About the book: 2007 / Michael Marrak was born in Weikershamm in 1965, after receiving an education in the field of wholesale trade, he attended the College of Applied Graphics in Stuttgart from 1988 to 1991 . In 1997, he hung up his job as a graphic designer and decided to make his way to the very top as a freelance writer and illustrator. Since the end of 2001 he has lived in Hildesheim near Hannover. Michael Marrack wrote his first story for two weeks in 1980. He now considers that story, entitled "Charter Flight to Hell," a "literary accident" and keeps it under lock and key. But then he did not stop there, but continued to write until he managed to publish his first thing in 1990. Since then, he has published more than three dozen stories and countless illustrations in magazines and anthologies both in his native country and abroad , including in China. From 1993 to 1996, he published the fiction art magazine Zimmerit, which published the first collection of his science fiction and horror stories entitled Grabwelt, and in 1997 his grotesque science fiction play Am Ende der "Beisszeit." In 1998–1999 he co-edited the series "Maldoror" and the fantasy anthology "Der agnostische Saal" in two volumes. Michael Marrak's first novel "Der Stadt der Klage" was published in 1997 by a Vienna publishing house. “A picturesque canvas of hell, full of grotesque and absurd oddities, like a modern version of Dante’s Inferno, an impressive creation of the subconscious, which at some moment hits the reader on the forehead, and the next moment inspires him with the deepest horror,” wrote one of the reviews. A collection of dark science fiction short stories, Die Stille nach dem Ton, followed in 1998. Already a significant and even cult figure in German science fiction, Michael Marrack made his final breakthrough at the end of 2000 with his novel Lord Gamma, which a year later received both the Kurd Lasswitz Prize and the "Deutschen Phantastik-Award" in the category "best German-language science fiction novel of 2000". In the fall of 2003, his book was published in France, which critics described as “masterfully written” and having “an almost cinematic impact.” Marrak's last novel, Imagion, inspired by Lovecraft's The Myth of the Old Gods, was published in 2002. Michael Marrak is undoubtedly one of the most gifted and eloquent writers of German science fiction today, independent and original. In his works, science fiction is fused with horror and ancient myths into an inimitable mixture, the authorship of which cannot be mistaken. He loves excursions into the grotesque or surrealism, does not shy away from experiments, and at the most unexpected moments resorts to laconic, sometimes eccentric humor. His stories are populated by bizarre creatures and demonic figures, set in dark cities, hotbeds of urban nightmares, and you can never tell in advance whether an unnamed horror, a grotesque comic scene or something completely bewildering is lurking around the next corner. Is it possible to avoid such a nightmare? Or should I stock up on rope in advance? Or maybe, since we are visiting science fiction here, a high-tech version of rope? Michael Marrak, a specialist in horror, gives us an unexpected answer to everything dark, perverted and terrible that lies in wait for us under an innocent shell. (A. Eschbach)