Footvote

Taken from Peter F. Hamilton's short story collection Manhattan in Reverse, Footvote is a thrilling short story featuring Paulo Myo of the Commonwealth Saga.

It's our world, present day – the UK is going to rack and ruin. There are strikes, the power facilities don't have enough technicians to continue running them, oppression and a terminal malaise afflicts the country and there seems no respite from the economic catastrophe. Then Bradley Ethan Murray opens a wormhole, a passage through to a new world and, potentially, a new world order.

New Suffolk is available for all 'decent people' from the UK to start a new life – free from the troubles they will leave behind them. But is a new world really the way to help alleviate the problems of Earth?

This short story is taken from Manhattan in Reverse, the first short story collection in thirteen years from the master of space opera.

The cover image for Footvote was designed by Ioan Dumitrescu as part of a competition run by Pan Macmillan in association with SFX magazine.