CELEBRATING THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR
Inspired by one of the most iconic comic strips from Scream!, The Thirteenth Floor Anthology watches evil AI Max go worldwide in a collection of 13 stories for fans of Black Mirror.
London's Maxwell Towers have long been under the control of Max - an all-seeing AI intent on punishing wrongdoers and wicked tenants by sending them to the Thirteenth Floor, where unspeakable horrors come to life. Now, Max's coding has been embedded in computer systems all over the world, and there is no escape from his nightmarish reign.
The Thirteenth Floor Anthology features thirteen brand-new stories, and we’ll have three of the featured authors with us to talk Fantasy, Fear, Futurism and Fiction as well as what happens when Artificial Intelligence is set free to do whatever it wants.
James Lovegrove is the author of over 70 books, which have sold all over the world and been translated into 18 languages.
His original fiction includes Days, a satire on consumerism, the Brexit-predicting Untied Kingdom, Worldstorm, Provender Gleed and the back-to-back double-novella Gig. Untied Kingdom was shortlisted for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, while Carry The Moon In My Pocket, a short story, won Japan’s Seiun Award in 2011 for Best Foreign Short Story.
His Pantheon series, a set of standalone military-SF adventures combining high-tech weaponry and ancient gods have been New York Times bestsellers.
He has also penned a dozen Sherlock Holmes novels as well as Conan Doyle / H.P. Lovecraft mashups and his award-winning novels set in the Firefly universe have been rapturously received by fans of the much-loved TV series. James has also written novels set in the Marvel Comics Universe and featuring Doctor Strange, The Famous Four and others as well as novels featuring Conan the barbarian.
Guy Adams
As a ghost writer, Guy has kicked heroin, robbed a casino, worked as a prison doctor and enjoyed the riches that come as part of being a hugely successful YouTuber.
When feeling more himself, he is the author of The Clown Service novels, the Heavens Gate trilogy and the famous sixties newspaper strip that never existed, Goldtiger. He also writes comics for various publishers including 2000AD.
He has twice been a finalist in the BBC Audio Drama Awards and as well as writing hundreds of hours of Doctor Who is the co-author of Arkham County for Audible and Children of the Stones for BBC Sounds.
He also writes about and reviews and watches and watches and watches film.
Neurodivergent (Autistic, ADHD), he can be found on the South coast, staring out to sea, muttering. He lives with his wife the writer and genius, Alexandra Benedict, his daughters Verity (human) and Dame Margaret Rutherford (canine).
Derek Farrell is the creator of The Danny Bird Mysteries, and the novella What Comes Around.
His short fiction has appeared in Gabba Gabba Hey an anthology of fiction inspired by the music of the Ramones, Sharpen Fist Here and Noir from The Bar. He is also the crime fiction programming director for the award-winning WORDfest Crawley, an editor and one of the team behind Interview Room One.
He first stumbled upon Max, the terrifying Artificial Intelligence at the heart of The Thirteenth Floor when he pinched his younger brother’s copies of Scream! Back in the eighties and became fascinated at the idea of an inhuman. Intelligence doling out justice and retribution in, at times, an alternative universe.
Prior to embarking on a career as a writer, Derek’s previous jobs have included: Burger dresser, Bank teller, David Bowie’s paperboy, and Investment Banker, which gave him the opportunity to observe investment bankers up close and decide that one of them had to die in one of the Danny books, but that’s perhaps a story for another day.