Apocalyptic Fantasy

Marie and Erik were having a normal day, sitting at the table drinking coffee while Marie worked on her PhD thesis. She had been having strange headaches all her life, though, and the past few days seemed to be worse than normal. Suddenly, her headache spiked - she saw strange words floating in the air and on her computer screen... Some kind of countdown...? At noon, the system arrived with a message... System Initialization Complete. Welcome to the Multiverse! Your planet has now been integrated into the system. Please review your status screen and familiarize yourself. If your health ...

When our protagonist, Andrei, discovers that his girlfriend has cheated on him, he finds himself with an unexpected choice to make: a quick death or a new life in another world he knows absolutely nothing about. Andrei chooses life and sets off alongside his pet, a ginger cat with a limp, for a primeval world fraught with danger. The trouble is...who is whose pet becomes entirely unclear; the man's consciousness is split between both creatures, and the little cat gets a far greater share of intelligence and wit than his hulking master.

The world has fallen to a relentless enemy beyond reason or mercy. With no remorse they rend the planet with tooth and nail. One man stands against the scourge of death that consumes all. Teamed with a genius survivalist and a teenage girl, he must flee the teeming dead, the evils of humans left unchecked, and those that would seek to use him. His best weapon to stave off the horrors of this new world? His wit.

Dan has accidentally "Noclipped" into the Backrooms—a bizarro, extra-dimensional Alice-in-Wonderland world, overrun with horrific nightmare creatures known as the Dwellers. No one ever gets out. Hell, forget about leaving, if Dan wants to survive the week, he's going to need to harness the strange game-like magic of the Backrooms, make some very sketchy allies, and carve out a little safe haven to call his own.

When the Blackout arrives, Dax Harper finds himself alone and fighting for survival on the chaotic streets of New Orleans. He is on the run, desperately searching for his estranged sister as the riots intensify. An unexpected encounter with his ex-girlfriend thrusts Dax into a leadership position—one he's not sure he can accept. As the hours pass, the city floods, pitting Dax in an epic battle against time and a mysterious new enemy threatening the future of humankind.

Jennifer Martin’s country lies in ruins—decimated by a civilization collapse weapon designed to depopulate the planet. Those who have survived live in want and oppression. Jennifer has suffered much since the beginning of the outbreak. She has lost her fiancé and her best friend. But her sacrifice has not been a complete loss. Thanks to what she started, resistance fighters around the country are taking up arms against the rogue federal government. Decentralized cells of the Free American Front are fighting back against the new Federal Emergency Security Agency.

After the events in Nebraska, the Andderson brothers continue their trek northward, joined by Emmett and the girls. The group makes their way through Wyoming to meet up with Tank, the brothers' best friend from a time before the apocalypse. They're delayed when they stumble upon a school full of more than 100 survivors - most of them children. While Connor disagrees with James's choice to help them, he follows his brother's lead as a series of drastic events makes James the unspoken leader of the large group.

Ellis Rogers is an ordinary man who is about to embark on an extraordinary journey. All his life he has played it safe and done the right thing. But when he is faced with a terminal illness, Ellis is willing to take an insane gamble. He's built a time machine in his garage, and if it works, he'll face a world that challenges his understanding of what it means to be human, what it takes to love, and the cost of paradise. Ellis could find more than a cure for his disease; he might find what everyone has been searching for since time has begun.

Each year, the residents of Pine Deep host the Halloween Festival, drawing tourists and celebrities from across the country to enjoy the deliciously creepy fun. Those who visit the small Pennsylvania town are out for a good time, but those who live there are desperately trying to survive. For a monstrous evil lives among them, a savage presence whose malicious power has grown too powerful even for death to hold it back.

In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague.

Edgar Hill is 35 and caught in his own headlock. Overweight slob, underperforming husband, and reluctant father - for Ed, the world may as well have already ended. So when it does end in a catastrophic asteroid strike and Edgar and his family find refuge in an Edinburgh army barracks, it comes as something of a relief. But nothing's ever that simple. Returning from a salvage run in the city, Edgar finds his family gone, taken to the south coast for evacuation by an international task force.

Sam Porter Bridges, the legendary porter with the ability to return from the world of the dead, has been entrusted to save mankind from the brink of destruction. Plagued by haunting visions and tracked by Higgs, a man who longs to see humanity extinct, Sam must finally discover the truth behind the Death Stranding and fate of this world.

Ninety years ago, Earth was consumed—and irrevocably transformed—by a cloud of alien nanites known as the Mist, bestowing humanity with uncanny abilities and enhancing technology far beyond early twenty-first century science. But these advancements came at a high price: Billions are dead. The planet has been overrun by vicious monsters. And alien overlords await the opportunity to swoop in and exploit what remains of Earth and its people for all their worth.

Two generations after the Change, Crown Princess Orlaith struggles to preserve the hard-won peace her father brought to Montival - the former Western US. But the Change opened many doors, and through them, powers strong, strange, and terrible walk once more among humankind. With her fire-forged friend and ally Japanese Empress Reiko, Orlaith must take up her sword to stop the spread of the mad malignancy behind the Yellow Raja that has imprisoned her brother, Prince John.

A few minutes ago, Meghan Moretti's biggest concern was getting the kids' athletic clothes washed in time for practice this evening. Now, it seems that Earth has been forced into participating in some high-stakes intergalactic reality television. All electrical wiring has been slagged, and most combustibles neutralized. Some kind of evil space rodents are appearing on the front lawn, too.

Two years after Great Britain is devastated by an alien virus, a young girl and her ex-military guardian are drawn back to the mainland for reasons only known to the dark gift inside her head. It’s a gift neither she nor the old soldier trusts entirely, but their only hope is to obey its call into the wastelands.

Jennifer Martin struggles to keep her small business afloat in the aftermath of a global pandemic. But when a blast from the past informs her of a plan to take down America, she realizes the pandemic was only the opening act. Death and destruction hang like a dark cloud over the horizon. Jennifer must steel herself for the trouble to come.

The world died long ago, leaving only a few here and there to rebuild. Their world had once been grand and magnificent, but too much was lost in the years after the time known as the Dying. Knowledge that had been gained over centuries disappeared from the world, lost when those who carried that knowledge died with it.

How do you stage a mutiny when you're only awake one day in a million? How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each job shift? How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears, and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what's best for you? Trapped aboard the starship Eriophora, Sunday Ahzmundin is about to discover the components of any successful revolution: conspiracy, code - and unavoidable casualties.

Bronwic, a recently retired ice hockey enforcer, is trying unsuccessfully to rebuild himself in the remote Milford Sounds of New Zealand when a Mana Influx hits Earth. Danger is everywhere as oversaturated Mana creates wormholes that bring dangerous creatures to Earth. Animals and vegetation are warped and forcibly evolved into a new hostile food chain, and humanity is no longer at the top.