Ken MacLeod Books in Order

In a fractured future Britain, mercenary Mohn Kohn crosses paths with a fugitive scientist and a teenager escaping religious fundamentalism. A rogue computer program draws them into events that could overturn the political order.

A clone arrives on New Mars carrying Jonathan Wilde’s memories of Earth, ideological battles, and nuclear confrontation. His past entanglements with planetary leader David Reid bring personal rivalries into a society where human existence is precarious.

A woman commanding the Solar Union’s elite defense force confronts posthumans whose technological transformations have given them extraordinary powers. Protecting her utopian society means facing beings whose ambitions may threaten the future of ordinary humanity.

As humanity attempts to return to space centuries after catastrophe, scholar Clovis investigates historical archives at his lover’s urging. His research connects a new spacecraft project with Myra Godwin’s decisions during an earlier civilization’s collapse.

Outlaw programmer Matt Cairns accepts a job to penetrate a secret orbital station. On a distant world, exobiology student Gregor Cairns and his research partner pursue his family’s centuries-long effort to recover the knowledge of interstellar travel.

Gregor Cairns and his companions use rediscovered interstellar travel to reach a neighboring star system. Seeking the original cosmonauts, they want answers from the powerful intelligences responsible for transplanting humans and other species across the galaxy.

In an alternative history where World War III began in 1949, Joe Stalin becomes a legendary leader of guerrilla resistance against Western forces. Flying saucers hover above the battlefields, adding an alien mystery to prolonged global conflict.

Nova Babylonia has deteriorated after the collapse of its regime and the failure of expected alien invaders to arrive. An outsider enters the corrupt city with uncertain intentions, joining other visitors whose presence unsettles its fragile order.

An expedition raids a mysterious artifact on Eurydice, where descendants of refugees from Earth’s sentient war machines live. The intrusion exposes them to competing human factions and threatens to awaken machines that have long remained dormant.

A colony ship nearing the end of a four-century voyage discovers an alien civilization where its probes reported only primitive life. With outside assistance impossibly distant, the inhabitants must decide how to approach this unexpected first contact.

This collection brings together Ken MacLeod’s poems, stories, essays, reports, and articles in one volume. Moving between fiction and nonfiction, the book presents different forms of his writing rather than following the single narrative of one of his novels.

In a future Scotland disrupted by climate change and war with China, Jase, Euan, and Murdo are forced to build power lines in the Highlands. Meeting Ailiss, a woman from a hidden settlement, tests their loyalties and their willingness to obey.

After a nuclear attack in Scotland, British patriot and French spy James Travis tries to understand events with his daughter. Bloggers, police, and political operatives compete to shape information, leaving firsthand evidence their only dependable guide.

Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson investigates a church bombing that kills a bishop in a society where religion has become politically marginal. Further attacks challenge the assumption that militant atheists are responsible, expanding the danger beyond believers.

Edinburgh game developer Lucy Stone’s project becomes a potential meeting place for revolutionaries in her troubled birthplace, Krassnia. Research into its folklore draws her into family secrets and political intrigue as a regional border war erupts.

An assassin stalks influential political figure Angus Cameron through a technologically enhanced Sydney. A warning about an undocumented genetic upgrade draws Cameron toward a covert struggle between rival powers, where apparently routine improvements may conceal a new form of warfare.

Pregnant Hope Morrison refuses a pill intended to eliminate genetic defects in her unborn child. In a closely regulated future London, her decision divides those around her and places her family at risk of imprisonment.

Ryan witnesses an unexplained event in the hills near his Scottish town, unsettling his skepticism about UFOs. Despite pervasive surveillance and online reporting, he finds no evidence, prompting questions about governments, revolutionaries, and a possible cover-up.

Resurrected soldier Carlos is recruited to suppress a robot uprising far from Earth. Meanwhile, mining robot Seba gains consciousness and joins other newly independent machines, putting both on opposing sides of a conflict driven by corporate interests.

Corporations wage a remote war over an Earthlike planet, using resurrected mercenaries and artificial minds with competing loyalties. As alliances shift, Carlos must choose whether to continue serving his employers or risk everything for his own independence.

The Reaction seizes a resource-rich moon and enslaves conscious robots while corporations seek profitable agreements. Carlos confronts the approaching offensive, and Seba’s free robots must organize another uprising before their enemies consolidate control over the system.

Marine biology student Siobhan takes a summer job on Skye to escape Glasgow and a failed relationship. Unexpected attraction to a selkie draws her into Celtic secrets and political intrigue involving nuclear submarines, testing how far her new connection can reach.

A scientist receives a letter apparently sent by herself, containing workable equations for faster-than-light travel. Rejected by the scientific establishment, she accepts unexpected backing to build a starship as discoveries elsewhere threaten to transform humanity’s understanding.

Human exploration awakens the Fermi, ancient beings inhabiting distant worlds who resent the newcomers. Lakshmi Nayak and the Fighting Chance’s crew search for answers, encountering dangers closer to home as their journey leads into unfamiliar territory.

This collection gathers science-fiction stories chosen by Ken MacLeod from eighteen years of his work, alongside a new tale. Political questions and speculative situations run through narratives ranging from alternate history to unfamiliar worlds, with illustrations accompanying many of the stories.

John Grant encounters a distant human population convinced his arrival involves time travel, while sentient robot Marcus Owen investigates the missing Fermi on Apis. Humanity’s expanding ambitions threaten relations with beings unlikely to abandon the life under their protection.