The Universe Delivers the Enemy You Need

About

Plant-based skyscrapers, reluctant sex robots, pencil-wielding black-belts fighting a zombie apocalypse... 

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Adam Marek’s third collection: an almanac of the absurd, a handbook to the hardware problems of being human. From driverless bodies, to life-coaching AIs, to sleep research on primates, to the effects of time dilation on married life... these stories explore the unlikeliest of possibilities the future may hold for us, as a race, but at their heart is a paradox: what happens when the seemingly limitless potential of human ability runs up against the insurmountable inadequacies of basic human psychology? Sons never forgive their fathers. Superheroes are brought low by simple performance anxiety. Billionaire space industrialists are exposed by their bad parenting skills. Hardwired into our humanity, it seems, are bugs that no amount of future upgrades can ever fix. 

Press

‘Playful, clever, witty, surprising, The Universe Delivers the Enemy You Need is 21 shots of pure pleasure which add up, Ray Bradbury-style, to a profound reflection on life in our twenty-first century. Adam Marek is surely one of the most enjoyable and humane writers of sci-fi around.’ – Lucy Caldwell (Intimacies: Eleven More Stories)

‘Clever, cool, beautifully written stuff…  funny, poignant and original.' - Chris Beckett (America City, The Eden Trilogy)

'Marek's stories are a conjuring trick performed right before your eyes. You believe you see every movement but don't understand how the thing was accomplished.' - Aiden O'Reilly (Greetings, Hero)

‘[Marek] is a unique chronicler of 21st century alienation, a condition rooted in the cruelties of consumerism and the reshaping of human psychology to meet the needs of artificial systems. Furthermore, his brittle humour is tempered with a subtle sense of sadness.’  - The Morning Star

‘Marek’s restlessly fertile imagination ensures that the collection… is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.’ - The Irish Times

‘These 20 short stories take a variety of approaches – sometimes absurd or metafictional, but always insightful and often moving examinations of relationships and the human condition.’ - The Guardian

‘What’s lovely about Marek’s third collection is that it isn’t devoted to a single subject; there’s a wide variety of storytelling in terms of style, tone, and content… All these stories, these thought experiments, query whether technology makes the world a better place. Does it bring us closer as a species? Does it enhance our relationship with those we love?’ - Locus Magazine, Issue 762

‘Marek has long found his voice and his stance: one of endless fascination with how strange people can be. He follows the credo that psychological reality is best conveyed via the fantastical.’ - Nothing in the Rulebook

The Universe Delivers the Enemy You Need was long-listed for the 2024 Edge Hill Short Story Prize.