CLEAVE KILL MONSTERS

60% Off - Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/CLEAVE-S-Reyes-Jones-ebook/dp/B0GYSRHQYF/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0

In the shadowed realms of Estara, where dragons are believed long extinct, a lone warrior named Cleave hunts a forbidden prize: a massive dragon egg coveted by the Sun-Slayers, a ruthless cult led by a powerful High Priestess.

As villages burn in the name of “sanctification” and dark forces gather, Cleave must battle through brutal enemies and navigate dangerous alliances to destroy the egg before it can be hatched. With nothing left to lose, he becomes the last hope against a fiery resurrection that could consume everything.

CLEAVE is a gritty, fast-paced dark fantasy novella packed with visceral sword fights, a morally gray anti-hero, and high-stakes adventure. Perfect for readers who crave grimdark fantasy, intense action, and a world teetering on the edge of apocalypse.

For fans of Frazetta, Karl Edward Wagner, Joe Abercrombie, Mark Lawrence, and classic sword & sorcery with a dark modern edge.

CLEAVE KILL MONSTERS!!!

SARJ OUT

ELIJAH CROWE is a troubled man in troubled times. In the wake of the end of World War 1, Elijah returns home to 1920s Chicago. One night, he awakens in a strange hotel not remembering how he got there. A blaring voice on a speaker box tells him that he’s in a room on the sixth floor of Hotel Erebus and if he wants to leave, he just has to find a way to get to the first floor and walk out. The problem is that Hotel Erebus is no typical place and the hotel is filled with occupants that don’t want him to leave. The mysterious voice offers him a suitcase that has two strange pistols in it that don’t need to be reloaded and don’t run out of ammo. They’re his only weapons and only means of protection for this night of terror.

Will Elijah survive and escape? Find out by reading Hotel Erebus!

CHAPTER ONE

Elijah Crowe awoke from a horrible sleep. His head was throbbing and his stubble-dusted jaw ached as if waking after being cold-cocked. His tongue slid around his mouth, tasting cheap alcohol on rotting breath. His hands smelled like he’d been handsy with a cheap hooker. The residue on his fingertips reeked of rosewater perfume. He hated rosewater. The smell of it repulsed him.

Patting himself down, he was in tattered slacks and work boots, a stained wife beater and not much else. He felt something soft and metallic sliding against his throat. Reaching up, he found a silver chain with a large crucifix pendant hanging from it. In his front-left pocket there was a wallet. Flipping through it briefly, he found his driver’s license—a few months expired as of February 1925—and a single photo of him and Mia Wolfe in the alley behind a local speakeasy. She was a brooding brunette of a dame. A hot property. A good time.

He flipped the photo over, and Mia had scribbled a note on it:

You’re the worst thing that ever happened to me.

-Mia

As his senses centered sharply, his eyes rolled about the room. A gaudy, shoddy motel with chipped plaster walls. The bed beneath creaked and groaned. The springs were sprung and several tears in the mattress revealed rusted metal coils. Blackened splotch marks on the walls made it look like someone took one of those flamespitters the GIs used in the big war to dab the place up nice and crispy. The carpet had suspicious stains soaked in.

Elijah had been in burnt out joints like this before. He called them ‘princess palaces’, havens for one-night stands where he’d get to be Prince Charming for a special princess, but he’d have to hurry because the magic died at midnight. He was one of Mia’s regulars—practically under contract with her, but he wasn’t an exclusive player. The two of them put miles on beds like this. Sometimes she wore a busted lip. It perplexed him since he was a gentlemanly crook and never the type to lay hands on a dame. Must’ve been one of her other clients. He wondered which one as he wanted to put a fist through the rat’s skull.

Elijah tried to put the pieces together and discern where he was and how he got there. His head rolled with muddied marbles. He was known to throw down drinks and heat up his heels on the dance floor if an eye-friendly dame was within arm’s reach, but he couldn’t recall the previous night’s events.

He scanned the rest of the room; it was a minimalist deal: four walls, a ceiling, a floor, all sparsely furnished. There was the bed upon which he currently laid, a simple bulb light fixed to the ceiling, a ratty felt chair in the corner and a lone, barren wood table slid against the other corner. Not a particularly inviting space. You came to these joints to do half-hour kinds of business. Discretion not luxury.

The only curious feature of the room was an inconspicuous fixture about the size and shape of a shoe box mounted high up on a wall adjacent to the only door in the room. There were no windows, either. Disarmingly bland. All he had were questions. His foggy mind had nothing to offer.

“Elijah Crowe!” a gravelly male voice blared over the beige box fitted to the wall near the ceiling. The sound popped, squeaked and grumbled through the speaker.

The confused man slowly rose from the bed, eyes tuned to the growling box.

“Wakey, wakey,” the voice muttered with a mirthful derision.

“Who are you? Where am I?” Elijah barked.

“I’m your Broker and you’re in my house. House rules are this: get to the ground floor and out the front door. Sounds simple, right? Well, there’s five floors between you and freedom. Problem is that this building isn’t empty. You’ve got a few hundred friends that have been here a loooong time. They’re hungry and it’s been awhile.”

Elijah’s brow sank in concern and he stood still, concentrating to better focus his hearing. Through the walls, he heard distant, indistinct clamor. It was an arrhythmic surging, sliding and thumping. Stitched within the slithery groans, he could’ve sworn he heard some kind of animalistic muttering. He couldn’t place it, but knew it wasn’t natural. His imagination failed to visualize what could be on the other side of the wall.

“What the fuck is that?” he whispered.

“The other pieces of the board, Mr. Crowe.”

The Broker’s voice pestered him as a niggling pebble in a shoe. “Don’t know what greases you, sir, but I ain’t playin’ your game.”

Elijah popped off of the bed and ran to the door, grabbing the knob. The steel knob boiled in his grip, causing him to pull his hand away and wince as he staggered back.

“I told you, Mr. Crowe. You will do as you’re told. Collect your belongings in the suitcase and then you may proceed,” the unseen Broker commanded.

Elijah clutched his clawed hand which still reeled from the burn.

“What the fuck is this?!” Crowe shouted in inconsolable rage, veins pulsing against the corded muscles in his neck.

For the moment, he had no other recourse but to obey the formless voice in the speaker. He turned away and made towards the suitcase which sat innocently atop the ratty chair.

“The suitcase. Open it,” the Broker commanded.

The tattered man flipped open the case and inside sat two modified M1911 .45 longslide pistols. They were unlike anything he’d seen before. Their barrels were pointed inward, facing each other as if placed for effect. The pistol on the left was pure white with a polished ivory handle and a slide which was furnished with a swooping flourish which started at the front and glided in a wind-swept pattern back to angel wings engraved on either side of the rear of the slide. The pistol on the right was constructed of burnished silver with a molded marble handle and a cherubic face engraved into the rear of the slide.

A momentary lapse in focus overcame Elijah as he fawned over the implements of war. Elijah was a simple man in simple times, but these pistols seemed the product of divine engineering. He knew that his hands were unworthy to wield them. He’d leveled Tommy guns into two-bit thieves, pickpockets and button men and split them in half. He’d fed sidewalks with the blood of mouthy street toughs who thought they were above the law of the wild. He lobbed grenades at Krauts during the War. He’d fired every kind of firearm a civilian could get their hands on and many a common Joe had never heard of, but he’d never seen anything like the angelic hand cannons beaming up at him from that shabby suitcase.

The Broker’s snarling, mocking voice shattered the transitory serenity. “Your two best friends. Michael and Gabriel. Better to have two angels in your hand than a devil on your shoulder, hmm?” the Broker jabbed.

“Michael and Gabriel?” Elijah wondered aloud.

“The names should be familiar. Like old friends, eh, choir boy?”

The sharp words needled Elijah. “What d’you think you know about me, huh?”

“Enough. Take care of your new friends. They’ll serve you well. Light on the trigger pull and you’ll notice there’s no magazines. There’s no magazines because they don’t fire bullets and they never run out of ammo. Pull the trigger to your heart’s content. Inflict maximum violence.”

Elijah was beyond discombobulation and fumed at the needlessness of it all. “What is this?! Let me out of here!”

“I didn’t bring you here, Mr. Crowe. You brought yourself here. You’re under my roof now and under my rules. You will play by them.”

“This a game to you?!”

“It is. And with all of your barking, some of the other players know where you are. You might want to check the door. Don’t forget to bring the heat.”

Elijah slowed his anger and closed his eyes momentarily to compose himself. “I get to the ground floor and I’m free?”

“It’s that simple. May Lady Luck shine on you.”

Looking back into the suitcase, there was a leather double shoulder holster. He set the pistols back into the case, hastily drew out the harness and slung it on, adjusting the shoulder straps before fastening the tie-downs to his trousers around the belt line. Snatching up the pistols, a slight calm radiated through him, feeling the latent power present in their weightiness. He carefully made for the door, unsure of what was on the other side.

The slithering groans outside the door strangely faded into silence just as he planned to enter the fray. Elijah tucked Michael in his armpit and reached apprehensively towards the door knob again, summoning the courage to finally grab it. It wasn’t hot this time, and when he turned it, the door slowly creaked opened.

Elijah drew both pistols up, peeking out. There was a corridor running perpendicular to his room. It was eerily dark at both ends of the hallway. The building seemed to creak and yawn, as if it were breathing. Slipping into the hall, the door slammed shut behind him. No turning back now. He slid with his back against the wall as he stalked forward with his pistols hiked up and ready to sing at the first sign of trouble.

The persistent ambient noise daunted him, but just ahead he noticed the outline of an elevator door. Rushing towards it, he found the elevator to be seated in a bronze frame, decorated with intricate Art Deco engravings and relief patterns consisting of swirling floral and hard, geometric shapes. It resembled a bank vault more than an elevator, but he didn’t judge it further. The heavy doors divided open and he piled in. As he did, he noticed the elevator operator and flinched, reflexively drawing his M1911s and aiming them into the servant’s chest. The operator was daintily dressed in royal-red livery and a service cap tilted marginally on his head. Despite his relatively dapper gear, the man himself looked depleted; his skin was deflated, creased and waxy and his eyes were a lifeless gray. Elijah couldn’t place the man’s age; he looked both young and old, decoupled from time.

Despite the operator’s harmless vibe, Elijah didn’t trust him and kept his new friends leveled at him as he nested in the corner of the elevator car.

“Take ‘er down, friend,” Elijah skittishly commanded.

“I’m sorry, sir, but this elevator only goes up.”

Elijah was momentarily boggled. “What kind of an elevator only goes up?”

“House rules. I’m just the operator.”

Elijah recognized the man’s strange appearance and stiff, lethargic movements and realized he had little leverage. Whoever he was, he was bound to the rules of this strange prison.

“What is this place? Where are we?” Elijah pressed curiously.

“The Hotel Erebus, sir.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I’ve always been here,” the operator droned. “I’ll always be here.”

The listless manner in which the elevator operator delivered his response vexed Elijah. He looked like he’d crawled out of the grave and reported for duty.

Shaking off the disillusionment, Elijah peeked out of the car and glared down the long hallway which tapered into darkness. Raucous movement was shifting within it. He quickly distinguished numerous silhouetted forms moving intelligently within the well of shadows. A jerky, thudding cacophony resounded as limbs clattered against the walls and floor. Whatever the source, Elijah didn’t want the chance to introduce himself.

“Close the door. Close the door!” Elijah demanded.

As soon as the heavy bronze slabs slid shut, the swarming racket on the other side became undeniable. Disassociated forces clattered against the door and it would be impossible to head back whence he came.

“What the hell is that?”

“We’re not the only ones in the hotel, Mr. Crowe,” the operator deadpanned.

No time to delve into what that meant. The operator—like everything else in the hotel—wasn’t hospitable nor accommodating.

“How many floors in this building?” Elijah asked hurriedly.

“Seven.”

“Okay, and we’re on the sixth floor, right? That’s what the man on the speaker said.”

“The Broker.”

“Yeah, the Broker. So, we’re one floor away from the roof. I can get on the roof and call for help.”

The operator’s face didn’t so much as form a crease in response. The body was present but there was nothing there to generate even false interest.

The scratching and clawing on the door persisted into a shrill ambiance as Elijah looked up and noticed a panel in the ceiling of the elevator car. Only one way out: up. He holstered his friends and climbed up to dislodge the panel, shoving it aside and climbing up through it.

When standing atop the elevator, he realized he was in the elevator shaft whose walls were covered in soot and grease with cabling running up and along the walls. There was only marginal illumination in the claustrophobic steel shaft and he had to squint and focus to place structural details. As he scanned upward, he finally noticed what looked like a service area intended for the construction and repairmen that would work the innards of the place. There was a handy ladder bolted to a recess in a wall that led up to a gangway that he hoped offered roof access.

Elijah quickly scrambled up the ladder to the gangway. Upon putting his weight on it, it creaked but was strong enough to support him. At the end of the gangway was a panel whose utility he couldn’t place. Scurrying over, he noticed that it was a service access panel with a small handle. He excitedly turned it and pushed the panel open. A gust of chilly night air washed across his face which provided beautiful relief.

Upon crawling through the access, he found himself on the roof. Gravel crunched under his knees and feet until he was able to stand and sweep his vision to assess his surroundings. Sweet night. Elijah loved the dark and all that came with it. The distinct smell of moist air tinged with steam piling out of manholes. Even the stench of trash offered an odd safety. In the city he was home. His eyes leveled forward at the multi-tiered Chicago skyline splayed before him. Pillars of smoke and soot wafted up, seasoning the stone, steel and glass verticals with a hazy, granular texture. Wherever he was, the hotel was near the waterfront. He knew the area, but there’s no way he could’ve missed a seven-story stack in this part of town. In his mind, he had a moment of clarity and confidence knowing where he now was in the grand state of things. The mental gears began to spin and whir.

Get out of this fucking prison.

“Very astute,” the Broker’s disembodied voice resonated.

Elijah looked around and noticed a small stair enclosure behind him with a speaker box fitted near the top of it beside its lone door. The Broker had eyes everywhere.

“Only seven floors down. Maybe you can jump and—by some miracle—survive the fall?” the Broker chuckled derisively.

“Fuck you,” Elijah said as he jogged over to the edge.

“Don’t fall. The game’s just started.”

Elijah sneered as he peeked over the edge and down to street level. Traffic around the block was sparse, but he could see several blocks away and the automobile traffic shuffling healthily. He looked near the base of the building and noticed someone walking up the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Finally, a free soul.

“Hey!” Elijah yelled, his booming voice carrying downward. “You there!”

The sidewalker kept walking as if he heard nothing.

Irritated, Elijah inhaled deeply before bellowing out with all of his strength. “Buddy! Hey, you!”

But the man kept walking. Elijah slapped the lip of the roof.

“Dammit,” Elijah muttered low.

The building was near the waterfront where traffic density was thin. The man should’ve been able to hear him. Maybe he was hard of hearing? Maybe he didn’t give enough of a shit to respond.

When his hope began to ebb, he looked back down and noticed a tubular escape chute built into the exterior of a section of the seventh floor. There was no way to get to it from the roof. Hotel Erebus apparently had no fire escapes. To confirm his realization, he looked down the roof on two sides and didn’t see a single scaffold leading safely to the ground. That one escape chute was the only one.

“Are you hosting a party, Mr. Crowe?” the Broker asked ominously.

Crowe squinted with suspicion. “No, why?”

“I thought you might be having a rooftop party. You’ve got visitors incoming.”

Elijah knew nothing about the Broker aside from that accursed voice, but he knew that the voice seemed to love to impart uncomfortable truths. He ran back towards the edge of the roof and peered over carefully.

What he saw forced a drawn breath. Indistinct, humanoid forms were scaling up the side of the building towards him. He couldn’t make out the shapes of what they were, but he saw what looked like beady, cherry-red eyes set in gelatinous, obsidian flesh. There were dozens of the things lurching up towards him.

The Broker could be heard laughing quietly through the speaker box. Elijah pulled away from the edge and ran over to the stair enclosure, kicking the door in and charging down the stairs. He thought of nothing but descending away from the roof and those things. Even though he only scaled down a single flight of stairs, when he reached the door at the bottom of the well, the number ‘6’ was painted on the door.

‘Where was the seventh floor?’ he thought, but he didn’t have time to tarry.

Moving through the door back onto the sixth floor, he found himself in a nondescript hallway. The carpet was dyed in dull wine adorned with generic floral patterns. The plastered beige walls featured Art Deco flourishes in the baseboards and crown moldings.

There were several doors lining the corridor. It was a hotel, after all. He began to wonder about the mechanics of the place. Was he the only one being harassed? He ran up to one of the doors and knocked on it. The worst that could happen is that he might interrupt a couple mid-coitus or wake a drunk out of a sound sleep. It was worth the risk.

He knocked again. Nothing.

“Hey! You in there! Open up!” he exclaimed. Then, he listened quietly for any ruckus on the other side of the door.

“Shy neighbors aren’t much fun, are they, Mr. Crowe?” the Broker asked through a speaker box a bit further down the hallway.

Elijah ignored the attempt to vex and opted to pound his fist into the door. Nothing. He ran over to a door on the opposite side of the corridor and banged on it.

“Building’s on fire! Open up! Life or death situation, buddy! You in there?” he yelled desperately, but there was no response.

“My house, my rules. Carry on, good sir. Find your way down.”

Elijah ground his teeth, seething through the skin. “When I find you…”

The Broker chuckled. “That’s the last thing you want.”

Composing himself against the obvious needling, he noticed a painting hanging on the wall beside the door. It was the kind of art intended to fill a space and not elicit any specific emotions. A generic landscape. Trees, a blue sky and a brilliant sun. A horrible suggestion entered his mind. He closed his eyes and turned his head away from the painting. Opening his eyes and looking back at it, he was shocked. The daytime landscape had flipped nocturnal. The sun was replaced by a moon.

Elijah staggered away—overcome in incredulity—and ran down the hall until he came upon another door. This time, rather than knock, he opted to turn the knob. It wasn’t hot like the first time and the door opened. Beyond the door was a simple room like the one he awoke in with a door directly across from him. His nerves danced on edge and sweat pooled in cold beads on his forehead as he dashed across the room seeking the other door knob. As he emerged through the doorframe, he found himself in another corridor indistinguishable from the one he’d just left.

“What is this?” Elijah asked breathlessly, eyes glazed over.

“I told you, there’s only one way out: down,” the Broker’s voice resonated through another speaker box fitted in the crown molding in the wall directly across from Elijah.

On the verge of panic, he scrambled back the way he came and when he went through the open door, hoping to find the painting with the nighttime landscape, he discovered it was no longer there and neither was the door beside it. In fact, the corridor ended and emptied into another that ran perpendicular. The entire floor-plan had changed in mere moments. His brain instinctively tried to calculate with a linear logic to bring order to the madness that surrounded him, but he was left completely perplexed.

Pondering the endless labyrinthine tomb he’d found himself in, a low sound perpetuated in the distance. Almost imperceptible at first, the sound gained in volume and intensity; it resembled a heavy sack being dragged across the floor. He loosely pinpointed its origin and wandered out of the room into the hallway to pursue it. Running up to the edge of the corridor, he peeked around the corner.

The elongated, intersecting hallway seemed to stretch far beyond the physical limits of such a building, but something else perplexed Elijah. Something was moving rapidly down the corridor and heading towards him. At first it looked like a rushing tidal wave that encompassed the dimensions of the hallway, but it was an unnatural, lush red. A wall of flesh-colored mass was careening rapidly down the entirety of the corridor, smothering the wall sconces lining the plaster walls in sections and blotting out their light. Within seconds, Elijah was able to discern details on the horrifying thing. The face of this flesh wall flexed large, pearl-colored fangs which sprouted forward and wreathed a textured, slimy maw which spewed translucent saliva.

The realization of what he was watching surged down his back like a lightning bolt. The hairs on the back of his neck straightened and he stumbled from the wall. Sensing that this rushing mass of flesh wasn’t slowing down, he spun around to return through the door he’d just walked through, but it wasn’t there. Where the door was, a framed painting of a flower had replaced it. The rumble of the approaching flesh reached a fever pitch, shaking the building around him. It shook with some ferocity that the walls vibrated and powdered plaster shook free as Elijah was thrown to the ground. He finally pulled his pistols from their holsters and aimed them towards the end of the hallway, waiting for hell to arrive. The flesh wall suddenly hurtled past, revealing itself to be more like a train car made entirely of skinless sinew, an elongated, worm-like creature that undulated and pulsed, moving with an unstoppable fervor.

Seeing it sweep by, seemingly unaware of his presence, gave Elijah a moment to seek refuge. He popped to his feet and charged down the hall behind him. As he neared the end of the corridor, the flesh train rumbled past through that intersecting corridor. He didn’t know if it was circling him like a shark or slithering about randomly. Both possibilities terrified him.

He opted to round the corner, going in the opposite direction the creature had just hurtled through. He found that several doors lined both sides of this particular corridor. Part of him felt a spate of confidence that he’d evaded the monster; a smirk crept onto his lips thinking he was figuring out the madhouse. The hallway through which he ran seemed to stretch on forever like the others.

Elijah peeked behind him to ensure the fanged maw of the creature hadn’t circled back, but it was when he turned forward again that the view tightened his heart...

It was straight ahead!

The hungry train of insatiable flesh was coming again. It had circled around to retread its recent route. Looking to the closest door on his right, he curved towards it and went to turn its knob, but the door wouldn’t open. He swung a heavy kick into it but no luck. Seeing the speeding train of death bearing down towards him, he gave a final, powerful kick that threw the door inward, but it emptied into a void! There was no time to think; Elijah leapt, snatching at the top of the door and hanging from it as the snapping worm roared past the open doorframe. Elijah looked down, realizing the door had opened to the outside of the building and there was a sixty-foot-odd drop to the street below. Impossible, but “impossible” was being redefined on a moment-by-moment basis now. He stretched his foot to touch the edge of the floor and pulled himself back inside.

Not wanting to risk sprinting down this particular hallway, he tried for the closest door. Luckily the knob turned and he pushed it open. Another plastered passageway identical to the others revealed itself. This time, however, a descending stairway was just across the way, a few long paces away. But as he took a step towards it, he noticed that accursed bore-worm rushing in from the right. With all the courage he could muster, he tore off for the stairwell, leaping in the last stride, tumbling into the stairwell as the beast barreled ahead behind the fallen Elijah.

Elijah heard it rumble away through the hotel, the sound lessening as it moved further away. He loosened up and rested his head against one of the stairs, closing his eyes and breathing deeply.

“Hmm, congratulations, Mr. Crowe,” the Broker’s voice piped in through a speaker box in the stairwell. “The fifth floor has some surprises of its own. The game persists. Are you game?”

Elijah sat up and stood, yanking his weapons from their holsters as he cautiously descended the stairs. “Yeah.”

Want the full eBook? It’s on Amazon FOR FREE until Friday, August 7th.

Free eBook - Hotel Erebus

SARJ OUT

ELIJAH CROWE is a troubled man in troubled times. In the wake of the end of World War 1, Elijah returns home to 1920s Chicago. One night, he awakens in a strange hotel not remembering how he got there. A blaring voice on a speaker box tells him that he’s in a room on the sixth floor of Hotel Erebus and if he wants to leave, he just has to find a way to get to the first floor and walk out. The problem is that Hotel Erebus is no typical place and the hotel is filled with occupants that don’t want him to leave. The mysterious voice offers him a suitcase that has two strange pistols in it that don’t need to be reloaded and don’t run out of ammo. They’re his only weapons and only means of protection for this night of terror.

Will Elijah survive and escape? Find out by reading Hotel Erebus!

Free eBook - Hotel Erebus

Free eBook - Hotel Erebus

SARJ OUT

CLEAVE KILL MONSTERS!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/CLEAVE-S-Reyes-Jones/dp/B0H3Q81N46/

In the shadowed realms of Estara, where dragons are believed long extinct, a lone warrior named Cleave hunts a forbidden prize: a massive dragon egg coveted by the Sun-Slayers, a ruthless cult led by a powerful High Priestess.

As villages burn in the name of “sanctification” and dark forces gather, Cleave must battle through brutal enemies and navigate dangerous alliances to destroy the egg before it can be hatched. With nothing left to lose, he becomes the last hope against a fiery resurrection that could consume everything.

CLEAVE is a gritty, fast-paced dark fantasy novella packed with visceral sword fights, a morally gray anti-hero, and high-stakes adventure. Perfect for readers who crave grimdark fantasy, intense action, and a world teetering on the edge of apocalypse.

For fans of Frazetta, Karl Edward Wagner, Joe Abercrombie, Mark Lawrence, and classic sword & sorcery with a dark modern edge.

CLEAVE KILL MONSTERS!

SARJ OUT

ELIJAH CROWE is a troubled man in troubled times. In the wake of the end of World War 1, Elijah returns home to 1920s Chicago. One night, he awakens in a strange hotel not remembering how he got there. A blaring voice on a speaker box tells him that he’s in a room on the sixth floor of Hotel Erebus and if he wants to leave, he just has to find a way to get to the first floor and walk out. The problem is that Hotel Erebus is no typical place and the hotel is filled with occupants that don’t want him to leave. The mysterious voice offers him a suitcase that has two strange pistols in it that don’t need to be reloaded and don’t run out of ammo. They’re his only weapons and only means of protection for this night of terror.

Will Elijah survive and escape? Find out by reading Hotel Erebus!

Free eBook - Hotel Erebus

Free eBook - Hotel Erebus

SARJ OUT

At Stratum Press, in addition to writing books and creating games, we’re also putting out some free music to add to your experience.

Stratum Music Channel

With SARJ’s newest novel, Necropolice: Bloodstorm, going to the printers soon, there’s some free soundtracks to read to. Enjoy!

Grave Deliverance | Ursula's Theme

Necropolice: Bloodstorm | Horror Mix

1 Hour Horror Synthwave Mix

Hotel Erebus | ESCAPE Horror Music

Hotel Erebus | Horror/Action Music

SARJ OUT

The miserable state of Western entertainment isn’t news to most of the people who will read this. Over the last 10-15 years, we’ve been in what I call a cultural Boötes Void—a vast morass where little of note has been produced. For every Top Gun: Maverick we get there are dozens of movies that exist to remind us of the various neuroses of the people involved in the productions. This Western malaise has infected not only movies but comics, animation, and even video games… but it wasn’t always this way.

Remember fun? I do. I grew up in the 1980s and 90s and we were inundated with fun. Movies were fun. Music was fun. Sports were fun. Going out was fun. Cartoons, board games and card games were plentiful and made for their intended audiences. When you went to a convenience store, you had your choice of a Mortal Kombat cabinet, Street Fighter 2, Golden Axe and more. Spinner racks contained comics that made us come back month after month. At the cash register, there were boxes of collectible cards like Garbage Pail Kids, Batman or TMNT. We were spoiled.

It was the golden age of American media where the rest of the world had an insatiable thirst for American culture. We were overwhelmed with an almost perpetual feed of quality entertainment. There were hundreds of movies, albums, animated shows and sitcoms that created this comfy sphere of escapism that we reveled in as a people.

Optimism was high even into the early 2000s, although some have argued that September 11th, 2001 was the beginning of the fall of Western civilization. Frutiger Aero tech optimism permeated the culture with a bright, metallic utopianism. Humanity seemed to have finally broken through the doldrums of the cynicism of past generations.

I know it’s strange to brag about such a seemingly innocuous concept, but in the 80s and 90s, people OWNED things. Rental services existed but were far outmatched by an ownership economy. For example: you rented a hotel room, a car, a moving van, but you owned your video games, software, computer components, music, movies, etc. You bought stuff and kept it in your house and used it at your leisure and discretion. The service-dependency economy had yet to rear its ugly head.

At this time, the Japanese were producing legendary media that helped define a generation, from manga and anime to video games. They even took properties like TMNT and created some of the best iterations of them. From Nintendo, Konami and Capcom to Studio Ghibli, the Japanese enthralled global audiences.

Even ads got in on the fun. We were inundated with an endless parade of guilt-free fun. Beer ads featured busty women in bikinis teasing ogling men; there were TV shows about professional men and women who were competent and lovable; we bought and owned our physical media rather than renting access to evolving streaming catalogues. Whatever our problems are, we would conquer and move beyond them. That was the mindset. But this didn’t last forever.

NOTHING GOOD LASTS FOREVER

Somewhere along the line, we adopted self-destructive ideas that posited that our present and future would be punishment for the sins of our pasts. Mainstream entertainment studios turned on their customers and fans, denigrating them in vitriolic campaigns fueled by ideological capture. Anything you loved has likely been captured by people who want to use it to broadcast their fringe political beliefs to a global market that has no interest.

In an attempt to brute force “diversity” into Western culture, corporate publishers have driven Americans like my wife to drop American entertainment altogether in favor of foreign media. My wife largely watches soap operas from South Korea and watches next to no modern media made in our country.

Director Noah Hawley recently complained that YouTube is stealing eyes from Hollywood. The vast majority of creators on the platform are fully-independent and viewer-subsidized as opposed to being majority corporate-backed. The cost to produce a YouTube video is negligible whereas Hollywood throws hundreds of millions of dollars at producing shows and movies that are entirely forgotten within days to weeks of release. The cost-to-value ratio has become completely untenable.

The mainstream, corporate-backed media is increasingly ruling itself out as an option for entertainment end-users. Instead, Hollywood and “AAA” gaming is becoming a strange, incestuous, business-hostile place where billions of dollars are wasted to entertain fringe activist sensibilities online. On the face of it, it’s an asinine and nonsensical endeavor, but the truth is more insidious: it’s being done on purpose.

In a normal, healthy economy, free peoples trade money, time and energy to create a loop of mutual dependency. A producer makes something, sets a price, puts it on the market and consumers decide in an unincorporated basis what goods and services succeed and to what extent.

For the last decade, institutions have worked in tandem with mostly left-wing special interest groups to influence entertainment and control what can/can’t be produced. Microsoft openly dictated that attractive women shouldn’t exist in video games. Grifting activists like Anita Sarkeesian were assigned cultural gatekeeper status to moderate the authorial visions of game developers. Notorious race-obsessed “consultancy firms” like Sweet Baby Inc. have encouraged games to change ethnicities of characters to meet arbitrary “representation” quotas to almost uniform commercial failure.

A GLOBAL RETURN TO COMMON SENSE

A return to sanity was inevitable, and the hammer of mass layoffs is proof that the cheap money era is tapering out. Over the last few years, consumers appeared to detect the strange artistic limitations that ran opposite to the consensus of what humans have always found interesting and entertaining. In film, books and gaming, the output of these social engineering campaigns fell on deaf ears with global audiences rejecting it. Asian game developers are growing to fill the gap left by America’s cultural capture. Gen Z is thirsting for Gen X culture, rejecting “modern audience” tropes in favor of traditional storytelling. The “Body Positivity” fraud disappeared overnight with the advent of Ozempic. People aren’t afraid to be honest about what they want anymore, and what they want is what they’ve always wanted. A return to traditionalism was inevitable.

I see a lot of people on YouTube and X who act as cultural commentators criticizing the state of American entertainment, and that’s great! I love channels like Film Threat and Nerdrotic which I watch quite often. However, I also think that it’s not enough to just criticize; we should be creating that which will supplant the culture that has been destroyed in the last twenty years and can’t be reconstituted. Unfortunately, the old heroes are dead and live on only in our nostalgia. To fill the gap left in their wake, new heroes must be forged by new voices.

MY NEWEST BOOK - MADE FOR YOU

I write novelizations for movies that only exist in my mind. I’m not the only writer at Stratum Press. My business partner, JP, is writing his own novel, Redneck Wizard, which will be a joy to watch him develop and write over the next few months. The way he described the concept, it feels like a combination of Harry Potter meets The Last Starfighter. I told him it sounded like Harry Potter if written and directed by 80s and 90s legend, John Hughes: wholesome, exciting and fun. The one thing you can depend on from Stratum Press is just that: fun.

My newest book, Necropolice: Bloodstorm, is now on Kickstarter and will be funding for two more weeks, concluding the campaign on Saturday, August 1st. Take a look!

Necropolice: Bloodstorm on Kickstarter

ORIGINS OF FUTURESHOCK

It’s impossible for us to know what the future holds. However, the trajectory of technology has been moving on an upward swing for centuries. The effects of this have been illustrated in various forms of media.

Frank Herbert’s Dune was written in the 1960s and likely conceived in the late 1950s. In many ways, Herbert was a literary genius, but he was a man of his time. The concept of artificial intelligence was coined in the mid-1950s, around the same time the author likely began to conceive of the foundations for Dune. He set the story ten-thousand years into a future of a human race parallel to us; the planets in the story are completely different, but the principle characters are humans that speak English. This gave Herbert creative license to take the story in different directions.

Ten-thousand years is an eternity when layered on top of human technological advancements. By the late 50s, the early foundations for what would become our modern Internet were being devised. By 1969, ARPANET was created by the US Government, which was a network that implemented packet switching technology. This tech would pave the way for interconnected computer networks in vast meshes: the Internet.

From the Stone Age to the Iron Age to the Industrial Revolution to the Information Age, humanity has moved rapidly along an exponential curve towards a technological phenomenon we don’t truly understand and cannot intuit based on our biological computers that have taken millions of years to slowly evolve and develop. This is putting us into precarious—but potentially miraculous—times. But for Frank Herbert, a man wanting to write a science fiction novel set ten millennia into the future, the seeds for solving many of his narrative obstacles were inherent in the very technological progress he was writing about.

In Dune, humans developed artificial intelligence which eventually was physicalized into humanoid machines. These machines tried to subjugate the human race until we fought back and destroyed them in a campaign called the Butlerian Jihad. Eventually, humans would ban artificial intelligence entirely, moving us towards a humanistic form of technology that forced us to evolve our minds and bodies rather than rely on machines. Frank Herbert was clever in that he eliminated the need to create fictional technologies that might exist in ten-thousand years by making it a plot point that the very mechanisms that would allow us to do so are made illegal. Genius.

In fact, within the Dune universe, personal force-field tech even reduces the desire for projectile-based weapons. This is due to the fact that a speeding impact into a force-field would result in an explosion on a thermonuclear level. Therefore, men began to fight with knives at close-range to mitigate this mutually-assured destruction. In the distant future, we use advanced defensive tech to fight like stone-age brutes. Regression becomes progression. More genius.

In Warhammer 40K, humanity tread a similar path leading to a future consumed in unending warfare. In that universe, malicious AI—referred to as “abominable intelligence”—is just one threat, but it is a significant one.

THE BLIND SIDE

The problem with sci-fi is how often things can appear antiquated in the present day that are still portrayed in the future. In games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, people are shown driving cars everywhere even as we are currently in the process of mass implementation of self-driving cars. By 2077, self-driving cars will have had decades to revolutionize ground-based transport in ways we can’t currently imagine. Will people even need drivers’ licenses anymore? Will traffic lights exist? Will it be illegal at some point for humans to even operate road and air-based vehicles?

If progress is moving as fast as it is, fifty years from now will become increasingly unpredictable. Blade Runner portrayed flying vehicles and humanoid replicants, but people still read newspapers and used disc-based media. However, having made that case, authors like Herbert were at least aware of the coming blindsides and planned accordingly in their myths to seamlessly address the issues and make them foundational to the lore.

In Star Trek, we’re shown massive ships filled with human beings in traditional maritime managerial hierarchies traveling the cosmos to gather data to help progress human/alien relations. There’s a captain who delegates responsibilities to people running around a ship. In a few centuries, wouldn’t it be more likely that unmanned drones would gather all of this data? Would humans need to be present to achieve these ends? AIs that can process staggering levels of data in a femtosecond could use predictive models to execute plans to further human goals. We’re not just looking at a hockey stick; we’re looking at a hockey stick that accelerates at light-speed. Writing fiction about this future will become increasingly difficult. And the idea of writing books about a future of unparalleled technological developments is not lost on me.

STRANGE FUTURES

The future of the human race has many potential branches: in a thousand years we could be long-extinct, or we could live on dozens of colony worlds in various form factors that allow us to perpetually preserve our individual consciousnesses.

Regardless of the outcome, some questions remain: How will we process stories in the future? Will they even matter? Will human beings develop into something that will be as unpredictable as our technologies?

In 2026, human beings consume more media in one day than people consumed in the entirety of their lives not that long ago. We have access to thousands of years of books, hundreds of years of photos, a century of film, decades of video games, mountainous amounts of social media content, streaming video, AI-generated audio and more.

We seem to be transitioning away from a human-centric economy to a AI-centric economy that will be almost entirely automated. The hope/expectation is that dividends from mass automation—direct and indirect(via deflationary forces derived from millions of humanoid robots working endlessly on 7-days schedules to produce stuff at negligible cost) will transition humanity into a new age of active abundance. This will leave people with immense amounts of time to consume media.

This obviously sounds like a beautiful dream, however, there is a dark cloud here: with such abundance, will deflationary effects also lead individual artistic expressions to be worth less? Not worthless but worth less. Over the course of the last few decades, the Internet and easy access to music has made it increasingly difficult for musicians to sell their art. It’s packaged up and is accessible electronically via online platforms like Spotify and Apple Music for relatively low-cost. This is great for consumers but less so for the people creating the media. People generally seem to find music less valuable than in the past when it existed only on the radio and in physical formats.

Will the human race’s trajectory follow Dune’s? Star Trek’s? Warhammer 40K’s? Or something else that’s better… or worse?

NEW BOOK

If you’re interested in being introduced to a new world of gods, monsters and machines, NECROPOLICE: BLOODSTORM may be what you’re looking for.

The 170-page novella written by S.A. Reyes-Jones is currently funding pre-orders on Kickstarter.

The story centers on Necropolice agent Ursula Graves who is sent away from the dreary confines of an urban sprawl called the Necropolis and on a mission to recover a missing fellow agent. Her mission takes her to a quiet, pastoral village called Belarad. The villagers are afflicted with some kind of plague that has turned them into monsters. Ursula discovers that the key to completing her mission requires her to deal with demons from her past. Will she save the day? Find out in NECROPOLICE: BLOODSTORM.

Necropolice: Bloodstorm | Kickstarter

SARJ OUT

Obsession, Iron Lung, Backrooms, Siren Head. A year ago, Hollywood didn’t know that these names would constitute a growing tidal wave of systemic change, shifting the pillars of power from centralized corporations to decentralized creative voices.

The last decade was mired in demands for “social justice” which was a cover to reward undeserving and unqualified people and put them into positions of power and influence while actually talented people were actively excluded. That vise grip of social control is breaking, and the actual talents are achieving their natural state of success. The men who created Obsession, Iron Lung and Backrooms would never have been allowed into the woke-obsessed Hollywood machine just a few years ago. The truth is that the dead weight comprised of diversity and guilt-based hires produced nothing of value. In fact, they cost their parent companies dearly.

Giving gilded franchises like Star Wars, Doctor Who and Star Trek to self-titled “marginalized peoples” proved why these types weren’t previously given opportunities: when given a microphone, all they used their voices for was complaining about supposed injustices rather than entertaining audiences to the fullest. They used their new positions to dole out revenge and punishment for non-existent (or perceived) crimes.

In the wake of the destruction, male audiences have largely checked out of Hollywood, opting for video games, anime and manga, which provide all of the universal entertainment that used to be provided by American studios. New franchises are replacing the old. Previously popular male-branded Gen X franchises like Marvel, DC, Masters of the Universe, Mortal Kombat and others are dying on the vine—with rare successes like semi-regular Batman and Spider-Man releases.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, which once elicited concern at the abundance of White male characters—in a franchise aimed at males in a country that was built by Whites and who are still a large majority ethnic group—decided to fix this supposed problem by changing the raison d’être from creating massively popular movies to using them as a platform to project left-wing talking points. The majority of the world couldn’t even relate to the messages that were largely provincial. Foreign markets gave up on American entertainment, and rightfully so.

Rather than producing films that generated global interest and entertained a natural audience, the priorities shifted to “representing marginalized groups”. Demand fell off immediately. Imagine a steakhouse being used to promote veganism and berate its carnivore customers? They’d go out of business in short order.

Across the board over the last decade, documented losses to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in American IP devaluation. The traditional monthly comic book model is effectively dead, with superhero comics having collapsed as a viable youth medium. Nobody is buying toys for the old tent-pole franchises, and teenage boys don’t have comic book characters on their walls anymore. The world has moved digitally—for better or worse—and people are hungry for new stories and characters.

In what I call the “Boötes Void” era of anti-entertainment in the States, China, Japan and other countries built out their own industries to fill the gaps left by distasteful modern American culture. While American studios are facing mass layoffs, foreign studios are growing at staggering rates and issuing pay raises and bonuses to their employees. Companies like South Korea’s Shift Up are creating new franchises like Stellar Blade that are taking the world by storm.

Sandfall Interactive, a small studio founded by former developers from the French behemoth Ubisoft—a conglomerate that has relied heavily on regurgitating titles like Assassin’s Creed—created the passion project Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which went on to take the gaming world by storm. The relatively small studio produced an amazing title on a modest budget, showing the world that these bloated productions, which employ hundreds more people than are necessary, are a flaw in an antiquated system in sore need of a reboot.

The boundless, corrupt bureaucratic labyrinth that inflates the cost of films in America—mostly due to vast layers of abstraction coming from unions, special interest groups, and the like—is being exposed as parasitic and destructive. Los Angeles risks a collapse similar to Detroit, Michigan, a town whose most profitable industry was done in by greedy union bureaucrats, wealth redistributors and social organizer hacks looking to pick a once healthy body clean, leaving it a rotting carcass. The actual builders took their business elsewhere; this is the same rhythm of what is happening with Hollywood as studios are traveling to other states or even countries to invest in their productions.

The old ways are dying off in their entirety and the world is changing. With the advent of AI, automation, robotics, increasing optimization and a move to an all-digital world, entire industries are being leveled. However, in the end, what people want is the same: entertainment with universal themes. The franchises that used to provide this have been irrevocably infested with ideologues who are irrationally defiant against market forces.

The recent Hollywood bomb, Supergirl, attempted to sell global audiences on the idea of a woman portrayed as a mentally broken drunk who is emotionally imbalanced and is prone to violence. She comes off as an obnoxious dog-mom with questionable morals—she isn’t someone female viewers would want to emulate or male viewers would want to root for. This Supergirl isn’t someone whose adventures would appeal to global audiences; she feels more like a living embodiment of Hollywood’s social ecosystem than a true superhero.

The people spoke and the usual suspects have reacted with performative obtuseness as to why it failed, blaming the classics like “misogyny”, even though straight men made up the vast majority of the paying audience for the opening weekend. This is all despite weeks of build-up where red carpet journalists asked important questions like “How does it feel playing a ‘queer icon’?” to Supergirl actress Milly Alcock.

Of course, Alcock excitedly played along. However, the majority of viewers, who aren’t initiated in this coastal leftist echo chamber, responded with confusion. This is the key point: mainstream corporate entertainment producers don’t actually know what normal people want; they only know what messaging they want to employ to mold the public into the kinds of zombies that will parrot back the assigned talking points.

In the 80s and 90s, producing entertainment was seemingly effortless and even “bad” movies from that era are looked on with newfound excitement now. The occasional banger like John Wick or Top Gun: Maverick is surrounded by layer upon layer of putrid agitprop that lacks any self-awareness.

If you’re interested in new stories, new characters and new worlds from new voices, I’m an author who focuses on genre fiction. My newest book, Necropolice: Bloodstorm, is a love letter to schlocky horror/action/sci-fi media from the 80s and 90s.

Here are some of Necropolice’s inspirations.

In the book, Necropolice agent Ursula Graves is sent to the remote pastoral town of Belarad to investigate a missing agent. She finds the town besieged by a strange plague that has turned its people into monsters. Within the borders of the cursed town is the key to helping Ursula defeat the demons of her own past.

The Kickstarter for Necropolice: Bloodstorm is here: kickstarter.com/projects/stratum/ursula-graves-in-necropolice-a-horror-action-novella/

SARJ OUT

MEDIA’S DISDAIN FOR WOMEN AND WHAT THEY REPRESENT

Hollywood and the global-corporate media complex have a unique disdain for women. In the 2026 film adaptation of the DC Comics’ character, Supergirl, she lives alone, is a drunk, hates society and only cares about her dog. She eats the defecation of strange animals (not kidding) and wears a trench-coat as a daily driver. It’s mockery and a humiliation ritual not-so-cleverly masquerading as a superhero film.

Warner Brothers, the owner of DC Comics and by extension, Supergirl, took a beloved character and turned her into yet another monument of insidious influence. The global-corporate message passed down through the Supergirl movie’s marketing is simple: Be selfish. Consume. Reject love. Reject life.

The new Supergirl film, according to some who’ve seen it, is nothing more than a dull-gray pastiche drawing from a disparate swath of better films like John Wick and Mad Max (two characters that I’d never have said would be inspirations for Supergirl). Defenders use the inspirational links to John Wick to justify the plot that is essentially about saving her dog. But the death of Wick’s dog wasn’t the inciting incident for the character’s turn; it was just a visual cue.

The true, narrative inciting incident of John Wick was the breaking of rules that his previous life was built upon. Everything in his world was about rules; those who break them suffer mortal penalties. The men who beat him, stole his car and killed his dog broke a vital rule. John did an “impossible task” for a particularly influential criminal underworld figure and earned his freedom, but the indiscretions performed against him marked all involved with death. John Wick merely became a vehicle for the delivery of justice based on the rules that all involved agreed upon. In Supergirl, she just wants to save her dying dog. Noble but not heroic much less superheroic. She’s no John Wick.

USING HEROES TO PROMOTE NOTHING

A persistent global-corporate emphasis on “queer” branding is astroturfed for ideological reasons and is as subtle as a creepy van with the words “free candy” scrawled on the side of it.

Even though only a tiny, fringe minority of people identify with this label, a significant portion of people on the press circuit of any big budget Hollywood film just happen to be obsessed with minority sexual ideology and will often ask questions to imply it’s something anyone else would care about. To be nice, most of the actors/actresses simply play along, but the results have a negative effect on the end product.

Hollywood-ites—who are mere mouthpieces for these globalist ideological interests—constantly emphasize how the pairing of men and women is “repressive” for women and how “toxic” it is for men to display traditional attitudes about labor, sacrifice, desire for family, honor, dedication to God and nation, but how it’s “brave” for women to espouse a desire to be violent, to devote their lives to the pursuit of money and to reject any maternal instincts. Women who express the natural instinct of wanting to be mothers are lambasted and derided. You’re not being a good enough corporate citizen, consumer!

In this sick new world, pair-bonding with a man is oppressive but pair-bonding with a corporation is liberating. Raising children is oppressive but raising pets is laudable. The naturally minimalist lifestyle of a man is “toxic” but a man pretending to be a woman and replicating female spending habits is “brave”.

Redundant actress Rachel Zegler remarked while on the press circuit for the recent Disney remake of Snow White—in which she plays the titular character—that the Prince in the original animated film was a creep. He saved Snow White’s life. In Zegler’s version of the movie, she has no romantic pursuit, but her character does attempt a communist-style revolution to overthrow the queen. Subtle. The movie bombed, by the way.

Supergirl actress Milly Alcock is currently doing the press circuit where in numerous interviews she espouses how proud she is that Supergirl is a “queer icon”, whatever that means. This is concerning. For a movie with a significant production and marketing budget, encapsulating your lead character as one that only a fringe subset of the population can relate to isn’t an attractive message. But as is plainly evident by now, the entertainment content of a piece of modern art is an unnecessary result of its output; what matters is how successful that art is at delivering or reinforcing the aforementioned social messages.

Global audiences are rapidly rejecting the agitprop produced by the west in favor of unironic entertainment that’s increasingly being produced in the east, in countries like China, Japan and South Korea. In the media made in these countries, universalist themes of heroism are translated through traditional avatars that are relatable across all ethnic groups, male and female. And it works. Where there are mass layoffs in the west in film and video game production, eastern development studios are growing.

HOW GLOBAL CORPORATISM MADE “ANGRY WOMEN” THEIR MASCOT

The best way to destroy a society is to decouple its men and women. Powerful people know this. We are currently living in a world where being highly unlikely to contribute to the gene pool rewards you with a whole month of celebration. The incentivization structure of modern society isn’t subtle and is perpetually impressed upon us: consume, go into debt, don’t breed (adopt an animal instead), love is a hindrance, degenerate sex is acceptable, religious faith is laughable, etc.

But try as the elites might, I believe that they’re failing at dividing us. I understand that statistics are indifferent data, and the data says that men and women are increasingly decoupling, which is concerning. However, in my everyday life, I see male/female couples everywhere. And they’re happy. And these are younger people in the town I live in. It may not bode well against the global-corporate campaign to divide and conquer as it seems that Gen Z and younger generations are rejecting modernity and following their instincts. They seek the entertainment of older generations; they want physical media and the true social networking of physical third places; they want REALITY. They don’t want download codes for games/music/movies; they want physical discs, albums, media in general. They’re rejecting algorithms in exchange for real, tactile human conversations. This is the natural immunity response to elites wanting to turn us against each other.

Women are told that they should be angry—and even violent—in resistance against the crimes of the past(?) and supposed crimes of the present… as long as those crimes are the ones they’re intended to be angry about. A quarter-million young women in the UK actually being raped by hordes of foreign savages is meant to be dismissed. Vague accusations of “inequality” and supposed denial of “women’s rights” are intended to mobilize women for the political gain of our elite masters. Women are told to embrace that which is likely to repulse men, in regards to fashion and behavior and mire themselves in lifestyles of artificial decadence and self-destructive over-consumption. Essentially, be a slave that celebrates their position as yet another malleable identity and be accepted into the fold.

As the Joker would say, “It’s allllll part of the plaaannnnnn.”

GLAMOUR IS NOT NECESSARY, BUT BEING LIKEABLE IS

Captain Jack Sparrow was selfish. Ellen Ripley was afraid. Sarah Conner was a skeptic. Han Solo was a materialist. Superman defied the will of his loving father. Dorothy Gale was ungrateful. John McClane was jealous of his wife’s success. These are all character and their flaws, but somehow these same characters became aspirational icons and helped define their respective generations.

Many would say that these characters are “attractive” in a variety of ways. Dorothy has always been seen as sweet and affable and Superman as the traditional model of masculine power and grace, but none of them are especially glamorous. They don’t need to be. In heroic tales, beauty is typically a visual cue of a character’s internal discipline and physical prowess. Brad Pitt’s Achilles was understandably a specimen of physical near-perfection to justify his legendary status.

Heroic tales feature conventionally attractive characters who are embodiments of health and beauty. They’re conceptual avatars; vehicles of personality types. Only in comedies or horror movies can heroes be unusual or even monstrous-looking. Supergirl is a character of the typical superhero mold. Her current cinematic adaptation attempts to subvert her origins and turn her into a gaudy and laughable modern representation that appears to be summarily rejected by those who’ve already seen the movie. The people who produced the film clearly have a disdain for the source material and think of characters like her as mere carriers for the social disease they wish to propagate. But there is another way. In a near-future article, I’m going to present a case for a truly inspiring Supergirl film story that would rally global audiences behind her.

WHY THE ELITES HATE WOMEN

The truth is this: women are hated in this deranged new media world because they represent the ability to create life. This in and of itself is a superpower. It’s a power relegated only to God but is also something that men and women can achieve when they work together and not just to produce a living organism but a healthy, happy child that is the living embodiment of both of the parents. In creating life and passing down love to our children, we get a glimpse of the divine.

I believe that true evil exists in the world, and we don’t need to concoct dark mythologies about ghosts, demons and far-off malicious entities to explain it: evil exists in human hearts and there are people who think life itself is a problem to be solved. These types hate women for their ability to bring life into the universe. Over the last decade of learning about the lifestyles of men like Jeffrey Epstein, Sean Combs and others, these are no longer theories of conspiracies; they’re verifiable fact.

The way that elites consumed by evil use symbols, stories and language to craft narratives that divide us use our own culture against us. Supergirl was created as a symbol of hope, light, life and love. It only makes sense that she’s being revisited, repackaged and presented to us as an unrecognizable specter. This shoddy shadow of Supergirl is meant not to revivify old ways of divine instruction but to insist upon an insidious new way of thinking where division is unity, diversity is uniformity and life itself is a mold to be sanitized.

If you want to “fight the system”, the best way to do that is to embrace love and life and resist those who tell you otherwise.

SARJ OUT

STRATUM MUSIC - Music To Read To

We’ve recently started a free music channel on YouTube. There will be songs and compilations inspired by our books and games. You’re more than welcome to visit the page and enjoy the free music we’ve published there.

Buy Our Books/Games

At the Stratum Press store, we’ve got several books on offer as well as other merch. You can visit the website at stratumpress.store

Gothic horror is quietly oppressive. A creaking door. A long shadow. Shapes moving in fog. A moonlit night in an ancient graveyard. Silent, indifferent darkness. The genre is a mirror that reflects truth and mocks the romantic facades we’ve constructed to deify human mediocrity before God. The true abyss lies not in Hell, deep space, or the ocean’s depths—but in the human heart.

From Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Mummy, and Nosferatu to Bloodborne, Resident Evil, the cosmic dread of H.P. Lovecraft, the small-town nightmares of Stephen King, Hammer Films’ theatrical excesses, and the stark shadows of German Expressionism, these works represent the rich shades of Gothic horror—a unique and enduring subset of the genre.

The fear of the unknown has both restrained human progress and propelled it. For most of history, people died near where they were born. Yet those who braved the open seas—facing storms, pirates, and the void—established colonies, forged trade networks, and expanded the boundaries of human consciousness.

It was curiosity for forbidden knowledge that exiled us from Eden. That same drive fuels our technologies even as it dims the light that first brought us into being. H.P. Lovecraft understood this better than most. He peered past human-centric illusions and saw a cosmos utterly indifferent to our concerns. Yet we remain afraid of the dark for good reason. Our ancestors’ warnings were not obstacles to progress—they were survival wisdom we too often discard.

The past has always hidden eldritch horrors, and we fear it because it entombs the skeletons of our civilizational sins. Gothic horror captures our deepest terrors with quiet, romantic civility. Death does not conquer with brute force; it seduces. It implores us to give in to the chaos of our passions and within that self-summoned storm are we consumed.

There is profound pathos in these stories. The monsters that manifest within spring from very human flaws we rightly vilify. Not all are irredeemably evil, but they are driven—and often enslaved—by instincts civilized society demands we restrain.

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the true horror is not the creature but Victor’s hubris. He raids graves, stitches together butchered corpses, and reanimates the dead through profane science—denying them the dignity of death. The resulting being is pitiable: immense strength paired with childlike curiosity and profound isolation. Shelley indicts man’s audacity in playing God and redefining life itself.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a tragic romantic who rejects death for love, only to spread vampirism’s plague. Abandoned by God, he bends nature—becoming mist, bat, rat, or wolf. His victims often welcome the bite, craving the same transcendence.

F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu strips away the romance. Count Orlok is no urbane seducer but a withered corpse and living pestilence—Patient Zero of a rat-borne plague. Pure predatory instinct. In the end, the sun purifies him. God and nature restore order, destroying the fanged deviant.

The werewolf embodies man’s failure to master base urges. Bloodborne’s beasts literalize desire run amok, mutating humans into grotesque servants of entropy. Works like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Invisible Man, and The Mummy show creatures wrestling impotence in an indifferent universe.

At its core, Gothic horror warns of the consequences when man reaches into domains reserved for God. Detach from civilization’s guardrails, and the individual fractures first, then the community, then everything. It is the rotting of the soul, devoured by its own unchecked appetites.

In Resident Evil and Bloodborne, science or forbidden blood magic shatters the world, dragging order into chaos. The grotesque truth tears through our civilized masks.

In the end, the genre subverts any illusion of humanity’s innate divinity. It holds up a mirror, forcing us to confront the consequences of unchecked ambition, greed, lust, and avarice. For, in these dreary realms, truth is the ultimate horror.

IN CLOSING

If you love gothic horror, beautiful but flawed heroines and boisterous, frenetic action, then the novella Necropolice: Bloodstorm is for you. The Kickstarter project page for the book is going live soon. The first draft of the book is nearly done and the final version will be ready for digital delivery as soon as the campaign and funding concludes.

In the book, Necropolice agent, Ursula Graves, is sent to the sleepy pastoral town of Belarad to investigate the case of a missing agent with ties to the town. While there, she discovers that little is what it seems and that she’ll have to face her own demons to solve the case and survive the night.

STRATUM MUSIC - Music To Read To

We’ve recently started a free music channel on YouTube. There will be songs and compilations inspired by our books and games. You’re more than welcome to visit the page and enjoy the free music we’ve published there.

Buy Our Books/Games

At the Stratum Press store, we’ve got several books on offer as well as other merch. You can visit the website at stratumpress.store

While Hollywood and mainstream gaming destroys classic franchises—from Star Wars, Doctor Who, Masters of the Universe and comic book superheroes, to God of War, Halo and Gears of War—Stratum Press is busy building new worlds, characters and stories for a new counter-culture to entertain you. Over the last few months, I finished writing and publishing the dark fantasy, CLEAVE and the horror/action thriller, Hotel Erebus. I’m a few weeks away from finishing the first draft of the futuristic horror/action story, Necropolice: Bloodstorm, which features heroine Ursula Graves. She’s a beautiful, tough and no-nonsense law enforcement officer that seeks to maintain order in a world where evil is always angling to infiltrate, subvert and destroy the innocent. She’s a living embodiment of the direction Stratum Press is going with our brand of entertainment. This is just the beginning.

The new Stratum Press store is now available. It currently features our first two books, with many more on the way, and our first game, a lite tabletop RPG called Heroes of Nocturne. You can see our current offerings by following the link below.

Stratum Press Store

BOLD HEROES AND THE RESTORATION OF ENTERTAINMENT

The way forward is backward. The way that we restore and reconstitute our culture is by remembering what built the foundations. At Stratum Press, we don’t adhere or subscribe to the moral relativism that is slowly destroying cultures across the greater world.

In our stories, good is good and bad is bad. Villains are punished and heroes are rewarded. Good men love and are loved in return. Good women are cherished and fought for. Children are to be protected. That which disrupts harmonious society must be crushed. And above all: life is precious and must be held in the highest regards and its protection held in the utmost primacy. If a story isn’t about life and death, it’s about nothing at all.

However, having said that, our characters aren’t one-note; they’re complex, multi-faceted, relatable, inspiring, aspirational and interesting. Our heroines aren’t just feminine and attractive; they’re sensitive and vulnerable engines of ambition. Our heroes aren’t just muscular, masculine pillars; they’re introspective and stoic engines of measured concern. Our characters fight not only against external fury but internal insecurities. Our characters seek to better themselves, and in the process of these sanctifications they’ll improve their worlds. After reading our stories, you’ll feel better about yourself and life in general.

I remember going to the movie theater in the 1980s to the mid-2000s and feeling like a million bucks after seeing a great movie. This is what we plan to recreate: a feeling of exhilarated fulfillment for our audience.

At Stratum Press, we want you to be excited for the future. We want you to know that there will be things to look forward to and that we’re primed to provide reliable entertainment on a regular basis. While the mainstream corporate media engine pumps out derisive anti-entertainment made to propagandize, disappoint and demoralize you, we’re here to inspire, motivate, titillate and exhilarate.

Between myself and my associate JP—who is working on his novella, Redneck Wizard—we’re on schedule to have three more novels done by the end of the summer.

These books are going to be pure, unadulterated fun made by people who were inspired by classic books, movies and music that defined American culture. If you hate what’s happened to mainstream entertainment in the last decade or so, you’ll want to keep an eye on what we’re doing at Stratum Press.

If you want to be notified when the Necropolice Kickstarter finally goes live, you can follow this link.

Necropolice Kickstarter Pre-Launch

Stratum Press - remember it!

SARJ OUT

JP and I have started a free music channel on YouTube. It’s called Stratum Music and we’ll be posting song compilations that are tied to the books he and I write. The music videos will act as soundtracks for the books. The first comp is called “Escape” and features music created for Hotel Erebus.

JP is working to build more of the videos for me. I’ll be doing some music comps for CLEAVE that are more bombastic classical tunes to get you in the mood for high adventure as you read the book.

NEXT BOOK

The Kickstarter pre-launch page for my next book, Necropolice: Bloodstorm, is public. I’m halfway done on the first draft and will be finished with it in approximately two weeks. The Kickstarter won’t launch until the first draft is done.

Necropolice: Bloodstorm Pre-Launch Page

There will be at least two covers and a bunch of interesting merch to go with Necropolice. I hope you’ll consider pre-ordering Necropolice.

SARJ OUT

• Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hotel-Erebus-S-Reyes-Jones-ebook/dp/B0GJCSJ68R/

• Stratum Press: https://stratumpress.store/b/NDwJx

SYNOPSIS

ELIJAH CROWE is a troubled man in troubled times. In the wake of the end of World War 1, Elijah returns home a war hero in 1925 to the mean streets of the Chicago of his youth where he was a low-level street hood. One night, he awakens in a strange hotel not remembering how he got there. A blaring voice on a speaker box tells him that he’s in a room on the sixth floor of Hotel Erebus and if he wants to leave, he just has to find a way to get to the first floor and walk out. The problem is that Hotel Erebus is no typical place and the hotel is filled with occupants that don’t want him to leave. The mysterious voice offers him a suitcase that has two strange pistols in it that don’t need to be reloaded and don’t run out of ammo. They’re his only weapons and only means of protection for this night of terror.

Will Elijah survive and escape? Find out by reading Hotel Erebus!

I’m currently a third of the way through the first draft of Necropolice: Bloodstorm, a thrill ride novella—similar to Hotel Erebus—that will debut on Kickstarter in early July. I’m still writing Mad Malitia and will return to writing that novel after Necropolice ships in early August.

My associate JP and I will be introducing new books on an almost monthly basis for the next few months. I have a supernatural romance book whose first draft is already done, so I’ll be working on subsequent drafts before a Kickstarter launch.

Hotel Erebus on Amazon

Hotel Erebus | Stratum Press Store

(Note: This is a prelude to the novella, CLEAVE, which can be purchased on Amazon and the Stratum Press store.)

by SARJ

Muddrose was a dirtball of a town. No one went there with any virtuous intent. The local watering hole—affectionately named ‘the Wellspring’—attracted ne’er-do-wells, degenerates, godless heathens and drunken malcontents like moths to a deathless flame. The ale flowed into bottomless chalices, fists flew and voices swirled into cacophonous inanity. Torches sheathed in sconces mounted to the numerous support beams illuminated the grounds in wavy torchlight.

Funnily enough, amidst the mindless carnage and empty chatter, measured whispers from serious men were also uttered. The ears of serious men heard those whispers. In dens of hedonism like the Wellspring were where schemers schemed their machinations. These quiet, reserved criminal architects were easily parsed from the ebullient imbeciles.

Through the thickness of the chattering and jabber-jawing, a fight was taking place in a fighting pit set into a slight recess into the dirt foundation in the center of the bar. A groak—a large, bulb-eyed frog humanoid—trundled around the pit, standing across from a drunken, bearded man, circling in predatory postures. The groak was eight feet of gangly, slimy terror. Patrons pumped their fists in the air, sloshing ale out of their mugs and onto the filthy wooden floor planks as they cheered on the pending chaos.

The bearded drunk fighter—urged on by liquid courage—lunged forward and threw a clumsy haymaker that glanced off the groak’s slimy block of a head and thudded softly into its shoulder. The groak’s walleyed gaze revealed nothing of its thoughts. It merely croaked, inflating the air bladders under its neck. The drunk looked confused until the groak suddenly loosed a vicious slap with its webbed hand. The creature was deceptively strong, even with its odd form and massive proportions. The drunk was thrown to the side of the pit and fell to the ground. The blow didn’t even seem thrown with malicious intent but more annoyed confusion. The groak stalked ahead, its shoulders slumped forward and its head bobbing in concert with the pulsating flex of its goiter. The drunkard crawled back to his feet to the cheers of the mob.

The tavern door flung inward to a thudding stop, flooding the tavern with the sounds of a coming storm. A hush fell over the patrons for a drawn moment as a towering, broad silhouette filled the doorway. They watched as it breached the threshold into the warmth of torchlight and revealed itself as a fire-haired man in a thick pelt draped over his broad back and shoulders.

The fire-haired pillar was carried along by thick, muscled legs capped by leather boots lined with fur trim at the top. Chiseled, vein-wrapped tubes of muscle jutted from his barrel chest; leather bracers hugged his wrists. His scarred fists were like bulbous, knobby hammerheads; his knuckles bulged as bony knots.

The barbarian appeared as if carved from wood. Every crease, crevice, and winding contour implied he’d been chiseled from petrified timber. The patrons carefully returned to their drinks and conversation, wearing measured, self-aware smiles—a bit less enthusiastic than before the barbarian had entered.

Little did these folk know they were in the presence of Cleave of the Red Stone Clan. His people traveled quietly but their footfalls still left an impression wherever they went. He was no exception.

Cleave sidled up to the bar, his shoulders framed stiff and flat opposite the bartender. He was there on business.

“What can I get you, friend?” the bartender casually asked as he toweled off the bar. He didn’t seem particularly intimidated by the scowling mass of muscle crowned in fire. Serving liquor in Muddrose exposed him to a great many marvels and horrors; little surprised him.

“Ale,” was all Cleave said.

The man dutifully nodded and went off to get a mug. Kneeling behind the bar, he avoided the smaller mugs and went for the largest one he had. It had collected dust. None as hefty as Cleave had crossed the threshold into the Wellspring. The bartender quickly wiped it down before holding it under a cask of ale and unplugging it to let the liquor flow. When it kissed the rim, he replaced the plug and walked over to Cleave to present him his drink. Proportionally, it seemed like an average-sized mug when nothing could be further from the truth.

The barbarian kicked back a heavy swig before setting the mug on the bar.

“You don’t look like you’re here for that, friend. Here for business or pleasure?”

“Aside from the ale, what pleasure is to be had here?” Cleave muttered with his gravelly Red Stone accent.

“Much pleasure to be had. Any of our barmaidens would be happy to quicken you... for a fair price. Behind closed doors, of course. We haven’t abandoned all civility.”

“Whores, no,” he dismissed with clear disinterest.

The barkeep squinted knowingly. “I’d pick up that accent anywhere. A Northman. You’re far from home.”

“Yes.”

“Must be here on business, then.”

“Hmph,” Cleave said before swigging again.

“I might be able to help. A man in my position hears many things.”

“The Sun-Slayers. You know them?”

The bartender looked away, diving into his foggy memory before he seemed to recall something of significance. “They some kind of mad cult, yeah? Dragon worshipers?”

“They’re in this part of the country. I want to know where.”

“You want to join them?” the bartender chuckled heartily.

The grave look that Cleave gave in retort pacified the bartender, wiping away his smile. The barbarian was all business.

The barkeep composed himself. “All right. Tell you what. Why don’t we put on a show? Never seen a man of your stature walk in that door. Closest thing is that groak in the pit there,” he said, gesturing to the beast that was smothering his human opponent with his giant, webbed hands. “Apparently some pirates back east kept it as a pet, but they dumped it. Said something about it being a bad luck charm. Slavers sold ‘im to me. The groak hasn’t lost a fight yet. What say you step into the pit and throw hands with it. See if you can break the streak. Word gets around and I’ll have people from the four corners of Estara wanting to get drunk in this piss pot. Maybe it’ll pay back my investment in this place and him.”

“Hmm,” Cleave said as he eyed the monstrous anuran that threw its defeated opponent away. “Are weapons allowed?”

“Those smashing machines on the ends of your wrists seem all the weapons you need.”

“Aye,” Cleave grumbled in surly, subdued agreement as he tipped the mug back and fed the ale down his gullet.

“You fight until one of you can no longer continue. Them’s the rules; the only rules.”

Patrons carried the unconscious loser from the fighting pit to a raucous cacophony as the groak stood awkwardly, his goiter expanding and contracting with each rapid breath he drew.

Cleave unslung his pelt and scabbard, bundling it all in his muscled paws and laying the package on the bar. The proportions of the sheathed sword alone hoarded most of the bare space, forcing several patrons at the bar to lift their drinks.

Cleave marched past the spectators, stamping the ground with authority with each footfall. The groak’s inhuman, hunched stance shifted when the barbarian drew nearer. The walleyed anuran suddenly turned its head to lock onto its new opponent.

The barbarian had muted out the waves of mindless nonsense hitting him from all sides. The bar patrons, however, made it clear that they were expecting a savage trading of fists. Thankfully for them, Cleave could hold his liquor better than the last man.

The opponents squared up against each other. The groak suddenly lunged forward, opening its mouth and launching its tongue. Cleave brought up his bent arm and the viscous, sinewy dart wrapped around his wrist. The barbarian tugged back, but the slimy appendage stretched in response.

Flustered, Cleave leapt forward and hammered the anuran in the head with a thundering punch from his free hand. The groak recoiled back. The crowd cheered.

The groak settled back into a firm stance, shaking its head to regain its composure. Cleave tightened his fist. The anuran began to utter a deep and throaty guttural sound at such volume that many spectators had to cover their ears; Cleave resisted with a pitiless sneer.

Cleave cranked back to throw a titanic punch, but the groak ducked with slippery agility and snatched him up off of his feet, slamming him into the pit floor. Again, the audience cheered with ale-soaked enthusiasm. The anuran stood over Cleave and slapped its webbed hands around the barbarian’s head, dragging him to his feet before lifting him clear off the ground. Cleave was a mountain of a man, but the groak stood a head or two above him.

The anuran stood erect, arms outstretched and hands clasped around its fire-haired opponent’s head. Cleave’s feet dangled inches from the ground.

The groak’s power surprised even Cleave, but the Red Stone man would not be denied. He brought his arms down in hammering arcs, slamming into the groak’s arms, breaking the grip and forcing it to drop him to the ground. The barbarian laid into the groak’s ribs with a series of punches that would’ve liquefied a normal man, but this humanoid was in no way normal. It wrenched back in agony but remained still in one piece.

Cleave did not relent. His warrior’s instincts took over. He had to know where the accursed Sun-Slayers were laying down their camp. Lives depended on it. The consequences were grave.

The groak propelled its lashing tongue once again, but this time Cleave snatched it out of the air with his right hand, wrapping it around his wrist. He deftly swept under the anuran and hoisted it up on his shoulders. The patrons gasped, and even the barkeep’s eyes stretched in surprise.

Cleave seemed to hold the groak aloft for an eternity when it was only a prolonged moment before he twisted at the waist and drove the creature into the dirt. It belched an audible gurgle upon impact.

The driven barbarian gloated over the anuran beast. “I’m not going to kill you, creature. I don’t even pity you, but sometimes the flesh must suffer. I must know where the Sun-Slayers are, and therefore you must lose. Stay down and accept my mercy.”

With a slippery and deceptively agile movement, the groak slapped Cleave’s legs out from under him, knocking him to the ground. Before the groak could leap in for another attack, Cleave delivered a hard kick up into the beast’s face, stunning it. In a moment, the barbarian was back on his feet.

As the groak staggered back, trying to regain its frame, Cleave cocked back with a battering-ram of a punch. The stunned beast’s rotund belly was completely exposed. The patrons fell momentarily silent. Cleave leveled the groak’s belly with a thunderous blow that echoed through the tavern.

Another gasp from the mob as Cleave stood back to admire his handiwork. At first, the groak seemed shocked at the force of the blow, its bulging eyes and alien features exposing no emotion. But then a wet and gassy sound gurgled in its belly. The barbarian took a step back, fists still raised, as the groak folded forward and opened its wide maw.

The watery gurgle grew louder as the groak expelled a torrent of vomit onto the pit floor. The mob groaned in disgust as many rose from their seats and backed away from the filth. Cleave stood strong, watching the anuran expel the contents of its innards. As the barkeep watched in goggle-eyed awe at the sight, he noticed something in the spewed muck glimmering in the dim torchlight.

The barkeep excitedly ran around the bar counter, through the mass of patrons, and into the pit. Resting within the putrid, viscous mass were piles of golden coins.

“Praise be!” the barkeep gasped, eyes wide. Some of the patrons came to the same realization as the barkeep and seemed primed to rush the pile. “Stay where you stand, wretches! Or you’ll face the groak’s fury!” the man barked.

The gold-hungry patrons took a moment to consider the risk and realized the folly it represented. They stood down.

“Drinks are on the house!” the barkeep yelled, eyes still fixed to the gold. Every soul in the tavern cheered and the momentary tension broke.

The groak was now in a full squat, its tongue rolling around its face as it groomed himself.

“He seems to be in better spirits,” Cleave observed. “All of that gold in his belly couldn’t have felt good.”

“Aye,” the barkeep muttered.

“I’ve done my part,” Cleave reminded.

The honorable man bobbed his head in kind. “Verdecourt. That’s what I heard. They were moving through to Verdecourt. I’d say three hours’ ride east from here.”

Cleave nodded, imbued with a renewed purpose. The barkeep gathered the barmaidens around and began to giddily toss each of them slime-coated coins. The girls were simultaneously excited and disgusted as they caught them.

“Best of luck to ye, barbarian,” the barkeep wished. “That lot, the Sun-Slayers, they’re mad.”

“They’ll think I’m mad,” Cleave uttered ominously as he turned away.

Cleave went to the bar and collected his things. After he threw his pelt on and adjusted the scabbard on his back, he made for the door. Waiting by the tie stall was a large, saddled cat crouched down in rest. Upon seeing Cleave, the cat immediately stood in a display of obedient discipline.

Cleave mounted the saddle and patted the cat on her side. “Rikka, we go to Verdecourt. We’ve got Sun-Slayers to burn down.”

Rikka growled, and the pair bounded off into the forest.

(Note: this short story is a prelude to the novella, CLEAVE, which is currently available on both Amazon and the Stratum Press store (stratumpress.store))

© 2026 S.A. Reyes-Jones. All Rights Reserved.

An infamous article written in 2014, in the midst of the “Gamergate” internet phenomenon, posited that “gamers are over” and that “gamers didn’t have to be the customers of the gaming industry”. It seemed so obviously confounding twelve years ago that someone would say something like this. If gamers weren’t the target audience for those who make, sell and promote games, who would be the target audience?

Little did we know, in our naïve mindsets of 2014, that this article was projecting an awareness of a new kind of anti-business model. This new model subverts the tried and true method of consensual trade between producers and consumers and instead focuses on using taxpayer money to fund propaganda. Essentially, it’s a scam: Parasites who are tourists within a culture that isn’t naturally theirs will work within the culture to make money using gaming/movies/short films/novels/whatever by promoting propaganda on behalf of someone else. It’s the subversion of real culture to produce cynical anti-culture.

It works like this: activists signal to globalists within governments or even to “non-profit” NGOs (non-governmental organizations, usually created by government officials to justify allocation of taxpayer money) that they’re willing to boost a preferred ideological signal if only they’re given funds. Then, governments steal from their citizens via taxation to collect these funds. Some of those funds are designated to these “non-profit” NGOs who then give money to people who will create “art” that promotes whatever the NGO wants them to promote. Want to make people aware of climate crisis talking points? An NGO will commission you—with taxpayer funds—to create a game like Aphelion, which acts as a checklist of contemporary ideological talking points, all to promote human-guilt/ecological disaster porn.

No customers actually bought or paid for Aphelion upon release. At its peak, Aphelion reached just over two hundred concurrent players globally. But that was the plan.

Gamers engaging with the publisher on consensual economic grounds by trading money for an entertainment experience wasn’t the business plan for Aphelion or the growing slate of paid propaganda. The publisher got their money from the NGO who received funding from the government who stole those funds from the citizens via taxation. It’s a simple plan. The developers got paid. The publisher got paid. And they didn’t even have to adhere to the rules of free enterprise where people exchange goods and services with free citizens in a supply and demand paradigm. No, the developers and publisher went around the system and opened themselves up to being commissioned by an unelected group of people who had access to taxpayers’ money. They took on no personal financial risk. The taxpayer-funded treasury is of nearly infinite depth and volume. Neither government officials nor NGOs care because it’s not their money.

In a healthy, ethical economy, individuals and companies must adhere to the whims and will of the consumer for a greater likelihood of profit and sustainability because there is no other customer; now there is. If you’re willing to peddle globalist or left-wing talking points, you too can get paid by propagandist NGOs working with other people’s money. Many are more than happy to sell out to achieve this.

If you’re a gamer, the boot-up screens for many games will show a litany of logos. Sometimes those logos are for software stacks that allow for certain utility within the game, like video conversion software or lip-sync tech or motion capture, etc. However, sometimes you’ll see strange logos of governmental agencies. That means that the game was at least partially subsidized by some government entity that is encouraging a message. Or as the Critical Drinker would say, “THE MESSAGE”.

If you want access to this grant, you have to promote whatever the government wants you to promote. The entire cycle is predicated on a system of theft. Nothing of value is produced. Funds are stolen to fund unwanted propaganda. That’s it.

The way commercial art used to be created was that someone thought, “Hey, I bet people would be interested in this movie/video game/novel/etc, so I’ll make it, put it on the market and promote it and I think I’ll make my money back!” Now, this relationship is dead for many. Shameless parasites are happy to accept money—stolen from taxpayers who didn’t vote for this—in order to produce unwanted activist agitprop. It’s unjust. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that these kinds of anti-business practices are part of a slow push to drive private industries to become increasingly reliant not on free individuals but on government for their subsidization. That’s a historically dangerous precedent to establish.

If you’re old enough, you remember a time where most—if not all—commercial art was made to entertain, titillate, shock and awe (positively) or educate. Sometimes it succeeded and sometimes it failed, but you rarely got the feeling that you were being insulted. Most mainstream culture now is—intentionally or not—on the intellectual level of Sesame Street. Even worse, I think it’s sensory junk food that dumbs down the masses; it reduces our public discourse to fighting ghosts rather than reaching for the stars intellectually and culturally. So much of our discourse now involves awful people wanting to bludgeon us with their awful ideas when the goal should be entertainment.

There are alternatives and value-centric entertainment still does exist. For instance: Is there a market for a science fiction story about a beautiful female cop who teams up with her gruff and masculine male partner to take down a ring of terrorists comprised of angry female humanoid robots? I think so! That’s why I’m writing a book called Mad Malitia about exactly that.

No government agency, NGO or special interest group commissioned me to write this book. I’m writing Mad Malitia on my own time and dime. I write books to entertain you and deliver genuine value. I’m a new indie author, so I’m not wasting taxpayer money to produce my books. I sink or swim based on what I produce for readers who decide freely whether or not to patronize my work. I hope that I’m able to entertain you with Mad Malitia upon release.

SARJ OUT

LOVE WILL SAVE US ALL

Science fiction is often about humankind’s struggles with the results of our own success. Progress leads to unexpected punishment and sometimes irrevocable disaster. The one thing that can save the human race in the darkest of times is love. The best and most memorable art shows us pushing to the brink until we remember what got us as far as we have, and we reconstitute our understanding of ourselves.

The Terminator is one of the cornerstones of sci-fi cinema; it’s a story about a future world where humanoid robots had broken the shackles placed there by their human masters and have taken over the world. The only hope humanity has is in a man named John Connor whose tenacity, wit and tactical intelligence are enough to rally humanity from the brink and to push back the hordes of machines, restoring the Earth into human hands. The story hinges on a single resistance fighter named Kyle Reese who is sent back in time to intercept a robotic assassin whose goal is to eliminate John Connor’s mother, Sarah, effectively removing him from the timeline.

**SPOILERS**

What Kyle Reese doesn’t know is that in going back in time to protect Sarah, his presence will be the catalyzing event that leads to John Connor’s birth. As the story unfolds, Kyle and Sarah’s relationship becomes a romance. In a scene taking place in a hotel room—as they hide from a relentless killing machine from the future—they find solace in each other’s arms. The subsequent love scene is not exploitative or crude or even explicit; the love-making is tied to the function and foundation of the plot itself. The sex is a necessary part of the story and required for it to move forward.

Richard K. Morgan’s conspiracy-weaving novel, Altered Carbon, places a war-weary detective in a sleeve (temporary body) as he’s hired by a resurrected centenarian aristocrat to solve the mystery of who killed him. The story establishes a lewd affair between the detective and the aristocrat’s wife in several scenes that are quite graphic. The unfolding mystery justifies their lurid, physical interludes as more than mere sex. In Altered Carbon, everyone is a spider and the detective is a fly.

In Fritz Lang’s magnum opus, Metropolis—released in 1927—the villainous robot Maria used her feminine wiles to seduce the titular city’s men in pursuit of a hostile takeover.

Cannon Films’ guilty pleasure production of Lifeforce depicted a future Earth attacked by alien energy vampires who use sex as a means to attract prey.

And in 1997’s The Fifth Element, a futuristic cabbie played by Bruce Willis protects a strange and beautiful young woman played by Milla Jovovich in her attempt to stop a cosmic force from destroying Earth. As it turns out, the Fifth Element is love and the brief expression of this force between Willis and Jovovich is what saves the day.

The final frame of Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame is of time-traveling super-soldier Steve Rogers kissing the girl of his dreams, Peggy Carter, a woman he needed to defeat Death—in the form of villain Thanos—to be reunited with. This was the icing on the cake for a series of films that took over a decade to conclude its story.

The Matrix, in its mind-bending tale of a future resistance against squid-like machines that use humans as juice boxes, offered an ending where Carrie-Anne Moss’s Trinity “wakes up” a seemingly dead Keanu Reeves’ Neo with a kiss, which empowers him to take down the bad guys and win the day.

The entire goal of Marty McFly in 1985’s Back to the Future was to go back in time to the year 1955 to ensure that his high schooler parents would get together, ensuring that his “present” timeline in 1985 wouldn’t be erased.

So often, the coupling of men and women is literally what saves humanity. It’s our striving for love that indicates a desire to invest in our futures that buries a seed of hope.

PROGRESS HAS ITS PRICE

Regardless of how astoundingly advanced technologically our species becomes in the next few centuries, it’s doubtful that our ingrained software will adapt quickly enough to balance societal changes with basic human urges. Even in 2026, the need for human contact in a post-social media era has resulted in a loneliness epidemic that affects males and females, regardless of national or personal economic strength. The more advanced we’ve become, the more the deprivation of that which feeds our primal needs has lessened our appreciation for improvements in other areas.

Every survey conducted in the last twenty years has shown a marked decline in overall quality of life in first-world nations. Depression and loneliness are up as tech giants grow larger. Human beings need human connection and sex is the most necessary function as it leads to the proliferation of our species as well as concretizing interpersonal bonds.

SEX AS REVERENCE OF LIFE AND NOT FLESH

Oftentimes, sex in media can be portrayed boorishly and with little respect for the sanctity of human agency. It’s depicted as something people do to reject social norms and embrace selfish bodily satisfaction at the cost of everything else. However, as previous examples showed, this doesn’t have to be the case.

Blade Runner’s Rick Deckard has a fascinating infatuation with a woman named Rachel. The problem is that Rachel is actually a machine called a replicant made in the image of a woman, even down to DNA replication. Despite the complications, their love is real. That’s what matters. The illicit sexual tension in the film boils over and Rick and Rachel indulge their desires as a signal of choice in a world where autonomy itself is questioned.

We’re talking humans and robots, but in the worst ways, sex between humans is often portrayed as a mechanical exercise devoid of deep, human longing when it should be the result of it.

REDEFINING THE FUTURE

In my upcoming book, Mad Malitia, I deal with the concept of a robotics revolution quite a bit differently than many other stories. In the book, robots don’t usher in a post-human apocalypse but rather are a crucial part of a post-abundance utopia where the labor of billions of artificially-intelligent machines provides the human race all it needs to sustain itself and more.

But in all science fiction, a story doesn’t exist without drama, and the conflict in the book arises when a strange, emergent phenomena called “the Spark” begins to give robots sentience. An anti-human resistance force comprised entirely of post-spark machines arises. They don’t want revenge; they want humans to be reminded just how precious consciousness is and they’re willing to commit acts of domestic terrorism to achieve their goals.

“Mad” Malitia Kane and her heroic partner and lover, Jackson “Jax” Harlan, express their love through sex multiple times in the book. However, rather than being a crude ploy to titillate the imagination, these moments are portrayed to show the power of love as something humans choose in a world where the spark of autonomy itself is a point of debate. For them, it’s a ritual of pair bonding and primal joy contained in self-discipline.

We’re certainly not perfect and science fiction rarely depicts us as such. In fact, we’re repeatedly shown as failing—as we have throughout history—before recalling the best of our instincts and intentions to stave off disaster. That often involves love and remembering how it got us this far. Going from huddling naked in caves millennia ago to populating megalopolises and manufacturing machines in our image is quite the success story.

No journey is without bumps, but the importance of our destination precludes us from giving up. We won’t arrive without scars, but I believe we will get there together; love will be a big reason why.

What do you think? Is sex is too crude to be included in fiction regardless of the circumstances, or can it actually elevate a story? Let me know in the comments below.

SARJ OUT

A LOSS OF CULTURAL INTENT

The 20th century was a golden era for entertainment in the western world. In the USA and Europe, the technological age fused with some of the most vibrant civilizations in history to produce art of shocking global resonance. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published as a book at the tail-end of the 19th century, but a newfangled device called the motion picture camera allowed a film adaptation of the book in 1931 starring Bela Lugosi (simultaneous English and Spanish-language productions). A decade prior in 1922, a German company called Prana Films loosely adapted Bram Stoker’s opus into a silent film called Nosferatu, which promptly drew the legal ire of Stoker’s widow.

German director F.W. Murnau brought expressionism to the masses with the unsanctioned adaptation which would eventually grow beyond cult status—and its affiliation with Dracula—to establish its own cultural footing, eliciting as much attention as Stoker’s fanged blood-drinker. This was a link in a long chain where past cultures had been iterated upon, inspired by the desire to revivify the values that previous works represented, but doing so with slight aesthetic or narrative tweaks. Somewhere along the line, this tenet of cultural preservation was broken, ushering in an age of puerile artistic deconstruction to feed the egos of fragile and substandard talents incapable of escaping the shadows of their predecessors.

When Murnau and Prana Films were developing Nosferatu, there was an unspoken desire to stay true to the beats of Dracula’s story which worked so well. So much so that the subsequent legal entanglements demanded that the physical prints of Nosferatu be destroyed. Thankfully, some prints survived and the film is now widely distributed via home video and digitally. A masterful expression was nearly erased, not by the derision of an audience, but simply by legal mandate. However, in the new age, the past is not only dismissed but openly derided in favor of risible, pretentious agitprop. Culture is not destroyed by fire but through gradual, iterative erosion through means far more insidious than mere legal judgments. The desire for art that unites rather than divides is chided with charged language as “fascistic”, “regressive” and “problematic”. This is modernity’s revenge on beauty and truth.

There is a strange irony that Murnau and his crew risked legal ramifications to make a movie meant to titillate and entertain, even if it challenged legal boundaries. In the modern era, legal control of a property appears to give affiliated and contracted “creatives” the right to stray as far from the source material as possible while still retaining the popular signage and titles; a crass inversion of a once-mighty industry that prided itself on skill, talent and a boundless appreciation for the omnipresent audience. Now, the audience is a pesky hindrance that dependent orbiters in the fake-journalist media are happy to denigrate in order to maintain access in exchange for fealty.

The new era of corporate creatives—having no inclination to create original properties, nor the intellectual or artistic capacity to do so—opt to take that which has been created by their betters and shape them into amorphous mutations that only vaguely resemble the foundational art; entertainment be damned.

DISDAIN FOR THE PLEBS

We now live in an age where art has been so finely commodified that the idea of it existing to represent anything other than economic exchange is confounding in many circles. There was a time, not that long ago, that art existed as a form of self-expression, a humanistic distribution of ideas that are at the core of humanity’s struggles with the external and internal worlds.

Corporate chaff is hired to be the caretakers of intellectual properties they didn’t create and have no authorial responsibility to properly care for. It’s just a job for them. In fact, they have a vociferous disdain for those who consider themselves fans of franchises, and it shows in the work.

Even extremely competent talents aren’t immune to this. Director Denis Villeneuve can adapt Dune, but he can’t truly understand what drove Frank Herbert to write it. He can read the Dune books and even read interviews by Herbert regarding the motivations behind the writings, but in the end he’s just a movie director translating art from one medium to another. Through moving shapes and light, he can offer a visual and aural experience to tantalize the senses that doesn’t necessarily massage the mind. It’s just that: an adaptation. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

At least Villeneuve seems to have some kind of reverence for the source material, unlike many in the mainstream entertainment mill. Villeneuve seems to be among a dying breed closer in association to Murnau and co., in that common sense devotion to entertainment holds primacy, aside from a few niggling modern flourishes in his Dune adaptations that fans online are happy to point a microscope at.

THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

Western education has not only strayed from its foundational values, it is actively vilifying those whose merits built the civilization. For decades now, we’ve been told about the “problematic” origins of our forefathers. Monuments of great men are being toppled to satiate the fringes of “politically correct” elites who think the past is something to be excoriated and forgotten in lieu of the perfectly equitable future our betters want to force us into.

Many of these ill-informed and socially-engineered dregs have wriggled their way into positions within the arts, specifically commercial art, and they have their hands on the wheel of western culture, one they seem hellbent on driving off of a cliff.

They don’t know what is good; they don’t know what is beautiful. Many have been so ideologically poisoned that simple, common sense ideas like moral and immoral are frustratingly debatable. Moral relativism becomes the guiding principle of the day with all of its contradictions. For fans, excitement from twenty years ago has transitioned to anger, then disappointment and now apathy.

BILLIONS LOST TO EGO AND VANITY

Star Wars, previously a pillar of unparalleled commercial success and cultural relevance has been reduced to a franchise relegated to streaming where it gets middling and sporadic interest. Star Wars toys rot on shelves and end up getting mulched en masse; younger generations have no interest as the original magic is gone.

The desire to subvert human instincts and tendencies has failed. What attracted audiences a century ago is what attracts us now. Gen Z is watching TV shows and movies from the 80s and 90s, rejecting modernity for that which resonates on a deeply human level with the masses and not the politically-deranged fringes.

The Marvel and DC franchises are flagging corpses of once thriving titans while other geek stalwarts like Star Trek, TMNT, Masters of the Universe, GI Joe and others receive confoundingly inconsistent attention in regards to quality offerings. This is a far cry from decades past, when fun and a deep concern for positive audience response reigned supreme.

The rare quality book adaptations like Dune and Project Hail Mary attract film-lovers to theaters in droves, until Hollywood returns to its typical ways and the bursts of enthusiasm settle back into simmering indifference for careless products.

A FUTURE OF DECENTRALIZED ART

In the recent past, the book publishing industry consisted of a handful of mega-giants like Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster among a few others. However, in the last few years, the state of book publishing has fractured as tastes and audiences have diverged in ways that the lumbering giants are too slow and cumbersome to address and serve.

New creators, filmmakers, game developers and authors can go straight to the People through a plethora of platforms like Kickstarter. Social media platforms like X are connecting people the world over, diminishing the need for centralized control, and AI is enabling people to do far more with less resources. The customer receives the dividends.

Despite the previous content of this article, I’m actually extremely optimistic about the future of entertainment due to this fracturing of control and distribution. It’s a golden age of fun, whether it be in indie AI-generated movies, tens of thousands of games coming out on Steam every year or the growth of boutique book publishers like mine, Stratum Press. The menu is getting bigger and you—the customer—are eating good.

NEW CREATIVE VOICES

As an author of genre fiction, I feel blessed to be a part of this revolution. My third book, MAD MALITIA, is coming to Kickstarter likely by the end of May. It was originally set for completion/Kickstarter launch much sooner, but the story ballooned and expanded, nearly doubling the page count. The original concept was for it to be a “thrill ride” (short 2-3 hour read) but the story organically demanded to be more, so I happily acquiesced to the process. The final page count is looking to be closer to 400 pages by the final draft.

Mad Malitia is a more nuanced take on the cyberpunk epic about what happens when the human race gets everything they asked for—abundance—but there are still unforeseen circumstances. The Kickstarter project for Mad Malitia will offer the book itself in softcover, hardcover and eBook versions, as well as merch like a 128-page “Design Works” book of conceptual imagery, a physical CD soundtrack (yes, a physical CD of new music made just for the book) as well as a 2x8” bookmark of Malitia’s trusty sidearm, Chimera. There might also be prints.

My previous two works, Hotel Erebus and CLEAVE, are coming to Amazon this week in Hardcover, Softcover, eBook and Audiobook!

SARJ OUT

VIBE SHIFT

We live in uncertain times. Disruptions in AI, automation, geopolitics, rapidly-shifting incentives in labor and education and even transportation are altering the fabric of society as a whole. In times of discord, people often turn to fiction as a means of modeling the future and escaping from the uncertainty inherent in the present.

Forty years ago, movies such as War Games, The Terminator and Blade Runner painted a picture of a future world where artificial intelligence blurred the lines of what defined “human”. These fictional tales asked us to consider a time where machines created to serve us might act in a manner that contradicts their humanistic programming or even possibly outright revolt against a new form of slavery.

Metropolis, the expressionist masterpiece directed by German director Fritz Lang and released in 1927, chronicled the fears of automation and the loss of a people’s soul. The principal villain—the mad scientist Rotwang—builds the perfect machine, a gynoid he names Maria that he intends to use as a weapon against the system that wronged him. Maria represents hell on Earth and seduces the masses to bring down the entire system. Only by exposing Maria as a frigid, lifeless parody of womanhood is her demonic spell broken and the people’s sanity restored. This could be construed as the seductive power of technology holding sway over people until the realization that the true power is in human connection and not via cold, indifferent intermediary analogs.

In the 1980s, as home computers became ubiquitous, the sweeping fear of spreading communism and nuclear war with the Soviet Union was infused with technological skepticism. It became apparent that nuclear hot war was not only a threat by a button-press of a misanthropic despot but a rogue artificial intelligence that sees human beings as no more important than a misplaced line item in a digital ledger. Movies like the Mad Max Trilogy showed the consequences of a post-tech apocalypse with contemporary fears of travel insecurity due to volatility in gas prices being stoked.

DANGEROUS DAZE

In the 1982 film Blade Runner, Rick Deckard lives in 2019 Los Angeles, and his existence embodies the spirit of that theoretical age. He’s lonely, reserved, disconnected, cold and conflicted. He doesn’t have friends; he has associates, co-workers, acquaintances. He’s a man out of time, a bruised and broken loner who could’ve strolled into a saloon in the previous century looking for a kill or a flat-footed detective in the early twentieth looking for a dame and a hard drink. Instead, he’s trapped in 2019 looking for purpose. Purpose finds him when he’s called to track down four violent, murderous fugitives. But they’re not your typical criminals; they’re perfectly convincing synthetic humanoids called replicants, members of a new slave class who explicitly challenge the definition of what it means to be human.

The movie proceeds to plant seeds painting the picture of a dark future. In the film’s first scene, torrential rain is pelting downtown LA. Deckard runs across the street, dodging surging legions of umbrella-wielding Angelenos. Upon cutting a swath through the foot traffic, he grabs a seat at a street-side noodle shop. There’s a brief struggle through language barriers between Deckard and the Japanese chef to clumsily make his order. As Deckard digs in, a Latino detective approaches him from behind and barks at him in Esperanto, interrupting the meal. The film is very clear that in the future, shared humanity is a difficult thing to come by as we’re separated by language, culture and temperament: The human race is a petri dish on a hot stove and even a simple attempt at business could tilt towards a disagreeable conclusion.

In another scene, Deckard arrives home to his apartment and makes his way to the balcony. He sets his sidearm down and, in a bout of self-loathing ennui, just stares off into the cramped, claustrophobic urban mega-sprawl. Pillars of steel and glass glint in the distance like an earthbound starfield while flying taxis whiz by. The familiar soundscape of rain and emergency sirens fills our ears as Deckard maintains his outward glare at nothing in particular. The city is indifferent to him, as is the world. There is no community. There’s just survival with a creaky facade of civilization. This is the future.

In so many of these books and films released over the entirety of the 20th century, it’s clear that there is a simmering anxiety that the future will be incomprehensibly unpredictable.

IGNORANCE WAS BLISS

Good fiction masks the tireless conflicts of human virtues against incomprehensible and unassailable circumstances. Technology is the ironic weapon that we build to optimize human processes that end up ushering in new and unforeseen complications. Social media has caused rifts in society along cultural lines and “influencers” create spheres of fake engagement to engender mindless consumerism. Death at the hands of machines isn’t necessary to destroy society. It turns out that we didn’t need killer robots to create a dystopian future. All that was necessary was to hold a mirror up to the human race and we would happily destroy ourselves.

When I was young, I remember being asked what superpower I’d like to have. I knew the superpower I absolutely didn’t want: telepathy. Ignorance is bliss and knowing the truth is a bitter pill. Social media has given humanity the ability to know what everyone is thinking as soon as a thought is formed. Discretion is one of the elements that hold society together. The “movie star” was such because of the perceived rarity of their existence. In the early days of cinema, information about actors and actresses was carefully protected, filtered and curated by producers. Little was known of these people and the only time you saw them was on the silver screen. In 2026, the concept of the movie star has faded as modern social media has exposed “celebrities” as being mostly insufferable, mediocre people.

THREADING THE NEEDLE

In 2026, art is imitating life which is imitating art. People who’ve been told for decades that AI will be the end of human civilization are living in a part of the timeline where the technology is legitimately on the verge of developing into… something. There’s a strange collective consciousness that we’re on the verge of a societal rebirth: humanity is now trapped in a chrysalis. What will emerge? A butterfly or a skeleton? For many, this is the dichotomous conflict. It’s a binary wager.

I’m an eternal optimist. I believe in humanity. Over the course of some 300,000 years (scientists currently estimate), Homo sapiens have endured unimaginable horrors, engaging in intertribal and sectarian violence, fighting and hunting animals long extinct; we’ve danced on the verge of extinction numerous times, huddling in dank caves around flickering fires just desperate to survive. And now in 2026, there are over 8 billion of us. We’re on the precipice of staggering economic, technological and social change. Artemis II recently carried human beings around the Moon farther than any had gone before. Plans are formulating to send Man back to the Moon’s surface and then to Mars, not just to visit but to colonize and establish permanent bio-spheres. Millions of cars (Teslas) worldwide are developing the ability to drive themselves via AI. The robotics industry is now an arms race which is cresting towards a massive deflationary tidal wave once millions of bots are working in global factories; this will likely fulfill futurists’ promises of abundance.

Then again, all of these advancements are not without moral questions. Questions about the right to control synthetic humanoid life to achieve human goals; questions about the right to determine parameters for AI; questions about what humans are expected to do once a theoretical “abundance singularity” is realized. Interesting questions.

I’m currently writing a cyberpunk adventure called “Mad Malitia”, about a female law enforcement officer in the year 2147 who lives in a future where the benefits and consequences of today’s discourse are realized. Think Judge Dredd meets Mad Max. A Kickstarter campaign is planned to launch at the end of May 2026 and I’d love it if you’d consider pre-ordering the book once the Kickstarter goes live.

SARJ OUT

Video games are the only art form that simultaneously enthralls and disappoints, limited by the tech of the age they were designed in. Video games as a model for virtualized experiences are unmatched. Neither books, music nor movies can compete with video games in that regard.

Minecraft and GTA are global phenomena as they model ingrained human behavior regarding cultivation of natural resources and stress testing civil systems. Watch a video on YouTube of GTA gameplay and it will often involve the player testing the world reactivity by committing sundry criminal acts. Even with how relatively limited the systems are, they still resemble a kind of stunted reality. We can laugh as Trevor Philips punches a cop and runs away as the cop blindly fires into a crowd—and injuring bystanders—as he tries to exact justice.

In GTA, shenanigans such as those involving speeding cars and prostitutes are well-known and notorious. We laugh at these scenes because they reflect reality unburdened by consequences. The game allows a safe detachment from moral rules because the human analogs in these games are just that: analogs with no ability to remember, castigate, shame, punish or impose their wills. There’s a safe separation of consequences. But what if we as gamers want to narrow the separation of consequences? What if we want an answer to the promise of realism in digital interactive experiences?

IMMERSION: THE FINAL FRONTIER

A word that I’ve loved for a long time is “verisimilitude,” which means the appearance of truth and reality. Another way to say this is that which provides immersion. Verisimilitude in video games is one of the qualities that has made the medium so popular, and it doesn’t require hyper-realistic graphics to achieve the goal of immersion. As a kid, playing Super Mario World or Gradius or Excitebike or Street Fighter 2, I felt like I was in another world.

Funnily enough, the more game designers chased visual realism, the less true immersion they generated. An Uncanny Valley effect took hold which actually broke immersion as the very components of the “realistic” virtual environments exposed their flaws. As games’ graphics flirted with photorealism, achieving total immersion across every conceivable metric revealed the limits of modern gaming much in the same way that relativistic mass increase stifles a spaceship’s ability to reach light speed.

In other words: The closer to reality modern games try to get, the more energy required to reach the end goal becomes increasingly difficult to amass. Character models and prop assets can offer a mind-boggling level of detail, but the lack of realistic physics and sufficient interactivity ruins the overall effect. A character like Judy Alvarez in Cyberpunk 2077 looks like someone you could bump into at a local bar, but try to talk to her about anything she hasn’t been scripted to say, and you’re reminded of the limitations of contemporary game design. The overall effect begins to disappoint.

NPCs and levels become virtual museums; look and admire, but don’t touch. Walk through a room in Dimitrescu Castle in Resident Evil Village and marvel at the minute details present: a long-neglected dining table is covered in moldy scraps, fly-covered porcelain plates and neatly arranged silverware, but this photographic naturalism runs headlong into the reality of game engineering as your instinct to reach out and snatch up a fork to inspect it isn’t made available. What you’re looking at is a finely curated exhibition; the hyper-detailed surroundings are nothing more than static set dressings furnishing an experience that is largely a cat-and-mouse game between your player character and whatever monstrous ghouls that Capcom has devised.

My favorite game of the last decade is Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a decadent tour of a future dystopia that is the closest I’ve truly felt to experiencing verisimilitude. However, the game is still bound by 2010s-level hardware and software and the designers carefully navigate the player around a fragile world that is actually quite limited in its immersive potential. Go to any real city, and the density of interactivity is quite high. This goes up by orders of magnitude in a location engineered for human occupation, like a supermarket or bar. You can buy anything, strike up a conversation with a random person, drive your car to most any storefront and go in. Go home and rearrange things as you like. Everything is interactive. But video games have had this dichotomous obsession with visual realism whose promise of interactive realism could never deliver. Gamers have quietly accepted this bait-and-switch, understanding the limits of current tech, but that’s changing.

GAME WORLDS FOR A NEW AGE

In one of my previous articles, I spoke on the effect that video games might have on a post-scarcity/abundance society. For readers who missed it, there’s a seeming inevitability of future-shock involving a complete dissolution of the old ways of trading labor for “money” in the shadow of looming mass automation and artificial superintelligence. Some see this as doomerism. I’m an optimist. The hope is that millions of AI-powered machines will drive the cost of goods/services to near-zero, thereby shifting human priorities to other endeavors, likely causing us to reject anti-social norms and return to honest communities again, moving into the future and back to the past simultaneously. The rest of the article hinges on this presumption. This isn’t a full endorsement, but it’s becoming more and more of a strong likelihood for civilizational trajectory. In this context, I think that games will be a way for some to fortify social cohesion in a new world. Being able to go into a sufficiently immersive virtual environment and have meaningful social interactions will change society forever.

Regarding virtual socializing, I don’t mean joining up with a crew to rob a bank like in Payday or forming a squad in Battlefield to capture a checkpoint. These are extremely simplistic, rules-based scenarios. Digital sports. Games of tag. I’m talking about the ability to create an avatar and delve into a realistic and fully interactive virtual environment, join up with a friend and hang out with AI-powered NPCs doing… nothing in particular, but the experience will effectively simulate actual reality. Going to a beach. Going for a walk through a city. Going for a joy ride. Sitting outside of a bar/tavern and watching cities that live and breathe around you. All of these scenarios would be augmented by simple chit-chat and socializing with AI NPCs whose lives are just as nuanced and complex as your own. All of this will take place in any environment of your choosing: past, present, future or entirely fantastical. I’ll delve more into this later.

Perhaps—post-abundance—games/simulations in the future will be produced not to make money, but to create social circles since we’ll have more and more free time. People might generate video games not with the intention of milking players through every conceivable conversion tactic available like microtransactions, but rather they’ll engineer experiences that will attract attention and create social bonds. MMORPGs will shift from chicken-killing, dungeon-raiding stat porn to massively immersive worlds where people create parallel social and business lives within virtual worlds.

Curious enough to indulge this interest in the now, I asked my son to take my Steam copy of Cyberpunk 2077 and mod the hell out of it to get as close to my dream RPG as possible. We looked at the suite of mods available, and while they’re enticing, they were not enough to achieve the game I wanted. So, in lieu of pursuing a modded version of 2077, let’s design a theoretical perfect immersive sim RPG that isn’t limited by current technology. Just for fun.

DESIGNING THE PERFECT IMMERSIVE SIM

Most open-world RPGs are 80% scripted goals and 20% free roam—mostly space and time for you to travel from A>B to get you to the next trigger point for the story. This is one of the things that annoyed me about The Witcher 3, an otherwise great game. The game world gave the illusion of freedom, but the vast majority of content was in scripted materials. I felt herded along as I rode my horse through yet another vast, empty forest. I want to invert that ratio to where the 80% of free roam presents endless potential for dynamic, unscripted excitement while 20% of the overall experience is in tightly curated and engineered scenarios, similar to how theme parks work. Go to Disneyland and most of the park is just wandering territory where relatively-small islands of literal on-rails experiences (Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion) are packed into curiously furnished facades that hide the magic within.

Therefore, with that out of the way, this is what I want from this theoretical perfect immersive sim:

Drop me into a vast, multi-layered environment and allow me the freedom to create my own adventures in a world powered by immensely complex AI that will facilitate my curiosity. I don’t want to be guaranteed to have any particular interaction, only the possibility to have any potential interaction. I don’t need to be at the center of some grand conspiracy that will change the world; I just want to be some guy in a truly immersive world. I want my damn verisimilitude.

Let’s start with the setting and aesthetic. Cyberpunk is my favorite sub-genre. It always has been. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized that so many of my favorite movies are actually cyberpunk movies: Robocop, Blade Runner, The Matrix, Escape from New York, Demolition Man, Metropolis, Terminator 2, Alphaville, Judge Dredd(yes, the Stallone version), Hardware, Akira, Ghost in the Shell and many others. This is the subgenre that my immersive sim will be set in.

Having an open-world RPG set in a grimy, dystopian world where governments and corporations go to war using tech of unimaginable potential is a seductive theater that I’d want to live in for long chunks of time. Let’s create it.

We’ll call this theoretical RPG, Quantum Fury.

In Quantum Fury, the city in which the game takes place in would be called Desidero Bay, or DB for short. It would be a megalopolis of hard-luck stories where teeming millions are packed into sprawling patches of hyper-dense arcology towers. Beyond these towers are winding, labyrinthine networks of roads, expressways and subways. Webs of aerial vehicle traffic streak across the skies like trails of flying ants. At street level, DB is a human zoo. Dozens of languages are spoken with hundreds of dialects. It’s a future rendition of Babel reborn.

Dark alleys. Filthy streets. The low hum of automated taxis whiz by. Drizzle peppers the asphalt. Holographic ads bombard you with attentional demands and alluring offers. DB is peppered with stacks of bespoke bazaars filled with collections of odd merchandise. Imagine going into one of these little corner shops and digging into a box only to find a rare copy of an old magazine or comic book. You buy it and get the value checked on the ‘Net only to realize it’s extremely valuable. Now you have to plan on how to store it properly and possibly even put it in a safety deposit box in a bank for protection. Somehow, it’s discovered that you have it. People contact you with interest in buying it, but they could be looking to steal it. What do you do? The results are not scripted as the world and NPCs are all dictated by powerfully persistent AI systems.

Maybe you get up one morning and decide to go to a bar and while you’re there, the bartender lets slip that a local gang came into possession of a stolen car belonging to a foreign dignitary. What to do? You could do nothing. You could steal it and keep it. You could steal it and find a way to return it and rightfully pin the blame on the gang. But what if the owner doesn’t believe you and wants you dead? Choices. The responses won’t be scripted, but people in the world will remember what you do.

And here’s the wild part—this isn’t pure sci-fi anymore. Tools like Inworld AI are already letting modders give GTA V and Skyrim NPCs persistent memory, real-time dialogue, and emotional reactions that evolve across sessions.

In DB, anything is possible. Maybe you go get a massage, then have a coffee at your favorite spot, then meet up with a pal or two for a VR session in a private booth. Or maybe you just lie in bed and play an AR game of Duck Hunt in your apartment. In DB, you can do anything or nothing. There is no narrative Sword of Damocles hanging over your head, but anything could happen, sometimes due to your own choices or dumb luck. Quantum Fury would allow you to enjoy an experience that offers you the world and surprises you in ways you didn’t know were possible. I can dream, can’t I?

According to Grok, we’ll have simulations that will achieve my dream of fully dynamic, digital interactive experiences by 2030. A sim like Quantum Fury will likely be in development within 5-6 years. With AI tools to rapidly accelerate production, the game could be done in 2-3 years. These games would be less about contrived mechanics that require you to learn new rules, but instead provide experiences that tap into the organic and natural way that people converse, interact and navigate complex environments. With labor losing leverage, these worlds won’t just entertain; they’ll become the new third places where friendships, romances, and even micro-economies form. I can’t wait.

In the meantime, please take a look at the pre-launch page for Mad Malitia, my cyberpunk novel which is currently in-production.

SARJ OUT