Britain has fallen to the technological might of the Aztec Empire whose armies have rampaged across the globe. Now, for the first time in a millennium, the British are a subject race. Inevitably there is resistance – and among those determined to fight the invaders is Princess Catherine, elder daughter of the British monarch. But she is torn between her patriotism and her growing involvement, political and personal, with the Aztecs – and with one Aztec in particular. Then her sister is arrested and exiled for her part in an alleged terrorist attack – and Catherine finds herself walking a perilous tightrope… Sweeping from occupied Britain to the horrors of the Russian front and the savage splendour of the imperial capital in Mexico, Aztec Century is a magnificent novel of war, politics, intrigue and romance, set in a world that is both familiar – and terrifyingly alien. Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1993

(c) Christopher Evans 1980, 1997 This story first appeared in Extro Vol. 2, No. 3, 1980. This version slightly revised from the original

Omega: an apocalyptic rumour from the Eastern Front. Omega: something that will alter all the strategic calculations of the Earth’s great military blocs. Omega: the code name for a weapon that may well bring doomsday with it. But if Omega is indeed the agent that will destroy the world, that world is not our own. For this is a timeline in which World War Two never truly ended: a timeline in which Hitler died in a plane crash, Britain joined Germany in its battle against Communist Russia, and the present is an age of intermittent, but deadly, armed conflict between the USSR, the European Alliance, and the USA. The frontier regions are radioactive wastelands, nuclear winter threatens catastrophe, global confrontation could erupt again any time—and that’s before Omega is taken into account… This is the reality experienced by Owen Meredith when an accident forces his consciousness from the England we know into the mind of his cognate self in that other darker, Europe. Switching back and forth between being plain Owen Meredith and troubled Major Owain Maredudd, Owen is faced not only with a Cold War going Hot, but with a deep crisis of identity. Who is he? Whose twisted destiny is he treading? Did the ordinary domestic life he remembers ever even take place? Perhaps the universe of Owain and Omega is merely a symptom of mental illness—but if so, why is it so urgently tangible? Omega is the first adult novel by Christopher Evans in a decade, and perhaps his best so far. This is alternate history of a brilliantly unusual kind

(c) Christopher Evans 1983, 1997 This story first appeared in Lands of Never edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Unwin Paperbacks, 1983)