A collection of DJ Cockburn's short stories, each telling the tale of someone trying to adapt to the world as it is, was or may soon be.
CASSANDRA'S CARGO: A colonial administrator in West Africa finds himself remembering a life very different to his own. Could his new teeth have anything to do with it?
THE ENDOCRINE TYRANNY: A brilliant scientist has decided emotions are a disease in need of a cure.
COLDWATER COTTAGE: Twenty metres under the English Channel, a man confronts a broken promise and a dwindling air supply.
PERCHANCE TO DREAM: A man dies content knowing he's lived the life of a true Englishman. When he finds his trials are far from over, he has to question whether it was all a waste of effort.
SEEKING KAILASH: A Nepali porter carries a Victorian explorer up a mountain in search of a fabled healer.
SUMMER HOLIDAYS: Barry is adamantly not a kid any more. A girl straying into the abandoned holiday camp where he hides forces him to find out what he is instead.
STEEL IN THE MORNING: There can only be one reason for a fencing master to take his sword into the frosty dawn of Regency London.
VIRULENCE: A scientist is investigating a disease outbreak in the Philippines, but he's about to find out that neither the disease nor its after effects are as simple as he expects.
THE REDEEMED: The preacher says something unspeakable is stalking the winter. As the village follows him on the hunt, is anyone questioning where he may be leading them?
RAINFIRE BY NIGHT: When the sky is perpetually grey and humanity has disintegrated into warring bands huddled in mediaeval castles, does a woman have any role to play beyond being a trophy?