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. 

‘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)

Press

‘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