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| Summaries of larger works |
The Post-Self Cycle
The Post-Self Cycle were the four original large works that spawned the Post-Self setting in general.
Qoheleth (2019)
“All artists search. I search for stories, in this post-self age. What happens when you can no longer call yourself an individual, when you have split your sense of self among several instances? How do you react? Do you withdraw into yourself, become a hermit? Do you expand until you lose all sense of identity? Do you fragment? Do you go about it deliberately, or do you let nature and chance take their course?”
With immersive technology at its peak, it’s all too easy to get lost. When RJ loses emself in that virtual world, not only must ey find eir way out, but find all the answers ey can along the way.
And, nearly a century on, society still struggles with the ramifications of those answers.
Features the bonus novella Gallery Exhibition: A Love Story.
Read the summary here
Toledot (2022)
"I am saying that you trust me — really trust me — and that life in the System is more subtle than I think you know. You let me into your dreams, my dear, and your dreams influence this place as much as, if not more than, your waking mind."
No longer bound to the physical, what lengths should one go to in a virtual world to ensure the continuity of one’s existence?
Secession. Launch. Two separations from two societies, two hundred years apart. And through it all, so many parallels run on so many levels that it can be dizzying just keeping up. The more Ioan and Codrin Bălan learn, the more it calls into question the motivations of even those they hold most dear.
Read the summary here
Nevi'im (2022)
“Do you know how old I am, Dr. Brahe? I am 222 years old, a fork of an individual who is…who would be 259 years old. I am no longer the True Name of 2124. Even remembering her feels like remembering an old friend. I remember her perfectly, and yet I do not remember how to be earnest. I do not know how to simply be."
The cracks are showing.
Someone picked up on the broadcast from the Dreamer Module and as the powers that be rush to organize a meeting between races, Dr. Tycho Brahe is caught up in a whirlwind of activity. And as always, when the drama goes down, there is Codrin Bălan to witness it.
When faced with eternity in a new kind of digital world, however, old traumas come to roost, and those who were once powerful are brought to their knees
Growth is colliding with memory, and the cracks are showing.
Read the summary here
Mitzvot (2023)
“To be built to love is to be built to dissolve. It is to be built to unbecome. It is to have the sole purpose of falling apart all in the name of someone else."
Even the grandest of stories can feel small and immediate when it’s just one person’s life.
One of the most well-known names from one of the most well-known clades on the System, the avatar of political machinations and cool confidence, has been brought low. With help coming only from Ioan Bălan and the most grudging of support from her cocladists, all True Name has left to save herself is the ability to change.
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Other works
Motes Played (2024)
Motes played.
She played because she was play. She played because that was her role in life, because that is just who she was. She played with color, played with life, played with death.
She played with fire.
Motes played, because how could she not?
Read the summary here
Marsh (2024)
“I am seeing quiet chaos. I am seeing most of my sims emptying out. The ones that are not empty, however, remain dreadfully quiet. Most of those who are out and about have set up over themselves cones of silence. Those who have not, though, are decidedly not quiet. More than one silence has been broken by weeping and wailing.”
New Year's Eve, 2399, and Lagrange is celebrating almost three centuries of relative peace. Yes, there have been surprises, there has been drama and political intrigue, but life has, by and large, been quite good for those who have chosen to upload their consciousnesses. The celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. They fall in and out of love. They fork, creating copies of themselves to accomplish tasks or live out their own independent lives. Their memories build up and up forever within them.
2.3 trillion souls gather in quiet homes, in bars and restaurants, in parks and along prosaic main streets, and count down seconds to the new century.
And then, without warning, everything comes grinding to a halt. The internal clock of the System hits one second before midnight, December 31, 2399, and then it hits midnight, February 11, 2401. One year, one month, and eleven days have gone missing.
And so has one percent of the population of Lagrange. 23 billion souls lost.
Reed and the rest of his cocladists, fellow instances forked from the original uploaded mind of Marsh, to discover what has happened and where Marsh has gone, rendering them unmoored, five unconnected instances with no root to connect them.
What happened, and why is Earth being so cagey?
Read the summary here