to get started. And then, in all its brutality, the outside world intervenes...Ranging constantly backwards and forwards in time and space, Tomorrow becomes a restless search for meaning in a precarious and elusive world.

The fascinating new novel from Chris Beckett, the Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author.'Tomorrow I'm going to begin my novel...'A would-be author has taken time out from life in the city to live in a cabin by a river and write a novel.And not just any novel. A novel that will avoid all the pitfalls and limitations of other novels, a novel that will include everything. At first these new surroundings are so idyllic that it's hard to find the motivation to get started. And then, in all its brutality, the outside world intervenes...Ranging constantly backwards and forwards in time and space, Tomorrow becomes a restless search for meaning in a precarious and elusive world.

'Brilliantly and chillingly imagined' Guardian'Explored with wit, thoughtfulness and emotional weight' SpectatorAs a historian in the bleak, climate-ravaged twenty-third century, it's Zoe's job to record and archive the past, not to recreate it. But when she comes across the diaries of Harry and Michelle, who lived two hundred years ago, she becomes fascinated by the minutiae of their lives and decides to write a novel about them, filling in the gaps with her own imaginings.Harry and Michelle meet just after the Brexit referendum when Harry's car breaks down outside a small town in Norfolk. Despite their different backgrounds, and Michelle having voted Leave while Harry voted Remain, they are drawn to each other and begin a relationship.From her long perspective, the way Zoe sees their world is somewhat different from the way we see it now. Two Tribes becomes a reflection on the way our ideas are shaped by class and social circumstances, and how they change without us even noticing. It explores what divides us and what brings us together. And it asks where we may be headed next.

Supervising work that takes place outside your view is a challenge, as is making the best use of the supervision you receive.This guide aims to help both supervisors and supervisees use supervision to maximise learning, and to support best practice.

Award winning science fiction and fantasy magazine, featuring new short stories, articles, artwork, poetry, book reviews and more. The Silent Woods - Tony Ballantyne and Chris BeckettWe are Still Here - Anya OwSingularity - Davide ManaStay, Conscience - Gregory A. AustinBlank Slates - H w SteerThe Ghostlands - Mariah MontoyaA Cracked Teapot - Sherry ShahanThe Cyclops - Teika Marija SmitsWe Fall Like Leaves Fall - Raman MundairWhere would our eternal Roman Empire be without coffee? - Ian Watson2020 Shoreline of Infinity Flash Fiction Competition - the prize winning storiesTales of the Beachcomber- Mark TonerNoise and Sparks: A YA Revolutionary's Guide To the Pandemic - Ruth EJ BoothBiopolis: building the stories - Jane McKie & Gavin InglisSF Caledonia: Laura Lam- in Goldilocks Country - Pippa GoldschmidtSF Poetry - F. J. Bergmann, Karen Dennison, Finola ScottQuadrant - report from our Book Group review of Docile bu K.M. SzparaOther Book ReviewsHappiness for Humans by P.Z. ReizinOne Love Chigusa Soji Shimada (Author), David Warren (Translator)To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher PaoliniThe Doors of Eden by Adrian TchaikovskyThe Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Supervising work that takes place outside your view is a challenge, as is making the best use of the supervision you receive.This guide aims to help both supervisors and supervisees use supervision to maximise learning, and to support best practice.

A Tenderfoot is a novice, someone unaccustomed to hardship. Here, he is a white boy growing up in 1960s Ethiopia, a place he loves even as he learns his own privilege and foreignness. Later he hears rumours of a famine in the mountains and imagines a boy his own age living through it, surviving on angry couplets. Years after, he sees this famine-boy grown up and questions him. A sequel to Ethiopia Boy, Beckett's celebrated first Carcanet collection, Tenderfoot teems with praise-shouts for Asfaw the cook, for the boys living as minibus conductors or chewing-gum sellers, even for Tenderfoot's own stomach that hangs 'like a leopard in a thorn acacia tree'. Featuring storms and droughts, hunger and desire, donkeys who quote Samuel Johnson and a red bicycle that invites you on a poem tour of Addis Ababa, Tenderfoot takes in what is happening around but also inside the boy's mind and body - a human transformation.

'A disturbing descent into a surreal world, written with a deft hand.' Adrian Tchaikovsky, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2016Deep in an unnamed, unknown rainforest, Ben Ronson, a British police officer, investigates a spate of killings of a local, vaguely humanoid species. With long limbs and black button eyes, the Duendes are strange and silent creatures that have a deep psychic effect on people, unleashing the subconscious and exposing their innermost thoughts and fears. Ben rapidly becomes fascinated by the Duendes, but as his inquiry unfolds so too does he. Beneath the World, A Sea is a tour de force of modern fiction - a deeply searching and unsettling novel about the human subconscious, and all that lies beneath.'Beckett is superb at undercutting reader assumptions with a casual line of dialogue or acute psychological observation: the book reads like Conrad's Heart of Darkness reimagined by JG Ballard.' Guardian

Shoreline of Infinity Science Fiction Magazine is the winner of the British Fantasy Society Award 2018 for best magazine/periodical.New StoriesBo Balder - The Elephant KeeperS.A.M Rundell - The WeaversBrian M. Milton - Community Servicedave ring - Galaxies of Rotten StarsJeremy Nelson - Goatherd InquisitionPeyman Saremian - Ultimate CodeRaymond W Gallacher - The OverwriteSimon Fung - Those who live by the shawarmaEmma Levin - Search HistoryAnna Ziegelhof - Dimenso-yarn ad copy, draftMark Toner - Tales of the Beachcomber Ruth EJ Booth - award winning column, Noise and SparksChris Beckett - interviewSF Caledonia: J.T. McIntoshPoems fromFrederick PollackLaura WattsEmma LevinFeaturing: Russell Jones' Prime Jokes

'A disturbing descent into a surreal world, written with a deft hand.' Adrian Tchaikovsky, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2016South America, 1990. Ben Ronson, a British police officer, arrives in a mysterious forest to investigate a spate of killings of Duendes. These silent, vaguely humanoid creatures - with long limbs and black button eyes - have a strange psychic effect on people, unleashing the subconscious and exposing their innermost thoughts and fears. Ben becomes fascinated by the Duendes, but the closer he gets, the more he begins to unravel, with terrifying results...Beneath the World, A Sea is a tour de force of modern fiction - a deeply searching and unsettling novel about the human subconscious, and all that lies beneath.'Beckett is superb at undercutting reader assumptions with a casual line of dialogue or acute psychological observation: the book reads like Conrad's Heart of Darkness reimagined by JG Ballard.' Guardian

Arthur C. Clarke Award-Winning Author'An uneasy read that manages to feel both timely and urgent... Beckett offers an intelligent, visceral reminder that unless we change what today looks like, tomorrow will be turbulent indeed.' - GuardianAmerica, one century on: a warmer climate is causing vast movements of people. Droughts, floods and hurricanes force entire populations to abandon their homes. Tensions are mounting between north and south, and some northern states are threatening to close their borders against homeless fellow-Americans from the south.Against this backdrop, an ambitious young British-born publicist, Holly Peacock, meets a new client, the charismatic Senator Slaymaker, a politician whose sole mission is to keep America together, reconfiguring the entire country in order to meet the challenge of the new climate realities as a single, united nation. When he runs for President, Holly becomes his right hand woman, doing battle on the whisperstream, where stories are everything and truth counts for little.But can they bring America together - or have they set the country on a new, but equally devastating, path?

A thought-provoking collection of contemporary short stories from the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award 2013.Chris Beckett's thought-provoking and wide-ranging collection of contemporary short stories is a joy to read, rich in detail and texture. From stories about first love, to a man who discovers a labyrinth beneath his house, to an angel left alone at the end of the universe, Beckett displays both incredible range and extraordinary subtlety as a writer. Every story is a world unto itself - each one beautifully realized and brilliantly imagined.

'An uneasy read that manages to feel both timely and urgent... Beckett offers an intelligent, visceral reminder that unless we change what today looks like, tomorrow will be turbulent indeed.' - GuardianAmerica, one century on: a warmer climate is causing vast movements of people. Droughts, floods and hurricanes force entire populations to simply abandon their homes. Tensions are mounting between north and south, and some northern states are threatening to close their borders against homeless fellow-Americans from the south.Against this backdrop, an ambitious young British-born publicist, Holly Peacock, meets a new client, the charismatic Senator Slaymaker, a politician whose sole mission is to keep America together, reconfiguring the entire country in order to meet the challenge of the new climate realities as a single, united nation. When he runs for President, Holly becomes his right hand woman, doing battle on the whisperstream, where stories are everything and truth counts for little.But can they bring America together - or have they set the country on a new, but equally devastating, path?

An awareness of one’s own ethical assumptions and how these inform everyday practice is crucial for all student social workers. Social workers who genuinely wish to do the right thing by their services users have no alternative but to constantly think and rethink the principles and assumptions that inform their actions, and this book supports them on their journey to do just that. This third edition is set out in two parts: Part I deals with broad ideas about values and ethics in general, looking at philosophy, religion and politics, as well as the duty of realism. Part II takes the discussion further, looking at how these general principles are relevant to everyday practice, with chapters on the use and misuse of power, the idea of self-determination, and the challenges of working with people whose experience and outlook are different to one’s own.