Forward Collection Books In Order

Publication Order of Forward Books

Forward Collection is a series of short fiction written by six authors. Blake Crouch came up with the idea for the series and writes one of the stories. Blake came up with the idea when he was in a discussion with his partner about emerging technologies. The discussion inspired him to write “Summer Frost” his contribution to the collection that is about what advancements he would like to see rolled back. He then got N.K. Jemisin, Amor Towles, Paul Tremblay, Andy Weir, and Veronica Roth to write stories on the same thought process. With brilliant imagination, the authors write about the future from debating what identity means, exploring the boundaries of video games to plotting high tech casino heists. From the chilling to the darkly comic, from those who believe it is the beginning of a new world to those who think it is the end, the stories all look forward. The stories can be read in any order and were published on the same day.

“Ark” is the first story of the series penned by Veronica Roth, the bestselling author of the “Divergent” and the “Carve the Mark” Series. Her essays and short stories have been featured in “Shards and Ashes” and “Summer Days and Summer Nights.” The stories of the Divergent series were made into three major films. Veronica grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and went to Northwestern University. She is currently a full-time author and lives with her husband in Chicago.
“Ark” is set on the eve of Armageddon on Earth, in a story of cataclysm in which a young scientist just found something too valuable to lose. An asteroid is barreling towards Earth and is expected to hit in two weeks, turning her home planet to dust. While everyone has been evacuated, Samantha is tasked with cataloging plant samples to help the survivors on their journey into the unknown. She is making preparations to document the end of the world when against all odds she makes a human connection. Doom is coming ever nearer, even as the beautiful and unexpected potential for the future blooms.

Blake Crouch writes “Summer Frost” the second of the series. Crouch is a bestselling screenwriter and novelist also known for “Dark Matter” the novel that is soon to be made into a screenplay by Sony Pictures. He is also known for the “Wayward Pines Trilogy” that was made into a FOX TV series that topped the charts in the summer of 2015. His “Letty Dobesh” novellas were adapted into the show “Good Behavior” that aired on TNT. Blake is the author of more than a dozen novels and his short fiction has been featured in the likes of “Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine” and “Ellery Queen.” He currently lives in Colorado with his family.

“Summer Frost” is a mind-bending analysis of what being human means as the lead in the story develops an obsession with a willful character in his latest project. The minor non player character is a woman named Maxine that his owner made to die. But she makes an impossible decision by exploring the boundaries of the map and veering wildly off course. Riley the creator of the game finds it strange and extracts her code to find out what is happening only to develop an obsession with Maxine. He now wants to bring the spontaneous AI into the real world but she has her own plans.

Nora K Jesimin is the author of “Emergency Skin” the third novel of the Forward Collection series. Jesimin is a Hugo Award-winning novelist known for the “Broken Earth” novels and her speculative short fiction. Her short fiction had been published in “Popular Science,” “WIRED,” “Tor.com,” and “Clarkesworld.” She published with Orbit books who have published her eight novels, a short story collection, and a novella. Aside from being an author, she is an educator and counseling psychologist, an anti-racist/feminist/political blogger, hiker, and biker. She occasionally writes long-form book reviews for the New York Times.

“Emergency Skin” is a subversive speculative novel that asks the question of what awaits the self-destruction of our planet. An explorer is back on Earth to collect information on what happened to a planet that his ancestors had fled centuries ago after it was ravaged by climate change. His mission is a dangerous one and he has been warned that he may never return. The humans that were left for dead back on Earth have devolved and what is left is shocking.

“You Have Arrived at Your Destination” the fourth story of the Forward Collection series was penned by Amor Towles. Towles was born and raised in Boston and went to Yale before proceeding to Stanford where she got an MA in English. He worked as an investment professional in New York before he published his first novel “Rules of Civility” that became a New York Times bestseller in 2011. His novels have been translated into more than fifteen languages with the first due to be made into a film by Lionsgate. He currently lives in New York with his wife and two children.
“You Have Arrived at Your Destination” is a story of the near future that analyzes the debate between nurture and nature in raising a child. The story tells of Sam whose wife tells him about a 21st-century fertility lab named Vitek. He believes that the lab is the best way for their child to gain an advantage in an increasingly competitive world. But the more he thinks about the future of his child, the more he questions the choice he has made and his own relationships.

“The Last Conversation” is written by Paul Tremblay, the bestselling author of short collections such as “The Mean Time” and “Compositions for the Young and the Old.” His short and essays have been featured on the numerous anthologies and on the Los Angeles Times. He also edits several anthologies including the popular “Creatures: Thirty Years of Monster Stories. He is also on the board of the Shirley Jackson Awards. Tremblay is a professor of Calculus and lives with family in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts.

“The Last Conversation” explores two frightening propositions; finding out who you are or not knowing who you are. In a chilling narrative of human consciousness and identity. The lead in the story wakes up in a room with no memory of who he is, how he got there or where he came from. All he hears is the voice of Dr. Kuhn, who is determined to help him psychologically, physically and emotionally. She will help the patient reclaim their identity and remember everything that came before.

Randomize the last novel in the Forward Collection is written by Andy Weir. Weir started out as a software engineer before he quit to become a full-time author following the massive success of “The Martian”, his debut novel. The ardent space nerd is also well attuned in subjects such as the history of manned spaceflight, relativist physics, and orbital mechanics. He currently lives in California.

Andy Weir’s “Randomize” is a whip-smart and imaginative story that analyzes the ingenuity of Vegas Games and the even greater ingenuity of the heists. The lead in the novel is an IT whiz that has just been contracted to work on security systems of the Babylon Casino. The casino wants him to upgrade the random number generator, particularly of the keno machine. He is a professional and within no time makes a foolproof computer system. But someone has cracked the machine and the house can no longer always win.