Apocalyptic Fiction

Hugh Howey is known for crafting riveting and immersive tales of boundless imagination. Now comes Machine Learning, an impressive collection of Howey's science fiction and fantasy short fiction, including three stories set in the world of Wool, two never-before-published tales written exclusively for this volume, and 15 additional stories collected here for the first time. These stories explore everything from artificial intelligence to parallel universes to video games, and each story is accompanied by an author's note.

The survivors have established a home, but they still have to face the brutality of human nature. Not only do they have to survive, but they must keep their humanity.

A zombie apocalypse may seem like a fantasy right now. But what happens when an outbreak hits? Will you be prepared? The zombie apocalypse is a disaster few believe will truly ever occur despite how it has captured the popular imagination. The Center for Disease Control and the Pentagon have developed zombie apocalypse scenarios. If these powerhouses of the American government can take the apocalypse seriously, so can you.

Whether romantic or platonic, changing relationships prove tricky for Rose, Tom, Clara, and Craig—never mind adapting to the new not-so-normal. Being surrounded by the undead is bad enough, but with a tyrant-in-training running their Safe Zone, it’s that much worse.

In 2025, the moon hatched and its child died. Things have since gotten worse. Some people have superpowers now, but so do the extradimensional invaders slowly wiping humanity out. By Julietta's eighteenth birthday, the war has been loss after loss for far longer than she's been alive, so she can't bring herself to be terribly shocked when the sky splits in half and weeps death. Surviving is the real surprise.

Apocalypse Online: The Complete Series is 3000 Pages of LitRPG / Progression madness! At first everyone thought it was a game.... But aliens have arrived, and they are turning people into fertilizer. Brad and Sam are gamers. And when they started playing the hot new game Apocalypse Online, they had no idea that the game was a preview of reality! With the help of a benevolent alien AI and nanotechnology, our heroes will have a chance to survive the apocalypse. They just have to survive, level up, and find other survivors. Jake is no gamer.

Cotton Crossing was a dead end, but not for Ginny Mills. She's just marking time, getting experience in the county library system, before moving back to a decent urban environment. Then the phones stop working. Lee Quartine knows there's no way the pretty girl at the library will even look at him. Especially since he can't open his mouth. He knows he's a hick, but when the power starts going out and the woods are full of strange creatures, it's good to have someone around who can build a fire. And kill.

Discover a hidden conspiracy, a shadow government, and the CIA analyst who uncovers it all in this complete box set of The Days of Noah series by Mark Goodwin.

The worst of nature and the worst of science will bring the human race to the brink of extinction. Master Sergeant Reed Beckham has led his Delta Force team, code named Ghost, through every kind of hell imaginable and never lost a man. When a top secret medical corps research facility goes dark, Team Ghost is called in to face their deadliest enemy yet - a variant strain of Ebola that turns men into monsters.

For trained assassin Dylan Romero, business is good. As the agency's top warriors, he and partner Jake Walker are the last two people evil wants to see on the other side of a gun. When a mission takes them to the college town of Bozeman, Montana, they discover that there is more than just another mark in another town to keep them there. With a heavy concentration of vessels doing their demon masters' dirty work and flesh-craving monsters lurking around every corner, the secluded Midwest town is set to become the first battleground of the apocalypse.

Five years after a pneumonic plague killed two-thirds of the world’s population, army veteran Marcus Battle is isolated. He’s alone with his guns, his food, and the graves of his wife and child. If anyone steps onto his property he shoots first and never ask questions. But when a woman in distress, chased by marauders, seeks asylum, Marcus has a decision to make.

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.

Katmai National Park: 7,000 square miles of rugged, isolated wilderness in southern Alaska. Vast stretches of frozen tundra, deep ancient forests, and impassable ravines ruled by the massive volcanic God, Devil's Desk. Despite the vigorous protests of Michael, the Talbots and the Tynes head to the park for a much-needed vacation away from it all.

Flagler Beach, Florida, is a wasteland of ruin and gore, looted and picked clean of supplies… and now, Darlene Bobich and the other survivors have an even bigger problem. What could be worse than a mindless zombie horde? They are about to find out. Continuing the zombie series Dying Days.

Justin and gang finally find a way back to Eden. But the world they find isn't the one they left. The people are gone. Zombie-like creatures roam the streets. And the grand ruler of this dystopia is a man named Vokan. How did Eden die? How did Vokan gain power over the ashes of civilization? None of the clues make sense and Vokan isn't giving straight answers. What started as a jubilant return home becomes a lethal quest to fight Vokan and save the world yet again. But Vokan is no pushover and his kind of magic is something Justin has never faced before.

Five years after a pneumonic plague killed two-thirds of the world's population, army veteran Marcus Battle is isolated. He's alone with his guns, his food, and the graves of his wife and child. Unaware of the chaos that's befallen everything outside of his central Texas ranch land, Marcus lives a Spartan life. If anyone steps onto his property, he shoots first and never asks questions. But when a woman in distress, chased by marauders, seeks asylum, Marcus has a decision to make.

It's New Year's Eve, and the world is about to change. Forever. Out of nowhere, a catastrophic EMP event cripples the nation's power supply. Cars spiral off the streets. Planes hurtle from the skies. And in the powerless confusion, it doesn't take long for terrified survivors to resort to violence. Max is working as a security guard in the city center when the power goes out. Surrounded by chaos, he knows he only has one choice: to get out of the city and get to the countryside. But will he make it out of a city that is rapidly collapsing?

For dinosaurs, it was a big rock. For humans: Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). When the Earth is hit by the greatest CME in recorded history (several times larger than the Carrington Event of 1859), the combined societies of the planet's most developed nations struggle to adapt to a life thrust back into the Dark Ages. In the United States, the military scrambles to speed the nation's recovery on multiple fronts including putting down riots, establishing relief camps, delivering medical aid, and bringing communication and travel back on line. Just as a real foothold is established in retaking the skies (utilizing existing commercial aircraft supplemented by military resources and ground control systems), a mysterious virus takes hold of the population, spreading globally over the very flight routes that the survivors fought so hard to rebuild.

Mason Kowalski, a twenty-four year-old copywriter for a San Mateo startup, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown when he inexplicably suffers widespread vision loss in one eye. The doctors say it’s macular degeneration triggered by overwhelming stress, but he wonders if it’s something more, especially when the shadows in his peripheral vision begin to take shape and whisper wonderful and horrible things to him. Is it madness or destiny? The answer could destroy everything and everyone he holds dear.

What do people enjoy about this series? The characters. You'll meet people you'll love like family and hate like your worst enemy. You'll experience their highs and lows, their triumphs and their failures. You'll find yourself invested in their survival because they could be you.