The Novel

by Mike Speegle

Available for purchase on Amazon.

The Audiobook

Irishly narrated by Paul Campbell

The audiobook covers half of the novel.

Introduction

The woman known only as Ros emerges from the badlands, her companion Gregor at her side. Their road is long and perilous, besieged with those that would see them dead or worse, but they have no time to rest.

Because the apocalypse is coming. And it’s hungry.

Something Greater than Artifice is &yet’s vision of an all-too-real future in which indifference and divisiveness have created something relentless and terrifying: the all-devouring megacorporate entity, SILOS. Join Ros as she journeys to the Greater Tech Republic–the last great enclave of human civilization–in order to warn them of the coming storm.

Forged in razor-sharp language and tinged with genuine emotion, Something Greater than Artifice is a cyberpunk indie-web polemic that forces the reader to wonder: what must we do to save ourselves…from ourselves?

Excerpt

Gregor regarded her for a second, an aggressively medium-sized woman, clad in matte black like some weaponized hiking instructor, an outsized, presumably heavy stringed instrument strapped to her back. She was a crazy quilt of contrasting concepts, but there was little mistaking the burden she bore, and the nigh-compulsive need that ran counterpoint to it.

This was a woman with a mission.

“I made a promise to some people a long time ago,” she said. “A promise that I intend to either fulfill or to die in the offing. Nothing will alter my course nor stay my hand. I intend to make the Bloc by month’s end, and the Conference after, because the Greater Tech Republic might be the last damned hope for us all.

“So without getting into the finer details, I am going where I’m going and you can come too if you can keep up. Because even though I saved your ass, I will not hesitate to leave you behind should you come to burden me unduly.”

“Wow,” Gregor said.

“So are you coming? Because I might need that creepy little terminus of yours again.”

“Well, since you asked so nice, yes, I will come along. Better’n staying here and being eaten alive.”

“Then shut up and follow me.”