'Down' by Lawrence Miles

Tyler's Folly: a colony world on the unattractive side of Earthspace, a planet wracked by earthquakes and crawling with off-world bodysnatchers. Not really the sort of place Professor Bernice Summerfield would expect to find herself. So the local authorities are similarly surprised to pull her out of the ocean in a forbidden 'quake zone.

However, Benny's explanations only serve to confuse matters. According to her, the planet is hollow - its interior inhabited by warring tribes of cavemen and strangely unconvincing prehistoric monsters. What's more, this bizarrely improbable land is ruled by a dark and ancient god with a penchant for thirties pulp adventures and Saturday morning action serials. Clearly something very odd has happened to our favourite rational archaeologist.

But what could have stolen Benny's reason? Or could Tyler's Folly be the sole exception to the universal laws of physics? One thing is certain: at the heart of the mystery is the utterly amoral alien known only as !X.


Publication Date:
September 1997

Notes:
*Featuring Benny

*A Virgin Books 'New Adventures' novel