System Fiction

Jebediah Trapper is a ticking time bomb. After sort of saving the day months ago, he's got a nuclear bomb attached to him in the Fate Dimension, where magic and potential collide. Jeb just wants to defuse himself before he collapses into a sickly pile of green goo or ignites in a city-destroying blast. There's just one problem: The world doesn't slow down because you've got a nuclear hangnail. Mab, Queen of the Fae wants him for unknown, yet most likely sinister reasons. A mysterious, abhorrent entity is making him an offer he can't refuse, and the undead are getting organized.

Simone knows if she plays with fire, she runs the risk of getting burned, but she just can't help herself. Living large off the paternity scam of a lifetime, she has two baby daddies cashing her out for her infant son. Even her own best friends are getting tired of her low-down, manipulative ways. Unfortunately, the streets begin to talk, and the out-for-self mother's luck taps out.

Vernell LaQuan Banks and Justyce McAllister grew up a block apart in the Southwest Atlanta neighborhood of Wynwood Heights. Years later, though, Justyce walks the illustrious halls of Yale University...and Quan sits behind bars at the Fulton Regional Youth Detention Center. Through a series of flashbacks, vignettes, and letters to Justyce - the protagonist of Dear Martin - Quan's story takes form.

With the galaxy thrown into chaos by mutual breaches of the Two Hundred Years' peace, what seemed like an isolated incident on the Thelicosa/Merida border has become an epidemic. In the midst of this chaos, the Thelicosan and Meridan fleets on their respective borders have come to a sort of tense peace after the events in Book II, but now it's clear: Somebody wants war. And it's not the Free Systems of the galaxy.

Born over a century after "The Rise", Jeff scavenges with his tyrannical mother for survival. Banned from cultivating freely, Jeff wants none of this life; his one objective is to join the immortal rankers as they attempt to climb the Northern Tower. On the day of his escape, a powerful guild attacks Leah’s group, and Jeff is thrown through a unique dungeon portal—a portal that hasn’t been used in nearly a hundred years. In the pursuit of Jeff’s ultimate goal, he must choose whether to follow the Church, join a guild, or try it all on his own.

When decorated military pilot Shawna Bright is convicted of a heinous crime and incarcerated, she is determined to prove her innocence. However, flying the getaway ship during a prison break wrecks that hope. Forced to land on the terrifying Xeno-ridden planet, PK-L7, Shawna must survive both ravenous alien-zombies and a crew of dangerous criminals. When they discover Xenos with cybernetic implants, Shawna uncovers a deadly plan to wreak havoc across the universe. She must do everything in her power to stop it—even if she goes down in history as one of the bad guys.

My life took a turn I never expected on the day the world ended. Suddenly forced to fight in a bloody arena by a faceless System, I find the only way to survive is to win. I’m told that ten victories in the arena will give me my freedom, but if I’m going to get there, I’ll need a crack team of hardened allies to fight with me. What I got instead was a bratty college girl with a jealousy streak, a momma’s boy roommate who now inhabits the body of a piglet, and a devastatingly gorgeous teacher whose sword is as sharp as her tongue.

In a Post-Apocalyptic world of Magic and Machinery, Jack Knight is an orphan who finds himself caught between a life-altering decision. Join the military and fight the demon hordes or sell his soul to the Corpos. Both options having minimal appeal to a shut-in like Jack. Thanks to the high cost of living, and his sister’s medical expenses, Jack has never given much thought to what he’d want to do with life, always living paycheck to paycheck, scrounging just enough to keep the lights on and his sister safe. However, an Angel presents him with a third option.

No more cute koala bears, bouncy kangaroos, or fuzzy wallabies. Now, everything is mutated and aggressive? Who made the spiders so big? The world's most dangerous continent just got a lot more dangerous, and no one, not even the alien Galactics who arrive, are ready for it.

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.

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.

The U.S.S. Enterprise is the site for a wedding that will unite two powerful rival families of the Tizarin. But Captain Picard's happiness is soon cut short by the arrival of Lwaxana Troi, the nagging mother of ship's counsellor Deanna Troi, and the notorious, all-powerful Q, who has come to examine and challenge the human concept of love. Read by Majel Barrett and John de Lancie!

Jeff's original dream of escape, living between cities and the Wilds as a Hunter, has come true. Of course, in that fantasy, he had Alrick by his side and these Hunters are definitely not him. They might actually be closer to his childhood tormentors, Leah, and her Mercenaries. In pursuit of a way to continue to grow the Training Room and himself, conflict festers between his goblin friends Mur and Tet and his fellow humans. Still, is Hunting with his monsters out of the question? Surely his understanding of Dungeons and their strategies means he can at least try…

When the System came to Earth, technology failed, monsters appeared, and billions died as humans were inducted into the game-like physics the System enforced.

Captain Picard has never encountered an opponent more powerful than Q, a being from another continuum who is dangerous, obnoxious, mysterious, and seemingly all-powerful. But now, Trelane has tapped in to an awesome power source that makes him more powerful than the entire continuum. Q warns that Trelane has become unspeakably dangerous - this time the stakes are all of creation. Read by John de Lancie.

I, Q is a wild and witty voyage through the secret soul of creation as only the enigmatic Q can tell it! Co-written and read by John de Lancie, who portrayed Q on television for more than a decade!

After saying goodbye to his life on earth, he never expected to find a brand new world still awaiting for him. One where immortals flew through the clouds and ancient evils hid below the surface. One where fables, myths, and legends filled every corner. One where he could finally start anew. Now, however, John is about to learn a valuable lesson, for any place humanity rules will always be the same - a domain where sin and ambition can only be tamed by power. Will he have the strength to walk this road on his own or will he be unable to heal the old wounds hidden deep within his heart?

On a planet code-named Gateway stands a mysterious portal to the past, the Guardian of Forever. Spock, Kirk, and McCoy have just returned from a voyage through the gateway with a young man named Zar - Spock's own son from ancient Sarpeidon! But while Spock and the brilliant, primitive youth try to bridge a gap of centuries and cultures, Gateway is seized by the Romulans...Featuring a dramatic reading by Leonard Nimoy and James Doohan, and enhanced with sound effects and an original score!

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.

Long Fang is stranded in a foreign world where proper cultivation has been replaced by annoying blue screens. He is confused and alone...but not for long. Completely ignoring the System, he forms a wholesome sect of followers to spread cultivation across the wild world. Blue screens do not take kindly to rejection, however, and Long Fang’s stubbornness soon finds him pitted against increasingly dangerous foes.