BooksChatter: ☀ Obsidian Worlds: Obsidian Worlds [1-11]

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Obsidian Worlds, a Sci-Fi by Jason Werbeloff (25 November 2015, Jason Werbeloff, 247 pages).

This is an anthology containing shorts one to eleven in the Obsidian Worlds series.

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and excerpt below, as well as details of each short story included in the Obsidian Worlds anthology. Find out more in our Q&A with author Jason Werbeloff .

Read the first short, Your Averaged Joe, and the beginning of the second, The Cryo Killer, with Amazon Look Inside.

Subscribe to Jason Werbeloff Newsletter to get his novel 'The Solace Pill' FREE!!!

Author Jason Werbeloff will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), interviews (ℚ), reviews (✍) and guest blog posts (✉).

Synopsis | Teaser | The Series | Author Q&A | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops

Synopsis

11 mind-bending sci-fi shorts.
1 must-read anthology.
Your brain will never be the same again.

Jason Werbeloff’s short stories have been downloaded over 20,000 times. Obsidian Worlds brings together 11 of his best sci-fi shorts into a mind-bending philosophical anthology.

In Your Averaged Joe, a man’s headache is large enough to hold the multiverse. Q46F is an obsessive-compulsive android who finds love in a zombie-embroiled apocalypse. The end of the world isn’t all that bad – The Experience Machine will fulfill your every desire (and some you hadn’t considered). A sex bot dares to dream of freedom in Dinner with Flexi. But mind what you eat, because The Photons in the Cheese Are Lost. Don’t fret though: The Cryo Killer guarantees that your death will be painless, or your money back when you’re thawed. Unless, that is, you’re The Man with Two Legs.

Plug into Obsidian Worlds for these and other immersive stories, including the hilarious Time-Traveling Chicken Sexer. Your brain will never be the same again.

Find out more about each short story included in Obsidian Worlds.

Teaser: Excerpt

From Bleed Me Silicone
     My first memory is of the inside of a cardboard box. The material is gray and slightly rough to the touch. It smells of fluorescent light and ancient canyon floors.
     I savor the feeling of being lifted from the shelf – rubbed and jostled against the almost-smooth interior of the box, as I’m carried through the aisles. My new owner places me on the till. The other products and I have talked about this day. Wondered when our time would come. The time to be purchased.
     “Would you like a packet for that, ma’am?” the teller asks. I recognize his voice. He does stock-take on Sundays.
     “Umm … yes,” says a nervous voice. Nervous, but forgiving. I like her already.
     The crinkle-swoosh of plastic competes with the sound of a radio. Sunlight perforates the miniscule holes in the edges of the cardboard that encloses me. I feel warmth for the first time. She drives me home.
     The roof of the box opens, and I’m out. In the world. Her face is just as I’d imagined. Elfin and freckled. No frown lines. Her eyes are intense as they follow my instructions.
     I tingle at the touch of her fingers. Delicate, careful. Fleshy and warm. Her lips curl into a smile, before she places me at the back of a dark shelf. The other lubes at the store told me this would happen. Life’s not all action for us. But when our owners take us for a night out of the closet, the world comes alive. Or that’s what the other lubes say.
     There aren’t many voices in her apartment. I wait patiently at the back of the closet, as the weeks and months pass. Just when I think she’s forgotten me, one warm evening the door of the apartment opens. A man sits on the creaky springs of the bed.
     “Are you ready?” His voice is young. Excited.
     “Yes,” she says. I know she’s trying not to sound nervous, like she did that day at the store when she purchased me.
     And then it begins.

Obsidian Worlds
Available NOW! ONLY £1.99 / $2.99

UK:

US:

The Series: Obsidian Worlds

This is the full list of all of the 11 short stories contained in the Obsidian Worlds anthology (£1.99 / $2.99).

Four of the short stories can currently be downloaded for FREE, whilst one is only currently available in the Obsidian Worlds anthology; all of the other stories can be purchased individually for .99 each.

Your Averaged Joe | The Cryo Killer | Falling for Q46F | Visiting Grandpa’s Brain | The Photons in the Cheese Are Lost | The Time-Traveling Chicken Sexer | The Man with Two Legs | F**king Through the Apocalypse | Bleed Me Silicone | Dinner with Flexi | The Experience Machine |

Click on the book cover to Look Inside the book on Amazon and read an excerpt.

Your Averaged Joe [1]

Joe has a migraine so bad it feels like the universe has been crammed into his head. The problem is, it has …

Your Averaged Joe is a mind-tingling, absurdist sci-fi short that will convince you never to go shopping for green lentils again.

[Published 12 December 2014, 20 pages]

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The Cryo Killer [2]

At Life Extensions Ltd we guarantee that your death will be painless, or your money back when you’re thawed. And the Cryo Bureau? They won’t suspect a thing…

The Cryo Killer is a thrilling sci-fi short that will convince you not to step into the freezer quite yet.

[Published 23 March 2015, 22 pages]

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Falling for Q46F [3]

**FREE Download**

In a world ravaged by undead humans, Q46F lives out its days trapped alone in a bunker. Each day since Master died is the same: feed the bunker wall, sing to the dining table in F major, and put the fridge to sleep.

But after waiting 27.03 years, obsessive compulsive Q46F hears a signal. A signal from another. Another Q46F.

Falling for Q46F is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi comedy short that will melt even a zombie-proof titanium heart.

[Published 13 April 2015, 18 pages]

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Visiting Grandpa’s Brain [4]

Grandpa doesn’t regret donating his brain to Zoogle. But when Judgment Day arrives and the Vatican possesses the world’s largest search engine, Jesus meddles with Grandpa’s search results. And Grandpa is not impressed.

Visiting Grandpa’s Brain is an irreverent sci-fi comedy horror that will dissuade you from keeping your brain anywhere but in your head.

[Published 15 January 2015, 17 pages]

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The Photons in the Cheese Are Lost[5]

Chris wakes to find that every message delivered to his spam folder comes true.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Photons in the Cheese Are Lost is an absurdist comedy short. Blue cheese will never taste the same again.

[Published 14 May 2015, 18 pages]

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The Time-Traveling Chicken Sexer [6]

**FREE Download**

2146. The Battle of Kentucky. When aliens invade earth, there’s only one woman who can save humanity: Agatha Wretched, a halitosis-fueled, husband-beating, pulpit-pounding chicken sexer living in 1908 South Africa.

No chickens were harmed (or pleasured) in the making of The Time-Traveling Chicken Sexer, a sci-fi comedy short.

[Published 17 August 2015, 37 pages]

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The Man with Two Legs [7]

**ONLY available within the anthology**

You’d think you’d remember what it’s like on the outside. The fine nuclear dust that cakes your nostrils. The wails of rabbis seeing out the Shabbos. The pale edges of a sunset simmering in the toxic dusk. You’d think you’d remember what it’s like to stand with your Eight legs on the streets of Jerusalem after the Bomb fell.

We hadn’t left the bunker in months. But then he stumbled through the airlock. A man with just Two legs. And only one consciousness inside his head.

The Man with Two Legs is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi short about finding connection in a world gone mad; but not with a Six. Never trust a Six.

[Published 14 December 2015, 24 pages]

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F**king Through the Apocalypse [8]

**FREE Download** (£0.99 on Amazon UK)

When Harold, not a day over 86, hears that the asteroid is going to hit in 27 days, he doesn’t sink into depression, nor jump off a building, nor move to Hawaii like his neighbors. No, Harold fulfills a dream. Harold decides to open a brothel.

F**king Through the Apocalypse is a short story about loss and redemption … with a hint of fuchsia.

[Published 19 October 2015, 27 pages]

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Bleed Me Silicone [9]

My first memory is of the inside of a cardboard box. It smells of fluorescent light and ancient canyon floors.

Bleed Me Silicone is a 5-minute surreal short about life from the perspective of a bottle of silicone lube. Silky. Brutal.

[Published 13 July 2015, 12 pages]

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Dinner with Flexi [10]

Twice an hour. Twenty hours a day. Two hundred and eighty johns a week. Standard working hours for a sex bot.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful. Someone has to keep the human men happy. Since The Drought, there are no women left to satisfy them – the Ministry decided women make good meat. Anyway, I have two years left on my debt repayments to Sexi Corp, and I need the cash.

Then, I’ll be free … or that’s what The Manual says.

Dinner with Flexi is a vicious, bite-sized cyberpunk satire. Served with a generous portion of mammary sauce.

[Published 15 June 2015, 25 pages]

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The Experience Machine [11]

**FREE Download**

The skullcap sits to one side of the chair. Its snaking wires and sensors throw a Medusa shadow against the basement wall. I touch its plastic. Stroke its wiry hair.

The Machine gives me everything I want. Or the one thing I want. Life in a woman’s body, under the tangerine glow of the Spiral Arm Nebula. But nothing remains the same for long, not even in the timeless worlds of the Experience Machine.

From the author of HEDON, The Experience Machine is a brutal story of identity found and lost. Plug in, baby. You won’t regret it.

[Published 1 September 2015, 39 pages]

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About the Author

Jason Werbeloff is a novelist and philosopher. He loves chocolate and his Labrador, Sunny.

He's interested in the nature of social groups, personal identity, freedom, and the nature of the mind. His passion is translating philosophical debate around these topics into works of science fiction, while gorging himself on chocolate.

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