Only Forward

by Michael Marshall Smith

Overview

Michael Marshall Smith’s surreal, groundbreaking, and award-winning debut which resonates with wild humour interlaced with dark recollections of an emotional minefield.

May we introduce you to Stark.

Oh, and by the way — good luck.

Stark is the private investigator who goes to work when Something Happens to you. And when a Something happens it’s no good chanting ‘go away go away go away’ and cowering in a corner, because a Something always comes from your darkest past and won’t be beaten until you face it. And that’s not easy in a city where reality is twisting and broken, a world in which friends can become enemies in a heartbeat — and where your most secret fear can become a soul-shredding reality.

And the worst of it is, for this nightmare you don’t even have to be asleep…

Considered a modern classic, and consistently featured in lists of Books To Read Before Your Head Explodes, ONLY FORWARD is a novel you'll never forget.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780008117443
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/28/2017
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Michael Marshall Smith is a novelist and screenwriter. Only Forward, his groundbreaking first novel, won the Philip K. Dick and August Derleth Awards. Its critically acclaimed successors SPARES and ONE OF US were optioned by major Hollywood studios. He has since written the internationally bestselling novels THE STRAW MEN, THE LONELY DEAD and BLOOD OF ANGELS, and his menacing thriller, THE INTRUDERS, was adapted as a major BBC television series. He lives in California with his wife, son and two cats.

Read an Excerpt

Once there was a boy in a house. He was alone because his father was out at work, and his mother had run around the corner to the store. Although the boy was only four, he was a reliable child who knew the difference between toys and accidents waiting to happen, and his mother trusted him to be alone for five
minutes.

The boy was sitting playing in the living room when suddenly he had an odd feeling. He looked around the room, thinking maybe that the cat had walked behind him, gently moving the air. But he wasn't there, and nothing else was out of the ordinary, so the boy went back to what he was doing. He was coloring a picture of a jungle in his coloring book, and he wanted to have it finished before his father got home from work.

Then there was a knock at the door.

The boy stared at the door for a moment. That's what the feeling had been about. He had known there would be a knock at the door, just as he sometimes knew that the phone was going to ring. He knew that it couldn't be his mother, because he'd seen her take the keys. He also knew that he shouldn't open the door to strangers when he was in the house alone. But something made him feel that this didn't count, that this time was different. After all, he'd known about it beforehand. So he got up, and walked slowly over to the door. After a pause, he opened it.

At the time his family were living high up in an apartment house. Outside their door was a balconied walkway which went right around the floor and led to lifts around to the right. It was midmorning, and bright spring sun streamed into the room, the sky a shining splash of white and blue.

On the balcony stood a man. He was a big man,wearing tired jeans and nothing on his feet. His torso was naked except for tiny whorls of hair, and he didn't have a head.

The man stood there on the balcony outside the boy's flat, leaning against the wall. His head and neck had been pulled from his body like a tooth from the gum, and his shoulders had healed over smoothly, with a pronounced dip in the middle where the roots had been.

The boy did not feel afraid, but instead a kind of terrible compassion and loss.

He didn't know what the feelings were in words, of course. He just felt bad for
the man.

"Hello?" he said, timidly.

In his head the boy heard a voice.

"Help me," it said.

"How?"

"Help me," said the voice again, "I can't find my way home."

The boy heard a noise from along the balcony and knew it was the elevator doors opening. His mother was coming back. The man spoke once more, spoke to the boy as if he was the only one who could help him, as if somehow it was his responsibility.

"I want to go back home. Help me."

"Where's your home?"

The voice inside his head said something, and the boy tried to repeat it, but he was young, a child, and couldn't get the word right. He heard footsteps comings toward the nearest corner, and knew they were his mother's."I can't help you," he said. "I can't help you," and he gently closed the door, shutting out the light. He walked stiffly back toward his book and all at once his legs gave way and left him on the floor.

When his mother came in moments later, she found the boy asleep on the carpet, with tears on his face. He woke up when she hugged him, and said that nothing was wrong. He didn't tell her about the dream, and soon forgot all about it.

But later he remembered, and realized it had not been a dream.

Editorial Reviews

‘A major work indeed’TODAY‘Smith delivers that rarest of commodities: a genuinely new twist with a punchline of CRYING GAME proportions’TIME OUT‘No one writes better than Smith about love…No one writes better about being wasted … Nigh-on unique.’ i-D

From the Publisher

When a senior member of Action Center disappears, the authorities hire Stark to find him. Stark succeeds in his mission and then the trouble begins. The author of Spares sets his latest sf action thriller in a color-coded near future, where independent neighborhoods vie for dominance in a dangerous and deadly high-tech world. Smith combines a whirlwind plot with a genially laconic hero to produce a fast-paced tale that belongs in large sf collections. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In a future world a lot weirder than the present, only a lunatic or a desperado would seek the services of Stark. Somehow, when he is on the job, everything seems to go screwier as Stark makes a sentry dog seem more like a gentle house pet. Thus, when Actioneer Zenda Renn introduces Stark to Darv and C of the Action Center's Intelligence Agency (ACIA), he knows they must be in extreme trouble, which they are. Apparently, three days ago someone abducted Senior Actioneer Fell Alkland who was doing highly classified work at the time. Stark is to find out who kidnapped Alkland, how they did it, and bring him back alive. Stark thinks the case has nothing to do with abduction, but knows that any inquiries in any of the Neighborhoods can be very perilous to one's life even if the case appears quite simple like this one. However, even the ultra-cautious Stark is not yet aware that Murphy's Law has been renamed for him because he soon becomes the target of friend and foe alike. If anyone had doubts before Only Forward was published that Michael Marshall Smith owns the absurd futuristic who-done-it sub-genre, they will not think so after this wild novel. Only Forward is weird, yet also amusing and entertaining. The story line is filled with a strange world loaded with intriguing but hard drive error gizmos inside a wonderful mystery. Stark is a great protagonist while the support cast provides depth to this surreal world. Not for everyone, Mr. Smith satirizes the mystery and science fiction genres while ripping every One Of Us with its acerbic tongue in cheek plot.
—Internet Book Watch

Internet Book Watch