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When the System came to Earth, technology failed, monsters appeared, and billions died as humans were inducted into game-like physics. Unfortunately for the System, not all humans were on Earth. Cato is an ordinary postbiological citizen — disgusted enough by the System's excesses to go through one of the portals and spread himself into the broader System just as Earth is completely freed. He has no magic, but he has the technology and knowledge of a civilization reaching toward the second rank of the Kardashev scale. He may have to operate under the System's limitations, but he certainly doesn't have to play by its rules. His goal is simple: remove the System entirely.

In a world where all magical spells have been captured into cards, those who can build a deck have the most power. The most Arthur could ever hope for was to someday earn a trash-tier spell card. When fate grants him a legendary Master of Skills card, he's thrust into a world of opportunity and danger. To survive and grow strong, Arthur must learn skills — all the skills.

Billions of years ago, Earth formed a little differently — less iron, more water — and the first humans evolved on a lone continent surrounded by vast oceans spanning 97.5% of the planet. For millennia, humanity believed their island to be the only land in existence, until satellites revealed two distant continents. An expedition of humanity's best and brightest sets out — only for a series of disasters to wipe out all but one of the crew. Doctor Alexander Pryce becomes the first and only man to step foot on foreign soil. Alone, he struggles to carry on the mission, and in doing so draws the attention of an inquisitive and highly intelligent dragon. Desolate but not alone, Pryce begins the painstaking process of learning to communicate with an alien species — and becomes the sole representative of humanity whose actions will determine the future of both their kinds.

Nothing walks the black cinder of Earth except the undead leftovers, reanimated by science so advanced it may as well be magic. Twisted into unimaginable forms by flesh-shaping and machine-grafting, the undead are the only remnant of a civilization reduced to ash and organic slurry. Elpida doesn't know this world, but she's on her feet, leading a half-dozen other fresh revenants — ripped from oblivion and disgorged shivering and naked on cold metal slabs in a womb-lab of blinking lights and blaring alarms, by machines running some ancient plan. A story about body horror and alienation, weird zombie-girls gluing themselves back together, mad science beyond mortal ken, and trying to cradle the flower of companionship in twitching, undead fingers.

When the first derelict alien spacecraft fell to Earth, humanity reverse-engineered its technology and entered a new Golden Age. Hundreds more ships followed over the years, each spurring greater leaps forward. One unassuming craft that fell on Siberia in 2021 passed unnoticed — but it contained something beyond miraculous technology. Three years later, in a top-secret underground facility in eastern Colorado, an army of Paladin Mobile Infantry Suits was being built to turn the tide against the alien incursion consuming the planet. Humanity fell before that could happen. Sam, an engineer responsible for overseeing the facility, is now alone — his only company a base AI and an army of empty suits. With the world gone to hell and the things that caused it still living above, he decides he is much better off staying exactly where he is. Unfortunately, that is no longer an option.

When humanity first encountered alien life, we were judged and found wanting. The Galactic Consensus found us selfish, wasteful, and boorish — blockaded Earth and left behind little more than a hypercomm relay and a handful of subscriptions to a massively multiplayer game played in one's sleep. The game, they said, would teach us to be better galactic neighbors. The megacorporations ignored it until they learned the powers earned from clearing dungeons were just as real when day broke. Magic and supernatural abilities exploded into existence, and a subscription to the Tower of Somnus became a status symbol. Katherine "Kat" Debs doesn't have much, but she wants something more — a chance to claw her way up the rigid social ladder from the arcology where she was raised. When she gets the opportunity to enter the Tower free of corporate control, she jumps at it, knowing the game might be her only path to taking control of her own destiny.

Tanya von Degurechaff meets a violent end as the Great War draws to a close. Being X, growing bored with his chew toy, flings her soul out of his system entirely. Tanya wakes in a new universe — a galaxy far, far away — and must start over once again. It's a long way to the top, if you want to retire early.

Richard "Dodge" Forthrast founded a gaming company that made him a multibillionaire. One day, during a routine medical procedure, something goes irrevocably wrong — Dodge is pronounced brain dead. Long ago, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company, and so his family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud. In the coming years, technology allows Dodge's brain to be turned back on. An eternal afterlife — the Bitworld — is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the utopia it might first seem.

What do you do when you find yourself the sole survivor of the complete destruction of Earth? Nikola winds up in that position — disembodied in a half-built asteroid outpost, the last remnant and only hope of the human race. Nikola exists now only in digital form, controlling drones and cameras to interact with the world. But memories are fractured, and there are endless obstacles between awakening as a glorified computer program and saving the species. Is Nikola even human anymore? Is it even possible to resurrect humanity?

The Confederacy of Aligned Systems has been deeply wounded — wracked by unceasing warfare and beset by enemies without number, yet still doing its best to defend its allies and member states. A new challenge has arrived. With humanity on the edge of reemergence, can the Confederacy hold out long enough for the Terrans to arrive in time to help? This story takes place after First Contact/Behold Humanity and Dark Ages.

An anthology and companion piece to The Perfect Run, exploring roads not taken. What if Quicksave had become a Psycho? What if Len Sabino had taken the Violet Elixir rather than the Blue? What if Jasmine had remembered? What if Ryan had gained a different power, or fallen in love with someone else? The Ultimate One guides readers through these alternate histories — moments where a single choice reshapes everything.

The Game is a virtual reality simulation played by over a billion children around the world. The best players are celebrities, adored and worshipped by countless fans. Zack is a superstar among players. His final play may change the world forever — setting in motion consequences that ripple across both Earth and the world of Tygon, where billions watch breathlessly as lives are put in jeopardy based on decisions made by children inside the Game.

The Rasmussem Corporation creates virtual reality games that plug directly into the brain — no keyboard, no monitor, just pure immersion. But the technology comes with catastrophic risks when things go wrong, and for some players the game becomes deadly serious. From brain-hacked dungeon crawls where a crashed game means real-world death, to a medieval fantasy where a girl must win or die for real, the Rasmussem universe explores what happens when the line between virtual and reality collapses.

Given his first weapon as a child, Edward Lee lived a life full of violence in a nation torn by war. Tormented by the demons of his past, he believed death would free him. Through the schemes of beings beyond his understanding, his death instead becomes the starting point of a new life — as a young teenager in a strange world of magic and monsters. Beyond simply surviving his new existence, Edward will soon realize there is still a price to pay for the actions of his past.

The universe was a vast, empty, dark, and uncaring place — until life happened and changed it forever, even if only a teeny-tiny bit. Perspective, as it turns out, is everything. Magh'rathlak the Observer is an unfathomable cosmic being from beyond the veil of reality. Average as far as reality-warping entities go, it still struggles to keep things in perspective. To narrow its maddening vastness, it decides to compress its entire being into a single corporeal form. Magh'rathlak had never tried such a feat, but that wasn't about to stop it. After all — how hard could being human possibly be?

It's just a game — isn't it? Twelve-year-old Johnny Maxwell is about to set the high score on Only You Can Save Mankind when the alien fleet sends an unexpected message: they wish to surrender. But the aliens aren't supposed to surrender — they're supposed to die.

Post-apocalyptic Oregon Trail. Mazelton comes from a clan of radiation wizards who harvest the cores of living beings to power their magics — but he has no enthusiasm for the family trade. That hardly matters when entire armies are sent to exterminate his clan. He has to run: from mobs, cannibals, soldiers, sailors, cholera, cattle, thieving sales-monks, starvation, mechanical horrors, vengeful spirits, forced marriages, and poison of every sort. Fortunately, his not-terribly-nice family has trained him to survive apocalypses. A world still recovering from the last one should be easy.

Every thousand cycles, the 108 gods select their avatars among the most deserving champions of the galaxy for a grand game to decide who will next bear the crown of archon. This time, even the mightiest tremble — the twin arbiters have entered the fray. Space has chosen Lilth Seranne Kerentis: empress, conqueror, warrior, scholar, an undisputed genius of brawn and magic. Time has chosen Steve, a 25-year-old cello player from London. Thing is, Steve cannot lose. But to get there, he'll have a very bad time.

Eight thousand years after the Glassing of Earth, Terran Descent Humanity has largely become a post-scarcity society based on consent and enjoying life. With the discovery of another ancient race beyond the "Great Gulf," events and history collide to draw the Terran Confederacy into war against a hundred-million-year-old empire that has always won — and believes it always will. With allies and enemies of multiple species, the Orion Galactic Arm Spur will be wracked by warfare the likes of which have not been seen. Cracked, harried, wounded, and damaged, Terran Descent Humanity willfully throws itself against the universe itself. Told largely from the viewpoint of other species, this is a vast ensemble war story spanning hundreds of perspectives across an entire interstellar conflict.