He made a sound of pleasure as the hot water needled his tired skin. Yet he heard nothing. The silence was more absolute than any he had experienced before. After more than fifty shifts, a lifetime among the stars, this was his first rehabilitation problem, and he was not unduly worried...In Eric Brown's landmark first collection of stories, fear, desire, love and redemption are forged with an innovative and stunning science-fiction imagination, creating eight exotic tales of tomorrow. Witty, original, imbued with a cyberpunk bleakness, this is the work of one of the UK's leading, and most loved, SF authors.