'I survive. I live from day to day – a Meridian day which humanity has created from one eternal stretch of daylight.'Meridian, twenty light years from Earth and with just a tiny scattering of inhabitable islands, seems the perfect place for Bob Benedict to escape the tragedy of his past.Here he can live out his days in drug abuse, despised by and despising the self-obsessed community of artists who make up the population of the colony planet: the Altereds who have swapped human form for animal, and the Augmenteds who have boosted their minds with computers.But when Bob meets Fire, the daughter of the formidable Tamara Trevellion, the most ruthlessly ambitious of the artists, he is drawn into a world of corruption and murder that is far darker than his past.Soon it's all he can do just to survive..."British writing with a deft, understated touch: wonderful" - New Scientist"SF infused with a cosmopolitan and literary sensibility... accomplished andaffecting" - Paul McAuley"One of the very best of the new generation of British SF writers" - Vector"Eric Brown has an enviable talent for writing stories which are the essenceof modern science fiction and yet show a passionate concern for the humanpredicament and human values" - Bob Shaw