System Fiction

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future. The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen....

Wrench is a Fixer. Someone born to maintain, fix, and correct any and every issue that could go wrong in the habitat he lives in. Someone who makes sure he and his fellow humans can remain on display and entertain their owners as any good human pet would. At least, that’s what he was born to be. He’s taken a different route and joined a resistance faction to help free humanity to become more than just pets to an alien race.

Nick Abrahams still holds the official world record for the number of space launches, but he’s bored stiff with his job hosting space tours. Only when his wife leaves him, however, does he try to change his life. He accepts a tempting offer from a Russian billionaire. In exchange for making a simple repair on Neptune’s moon Triton, he will return to Earth a multi-millionaire, enabling him to achieve his ‘impossible dream’ of buying his own California vineyard.

There's no way home. Not for John Lee. His search for answers for the System Quest has taken him deep into the Forbidden Zone, into the very arms of his enemies. He's betrayed family and friends and been betrayed in turn. The most powerful human in the System has come to the final leg of his journey.

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.

Hal Mason's still going to find surviving the System Apocalypse challenging. While bringing in his latest fugitive, Hal's payday is interrupted by the translucent blue boxes that herald Earth's introduction to the System - a galaxy spanning wave of structured mystical energy that destroys all electronics and bestows game-like abilities upon mankind. With society breaking down and mutating wildlife rampaging through the city of Pittsburgh, those who remain will sacrifice anything for a chance at earning their next Level.

Jay Luckrun has many interests: street dancing, anime, action movies, comedy, and dashing across rooftops to the point where his bullies nicknamed him Rooftop Weirdo. After struggling to confront his untouchable high school crush at her seventeenth birthday party, Jay adds another interest to his list—Dungeon Crawling in the face of the apocalypse. Jay meets a divine creature who chooses him to become a Champion. Someone with a leveling System, stats, skills, access to other dimensions containing dungeons filled with supernatural loot, and magical powers that’ll alter reality as they know it.

The Connected System has come to Earth and adapted humanity to be able to survive and try to Advance and Thrive in the Connection. With new Classes and Abilities; Lochlan Brady, his family and the rest of humanity will face challenges and threats from myths and beyond. Loch and his daughters have survived their first Dungeon in the newly changed world and come out far stronger. Just wanting to get home, and start searching for the missing Kelly, they come across other survivors in Northwood.

In System Consolidation, Knox faces his greatest ordeal yet. The Titan System stands as a testament to order, drawing the gaze of friends and foes alike. To counter the looming threat of the Dark Titan, Knox and his allies are thrust into the Tower Challenge, seeking a mythical item crucial for victory. But their path is marred by treachery as nobles desperate to hold onto power scheme against them.

Jeb is settling into his role as the head of the biggest orphanage in the alien city of Solmnath, taking in hundreds of human children orphaned by the harsh trials of the Tutorial.

In this concluding volume of Neal Stephenson’s epic work, “Half-Cocked Jack” Shaftoe must escape the noose of Jack Ketch; the rivalry between Newton and Leibniz comes to a head; and Daniel Waterhouse pursues his dream to build the Logic Mill

Having survived the trials of the dungeon and embraced the unbridled magic of Premar, Knox has ascended from a humble woodcutter to the revered Titan of Light. But with great power comes even greater challenges. As the guardian of new lands under the Titan System, Knox must navigate a treacherous path filled with monsters that lurk in the shadows, cunning pirates seeking to plunder his domain, and an onslaught of the undead threatening to overrun his territories.

With more than 10 stories from exciting new voices and a few veterans of the universe, the second anthology highlights the lives and struggles of humanity's best and worst years after system advent.

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.

As a 10-year-old orphan, all Wick ever wanted was money, power, and well, what else was there? Enough is never enough. His father's death left him only with a glass amulet, his trusty spade, and two level one skills. Six months in the backwater city of Outlast, Wick has finally decided to make his move for a brighter future. It may cost him the beating of his life, but he lives by the Sprawler's Code: The strong live long, but the bold get the gold. Follow Wick on the beginning of his new life as he explores new powers and manipulates anyone foolish enough to get in his way.

Living with an advanced Werewolf System hasn't always been easy for Gary Dem. But it sure comes in handy. Without it, he would never have been able to take on—and literally devour—a lethal Altered and live to tell about it. With his new rank and abilities, Gary and his gang, the Howlers, are primed to finally wipe out the last remaining competition in Slough. As long as he can control himself and his growing werewolf pack, things might just turn out all right . . . But it's not bloody likely.

After Jebediah Trapper completed the Impossible Tutorial (by cheating), the vet's been in something of a slump. His PTSD is gradually guiding him down the path of self-harm. Crippled, stripped of his power, and homeless, he's got no reason to keep breathing. Until a little girl is in trouble.

Finding his way back to Earth through a portal, John returns to a very changed world. The shackles of galactic control have bound Earth and humanity ever tighter to the system. Now, John has to find a way to free Earth from galactic control while battling stronger, more powerful enemies. And worst of all, he will need to indulge in politics. Good thing he's got a new class and new allies.

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.

While the Australian master Gerald Murnane’s reputation rests largely on his longer works of fiction, his short stories stand among the most brilliant and idiosyncratic uses of the form since Borges, Beckett, and Nabokov. Brutal, comic, obscene, and crystalline, Stream System runs from the haunting “Land Deal”, which imagines the colonization of Australia and the ultimate vengeance of its indigenous people as a series of nested dreams to “Finger Web”, which tells a quietly terrifying, fractal tale of the scars of war and the roots of misogyny.