Android in the Archives

The Dartmouth Speculative Fiction Project paired eight faculty-members at Dartmouth College with eight veteran speculative fiction authors. Through design activities, panels, symposia and a mountain lodge retreat, they collaboratively imagined worlds that interrogate the future humanity is heading towards. These stories can be found in the anthology, Android in the Archives: Research, Creative Collaboration and our Speculative Futures, to be published by MIT Press in 2027.

Dungeonspace

In Braxis City, teens have a unique after-school job opportunity: traveling into dungeonspace anomalies and defeating the traps and monsters within to capture the powerful artifacts at their hearts.

Only teenagers have the unique neurochemistry that allows them to interface and travel through the anomalies into dungeonspace. The anomalies must be closed, or they threaten the very fabric of reality within Braxis City. In the decades since the coming of the anomalies and the great Cataclysm that followed, an entire shadow economy has sprung up around "d-space" and servicing the young crawler teams that aim to protect their city and possibly find fame and fortune along the way.

From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide

In this collection of entries from The Lost Travelers' Tour Guide you'll find carnivorous hotels, cities of loneliness, mountaintop villages of joy, museums of heartbreak, and hotels for the lovestruck. Yes, the newly discovered Eighth Continent has plenty for the avid adventurer to explore, including the best seasons to visit and the most wretched towns to avoid. Welcome to the museums, cities, and hotels of our newest continent! To all who seek the untrodden paths of travel, we, your devoted guidebook writers, invite you aboard and raise our glasses in fellowship.

Legends of the Burnt Empire

Empowered to rule by the alien artifact known as Stonefire and believed to be direct descendants of the ancient race of beings known as the Stone Gods, the Krushan Dynasty has ruled over the vast expanse known as the Burnt Empire for milliennia. A crucial part of their history was explored in depth in the epic trilogy: Upon a Burning Throne, A Dark Queen Rises, and The Blind King's Wrath. In a series of loosely connected tales, Legends of the Burnt Empire explores the apocryphal stories of key figures of the dynasty.

Robot Country

Shadow Prisons

The Shadow Prisons series explores society's responses to ever more invasive technologies. Combining elements of augmented reality, game theory, and psychology, these stories ask the question: How can you fight back against corruption in a world where even your own perceptions can't be trusted?

Sun Lords of the Principality

When you are born, the universe smiles upon you. As you grow, you will worship the Sun Lords who allow your existence under their blessed reign. Upon your death, if you should have lived well and in obeisance to the gods, the Sun Lords will look upon you in benevolence, and your memory will be preserved for all time.

The Sun Lords of the Principality are infinite in their wisdom and grace. From the center of the universe, in the Courts of Tranquility, they oversee our fates with sanctity and forbearance. We are but specks of solar dust in the cosmos, yet we find peace in the knowledge the gods are eternal.

Worship, child! Kneel in reverence to our omniscient rulers; tithe as is required; praise as is your duty. You are a spark in the void, kindled from the heat of the Suns.

---excerpt from the New Citizen data node preloaded
into each child's neural link upon implant

Tales of the Great Sweet Sea

I have heard it on the rumors that when the tale-spinner's guild gathers in their secret places, a full half of them are sworn to never tell the truth, and the other half to never tell a lie, even if it mean their life. Being one of that trade myself, I can tell you that that's more or less the shape of it, and I tell you so that you will know that the tale I tell you now is true, just as it happened and just as it was told to me, for I am one of the ones sworn to the truth.

The Aetherian Revolution

CONFIDENTIAL DISPATCH TO THE PRIME MINISTER—DESTROY UPON READING

As you well know, Lord Salisbury, the agent known as "Harry" involved in certain recent escapades is indeed our granddaughter, Her Highness Maud of Wales. How she came to be in a position to accomplish such feats of espionage is not germane to our current discussions. However we might feel personally about our granddaughter's activities, we cannot ignore what she and Lieutenant Marlowe have accomplished in advancing British superiority in the realm of Aetherian research. Their travels and their insights have been a boon to us and we plan to continue to encourage their endeavors. We trust Her Highness completely, and the lieutenant has proven himself a more than able officer and scientist.

From the day the cursed alien craft met its fiery end in Surry, we have long feared that these Aetherian mechanisms that so dominate our thinking now will one day be the ruin of us all. We are confident that the courage of our subjects, Harry and Marlowe, will prevent calamity to our Empire, and possibly the entire world.

Signed,

HRM Victoria

The Kaslo Chronicles

Erm Kaslo is an "op"—a confidential operative based on Novo Bantry, a long-settled planet that is one of the Ten Thousand Worlds, humanity's far-future civilization.

A highly trained, highly principled security agent, he is at the peak of his professional career when he discovers a forgotten truth: every several thousand years, the fundamental ground rules of the universe arbitrarily switch between rational cause-and-effect and "sympathetic association." Very soon, the laws of physics will give way to the reign of magic.

Only a handful of people know what's coming: technological civilization will collapse; Novo Bantry will be ruled by wizards. And the would-be mages are already jockeying for position.

The question facing Kaslo: how will he greet the new order?

The Tales of Gorlen Vizenfirthe

The first Gorlen story was a novel, long since lost to time (written in the author’s teens and shredded in his twenties). In that novel of origins, the young bard Gorlen Vizenfirthe was given the typical task of saving the world. To keep him on track, one of his fingers was cut off and replaced with the stone finger of a gargoyle. As long as Gorlen kept on his quest, the stone was limited to his finger; but if he strayed, or tried to avoid his duty, the stone took over more of his flesh. By the time he had finished saving the world, the single gargoyle finger had become an entire hand. Assuming the corresponding gargoyle had seen similar transformations in its flesh finger, Gorlen sought this nameless goyle in hopes of arranging an exchange. The gargoyle’s name turned out to be Spar, but Spar had no ability to undo the magic of the priest who had done the deed in the first place. Together, they now seek this itinerant mage, hoping for restoration to their original forms.

The Weekdays

The Weekdays are personified divine beings whose domain is stories. They exist to tell and to hear stories because that is their function. They are made of stories. All the stories that are, that have been, that ever will be. But even those who are made of stories are not immune to their power. When The Weekdays tell a particularly harrowing story of pain and suffering in Southern Nigeria, one of them decides to try something forbidden---to change the story. It is a decision that takes them (and the reader) into the story itself and into other stories too, on a journey of consequences and learning about themselves, their relationships and the nature and power of stories.

Twinmaker

Matter transmission (d-mat) doesn’t just conveniently move people around. It saved the world, for a start, and created a whole new class of crimes. If you can build people from scratch, atom by atom, you can also suck poisons out of the environment and break the law in thousands of clever and deadly ways.

In a future where in theory anyone can have anything at the flick of a switch, what matters is much more than just mere matter.