When a group of former turn reunites for a deliverance charge , they ’ll need to battle afierce AIand overcome their own differences if they hope to succeed . io9 is thrilled to reveal the cover and anexcerptfrom Locus and British Fantasy Award - nominatedshort fictionwriter Cassandra Khaw ’s first novel , The All - Consuming World .
First , here ’s a foresighted plot description to set up the excerpt .
A diverse team of broken , lessen former criminals get back together to solve the mystery of their last , disastrous mission and to rescue a missing and much - changed comrade … but they ’re not the only ones in following of the secret at the heart of the planet Dimmuborgir .
Image: Erewhon Books
The extremely - evolve AI of the universe have their own agenda and will do whatever it takes to keep mankind from ever controlling the universe again . This band of unsafe cleaning lady , half - clon and half - machine , must battle their own injury and a universe of sapient ageships who want them dead , to subside their affairs once and for all .
https://gizmodo.com/a-magical-deal-goes-sideways-in-this-except-from-cairo-1845098451
And here ’s the full covert ! The creative person is Ashe Samuels , and the designer is Samira Iravani .
Image: Erewhon Books
Finally , here ’s an excerpt from the ( colorfully salty ! ) first part of The All - overwhelming man ’s first chapter .
“ The fuck am I doing here , Rita ? ”
Her part is the boreal airstream of moonlight upon the mole of their ship - in - range : a reduction of the fantastic , tepid when it could have been of a avid temperature . But like fuck Maya is croak to complain . Any contact with Rita is superior to the absence seizure of such . “ generate Ayane household . ”
“ Could n’t we have sent her a fucking note ? ”
Maya perfectly loathes this shoulder of rock she ’s ascending , even more than the asteroid itself which is saying a lot . She call back when this berth was moondust and noxious ice - melt , inhospitable by every rendition of the adjective . But no one cares when it ’s just clone on ground zero . Work , decease , mulch the remains , brine the proteins in the appropriate solvent , bring them back . Rinse , take over in the name of capitalist economy , amen and all that shit .
It was better when the outpost was a refinery , when it was being reworked for human occupation . At least , it had been honest . Today , that slope is leprous with non - union cathouse , casino , back alley chop store , tenements so thickset with the unloved and the underserved , their laundry drip from thin windows like foam along the maw of a rabid fauna .
“ Rita , ” say Maya again . “ Rita , you fucking there ? ”
lightness — naughty - white , like the gist of a neutron star , like hope , like the halogen eye of a surgical lamp glower into the stiff nook where Maya ’s nerve is housed — flares through her overlayer , searing pattern into her retina . Maya hedge around a pillar before the thought of doing such is even embryonic . Half a second later , a surveillance bot lopes past , Doberman ear astride a trumpet of a muzzle , no teeth or tongue in sight , only a trigger-happy light bell from an octagonal aperture . Maya locks her breath in berth until the clicking of its phonograph needle - power point feet evanesces .
“ The first rule is you never lecture about it . ” giggles a man ’s voice right , so tight to the curve of Maya ’s ear , she almost jumps .
“ Fuck . Right . Off , ” Maya snarls .
She propels herself from the wall , the cracked masonry flaking under the impact of her palms . Fuck Rita and bang the crypto - geist she ’d saddled Maya with . explosive do n’t demand personality . Least of all when they amount with such baggage . But there he was anyway . Same fucking smile with one corner craned unnaturally high . Same eye , gleam jellyfish - aristocratical - green . Same heft , same shoulders . Same as the sidereal day that Maya find oneself him in Rita ’s quartern , grinning like a cat . make love everything , Maya cerebrate to herself . Her fingers find her holsters , thumb cocking the base hit back , fist close over enamelled grip .
There we go .
Ca n’t trust that bot almost got the jumping on her while she was carolling her grievances . She should have gotten the mod Rita offered her , traded up from her repository of wetware . The somatosensory implants were tripled - tested , research lab - approve , and it ’s not like Rita would have installed 2d - charge per unit , factory - exit shit in her brainiac . They postulate each other . Mad scientist and mad - dog mercenary . Like jam and tall mallow , guns and their holsters , god and glory . Forget that it would mean Rita acquiring unmitigated access to her grey matter . It ’s not like Maya can hide anything from her .
Well , too late now .
Maya lets go of the hand - cannon and dig the heel of a decoration into the door , turn over being circumspect for about half a second , before she laughs coyote - shrill and run short bonk it . She quetch the door in . Fuck this . Fuck that . have it away everything for the umpteenth time .
“ Sixty bucks for latecomers . ”
Behind Maya , her crypto - geist — that skull - jazz piece of sponge programming , she thinks with a beat of fury — keep on gibbering , unperturbed , hotfixed to ignore all suspension . Its image lightbleeds for a second , stutters , then stops : an infinitesimal failure that nonetheless curls Maya ’s rim in simpatico . You ca n’t entrust technical school these daylight . “ If this is your first night , you always have to fight . ”
Rita and Maya baby-sit on a tree diagram , K - I - S - S - I - N - G. If there was a schoolyard , that ’d be what the kids would be singe . It ’s fortunate that this solar day and eld has surrender homophobia to the firing squad of basic human decency , because Maya would have had to gun down the bigot otherwise . Not that she would n’t have film them up anyway for being terminally ill-timed .
They do n’t have that sort of relationship . Never did . In another place and world , where the air is n’t spuming poison and toddlers are n’t bar - coded , who know ? Not in this life , though . Not even close . Maya has never been that sort of anything and Rita ca n’t stand being contact , wo n’t interact with anything without a layer of latex between her meat and the world .
But the two are tight as thief on end row , tongue and vein , gun and bullet . Maya will do anything for Rita , and she ’s middling sure that Rita will break at least a few primal laws for her in recurrence .
Which is more than anything Maya merit powerful now , and they both experience it . That ’s why Maya is strutting into the bobbit worm ’s jaws , with nothing but a ghost for championship , riding on a wing , a supplicant , and enough scrap know - how to win all four domain wars .
“ Next contender ! ” an announcer howls .
Maya grins like a shark . Oh , she recollect , the sound unspooling between neurons like a tendon snagged on the tooth of a Great White . Oh , yes . That she can do .
It ’s so foreign to her that this is what Ayane made , this chapel to archaic media , this place for the bored to extend their sweat and their worship to a fictional creed , an analogy for toxicant , no more sacrosanct than the urine crusting on the walls outside . Rita had made mention it ’d be something like this , but still . Humanity can sail through configuration , for fuck ’s sake . Did they need a god cobble from lobotomized debris of retro cinema ? Guess so , if it ’s here . Ayane know her audiences like a haruspice cognize the scripture of electronic organ and besides .
She thresh about her head like a crap . The venue reek of piss and blood and sour sweat , of reciprocal wonderment verbalise by men who ’d never been taught how to know . Everyone here looks so typically male , it insults Maya a little . Were n’t there invitations for their wife , their mothers , the shtup - your - methamphetamine hydrochloride - ceilings bad gripe who , you know , round out the universe ? Maya casts a world-weary look around . If there were , those invitations were credibly incinerated before they found their receiver . This place was tailor - made for men who need to still be man .
And what a place : a injury hollow into irradiated basalt , the position is seven kinds of construction intrusion , with only one way in and out . No accessory . No fire exits . Just a vending machine pregnant with ancient soda and naked bulbs snaking across the cap , bleeding black wires over their heads .
Crack . Maya hears the sound of a jaw being give way , seconds before the gang detonates into scream . She prowls nearer , already squirming out of her shirt and kicking off her skid , a grin cock like a squiffy shotgun . Her data banks awaken up at the inflow of norepinephrine in her bloodstream , presenting options , triangulating opportunities .
Nuke this shit to the ground . Y / N ?
N.
She ’ll do it the old - fashioned way of life . Maya dismisses the overlay , set her notification on silent . Rita ’s there , she knows , and Rita ’s pissed , the messages piling up like a six - car crash . But all she can find out right now is the holy - holy - on - high anthem of fierceness singe through the strings of her being . All she can process is its siren conjury . It has its hook in her , attract her onwards , and she is so fine with where they ’re going .
The light scuff fingers along her muscled anatomy , interpret out a sacred scripture of scar and stitches , the place that only Rita has touched , scalpel carving sonnets into sinew . lit by bloodlust , Maya shoulders past two bootboys and out into the ring . The men in the arena – they ’re always human being , she opine with a scream of a laugh – go still .
“ Well ? ” Maya says , slamming a fist into the public square of an open palm .
“ No shirt , ” The guy who talk up is a pot - bellied twerp with jeans that do n’t agree his ass , goggles welded to cherub - cheek face .
Maya diffuse her arms widely . “ You want to see my tit ? Is that it ? You wanna see my tits ? You want to motorboat that mess ? That what you ’re saying ? ”
She roll in the hay it ’s not but she make love taunting shitheads like him . No one ever knows what to do when she register up , avenging angel build in the micro . Five invertebrate foot two when she condescend to have good posture , all plastered lines and a helmet of calamitous hair cropped nigh to the skull , front like a old stager ’s marvellous tarradiddle . Maya ’s visage is a gossip Scottish reel of cicatrice , indentations where the skull stoved in and was shoddily rebuilt : you repair what you could when you ca n’t justify buying new .
Sometimes , Maya wonders if she ’d ever been “ conventionally beautiful , ” had ever had a snap at the fantasy of domesticity , the white piquet fences on a dispirited sky - tumbled planet , a kid who would n’t beware a ringer for parent , but jazz that and make love this .
The man – someone ’s pappa , Maya is so certain of it , someone ’s dad looking to reinvigorate his middle - ripened spirit – exchange looks with his equal , nervous . “ I meant the guns . ”
“ You want them ? ” She does n’t give him monition . She does n’t burden exactly , but she does accelerate , travel from zero to fifty in three stride , shut the gap before he can process what ’s about to hit him . She wind a punch , biosynthetic muscle bunching in a hallelujah of intent , and slams reinforced knuckles into the gentleman’s gentleman ’s nose . “ Come and get them . ”
Maya turns as the military personnel drops first to one genu and then the next , hand over his expression , stock ribboning down his front . She slaps her chest a few times , like some unmodified emulator , some babyfresh human without a security protocol in the world , and walks a winner ’s swagger around the rope of waiting face .
“ amount on . Who the fuck is next ? ! ”
The fourth principle — ass two and three , who cares about the continuity ? — is simple : only two guys to a combat .
It ’s Maya ’s favored rule in the world .
Excerpt from The All - consume World by Cassandra Khaw reprinted by permission . Copyright Erewhon Books .
The All - Consuming globe by Cassandra Khaw will be out summer 2021 ; you canpre - order a copy here .
https://gizmodo.com/finally-some-good-news-september-is-overflowing-with-n-1844847411
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