“Welcome to Taff’s nightmare. An entire novel seemingly set at that outer rim Lovecraft so deeply feared. Here plot makes room for philosophy without losing the beat, and the imagination does its work in the blackness of deepest outer space.” —Josh Malerman, New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box and Daphne THERE IS NO REALITY Hundreds of years into the future, mankind has begun seeding habitable planets, sending out a fleet of enormous ships filled with eager colonists. Three survivors of the explosion of the colony ship Promise—Harlan, Jaime, and El—discover that everything they know, even reality, is pliable and transitional. Plastic. As they attempt to either reach the colony or return to Earth, they learn the conscious universe wants to prevent humanity’s spread across the galaxies and that it uses our own fear to keep us isolated—a fear embodied in a literal haunted house they encounter in space. Once inside, they find nothing is as it seems, everything is liminal, and they must face their deepest fears if they hope to survive. “A harrowing journey through space gives way to a vertiginous plunge into cosmic and psychological horror. Big ideas and big scares in a story that will have you questioning reality itself.” —Scott R. Jones, author of Stonefish and Shout Kill Revel Repeat. "An unsettling space tale that will make your skin crawl!" —J. Dianne Dotson, author of The Shadow Galaxy
Author
John F.D. Taff is a multi-Bram Stoker Award short-listed dark fiction author with more than 30 years experience, and more than 100 short stories and seven novels in print. He has appeared in Cemetery Dance, Eldritch Tales, Unnerving, Deathrealm, Big Pulp and One Buck Horror, as well as anthologies such as Hot Blood: Seeds of Fear, Hot Blood: Fear the Fever, Shock Rock II, Lullabies for Suffering, Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Behold!, Shadows Over Main Street 2, Horror Library V, Best of Horror Library, Dark Visions Vol. 1, Ominous Realities, Death's Realm, I Can Taste the Blood and Savage Beasts. His work will appear soon in The Seven Deadliest and I Can Hear the Shadows. His novels include The Bell Witch, Kill-Off and the serialized apocalyptic epic The Fearing. Thunderstorm Books and Grey Matter Press will release a one-volume version of The Fearing in 2021, in limited edition hardcover, soft cover and digital. Short fiction collections include Little Deaths: The Definitive Collection and Little Black Spots, both published by Grey Matter Press. Taff's novella collection, The End in All Beginnings, was called one of the best novella collections by Jack Ketchum and was a Stoker Award Finalist. His short "A Winter's Tale" was also a Stoker Finalist. His upcoming anthology Dark Stars, a tribute to that seminal '80s work Dark Forces, will be published by Tor/Nightfire 11/2/21. His website is at johnfdtaff.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnfdtaff.
