Introducing Ubo

Solaris is delighted to announce the next project from award-winning author Steve Rasnic Tem: Ubo.

 A blend of science fiction and horror, Ubo is a chilling story exploring the roots of violence and its effect on an ever shifting future. Rasnic Tem, whose previous work for Solaris includes Deadfall Hotel (2012) and the Bram Stoker Award-winning Blood Kin (2014), returns with a tale crackling with sinister energy sure to delight his fans – and win him a few more.

Solaris Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Oliver commented:

“Tem’s novels are always challenging and utterly brilliant. From the exploration of family, love and the power of story-telling in Deadfall Hotel, to the legacy of evil in the atmospheric and haunting Blood Kin; Tem’s novels are unique and a reminder of how powerful, how relevant, genre writing can be. Ubo feels particularly apt, a response to this increasingly uncertain and seemingly more violent world. Tem asks us to look at the worst elements of ourselves and examines what it is that makes us human.”

Steve Rasnic Tem commented:

“After the wonderful job Solaris did with my previous two novels I’m excited to be working with them again on Ubo. The result of years of research and contemplation. Ubo is a dark science fictional exploration of the roots of violence and its effects on an uncertain future, featuring some of history’s most horrific viewpoint characters.”

Ubo by Steve Rasnic Tem will be published by Solaris in February 2017.

Ubo
by Steve Rasnic Tem

Daniel is trapped in Ubo. He has no idea how long he has been imprisoned there by the roaches. 

Every resident has a similar memory of the journey to Ubo: a dream of dry, chitinous wings crossing the moon, the gigantic insects dropping swiftly over the houses of the neighborhood, passing through walls and windows as if by magic, or science. The creatures, like a deck of baroquely ornamented cards, fanning themselves from one hidden world into the next. 

And now each day they force Daniel to play a different figure from humanity’s violent history, from a frenzied Jack the Ripper to a stumbling and confused Stalin to a self-proclaimed god executing survivors atop the ruins of the world.

The scenarios mutate day after day in this camp somewhere beyond the rules of time. As skies burn and prisoners go mad, identities dissolve as the experiments evolve, and no one can foretell their mysterious end.