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Five and a Quarter: Hard Science Fiction
What if you deleted the source code of your own life?
In 2040, digital archivist John receives a strange assignment from his he has to read the contents of an ancient floppy disk and then destroy it immediately.
Meanwhile, astronaut Max is busy cleaning up the ISS space station in Earth's orbit—tech archaeologists want to finally dismantle the station and bring it to a museum in Texas.
When John can't resist his curiosity, he turns his and Max's life upside down. At the same time, however, he needs the astronaut to have even the slightest chance of undoing his terrible mistake.
Every wrong decision he makes could wipe out not only Max, but also the future of the woman he loves. Are Max and John facing a real choice, or are they just pawns in a game whose rules were set before they were born?
A novel for fans of Blake Crouch and Ernest a fast-paced chase through space and time that combines the heart of Arrival with the horror of Black Mirror.
A must if you loved games on your home computer.
In 2040, digital archivist John receives a strange assignment from his he has to read the contents of an ancient floppy disk and then destroy it immediately.
Meanwhile, astronaut Max is busy cleaning up the ISS space station in Earth's orbit—tech archaeologists want to finally dismantle the station and bring it to a museum in Texas.
When John can't resist his curiosity, he turns his and Max's life upside down. At the same time, however, he needs the astronaut to have even the slightest chance of undoing his terrible mistake.
Every wrong decision he makes could wipe out not only Max, but also the future of the woman he loves. Are Max and John facing a real choice, or are they just pawns in a game whose rules were set before they were born?
A novel for fans of Blake Crouch and Ernest a fast-paced chase through space and time that combines the heart of Arrival with the horror of Black Mirror.
A must if you loved games on your home computer.
360 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 30, 2025
About the author
Brandon Q. Morris
170 books501 followersBrandon Q. Morris is a physicist and space specialist. He has long been concerned with space issues, both professionally and privately and while he wanted to become an astronaut, he had to stay on Earth for a variety of reasons. He is particularly fascinated by the "what if” and through his books he aims to share compelling hard science fiction stories that could actually happen, and someday may happen. Morris is the author of several best-selling science fiction novels.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
January 9, 2026
When life turns into a simulation!
John is an archivist, storing old tech and saving information in a new format. He receives an old floppy disk- the original five and a quarter inch version -from his boss and is ordered to copy it to a data cube and then destroy the original. He does the first task but takes the disk home and installs it on an old Commodore 64 before destroying it. It turns out to be a game called Maniac World which features characters that he knows, including himself, and then weird things begin to happen...!
John is normally a man of routine, but this gets completely disrupted as it becomes a race against time (and a shadowy organization) to reset things in the past as reality (or is it a simulation?) starts to glitch.
An intriguing premise of a program that can manipulate reality/simulation that leads to glitching and so everything requires a reset leads John on an entertaining, suspenseful, intriguing, tale.
John is an archivist, storing old tech and saving information in a new format. He receives an old floppy disk- the original five and a quarter inch version -from his boss and is ordered to copy it to a data cube and then destroy the original. He does the first task but takes the disk home and installs it on an old Commodore 64 before destroying it. It turns out to be a game called Maniac World which features characters that he knows, including himself, and then weird things begin to happen...!
John is normally a man of routine, but this gets completely disrupted as it becomes a race against time (and a shadowy organization) to reset things in the past as reality (or is it a simulation?) starts to glitch.
An intriguing premise of a program that can manipulate reality/simulation that leads to glitching and so everything requires a reset leads John on an entertaining, suspenseful, intriguing, tale.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review