Steam Press is excited to be publishing DownMind, by VO Blum. This was the best novella in the 2012 SpecFicNZ / Steam Press manuscript contest, and is out now.

2025. Suicide is rampant, people are gasping in the streets, and planes fall from the sky. Medicine and technology can reverse the course, but humanity can’t seem to rally. By chance, a young Kiwi chemist stumbles across evidence that suggests that gravity and the air, indeed consciousness itself, are responding to a dispiriting force. But who – or what – is directing this energy? And can the mystery be solved before humanity sinks into the abyss?