Deeper Levels: Dark Science Fiction Stories

by Daniel Gower

If you like rollercoaster rides of the mind, the rush of soaring into the heights and the thrill of plumbing the depths, then take this trip to the weird and the wonderful. And the very human. You will go on cosmic voyages, diversions into completely unfamiliar realms, and explorations of the alien psyche. Venture into the profound and the disturbing at the far reaches of emotional and intellectual experience. These are the deeper levels. A group of travelers is stranded in a zone of the planet where nature has turned unearthly and savage, and where grave secrets lie hidden. A teenage native girl on a human-colonized planet comes to grips with her heritage in a fierce awakening. Humanity is shaken by its first contact with extraterrestrials, who reveal the terrible truth about the universe. A swarm of bizarre objects falls from the sky and one scientist discovers the surprising doom they contain. A freak event maroons ten ordinary people in a dislodged fragment of nightmare reality, which is rapidly diminishing in extent. On a mission to track down a rogue scientist, a starship crew encounters sanity-threatening enigmas and assaults from unknown aliens, leading to a confrontation with an ancient, elusive, near omnipotent race. A computer game designer is inexplicably flung forward in time, to a post-catastrophe world inhabited by two factions of survivors, one embracing the frightful altered future and the other clinging to the dead past. Seven descents into dark imagination, which illuminate the mystery of existence itself.

381 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 6, 2016