infinity plus: Glass by Stephen Palmer

Glass by Stephen Palmer

A plague is spreading through the city of Cray. Nobody knows its origin and nobody has discovered a cure. Cray is dying. Of glass.

As the city's ruling council resorts to increasingly desperate measures to maintain order, two people's lives are about to change. When the Keeper of the Cowhorn Tower witnesses a vast lens in the night sky, his work collating the city's scattered historical records takes on a significance he could not have imagined. And when Subadwan the Archivist is chosen to explore a land she never knew existed, she finds herself at the centre of a plot which threatens to shatter the very nature of reality.

And the glass plague advances.

Glass is the brilliantly imaginative and instantly compelling second novel by Stephen Palmer, whose Memory Seed was acclaimed as one of the most outstanding debuts in recent years.

Cover by Stephen Palmer

Published: 03 Dec 2013

"Not always a comfortable read, Glass is haunting and hallucinatory in its effect, a journey into a dreamlike world littered with evocative names and savagely bizarre images. This latest novel confirms that in Stephen Palmer, science fiction has gained a distinctive new voice." Ottaker's SF newsletter, Lee Mason

"Blending good science fiction with an elegant exploration of the relationship between humans and their ancient electronic creations, Palmer's tale is littered with characters who behave in an ultimately believable way... This is a brilliant second novel and makes, like its predecessor, a welcome change in a genre clogged with tat." SFX, Guy Haley * Best Original SF novel of the year: Guy Haley's choice in SFX, Dec 1997.

"Stephen Palmer's Glass is somewhat easier to read but even more strange than his first novel, Memory Seed, to which it is a sort-of sequel... This is no ordinary SF novel with nice neat explanations; we're never really told how we got there from here, only that the city of Cray is some five hundred years old. What happened before that, to create the city, and why? That's where the link between the two books come in... but don't expect it all to be spelt out for you... In both his poetic style of language and his elliptical style of plotting, Stephen Palmer looks set to become a British Gene Wolfe... Give him a try; his originality is refreshing." Freelance Informer, David V. Barrett

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Stephen Palmer

Stephen Palmer is the author of fifteen novels: Memory Seed (Orbit 1996; Infinity Plus ebooks 2013), Glass (Orbit 1997; Infinity Plus ebooks 2013), Flowercrash (Wildside 2002; Infinity Plus ebooks 2013), Muezzinland (Wildside 2003; Infinity Plus ebooks 2011), Hallucinating (Wildside 2004; Infinity Plus ebooks 2011), The Rat & The Serpent (as Bryn Llewellyn, Prime Books 2005; Infinity Plus ebooks 2012) and Urbis Morpheos (PS Publishing 2010). His eighth novel, the surreal and fast-paced Hairy London, was published by Infinity Plus Books as a paperback and ebook in 2014, while the ninth, Beautiful Intelligence, was published in 2015, as was the subsequent short novel No Grave for a Fox. In 2016 Infinity Plus Books published his Edwardian steampunk trilogy, Factory Girl. His most recent novel, published in 2019, is The Conscientious Objector. His short stories have been published by Spectrum, Wildside, NewCon, Unspoken Water, Mutation Press, Solaris, Theakers, Eibonvale, Dog Horn, Manchester Speculative Fiction, Woodbridge Press and elsewhere. He lives and works in Shropshire, UK.