Memory Seed

There is one city left, and soon that will be gone, for the streets of Kray are crumbling beneath a wave of exotic and lethal vegetation as it creeps south, threatening to wipe out the last traces of humanity. In the desperate struggle for survival most Krayans live from day to day, awaiting salvation from their goddesses or the government. Only a few believe that the future might lie in their own hands. Zinina, having fled from the Citadel, determined to discover what secrets are buried beneath it... Arrahaquen, daughter of a member of the all-powerful Red Brigade, whose privileged position makes her insurgency all the more dangerous... Graaf-lin, channelling the prophecies of the Eastcity serpents and racing against time to infiltrate the city's computer networks before they collapse... And a man, deKray, whose sudden appearance accompanies a startling sequence of events... Set on a world both deadly and fascinating, Memory Seed is a compelling first novel which heralds a powerful new voice in science fiction. This ebook edition includes two short stories set in the same world as the novel. "Memory Seed flowers into a very convincing and entertaining first novel. The sense of location is particularly well realised, with the wretched overrun streets, the lost quarters of the city and the impinging ruin depicted particularly vividly... This attractive voice, coupled with a complex and fascinating plot and a simple but stylish book design, makes Memory Seed a notable debut novel." SFX "The exotic horticulture is as inventive as anything in Aldiss' classic Hothouse, and parallels with present environmental concerns aren't bludgeoned home... Palmer is a find." Time Out "Memory Seed is a speculative novel of the distant future that extrapolates many of today's environmental and New Age concerns into an enjoyable thriller about human survival against the odds. Stephen Palmer has concocted a beguiling adventure that draws on some of the best sf of recent years for its basic themes, yet also adds just as much to the genre's melting-pot of ideas." Starburst "Palmer's imagination is fecund, and his city, inhabited by clashing tribes of women (men are confined to breeding houses), with exotic biotechnologies which enable computers and other machines to be grown from genetically engineered seeds, is vividly drawn... Despite the multiplication of plot threads, Palmer is meticulous in tying up the loose ends... a hectic but ultimately convincing debut." Interzone "Stephen Palmer has a powerful imagination and the scenes of urban collapse and encroaching jungle are vivid and compelling. In this respect he has created an intriguing dystopian ecological-catastrophe novel, diverging from the recent trend of socially-driven catastrophes in British sf." Foundation "Just reading it is enough to give you hayfever... Memory Seed is a promising debut. Palmer takes biotech to its farthest extreme, and beyond into entropy, yet he offers a flicker of hope." Locus