'In medical student August Seebeck's world, almost identical to ours, there are eleven months in a year. None of them is the month of August—until now, when the young orphan stumbles into the true, infinite universe, and becomes a Player in the Game of Worlds. And step by deranged step he meets his siblings: Avril, Decius, Jan, Jules, Maybelline, Septimus/Septima who is both male and female, Toby, the others. And outside his family, glorious, brilliant Lune, also a Player, is quickly his lover, with dreadful secrets of her own.
'These diverse warriors of the multiverse confront the terrible K-machines, who detest and slaughter humans ... but then are the Seebeck family really human? What are these silver symbols engraved into their flesh? What is the true nature of the unending, unfolding cosmos, a meta-reality built from ontological computation, Lune's doctoral specialty? And how can August slay the looming Jabberwock using only the Sun-blazing Vorpal implant in his hand? What final transformation awaits the multiverse at Yggdrasil Station, at the death and dawn of spacetime, where all the heroes die and live again? In this astounding helter-skelter two-part novel, the answers to such questions emerge along a twisting path that will not set you free until you sit with August at a great thirteen-sided table and learn his destiny, and perhaps your own.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Author's note:
This project was generously assisted by the Australian government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
It was originally published, in somewhat different form, in two parts: Godplayers, followed a year later by the rest of the story, K-Machines. I was happy to see that they were well received—the second volume received the Aurealis award for best Australian sf novel of the year—but I always hoped to see the whole arc of the book in a single volume. And here it is, to my considerable satisfaction.
Godplayers
New York (City)
:
Thunder's Mouth Press
,
2005
Z1289784
2005
single work
novel
science fiction
'August Seebeck is in his twenties, a man of average looks, intellect, and outlook. Then comes the claim of his great-aunt Tansy that she has been finding corpses each Saturday night in her bath which vanish by morning. August dismisses this tale as elderly fantasy until he stumbles upon a corpse being shoved into the second-floor bathroom of his aunt's house. Even that wouldn't faze him, but then someone steps out of the bathroom mirror.'
'August suddenly discovers he is a Player in the multiuniverse Contest of Worlds. He plumbs the secrets of a cosmos revealed as ultimately computational, learns of the bitter enmity between Vorpal Players and the vicious K-Machines, meets the Good Machine that killed everyone on one world, and brings himself back from the dead.'
(Source: Publisher's blurb.)
K-Machines
New York (City)
:
Thunder's Mouth Press
,
2006
Z1289765
2006
single work
novel
science fiction
'A twenty-something student from a world not quite the same as ours, August Seebeck tumbled into a vastly larger universe, and learned that he and his turbulent siblings, and the breathtaking Lune and others still stranger, are Players in the Contest of Worlds. They are mysteriously transformed humans whose ancient task is an enigmatic battle with the dread, passionate K-Machines. Now crisis deepens. Empowered with a potent killing device of his own, August finds himself flung from world to world in a brutal and baffling game, with entire universes at stake and very little idea of the rules. Only two things are clear: his beloved Lune is not who she seemed, and August's pivotal role is no chance accident.'
(Source: Publisher's blurb.)
