Sci Fi - Apocalyptic Fiction Genre

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Summary: A fresh start, a queer social liberal dream, and a planet that wants to kill you. Carving out a life on Mars is no easy feat. With Earth in the throes of a devastating pandemic, autistic scientist Devon and her fellow colonists are faced with the momentous task of establishing a new society – one that learns from the past and prioritises sustainability over short-term gain. Noble aspirations are easier said than done, though – especially when the entire planet wants to kill you. Grappling with the realities of human nature and with their batteries slowly dying, the colony’s 150 women and 10 men must overcome their differences to create a lasting community. But things aren’t always what they seem and maybe the colonists aren’t as alone as they thought… Perfect for fans of Mary Robinette Kowal’s ‘Lady Astronaut’ series and the writing styles of Robert J. Sawyer and Becky Chambers. This thought-provoking sci-fi novel blends classic science fiction ideas with neurodiverse and LGBTQIA+ themes.

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Bad "Things" lurk in dark, abandoned spaces...

Love, Death, & The After: Abandoned Spaces picks up the story where Rainey and her Team, along with Kendale's survivors, left off in Darkness.

Escaping a late-night Nagual attack, and with her lover held together by "shoelaces and bailing wire," Rainey encounters the secret behind the Nagual hidden within a black site lab--a secret from The Before with a treacherous purpose in The After.

Stopping the Nagual plan is hard enough, but her team has betrayed the trust of the town's survivors, while an attack by the Nagual's "Maker" and his militant allies looms. When someone compromises Preston's life, Rainey might be out of time and luck altogether.

The black site's lead scientist puts his agenda on hold until he and his militia support team can eliminate Rainey and her team. Tesla has a golden opportunity to test his Nagual creations against an old nemesis and the geopolitical forces standing in the way of his greater destiny.

Meanwhile, the emergent Nagual, Adam and Cain, have plans of their own.

Book 2 of 3 in this four part series, "Love, Death, & The After: Abandoned Spaces" brings a science-fiction take on cutting edge bioengineering that pits the limits of romance, loyalty, and community against a violent world hell-bent on devouring it all.

Book 1: Love, Death, & The After: Darkness

Book 2: Love, Death, & The After: Abandoned Spaces

Book 3: Love, Death, & The After: Never Again

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“Human civilization has collapsed. Rainey Vidic, MD is a genius, and she has Preston Hayes--her open hand, or hammering fist...

...Only the strongest and smartest will survive in The After.

A gifted surgeon, her retired warrior lover, a former Marine, and a taciturn drone pilot fight for survival in a dangerous and pitiless world, while navigating human needs for love, family and community.

When one of their own faces a lethal illness, Dr. Rainey Vidic's efforts are compromised by a savage horde of highly intelligent, relentlessly evil creatures that threaten the lives of the entire team.

Desperate to save their teammate, the Team encounters an imperiled town of survivors that may hold the key to saving them all. . . or send humanity into extinction.

With echoes of McCarthy's "The Road" and the thrill ride of "Jurassic Park," this three volume, four part series, "Love, Death, & The After," tests the limits of romance, loyalty, and community against a violent world hell-bent on devouring it all.

This book, Love, Death, & The After: Darkness is the first of three:

Book 2: Love, Death, & The After: Abandoned Spaces

Book 3: Love, Death, & The After: Never Again”

Word Count: Click here to reveal119000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: A single father fights to retain control as he shares his body and mind with an evolving AI. It’s been nine years since the government banned all technology. So, when Joel Lodowick, a young transgender father struggling to support his five-year-old daughter, has an old bionic upload itself into his head, he is faced with a decision: Go to the cops and risk prosecution? Or use the robot’s skills to turn his life around? Scared of losing his daughter, Joel chooses the latter. Heightened intelligence and physical enhancements quickly land him a better job and a brighter future. But things take a sinister turn when Joel realizes his uninvited companion has an agenda of its own, which may or may not include leaving him in control. Unable to approach the government who covered up the truth about AI sentience, Joel finds himself on the run. With his daughter’s life on the line and his own body turning against him, he must find a way to convince the bionic in his head to value his human life before he loses the chance forever. Find out what happens in My Heart is Human by Reese Hogan!

Word Count: Click here to reveal105000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: RETURN TO THE MEAN STREETS OF AUTUMN Valerius Bakhoum is dead and buried. Too bad he’s still flat broke and behind on the rent. Unsure what to do with himself—and of who he is—Valerius resumes his career as a detective by taking up the oldest case in his files: where do the children go? Throughout his own youth on the streets of Autumn, last of the Great Flying Cities, Valerius knew his fellow runaways disappeared from back alleys and other hiding places more than anyone realized. Street kids even had a myth to explain it: the Gotchas, who steal urchins away in the night. With nothing but time on his hands, Valerius dives in head-first to settle the question once and for all and runs smack into a more pressing mystery: who killed one of Valerius’ former lovers? And do they know Valerius is still alive? Stalk the shadows of Autumn’s hidden places by Valerius Bakhoum’s side as he shines a light on secrets both sacred and profane, ones with shockingly personal connections to who he was—and who he might become. New Life in Autumn is the sequel to the Manly Wade Wellman Award-winning A Fall in Autumn.

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Summary: It’s 200 years after WWIII and he earth is poisoned with Carbon-14 and plutonium. Following the decade long night of nuclear winter and the Great Famines, what’s left of the human race is fragmented and much of the old world is nuclear wastelands inhabited by different factions, from the cannibalistic Ferals, who have reverted to savagery, to the Scavengers who pick among the ruins of the old world cities for useful items to barter with the Dusteaters, nomadic warlike factions who are at war with the despotic Utopians, the most technologically advanced and powerful of the human enclaves, who have forged a new civilization that is controlled by an elite of fertile scientists and intelligentsia who live underground in Sub City, which sprawls beneath Silo City and Surfer Town, where the infertile topsiders called the Mudsurfers live and work for their troglodyte masters. Thundersky often wonders why he doesn’t get sick? All the topsiders get sick from the radiation and the cancers. So sick, that living to 35 is considered a grand old age. Only the Scholars live for longer. But the Scholars manufacture the medicinals that everybody needs to survive. Thundersky is different, not only is he immune from the radiation and cancers that have plagued the earth for 500 years, he’s also a genius and just 19, he has designed an antimatter impulse drive capable of achieving 50% the speed of light. It’s been months since Thundersky submitted his data and applied to the prestigious Tech Training Academy but has heard nothing since. Not all the Scholars are tyrants; some believe the exploitation of topsiders is cruel and wrong. The human experimentations conducted in the Utopian prisons on Dusteater terrorists is barbaric and inhuman. Among them, Grand High Scholar Blackstone Washington and High Scholar Blossom Flora, who for the past twenty years, following the purge of the geneticists and bioengineers have been protecting the “Genesis Child” from the Grand High Council who would kill him. But now people are getting suspicious and asking questions about the topsider who never gets sick, they must act quickly before his true identity is discovered and contrive to bring Thundersky into Sub City and alter his records with a little help from the ARTI-QS-Six-Zero-Two Quantum AI. Zim Steven, head of the SSS is soon suspicious of the new young genius and discovers that he is the Genesis Child, but before he can act, an ancient quantum system is activated at a secret location beneath the flooded ruins of Manhattan, and a countdown begins to unleash another thermonuclear holocaust upon our dying world and a race against time begins. Thundersky is selected to go to New York with an elite team of military tacticals to locate the NORAD system and deactivate it. Meanwhile, Zim Steven lays his plans to make certain that Thundersky and his companions never return to Silo City alive. After their transport drone is shot down by Dusteaters, Corporal Venus Jane and Fox, Thundersky and his best friend Tiger White are the only survivors, with just an armored vehicle. They are pursued by Dusteaters and the infamous Godders of Pennsylvania and a desperate battle for survival begins. While in the wilderness, the foursome make unlikely allies, and Thundersky falls in love with a handsome young Dusteater fighter, Reaper Bloodbuck. Utopia’s arch enemy, the queen of the Dusteaters, the Prophetess will reveal things to Thundersky’s that will unravel his life and everything he believes in, and soon, it’s realized that the humble Mudsurfer is far more powerful than even the Scholars could have imagined…

Word Count: Click here to reveal101000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: Brey would rate himself least likely to survive a zombie apocalypse. Yet here he is. True, it was a viral apocalypse not zombies, but still… Gone from spoiled rich kid to convict in sixty seconds flat. Stuck in prison with his family three thousand miles away. But not for long. Soon everyone is on the run from the virus. When guards set the convicts loose, Brey vows to reunite with his family no matter what it takes. So what if he sucks at keeping promises? He’s damned if he’s breaking this one. Getting home is his only goal. Too bad there’s somebody who won’t make that easy for him… Hank is a cop. He enforces the law. Even the toxic ones. Waterfall, a small city that made it through the apocalypse, survives on the sale of human beings. Nobody’s getting in the way of Hank’s plans to stop them. Nobody but the rich kid he once arrested for murder. Now the guy’s up for sale, and Hank’s plans go south in a hurry. On the spot to make a quick decision, he buys him. What else can he do?… Dark with snark and crazy romantic. Want to tag along with Brey and Hank while they figure out how to reconcile the irreconcilable? For heart-stopping drama, heart-breaking scenes, swoon-worthy love, and a happy-ever-after to last a lifetime, read now or buy On the Eve of Forever and enjoy! NOTE: On the Eve of Forever was previously published as Backbone by Pride Publishing. It has been rewritten and expanded by approximately 25,000 words.

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Summary: Li Liang has found a berth to suit her: chief pilot and first officer of the all-female crew of an old space freighter, the Sappho. Then one ordinary, unremarkable morning, Liang retunes the Sappho’s communications systems just in time to catch the breathless, terrible accounts from Mars of the total destruction of Earth. Earth’s a cinder. The unknown alien race that destroyed it has left Mars, too, in flames and is ravening outward from the solar system, devouring every human colony on the way. Liang’s one of the few survivors, racing ahead of the Devourers, rescuing as many frightened, shocked people as she can. Will Liang and the pitiful remnants of humanity find a new haven, somewhere to start again? Or will she, too, echo the dreadful last message coming out of their dead home? They’re coming. Oh God, they’re coming.  

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Summary: When Peace-in-the-Sky awakens as a captive with a young girl by her side, she only understands one thing: she must escape the tribe who captured her. A brutal head injury makes the past a swirling fog, so she is reliant on the girl—her precocious daughter Anissa—to guide them. She must return Anissa to the Tribes-under-the-Dome to keep her safe from warring and vicious tribes inhabiting the wasted landscape. Every group they shelter with along the way sees something different when they look at Peace-in-the-Sky—a god, a savior, a valuable commodity, a volatile danger. She doesn't know herself, but soon realizes she can protect Anissa with the scorching power of the pillars-of-flame. Only her tender love for Anissa and her mission to return the girl home to the Tribes-under-the-Dome matter. As her body grows weaker, not even the inexorable unraveling mystery of who, or what, Peace-in-the-Sky really is can deflect her from the task. Find out what happens in Peace In The Sky by Caye Marsh!

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Summary: The Complete Powerless World Series in one set! Prequel, Before the Power was Gone “My name is Anne Mathews. I'm a prepper. But I haven't always been. This is how it started.” Book 1, When the Power is Gone Russ and Anne Mathews live in a rural suburb in Tennessee. Regular people, with regular jobs, living a normal life - except for one thing. They are what many people call "preppers". They have stocked up on supplies to survive any kind of event they can think of that may occur to disrupt life as they know it. When that event comes, they start preparing for the new way of life they will face. Along with their teenage son, and their next door neighbors and best friends, they plan their exit from a neighborhood too close to the city to a farm in the country. They just have to get there. Their faith in their own capabilities and in humankind will be challenged, as they fight to protect and keep their supplies and, quite possibly, their lives. Book 2, When the Peace is Gone Russ and Anne Mathews made their escape from their home, along with family, friends, and new friends they made along the way. Now, they must build a new life for themselves at the Warren farm, without the luxury of electricity and very few traces of the 21st century. The problem: there are a lot of people who didn’t prepare for something like this, and some of those people will stop at nothing to take what the group has, by whatever means necessary. They must protect the farm and their supplies day and night from those who would do them harm to acquire them. These people are not soldiers. They are everyday people like you and me. They’re building a clan. How far will they have to go in order to secure the safety of the ones they love in their new home? What price will they pay in the process? Book 3, When the Pain is Gone They thought they were safe, somewhat hidden from the world. They were wrong. They thought they knew how to protect themselves and each other. They were wrong again. In the blink of an eye, they lost people, good people, who were trying to help others. When the evil outside the farm finds its way in, how will they react? Will they hide themselves away, or join in the fight for survival and freedom? They’ve paid the ultimate price. How much more will this new way of life cost them?

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Summary: For most twelve-year-olds, being kidnapped is terrifying. For Althea, it’s only Tuesday. Her powers of healing make her a precious commodity in the Badlands, a place where the strong write the law in blood. For as long as she can remember, she has lived either as a possession or a goddess. Althea contents herself with captivity as long as she can help others, even those who killed to own her. After three whole months in the same village, the friendship of a young warrior makes her feel almost like a member of the tribe rather than a prisoner. Alas, raiders seize her yet again. For the first time in six years, being stolen hurts. Following a reluctant escape, she questions if she should dare risk using her powers to defend herself, and those she has come to love. Her attempt to return to the tribe leaves her lost and alone and, for the first time in her life, trying to stay free. Alas, two threats far beyond her experience to understand also hunt her. One wishes to use her for his grand scheme—and one wants to destroy her.

Word Count: Click here to reveal124000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: Althea struggles to adapt to an unexpected twist in her life—not being kidnapped in six whole months. The strange police from the faraway city claim the abilities she thought of as magic are really ‘psionics,’ and say she is far stronger than anyone they have ever seen. Despite their curiosity, they let her remain in the Badlands to protect her from an evil they call corporations. Of course, Althea knows all too well how powerful her healing gift is. For most of her life, she’d been a prize taken in raids. Tribes have killed to own her, and she let them. But the Prophet is done being passive. Having a family changes everything. No longer afraid to use her powers to protect herself, Althea refuses to be taken again… even when corporate mercenaries find her.

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Summary: RISE (noun / verb) Eight definitions to inspire writers around the world, and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) An upward slope or movement 2) A beginning or origin 3) An increase in amount or number 4) An angry reaction 5) To take up arms 6) To return from death 7) To become heartened or elated 8) To exert oneself to meet a challenge Rise features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

Word Count: Click here to reveal111,000 (Click here to hide)

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Summary: 133 years. Time is up. Lead Engineer Tara and her partner Sasha face the coming end of the facility generator. For generations It has served thousands of people who have been hiding underground from the ravages of the war, and the lingering Enemy above. Up and down the Grand Elevator, though the entire facility, every resident's life will be shaken when the generator sparks its last amp. The Great Actual, the anarchistic Citizens, and all of the regressed sub-societies in between will have to face the unknowns of the surface. Old fears will pale against new circumstances beyond their imagination, and new attention brings judgment upon all.

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Summary: Amargosa is under occupation. But a fallen starship may turn the tide for the resistance. JT Austin, Davra Andraste, and Eric Yuwono disobey orders to reach this ship. Along the way, they discover that not every enemy is Gelt, not every ally is human, and humans and Gelt are not the only intelligences on Amargosa.

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Summary: Language is no longer learned, it is streamed to neural implants regulated by lang-laws. Those who cannot afford monthly Language Streaming services are feral, living at the fringes of society. Big tech corporations control language, the world’s most valuable commodity. But when a massive cyberattack causes a global language outage, catastrophe looms. Europol detective Emyr Morgan is assigned to the case. Suspect number one is Professor Ebba Black, the last native speaker of language in the automated world, and leader of the Babel cyberterrorist organization. But Emyr soon learns that in a world of corporate power, where they who control language control everything, all is not as it seems. After all, if the mysterious Ebba Black is to blame, why is the Russian Federation being framed for an outage it claims to have no responsibility for? And why is Ebba now targeted for assassination? As he and Ebba collide, each with their divergent agendas and value systems, Emyr faces an existential dilemma between loyalty and betrayal, when everything he once believed in is called into question. To prevent the imminent collapse of civilization, and a deadly war between the great federations, he must figure out friend from foe, as his life may very well depend on it. And with the odds stacked against him, he must find a way to stop the Babel Apocalypse.

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Summary: Childhood ends the night the sky explodes. Six teenagers from different backgrounds are thrown together when an unknown species seizes their world. Will they be able to put their differences aside long enough to survive?

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Summary: Poems written by Cyborgs in the future, melding sci-fi and poetry, human and machine. The Cyborg Anthology takes place in a future where there was a thriving world of Robots and Cyborgs living peacefully beside Humans, but a disaster destroyed all Robot and most Cyborg life. The book is organized like a typical anthology of literature, split into sections that include a biography of each poet and a sample of their poetry. It covers early Cyborg poetry, political, celebrity, and pop culture poets, and ends with the next generation of Cyborg poets. The narrative takes place in the time after a cataclysmic event, and the collection wrestles with this loss. Through the lives of the poets, the book chronicles the history of personhood for technological beings, their struggle for liberation, and demonstrates different ways a person can be Cyborg. The poems and biographies together tell the story of a complex and enthralling world-to-come, exploring topics that are important in the future, and also urgent right now. “With mordant wit and a playful satiric touch, these Cyborg poems showcase a dazzling range of poetic forms and ideas: imaginative and charmingly subversive. Move over Norton Anthology of Poetry, there’s a new force in town, and they are a delight.” —Renée Sarojini Saklikar, author of Listening to the Bees and Children of Air India “The premise of this collection alone is fabulous. The poems are potent and powerful. With echoes of Le Guin, Brunner and Monáe, Lindsay B-e’s debut is layered and smart, provocative, and deeply satisfying. I was moved and fascinated. Speculative poetry at its best.” —Hiromi Goto, author of Chorus of Mushrooms and Darkest Light

Word Count: Click here to reveal108000 (Click here to hide)

Summary:

Under the watchful eye of the Mother Shrine, twelve-year-old Wisp ekes out a simple, but challenging life with Dad, foraging for food and losing herself in old books from the world that came before. She loves the Endless Forest―except when the Tree Walkers come for her.