These self-published titles are currently available on Amazon for electronic download and paperback.

THE SWAN AND THE WHIRLWIND is an adult science fiction novel completed with around 110,000 words. Taking inspiration from the epic alien intrigue from The Reality Dysfunction and the interwoven, reality-bending layers of 1Q84, this action-driven novel will appeal to fans of multi-POV speculative thrillers and artificial intelligent monstrosities.

In a parallel future, Paul Vallier, a gifted intelligence agent, makes a startling discovery. The current director, Sara Burton, isn’t someone he remembers her to be. Paul learns that Sara holds a secret regret. Now, at the end of her career, reexamining the anomalous readings recorded in a fifty-year-old dataset reveals the paradoxical memory of an alternate reality of a crashed alien craft masked inside an extradimensional façade illusion.

Murine Sabah, a member of an ancient race known as the Arox, is the sole living occupant of the ship and the last survivor of the Ynys Môn, an Arox secular order. She learns too late that in her traumatic escape from the troubles of her home world, a sentient machine mind that had once waged war on her planet escaped its prison. Stripped of its memory, it knits a semblance of a mind from form what it finds on the human internet and becomes Lurker. With the power of Earth’s resources at Lurker’s fingertips, the world slowly succumbs as this amalgam builds outward from his game space into reality, reconfiguring natural and temporal spaces.

In a contemporary reality parallel to ours, Sara, joined by other agents, discovers the true nature of the original anomaly when they find signals controlling a cult-like role-playing game known as Lurker originating from the crashed ship. Together, they form the core of resistance in a conflict with far-ranging consequences, further distorting reality and creating potentially dangerous doorways to other realms.

Operation Golden Age is a slow-burning, post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi odyssey dealing with symbiosis, metamorphosis, illusion, and the fragility of memory in the face of ecological extinction. It is an exciting story about a pair of ill-fated human survivors navigating a post-apocalyptic landscape. Unwittingly existing in an environment dominated by a sentient mycelial network. They soon discover that the world they inherited was not what they believed it to be. Within its mycelial network, a parasitic hive mind of post-human consciousness at odds with ancestral humanity endeavors to evict the survivors from their forest menagerie by whatever means necessary. The discovery that they are a set of pair-bonded clones being manipulated in a controlled environment compels them on an odyssey beyond their circle of protection to face the dangers in a stark desert wilderness. Their trials in the desert bring them to a lost human colony where the ultimate truth behind Operation Golden Age only grows deeper.

The story of “A Paradox in Retrograde” is set in a far distant future, on an island city-state Baldur. Balanced on the edge of a decimated world, Baldur is governed by the power of myth and dependent upon the latent technology of a precedent, lost civilization. An unfolding chain of events soon leads to the discovery of a coming catastrophe. They must deal with a mysterious discovery of strange objects and the remains of a crashed alien vessel high in the hills above the city. Amidst this, a mysterious stranger named Ananda appears suddenly out of the sea. This stranger, suffering from some memory deficit, knows little more than his name.

From the frozen depths of space, a dark companion to the Earth once again wanders into the realm of the inner planets. From this nemesis planet known as Nibiru, a great fleet of savage warriors freed from the icy embrace of the nether regions threatens again to cross the gulf of space and descend upon the fragile Earth. Once there, they plan to feed in a cannibalistic frenzy to devour the precious life force of their human host. Through a sacred religious rite known as “the rite of combat,” Nibaru’s warrior caste must first risk all to prove themselves worthy before Hector, the Immortal King of the Earthmen. 

Meanwhile, on Earth, far more familiar to our own, scientists using condemned prisoners are conducting experiments in search of the elusive seat of the mind. Through their experiments using artificial intelligence to map the quantum topography of consciousness, they unwittingly unleash within the fabric of reality a series of breaches to the boundaries that constrain it, creating a paradox. As a result, the subject’s consciousness is splintered throughout time and affixed to Baldur’s timeline.

Ananda discovers then that he now possesses knowledge concerning the coming conflict. Possessing this, he soon emerges as Hector, the eternal defender of the human race. His brother Amida, having long ago chosen a different path, returns. Appearing first as an apparition and then in human form, attempts to guide his brother. Amida knows a secret that is not yet known to Ananda. Ananda and Hector are one and the same entity. It is Amida’s mission to somehow blunt his brother’s fury. If left unchecked, Hector would destroy everything to ensure victory. 

In fear of Ananda’s motives, the humans attempt to disrupt his plans, which threaten to destroy them. The group led by Landaus makes a daring first strike, and they gain access to Nibaru. Once there, they set to even the odds, crippling any chance of a full-out invasion by sabotaging the vast fleet of ships arrayed against them. They could not know that by completing this mission, they had unwittingly disrupted the timeline between these realities. Then, a desperate battle unfolds on the field before the citadel of Baldur. There now, the ancient cycle of conflict comes to its bitter end as Ananda and Amida fight their final battle.

The Strange Case of Cannibals Under Kensington  2011 John Faherty

“The Strange Case of Cannibal’s Under Kensington” is John’s recently completed Science Fiction novel. This 84,000-word title tells a story of transformation and redemption. The story is set a few decades into the future, in a time and place where the boundaries of technology have outpaced the gritty realities of existence. The novel tells the story of two people who, while investigating a bizarre set of grizzly murders, discover both the mad work of immoral science and a dark governmental shadow conspiracy. In unraveling these mysteries, they discover the hidden strengths they’ll need to blunt the heavy hand of unrestrained power and those required to rebuild their shattered lives. 
The plot of this novel unfolds in an alternate history set in the future, slightly ahead of ours. In this alternate Philadelphia, the stark divisions of class and technology unravel in this world beset by economic upheaval and unrestrained science. A scientific discovery is made in the field of genetics that sets in motion a terrifying chain of events. From within, a city is under siege by a human chimera. 

Though Daniel Burton that night would lose his life in the icy water, by strange circumstances and misguided science, he would be reborn in the guise of the basest animal. Within this new form lingered an unquiet human spirit and a longing he could no longer understand. To which this new life would not reconcile. 

Unknown to those involved, the unfolding events had not gone unnoticed by certain unsavory government agencies. With the advent of the newest generation of thinking machines, algorithms are devised to fine-tune a clairvoyant peek into the future. Using these supercomputers achieved some success in seeing into future events. Its predictions, however, now told a grave story of an inevitable future war. There they discover that in the coming global conflict that had been predicted, this chimera may have far-ranging implications to its inevitable outcome.

The Children Of a Dark Age is a 128,000 word Sci-Fi novel set in a future Island city-state, teetering precariously on the edge of oblivion. In a world devastated by the ancient plagues of Man, a wandering probe from a long-dead civilization, having visited the Earth, now sets to make some changes employing subtle genetic manipulation. The probe uses a microscopic sentient life form known as the Architecture molecule to do this. The long-dead builders of the probe, betrayed by their own creation, seek now only release from its hold. 

By tinkering with the gears of evolution, its plan is to create a suitable symbiotic host in a world of its own creation. This tinkering beyond its intended purpose has unforeseen consequences for biology and the earthly technology based upon it. These circumstances leave the already fragile human population with one last extinction hurdle to pass, domination by an emergent artificial intelligence. It is to these circumstances that the characters must rise up against.

Jack Walker, an unwitting product of this tinkering, has somehow changed.
He is possessed now by sensitivity to this sentient architecture molecule, wherein he discovers the ability to transfigure matter and bend the form of space and time. Jack is at once its slave and its master. This sweeping epic brings to full circle three story arcs to a final battle and resolution. There can be only one race to inherit the Earth. The family of Man has been its sole master for ten millennia, can they hold out for one more day?