Transmissions

Three Hundred Years Before Anyone Had a Stat Line

Human space reached five hundred light-years on jump drive and paper charts, with no way to send a word faster than a ship. This is the map of it. For three centuries the fastest way to send a message was to hand it to a captain. A death in the family, a cancelled contract, a col…

Books Like Silo

Books like Silo: what to read now that season three is over Ten episodes, one finale, and season four is the last one. Three novels that do what Silo does, sorted by which part of it kept you watching. Season three of Silo wrapped on September 4, which leaves everyone in the same…

She Spent Fourteen Years Not Looking

Meet Senna, who inherited a ship, a debt, and an alien overlay she decided she could go around. The Null Margin came to Senna from her mother, best asset and worst debt in the same envelope, and it still runs. Barely, and with the mechanical personality of a grudge. She has been …

Deep Access // File 03 - The Number Between You

// CLEARANCE You've been on a team that was better than the people on it. It moved like it shared one nervous system, and afterward you couldn't say exactly how. In this world, the system has a number for that. It keeps the number on the team itself, above any single member, and …

Books like Defiance of the Fall and The Primal Hunter (sorted by what you're really reading for)

Zac Atwood was on a camping trip. Jake Thayne was at work. Three read-alikes for people who came for the moment the planet stopped being the same kind of place, plus one with my name on it. Both of those series open on an ordinary person having an ordinary day, and then the Syste…

Hold this Junction

Meet Dex Korin, who stayed behind so the rest of his team could move, and got a system notification about it in front of everyone. The corridor they came in through has lost two meters of ceiling, and the debris is still settling. There is one route left off the maintenance level…

Books like He Who Fights With Monsters (sorted by what actually hooked you)

You've caught up on Jason Asano and now you're waiting like everyone else. Three read-alikes sorted by which part of HWFWM you were really there for, plus one I have a stake in. He Who Fights With Monsters is a dozen books deep with another on the way, which is a wonderful proble…

The Conservator the System Filed Under Combat

Meet Reva Osk, who takes the damage off eighty-year-old audio for a living, and carries a designation the system wrote for people who shoot things. The recording on Reva Osk's bench is eighty years old and there is one copy of it. Six weeks of work so far, lifting the damage off …

Deep Access // File 02 - Load-Bearing

// CLEARANCE Most of what moves your profile, you can do alone and silent. Read in the dark, hold your streak, sit the assessment, never say a word to anyone. Echo is different. The system only feeds it when you reach another person: a line in the discussion, a reply that lands. …

Cradle vs Dungeon Crawler Carl: Which One Should You Read First?

Two of the biggest names in progression fiction. Two completely different rides. Here's how to pick your entry point — spoiler-free — based on what you actually want out of the next thing you read. If you've spent any time looking for your next progression read, you've hit both o…

The Woman Who Took the Stairs for Eleven Years

Meet Petra Osei, who's very good at her job and has never once looked at the number that says so. There is one screen in Petra Osei's overlay that she has never opened. Eleven years at the same firm, the system scoring every day of it, and she has never once looked at the result.…

If you loved Squid Game or Alice in Borderland

A reader's on-ramp for the Integration Era Every good death-game story runs on the same cold engine. You get a number. The number decides where you rank, your rank decides whether you're worth keeping alive, and none of it arrives with any more feeling than a spreadsheet updating…