System Fiction

House Gracefall wasn’t anything like what Derek had imagined it would be. Instead of rage and anger at the loss of one of their young masters, House Gracefall showed humility and even apologized. Despite one noble house exemplifying honor and nobility, another awaited to reinforce the negative stereotypes that Derek had been anticipating all along. Somehow, out of all that, Derek made a new friend, a new business partner, and learned some secrets, while Silvi got her first taste of the real world of cooking and loved it.

The last wing of the red cathedral is finally live, and the possibility king awaits. To reach his throne, players will have to face foes capable of bringing about the end of the world. However, nothing can compare to their creator. The prize for defeating him is unprecedented: the ability to create a custom Ripple. A single change that will alter the very fabric of EBO forever. A power that Ned’s enemies would do anything to obtain.

“Z’s”, “Zekes”, “Skinbags”, “Meat puppets” and at least a dozen other names had taken root on social media and news feeds before most forms of communication dropped off the air. Of course, the word, Zombie, was the most prevalent term of all. The only problem was, these weren’t the Zombies of science fiction and folklore, this was something entirely different. This was an invasion; the complete and utter recolonization of planet earth had begun. As Armies fall and governments collapse, a small pocket of humanity manages to eke out a desperate existence in the Florida ...

All Systems Red is the tense first science fiction adventure novella in Martha Wells' series The Murderbot Diaries. For fans of Westworld, Ex Machina, Ann Leckie's Imperial Raadch series, or Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. The main character is a deadly security droid that has bucked its restrictive programming and is balanced between contemplative self-discovery and an idle instinct to kill all humans.

The world ends in a slew of blue notification boxes, bringing with it a game-like existence including monsters and Classes. Now, John has to make his way from Kluane National Park in the Yukon to Whitehorse through monster infested forests. But, that's not enough; because he'll need to help rebuild civilization itself around the System, aliens and monsters. And, as always, humanity will be its own greatest enemy.

A mysterious object threatens to destroy our solar system. The survival of humankind is at risk, but nobody takes the warning of young astrophysicist Maribel Pedreira seriously. At the same time, an exiled crew of outcasts mines for rare minerals on a lone asteroid. When other scientists finally acknowledge Pedreira's alarming discovery, it becomes clear that these outcasts are the only ones who may be able to save our world, knowing that the Hole hurtles inexorably toward the sun.

Marc's Safe Zone, and his network of interconnected Safe Zones, has been upgraded to an Industrial Technology level. With the new tech level comes a number of items that they've desperately wanted to build. Now railways, lighter than air travel, primitive firearms, and more are available, once the requirements for their tech chains are satisfied.

There is a huge, bold black streak in the sky. Branches appear out of nowhere over North America, Southern Europe, and Central Africa. People who live beneath The Rift can see it. But scientists worldwide are distressed - their equipment cannot pick up any type of signal from it. The rift appears to consist of nothing. Literally. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Most people are curious but not overly concerned. The phenomenon seems to pose no danger. It is just there. Then something jolts the most hardened naysayers, and surpasses the worst nightmares of the world's greatest scientists.

Fight, survive, adapt, and rely only on yourself. That is Derek’s creed and what's got him through the System Integration on Earth. Everything changed when the System came. Cute bunnies and beautiful butterflies became savage killing machines. Then the Invaders arrived with a single goal: to obtain ownership of this new habitable planet. War has raged ever since. None of this mattered much to Derek, aside from making living a little more perilous.

Marc's home from college on break, spending his time laughing about some of the crazy news stories he's found online, and gaming. When a message appears in his line of sight, blocking out absolutely everything else, he nearly freaks out. The message warns that the world has been in a variant Natural Laws beta test for millennia and that it's about to revert to the norms.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there's an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can't have the planet, they're sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize. But there's something wrong with Murderbot; it isn't running within normal operational parameters.

Glitches are appearing across the Minecraft server. Blocks are flickering unexpectedly and randomly disappearing. To make matters worse, villagers are claiming that their entire villages have mysteriously vanished, and they desperately need Gameknight999's help. What's causing the server to overload and glitch, and where have all the NPCs gone? The User-that-is-not-a-user suspects the two questions are related, and that somehow Herobrine's henchmen are responsible.

Marc and his party have finished their zeppelin and taken it out to try to discover other Safe Zones. Their intent is to set up trade routes between all the different Safe Zones in order to give them a better chance to survive. The second Safe Zone they discover with the zeppelin is nearly as large as Any Port. It even has its own ring of outlier Safe Zones, or a partial ring at least. It appears that several of the smaller Safe Zones have been taken and converted into dungeons. With the safety of the larger Safe Zone at stake, they bring the zeppelin down to help the larger Safe Zone.

After the discovery that the encampment outside of his Safe Zone is full of friendlies, Marc and his group finally have a chance to try to grow stronger again. The addition of an administrator for the Safe Zone as well as someone to coordinate its defenses finally allows Marc to feel like he can go out and do other things.

After an unfortunate accident, Handry is forced to wander a world he doesn't understand, searching for meaning. He soon discovers that the life he thought he knew is far stranger than he could even possibly imagine. Can an unlikely savior provide the answers to the questions he barely comprehends?

Last I remember I was saving my high school crush from the path of an oncoming truck. Now I'm a skin-and-bones weakling wearing nothing but my hospital gown. Oh yeah, the world is also full of monsters, and I'm the only human left. It turns out a godlike System evacuated humanity but decided to leave the vegetable in the bed. I could crawl into a corner and wait to get eaten by a kobold, but after years of being asleep, I have a new appreciation for feeling alive. I'll have to find the tenacity to survive, the courage to fight, and the strength to face some dark truths about myself.

Ivan Susanin, a typical guy and unemployed techie, is initiated by the System and transported, together with a thousand other players, to an unknown location beyond Earth. Ivan has an interface, a spear, and basic weapon skills. All he has to do to return to Earth is complete a simple quest and reach the second level. But experience points are only awarded for kills in this game, and the clock is ticking.

It's been 10 years since Handry was wrenched away from his family and friends, forced to wander a world he no longer understood. But with the help of the Ancients, he has cobbled together a life, of sorts, for himself and his fellow outcasts. Wandering from village to village, welcoming the folk that the townships abandon, fighting the monsters the villagers cannot - or dare not - his ever-growing band of misfits has become the stuff of legend, a story told by parents to keep unruly children in line.

It began as a terrorist attack against the United States and Europe. Middle Eastern terrorist squads were infected with a virus engineered to strike at the heart of the Western world in the name of Islam and the Holy Jihad. When the virus mutated without warning, the infection took on a dimension and scale beyond any rational explanation. Spreading across the globe like wildfire, it left millions dead in its wake. Worse than the initial body counts are those that suffered catastrophic and irreversible brain damage. The infected retain nothing of their former selves and instead they are ...

Is our sun behaving differently from other stars? When an amateur astronomer discovers something strange on telescopic solar pictures, an explanation must be found. Is it merely artifact? Or has he found something totally unexpected? An expert international crew is hastily assembled, a spaceship is speedily repurposed, and the foursome is sent on the ride of their lives. What challenges will they face on this spur-of-the-moment mission to our central star?