Descent

HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO FOR THE TRUTH?

Ball lightning. Weather balloons. Secret military aircraft. Ryan knows all the justifications for UFO sightings. But when something falls out of the sky on the hills near his small Scottish town, he finds his cynicism can't identify or explain the phenomenon.

And in a future where nothing is a secret, where everything is recorded on CCTV or reported online, why can he find no evidence of the UFO, nor anything to shed light on what occurred? Is it the political revolutionaries, is it the government or is it aliens themselves who are creating the cover-up? Or does the very idea of a cover-up hide the biggest secret of all?

Ken MacLeod, author of 2013 Arthur C. Clarke Award-nominated Intrusion, tells a science fiction story for the twenty-first century - this is what happens when conspiracy theorists meet Big Brother.