Ends

Join an awe-inspiring journey through a world where death has stopped in the finale of James Smythe’s acclaimed Anomaly Quartet. Decades ago, a vast object called the Anomaly was discovered moving through space. Missions sent to explore it found that anyone entering the Anomaly was unable to die. It kept moving, across our solar system, until finally the Anomaly enveloped Earth. Thirty years later, on the West Coast of the US, Theo hears that his missing wife has been sighted – in London. He’s sick, and getting worse, so he sets off to find her. Theo’s quest will take him across continents, through abandoned cities and new communities, meeting with bandits, artists, and cultists, murderers and heroes and survivors. Because this is a world of humanity at its absolute worst, and at its very best. A world where everything has been irrevocably altered, yet somehow still remains the same.

Reviews of the Explorer: ‘It's like an episode of Star Trek written by JM Coetzee’ Guardian ‘The Explorer has the dreamlike detachment of an Ishiguro novel’ Financial Times ‘Beautifully written, creepy as hell. The Explorer is as clever in its unravelling as it is breathlessly claustrophobic’ Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls ‘As you marvel at this twist-laden deep-space exploration thriller, it’s hard not to draw comparisons with Duncan Jones’ film Moon’ Shortlist ‘A fascinating character study that could only exist in a science-fictional world’ io9.com 'The SF novel everyone should read' Foyles

James Smythe is the winner of the Wales Fiction Book of the Year 2013 and shortlisted nominee for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2014. He is the author of the Anomaly Quartet which includes The Explorer and The Echo. James currently lives in London and teaches creative writing. Twitter @jpsmythe