Steve Aylett: 11 books

Smithereens gathers 19 stories of misfortune, madness and malady, including ‘The Man Whose Head Expanded’, set in a world where it is ‘undisputed’ that ‘if you tape the average man’s mouth shut he’ll lie through his nose’. Heads are no longer fashionable and are instead encased in...

Bigot Hall is the nightmare home of a family that most people would prefer to forget, but which Steve Aylett chooses to celebrate. Uncle Burst believes his face is made of pasta; the violent, grill-mouthed Uncle Snapper is confined to a treehouse; Uncle Blute is drowned in the lake at the wheel of...

‘Smithereens are hard to aggregate. Penguins can slide on their bellies but the humour is wasted on those stiff-billed bastards – yet put a paper hat on an owl and it’s you who feels like a fool.’ Corpses rain down from the sky as punishment for the massacres of the last century. A...

'Savage talked about his life as a re-offender. How could someone be offended by the same thing twice? Was nothing learnt?' Beerlight, the city of all of our futures, is not a safe place. Weaponry, rather than fast cars or designer clothes, is the ultimate status symbol. The populace is dedicated...

‘“Here’s one you won’t get – a paradox. ‘A’ states that everything ‘B’ says is a lie. ‘B’ states that everything ‘A’ says is true.” … “Easy. A and B are lying and mistaken, both and simultaneously. Happens all the time.”’ About to quit the failed experiment...

'To those who know that the inhabitants of heaven and hell are political prisoners, that the law is as preventative as next year's weather, that the post-human's too predictable, South London has always been a playground.' What if god were found to exist? What if revenge were possible? Competing...

True creativity, the making of a thing which has not been in the world previously, is originality by definition. But while many claim to crave originality, they feel an obscure revulsion when confronted with it. The really new is uncomfortable and disturbing. Repetition of the familiar is preferred....

'Beerlight was a blown circuit, where to kill a man was less a murder than a mannerism … Crime was the new and only artform.' A book with its own nervous system, Slaughtermatic follows Dante Cubit through the streets of Beerlight as he hunts for a crime mentor, tangling with Chief Henry Blince...

‘“Hundreds of famous brains,” beamed the newsgirl … “What. A. Mess.”’ Even Atom, a detective who harasses anyone who comes near him, wants to get to the bottom of what happened on the night the City Brain Facility blew up. Blince, Benny, mobster Eddie Thermidor and the other denizens...

After strangling a mime in the King’s court, Fain encounters a crazy old man who offers to grant him three wishes. What will Fain ask for? ‘Fain knew at once what had happened – he had travelled back in time as he had wished, but his clothing hadn’t. "I’ve read about how tricky this...

21st-century revolutionary Leo finds himself at the End of Time, surrounded by decadent sorcerers whose childlike incomprehension is his worst nightmare. How to be effective when consequence is removed? What can have meaning when everything is transformed into fashion? Can love exist here? Leo storms...