The guerilla war against the Second Alliance and its plans for a European apartheid intensifies in this second volume of John Shirley's A Song Called Youth.

'"Almost anyone could be a fascist under the right circumstances. If they get scared enough. That's why we have to fight it so hard. Because it never quite goes away."

From the beginning, thwarting the Second Alliance had been the first priority of the New Resistance; now the SA had decided it was time to return the favor, Resistance could not be allowed to interfere with the progress of the SA's master plan. The elimination of the rebels would clear the way for Project Total Eclipse, which in turn would stretch the SA's shadow over every remaining outpost of humanity, selecting scapegoats, directing violence, and creating an immutable new order,

The penumbra of the Eclipse -- it would establish complete SA control over the Grid, the space colony and the survivors of the war -- and decide the fate of humanity itself.

The Babbage Edition: Revised and updated. Order here.

|| REVIEWS ||

Vivid, dense, powerful imagery...hard to put down! -- Washington Post

Another welcome reprint derives from an era considerably closer to our present, the cyberpunk period. John Shirleyıs Eclipse Penumbra (Babbage Press, trade, $17.95, 286 pages, ISBN 1-930235-01-1), revised and updated, continues the harsh and unforgiving story of the worldıs near-future descent into neofascism begun in Eclipse (also reprinted by Babbage). Although Shirley writes even better today (witness Silicon Embrace, from 1996), this series, "A Song Called Youth," might very well be his signature production, still ringing with the clarion call of a bygone era. -- Paul Di Filippo, "On Books" Asimov's

in a revised edition of Eclipse Penumbra, the second book in John Shirley's revolutionary A Song Called Youth series (see Eclipse, Forecasts, Feb. 21), several nations ravaged by a third world war succumb to the influence of a neo-Nazi organization called the Second Alliance. Recognizing the SA's misguided ideals of genetic and racial purity, a small band of guerillas dubbed the New Resistance sabotage and attack SA forces on land and in space. With a skilled hand, Shirley maintains the tension of multiple plot threads, guiding the reader from NR battles in the Alps to murders on the space colony and the human experiments performed at the SA's New Life Lab. Avid cyberpunk fans will appreciate this updated edition of a cutting-edge classic. - Publishers Weekly, Vol. 247, Issue 36 V