Adrian Tchaikovsky

Firewalkers Are Brave.
Firewalkers Are Resourceful.
Firewalkers Are Expendable.

The Earth is burning. Nothing can survive at the Anchor; not without water and power. But the ultra-rich, waiting for their ride off the dying Earth? They can buy water. And thanks to their investment, the sun can provide power.

But someone has to repair the solar panels when they fail, down in the deserts below.

Kids like

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"Making friends has never been so important. Welcome to Fountains Parish--a cesspit of trade and crime, where ambition curls up to die and desperation grows on its cobbled streets like mold on week-old bread. Coppelia is a street thief, a trickster, a low-level con artist. But she has something other thieves don't... tiny puppet-like companions: some made of wood, some of metal. They don't entirely trust her, and she doesn't entirely understand them,...

In a sequel to the much-praised Dogs of War, Honey the genetically engineered bear takes a ride in Jimmy the Martian's head and starts a revolution on the Red Planet.Mars. The red planet. A new frontier for humanity: a civilization where humans can live in peace, lord and master of all they survey.But this isn't Space City from those old science-fiction books. It's more like Hell City, built into and from a huge crater. There's a big silk canopy over...

Original short story offering a new perspective while set in the same action-packed gaslamp world.

I'M LOST. I'M SCARED. AND THERE'S SOMETHING HORRIBLE IN HERE. My name is Gary Rendell. I'm an astronaut. When they asked me as a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, "astronaut, please!" I dreamed astronaut, I worked astronaut, I studied astronaut. I got lucky; when a probe exploring the Oort Cloud found a strange alien rock and an international team of scientists was put together to go and look at it, I made the draw. I got even...

Scions have no limits. Scions do not die. And Scions do not disappear. Sergeant Ted Regan has a problem. A son of one of the great corporate families, a Scion, has gone missing at the front. He should have been protected by his Ironclad – the lethal battle suits that make the Scions masters of war – but something has gone catastrophically wrong. Now Regan and his men, ill-equipped and demoralized, must go behind enemy lines, find the missing Scion,...

My name is Rex. I am a good dog…Rex is also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry, and a deadly weapon in a dirty war. He's part of a Multiform Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, south-eastern Mexico. He has the intelligence to carry out his orders and feedback implants to reward him when he does. All he wants to be is a Good Dog, and to do that he must do exactly what Master...

"There has always been a darkness to Ilmar, but never more so than now. The city chafes under the heavy hand of the Palleseen occupation, the choke-hold of its criminal underworld, the boot of its factory owners, the weight of its wretched poor and the burden of its ancient curse. What will be the spark that lights the conflagration? Despite the city's refugees, wanderers, murderers, madmen, fanatics and thieves, the catalyst, as always, will be the...

Idris, an enhanced human, and his crew, 50 years after the destruction of the earth by alien aggressors, the Architects, discover something strange in space that many people would kill to obtain--and could herald the return of the enemy.

"Earth failed. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, Heorest Holt, carried its precious human cargo to a potential new paradise. Generations later, this fragile colony has managed to survive, eking out a hardy existence. Yet life is tough, and much technological knowledge has been lost. Then strangers appear. They possess unparalleled knowledge and thrilling technology--and they've arrived from another world to help humanity's...