Zach King: My Magical Life

NGLND XPX will transport you to the most peculiar and unlikely of human circumstances and times. The anthology opens with the migration of the Human Race out into the galaxy using the new-fangled Model-T Virgin - a cunning device invented by a bored and lonely billionaire industrialist to test the species. You will then be introduced to some awfully English zombies, to the ladies and gentlemen of the alternative Industrial Revolution (steam trains and royalty abounding), to the staff of an asylum for automata and to a little survey robot that accidentally meets a chap called Mr Moses and who hands down the nearest thing he has to "Commandments". You will hear chilling tales of National Military Service in lieu of the Old Age Pension and of how "First Contact" really ought to be done, without guns and acrimony.

The ten stories in the anthology are:

The Model-T Virgin.
Begging your pardon, m'lord, but Cook's been eaten again.
Robots knitting with rubber needles.
Je pense it's all going very bien.
Footloose, en pas de basque.
iG-Zero-D.
In which Mr Cadwallader shampoos his parrot in the rain using some very dated popular science.
Diary of a National Service chap.
Blood-curdling screams and the Whitworth screw-thread.
The Day the Earth took tea.

The science of the fiction is risible, the plots are nice and thin and the characters are painted with a balding brush. The intention of the collection is to present the creepy little homunculus working the joysticks in your head with a laugh or three, and with some delicious English language to chew on as you commute or wait for the court to be called back into session for your sentencing.