Even with our modern technology, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis cannot be treated or cured. I've been bed or chair bound since I was a kid. The advent of Virtual Reality technology has given me a chance for a new life. Or rather dozens of them. Heh. I'm an avid gamer, and I wouldn't have it any other way. In the games I could be what I wanted to be, who I wanted to be. A mighty warrior, a powerful spellcaster, the charming rogue. The crafter. The builder. All of those and more have helped to greatly alleviated my problems. But a new game is coming out; one with the power to change the world. It uses a brand new technology, based around the first ever deep immersion Dive Pod. With it there is no more game lag or graphical limits. It is being heralded as the greatest breakthrough in Virtual Reality technologies since its founding. And the first and only game for it: Universe Online. No longer will players be stuck on a single large world to explore. No longer will there a limit to what you can do, what you can be. Fly spaceships between the stars, conquer planets, create custom technology. Mine, Build, Destroy. Explore. Rule. This is my story, and my path in Universe Online.

    -Royal Navy Motto Seventy years ago, the interstellar supercarrier Ark Royal was the pride of the Royal Navy. But now, her weapons are outdated and her solid-state armour nothing more than a burden on her colossal hull. She floats in permanent orbit near Earth, a dumping ground for the officers and crew the Royal Navy wishes to keep out of the public eye. But when a deadly alien threat appears, the modern starships built by humanity are no match for the powerful alien weapons. Ark Royal and her mismatched crew must go on the offensive, buying time with their lives. And yet, with a drunkard for a Captain, an over-ambitious first officer and a crew composed of reservists and the dregs of the service, do they have even the faintest hope of surviving......and returning to an Earth which may no longer be there?

    No job. No prospects. He lives in one of the most crime-ridden apartment blocks on the west coast. His girlfriend uses him for a place to stay. His father is on life support. Rent is due next week… Games are Nick’s passion. He's played them all - well, the old screen ones anyway. He's never been able to afford an Immersion tank and the amazing games that come with them, but he's seen the web casts. He knows the names of every superstar pixel runner. His heroes. So when he's picked out of the crowd to participate in a competitive, quest-driven dark fantasy RPG, his brain melts. Could this be his opportunity to get ahead? Or will he be chewed up by the machine, just another failed pixel runner by the side of the road? STRENGTH BUILD is a LitRPG serial. The Fields of Durandor is the first episode, with more to come in the coming weeks!

    when the Advent began. As all electronics in the world simply ceased to work, blue screens filled with information appeared before him. Drew was given access to a mana interface and a limited number of reality-altering crystals called Xatherite. Following the instructions on his vision-impairing screens, he ‘slotted’ his Xatherite and changed his fate: he gained the ability to cast spells. Now alone in the dark, he must battle through the government bunker-turned-dungeon in a desperate bid for survival. Escape is only the beginning, the first of his many problems in the changed world. Drew will be tasked to not only survive… but to guide the rest of humanity safely through the anarchy.

    Magic that has been banned from the world. A man willing to learn no matter the cost.The decision to start a new life is never an easy one, but for Joe the transition was far from figurative. Becoming a permanent addition to a game world, it doesn't take long to learn that people with his abilities are actively hunted. In fact, if the wrong people gained knowledge of what he was capable of, assassins would appear in droves.In his pursuit of power, Joe fights alongside his team, completes quests, and delves into the mysteries of his class, which he quickly discovers can only be practiced in secret. Ultimately, his goal is to complete every mission, master every ability, and learn all of the world's secrets.All he has to do is survive long enough to make that happen.

    An epic SF war story spanning space and time, The Forever War explores one soldier's experience caught up in the brutal machinery of a war that reaches across the stars.

    The next minute, they're in a horse-drawn cart surrounded by soldiers pointing crossbows at them. Tim now has the voice and physique of a prepubescent girl. Dave finds that while he lost a foot or two in height, he somehow acquired a suit of armor and a badass beard. Julian's ears have grown ridiculously long and pointy. And Cooper... well Cooper has gotten himself a set of tusks, a pair of clawed hands, and a bad case of the shits. He also finds that he's carrying a bag with a human head in it - a head that he had chopped off when they were still just playing a game.Shit just got real, and if they want to survive, these four friends are going to have to tap into some baser instincts they didn't even know existed in their fast-food and pizza delivery world.It's fight, flight, or try to convince the people who are trying to kill them that they don't really exist.Meanwhile, a sadistic game master sits back in the real world eating their fried chicken.

    Unbeknownst to him, he’s one of a handful of individuals capable of implementing a Save Point, a static moment in time he’s able to revisit over and over upon death.It’s a good thing, too. Brain cancer was turning into a real drag…The government owns the list though, and they’ve wasted no time snapping him up. According to them, he has thirteen days in an alien realm to learn as much as he can before the inevitable, at which point his memories, Skill Progressions and Weapon Proficiencies will endure despite his body resetting.Then it’s rinse and repeat.But there are unwritten rules to the game he’s about to play, and unseen forces acting in judgment. Adam will have to learn the hard way that dying is the easiest thing he’s going to do today.

    Their father was murdered, leaving them sitting in their spaceship waiting for his return. They remember almost nothing from before that time, when two Calavari who were business associates of their father took them in and told them they could never be seen outside their full body armor. They've honored their father's dying wish, living and working on the Calavari's farm while exploring the barren wastelands looking for bits of technological salvage from the time before the great cataclysm. They don't know they're Human, just that they're different and they can't show their skin in pubic. The two siblings have lived almost their entire lives in their self-styled body armor and dream of leaving the farm and doing something that mattered...but there's nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Then one day that all changes and Esna is set forth on a rollercoaster ride of a life she could never have expected once the word 'Human' is once again spoken on the planet...only its a word of rage and fear, with the local aliens trying to kill whoever it is applied to, though they've never seen one before. Regardless, the word is tagged to her and she must run...with a little help. -------------- Excerpt from 'Lost Destiny': “Donovan!” he called out, running towards him with plodding footsteps as his nose picked up the scent of burnt flesh even before he saw the hole in the chest plate of the full body armor the man wore. Whatever race he was his blood flowed a sickly red, a fact that he’d prefer to not have known as he leaned over and gripped the man’s shoulders, prying him up into a sitting position. “What happened?” A shaking hand rose up to the neck of his armor, fumbling for the latch that Yammar finally helped him with. The helmet cracked opened with a hiss and the Calavari helped him pull it off, revealing the pale skin beneath that had alarmingly become even more so, now nearly white. “Gladers,” he said, wincing horribly as he half bent over. “Jumped me from behind. I got two of them, but the third…” “Where’s the latch for the chest piece?” Yammar asked, pulling back the cloak that covered most of the hard plates as he looked, but the man took a death grip on his lower arm and locked eyes with him. “My children. In the ship. You have to…please. I’m all they’ve got. They’re dead without you.” “Where’s the latch?” he repeated, searching around with his other three hands and finally finding something that looked promising. He pressed and turned the small button, being rewarded with another hiss as a crack formed along the side beneath the man’s left arm, but suddenly that arm went straight to Yammar’s giant head and gripped it tightly, forcing him to look into the dying man’s eyes. “Promise me. Promise me…” he said, wincing again. “I don’t know anything about your race,” Yammar said, feeling helpless. “Good…” the man spat in a cough but no blood came out of his mouth, though it was continuing to pour out of his chest and seep down over his waistband plates in spurts every time he jerked in pain. “Good. Don’t ask questions…just…make sure they wear armor…in public. Promise me.” “I promise.

     Lindon is Unsouled, forbidden to learn the sacred arts of his clan. When faced with a looming fate he cannot ignore, he must defy his family's rules...and forge his own Path.

    Boy must put his best face forward. Brady Jones doesn’t know where he came from. He knows nothing about his family. He doesn’t know what he is, or how it’s possible to do the amazing things he can do. He does know loneliness and survival, both from a life in the foster care system. He knows that he’s comfortable being alone on a Friday night. Despite the fact they’re so very different, he’d like to get to know Lily Ferguson better. Maybe even call her a friend. Brady knows he’s a shapeshifter. He can change his body to look like nearly anything he can imagine. An object, an animal, even other people. What he doesn’t know is how far the powers-that-be in the world will go to meet him, control him. He’s about to find out.

    They failed. And millions died as a result. After decades of oppression, the rebels are getting ready to move again, to succeed where their predecessors could not. Their last hopes lie with the Federation's greatest space commander, now a drunken derelict, and a ship that was lost in deep space at the end of the war. The Starcruiser Polaris. Once the flagship of the Federation Fleet. And if the rebellion can find her before the dreaded Political Directorate, the key to a new rebellion, one that might accomplish the near-impossible. But they are not the only ones to seek her, and the future of all humanity depends on the winner of a desperate race, to find the lost starship, and bring her back into the fight...

    When he entered the EpiX! Games! PVP World Championship on a lark, this college senior never expected to make it to the final round, nor to get drugged and shoved into the alpha test for World of Ruul. The premise for this virtual reality MMO is simple. Find all eight treasures scattered throughout the world before the maelstrom’s forces devour everything in sight. The only catch? You can’t log off, and if you die… well, let’s just say what happens in the game doesn’t stay in the game.

    

    Christopher Connor has discovered a way to view the past. His invention collects light and focuses it such that events that occurred on Earth years ago can be viewed. All one need do is travel one light year away and one can see what was happening on the planet a year earlier by capturing and focusing the reflected light that left Earth a year ago. There’s only one problem: no ship exists that can travel faster than the speed of light, so his device cannot be conclusively demonstrated to function as advertised. That’s fine with Christopher, who would much rather party and have a good time rather than defend his creation against critics and governmental bureaucrats. Besides, who would pay to view the past anyway?Jillian Gordon, an Egyptologist with a PhD in Quantum Physics, has discovered that the survival of Earth depends on viewing what happened at the building of the Great Pyramid of Khufu five thousand years in the past. Christopher’s device would allow her to do just that and she intends to draft him into the project. Christopher is about to discover that the organization Jillian works for has engineered a starship with a faster-than-light drive, which will now allow his device to be field tested. The stardrive for that ship was developed from diagrams carved on the back of an ancient stone tablet excavated at the site of the Great Pyramid.Life for Christopher is about to make a radical departure from his party, happy-go-lucky lifestyle. Getting Christopher to focus on what needs to be done is a problem Jillian hadn’t counted on in her quest to save humanity. The predicted destruction of Earth, which is carved on the front of the tablet, doesn’t leave her much time and Christopher isn’t cooperating.What neither of them know is that the answer to survival is more than sixty five million light years away in light that left Earth just before the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.