Book picks similar to
The Dark Age by Jason Gurley


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Zombicorns


John Green - 2011
    It was written in a hurry. It is riddled with inconsistencies. And it never quite arrives at whatever point it sought to make. But remember: The $25 you donated to charity in exchange for this steaming mess of prose will help our species shuffle along, and I hope you’ll feel warmed by your good deed as you read. Thank you for decreasing the overall worldwide level of suck, and as they say in my hometown: Don’t forget to be awesome.Best wishes!John Green* The book has been made available under creative commons license, so it can be acquired legally here: http://effyeahnerdfighters.com/post/2... :)

Starstruck


Brenda Hiatt - 2013
    Orphaned as an infant and reluctantly raised by an overly-strict "aunt," she's not even sure who she is. M's dream of someday escaping tiny Jewel, Indiana and making her mark in the world seems impossibly distant until hot new quarterback Rigel inexplicably befriends her. As Rigel turns his back on fawning cheerleaders to spend time with M, strange things start to happen: her acne clears up, her eyesight improves to the point she can ditch her thick glasses, and when they touch, sparks fly--literally! When M digs for a reason, she discovers deep secrets that will change her formerly mundane life forever... and expose her to perils she never dreamed of.  Book 1 of the award-winning Starstruck series, where teen romance blends with science fiction to open a whole new world of action, adventure and discovery.

Empire


Michael R. Hicks - 2009
    Nightmarish female warriors with blue skin, fangs, and razor sharp talons, the Kreelans have technology that is millennia beyond that of the Confederation, yet they seek out close combat with sword and claw, fighting and dying to honor their god-like Empress. Captured and enslaved, Reza must live like his enemies in a grand experiment to see if humans have souls, and if one may be the key to unlocking an ages old curse upon the Kreelan race. Enduring the brutal conditions of Kreelan life, Reza and a young warrior named Esah-Zhurah find themselves bound together by fate and a prophecy foretold millennia before they were born.

Jumping Barrel


Cynthia Sax - 2016
    She needs a hero. Barrel requires an Expert for the Tau Cetian orphans. He’s looking for a female who is willing to commit to a lifespan-long role, who is comfortable with moving off planet, and who, preferably, has the ability to speak the offsprings’ first language. Nola wants the role Barrel is offering so badly she bends a few truths. Yes, she was born off planet but she has lived almost all of her lifespan in sheltered Academies. Yes, she has learned Tau Cetian but she has never spoken with a local. Yes, she plans to follow the rules but his deep, sexy voice tempts her to rebel. When a fact-morphing human academic meets her battle-worn cyborg warrior, deceptions are revealed, passions flare, and circuits sizzle. Wrong seems right. Lies turn into truth. The candidate least qualified for the role becomes the one candidate Barrel can’t let go. Jumping Barrel is a short companion story in the Cyborg Sizzle series and is meant to be read after Releasing Rage, Breathing Vapor and Crash And Burn. It is also a BBW Cyborg SciFi Romance.

The Annihilation of Foreverland


Tony Bertauski - 2011
    Before they can go home, they will visit Foreverland, an alternate reality that will heal their minds.Reed dreams of a girl that tells him to resist Foreverland. He doesn’t remember her name, but knows he once loved her. He’ll have to endure great suffering and trust his dream. And trust he’s not insane.Danny Boy, the new arrival, meets Reed’s dream girl inside Foreverland. She’s stuck in the fantasy land that no kid can resist. Where every heart’s desire is satisfied. Why should anyone care how Foreverland works?

Children of the New World


Alexander Weinstein - 2016
    Many of these characters live in a utopian future of instant connection and technological gratification that belies an unbridgeable human distance, while others inhabit a post-collapse landscape made primitive by disaster, which they must work to rebuild as we once did millennia ago.In “The Cartographers,” the main character works for a company that creates and sells virtual memories, while struggling to maintain a real-world relationship sabotaged by an addiction to his own creations. In “Saying Goodbye to Yang,” the robotic brother of an adopted Chinese child malfunctions, and only in his absence does the family realize how real a son he has become.Children of the New World grapples with our unease in this modern world and how our ever-growing dependence on new technologies has changed the shape of our society. Alexander Weinstein is a visionary new voice in speculative fiction for all of us who are fascinated by and terrified of what we might find on the horizon.

The Sentinel


Arthur C. Clarke - 1983
    Clarke. It is the startling realism of his vision that has made classics of his novels, such as CHILDHOOD'S END and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. It has also made Clarke himself one of the genre's most successful writers. The trade paperback was published to commemorate the arrival of the year 2001, one of the most notable dates in science fiction history. THE SENTINEL is a brilliant collection of Clarke's highest calibre short fiction.

Prime Meridian


Silvia Moreno-Garcia - 2017
    The Mars of the movies and the imagination, an endless bastion of opportunities for a colonist with some guts. But she’s trapped in Mexico City, enduring the drudgery of an unkind metropolis, working as a rent-a-friend, selling her blood to old folks with money who hope to rejuvenate themselves with it, enacting a fractured love story. And yet there’s Mars, at the edge of the silver screen, of life. It awaits her.Note: official publication date is December 2017 but only for IndieGoGo backers. Wide release for everyone else on July 2018.

Betrayal


Pippa DaCosta - 2015
    Rated: R. Restricted. Contains space battles, killer AI, intergalactic ass-kicking. Read at own risk.She is programmed to kill.He’ll do anything to survive. Ex-con Captain Caleb Shepperd believes being good is overrated. All he wants is to smuggle illegal cargo through the nine systems and live a prosperous (likely short) life on the wrong side of the law.But there's a problem with that plan. The priceless synthetic stowaway on his ship is a distraction he doesn't need.Torn between selling her and tossing her out the airlock, Shepperd fails to realize the synth is a killer, and he's the one locked in her sights.In a world where only one thousand synthetics were built, synthetic number One Thousand and One should not exist. She is no ordinary synth. Memories locked inside her code could bring Shepperd—and the entire nine systems—to its knees.Captain Shepperd and the oppressive corporations are about to learn that you can't hide from the sins of your past, especially when that past has orders to kill.WARNING: 18+ only. Contains adult content, including sex, drug use, violence, and swearing.Older cover editions of this ASIN can be found here & here.

The End is Nigh


John Joseph AdamsNancy Kress - 2014
    Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the End of the World. In science fiction, the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm.But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild. THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH will tell their stories.Edited by acclaimed anthologist John Joseph Adams and bestselling author Hugh Howey, THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH is a series of three anthologies of apocalyptic fiction. THE END IS NIGH focuses on life before the apocalypse. THE END IS NOW turns its attention to life during the apocalypse. And THE END HAS COME focuses on life after the apocalypse.THE END IS NIGH features all-new, never-before-published works by Hugh Howey, Paolo Bacigalupi, Jamie Ford, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Jonathan Maberry, Robin Wasserman, Nancy Kress, Charlie Jane Anders, Ken Liu, and many others.

By His Desire


Kate Grey - 2012
    Back in high school she was the one girl he couldn’t have, and the one girl who haunted his dreams. When he sees her again for the first time in ten years, he knows he’ll do anything to make her his—even if it’s just for one week.There’s only one flaw in his plan. With a woman like Sarah, one week will never be enough.By His Desire is a steamy romance novella of 20,000 words.EXCERPTKeith shook his head. “Whatever good opinion you might have about me, I’m about to destroy it.”Sarah stared at him. “What are you talking about? How?”“With the offer I’m about to make you.”“What offer?”He leaned forward across the table. “The museum has the portrait for one more week. When the week is up, I’ll have the painting delivered to you. It will be yours.”“No, Keith. I told you I don’t want your charity.”“This isn’t charity. Don’t you want to hear my price?”She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “Fine.”“In exchange, for one week, you’ll live with me in my house. During the day, you can do whatever you want. There’s a gym, an indoor pool, a library, a home theater. There’s a study where you can write, and I have a chef who’ll cook you anything you want to eat. But at night...” he paused for a moment. “At night, you have to do whatever I want.”

Who Goes There?


John W. Campbell Jr. - 1938
    Campbell classic about an antarctic research camp that discovers and thaws the ancient, frozen body of a crash-landed alien. The creature revives with terrifying results, shape-shifting to assume the exact form of animal and man, alike. Paranoia ensues as a band of frightened men work to discern friend from foe, and destroy the menace before it challenges all of humanity! The story, hailed as "one of the finest science fiction novellas ever written" by the SF Writers of America, is best known to fans as THE THING, as it was the basis of Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World in 1951, and John Carpenter's The Thing in 1982. With a new Introduction by William F. Nolan, author of Logan's Run, and his never-before-published, suspenseful Screen Treatment written for Universal Studios in 1978, this is a must-have edition for scifi and horror fans!

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2016


John Joseph AdamsMaria Dahvana Headley - 2016
    Valente, Dexter Palmer and others KAREN JOY FOWLER, guest editor, is the author of six novels and four short story collections, including We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. She is the winner of the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, and has won numerous Nebula and World Fantasy awards. JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS, series editor, is the best-selling editor of more than two dozen anthologies, including Brave New Worlds and Wastelands. He is the editor and publisher of the digital magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare and is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a new science fiction/fantasy novel imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Table of Contents:"Meet Me in Iram" by Sofia Samatar"The Game of Smash and Recovery" by Kelly Link"Interesting Facts" by Adam Johnson"Planet Lion" by Catherynne M. Valente"The Apartment Dweller’s Bestiary" by Kij Johnson"By Degrees and Dilatory Time" by S.L. Huang"The Mushroom Queen" by Liz Ziemska"The Daydreamer by Proxy" by Dexter Palmer"Tea Time" by Rachel Swirsky"Headshot" by Julian Mortimer Smith"The Duniazát" by Salman Rushdie"No Placeholder for You, My Love" by Nick Wolven"The Thirteen Mercies" by Maria Dahvana Headley"Lightning Jack’s Last Ride" by Dale Bailey"Things You Can Buy for a Penny" by Will Kaufman"Rat Catcher’s Yellows" by Charlie Jane Anders"The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History" by Sam J. Miller"Three Bodies at Mitanni" by Seth Dickinson"Ambiguity Machines: an Examination" by Vandana Singh"The Great Silence" by Ted Chiang

Song of Edmon


Adam Burch - 2017
    The product of diametrically opposed races, Edmon hopes to live a quiet life pursuing the music of his mother’s people, but his Nightsider father cruelly forces him to continue in his bloody footsteps to ensure his legacy.Edmon’s defiance will cost him everything… and spark a revolution that will shake the foundations of Tao. His choice—to embrace the light or surrender to the darkness—will shape his own fate and that of his divided world.

In Your Dreams


Amy Martin - 2012
    But when Kieran Lanier moves to town and passes out on her desk on his first day at school, Zip’s life gets complicated in a way she never dreamed. Kieran has narcolepsy, and although he sometimes struggles to stay awake, he has no trouble capturing Zip’s heart and trusting her with his most guarded secret—he sees bits and pieces of the future in his dreams. And while he didn’t know who she was at the time, Kieran had seen Zip in his dreams over five months before he moved to Titusville from North Carolina. But just when Zip thinks that maybe she can handle having a boyfriend who sees things before they happen, her budding relationship with Kieran gets a jolt. She and Kieran learn that his sleeping disorder and the future flashes were likely caused by a drug invented by his birth father, Morgan Levert, a convicted felon who plays a starring role in Kieran’s nightmares. And when Zip begins to have unsettling dreams after chance encounters with Morgan's former partner-in-crime, she must decide if she can live with the possibility of seeing the future when she doesn’t always like what she sees.