ENTROPY: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel of the End of Humanity (Large Print)

Large Print Edition

Our extinction is inevitable ...

Not through some random apocalyptic event, but by the natural decline of the human swarm until its eventual demise. So says entropy in the second law of thermodynamics.

Bill Bartles is one of the manifold data washers from the Department of Receipt and Organization of New Content, or DRONC as they prefer to be called. His purpose? Locate new information, clean it up, and add it to the Infinity Drive. Or as he often quips: Find all the knowledge ever created by mankind, strip out the crap, and save it to a little black box, no bigger than a shoebox. That’s his brief, simple and sweet.

Bartles has it all: a captivating companion, an inner-city apartment mid-way up the tall-tower, and an imminent promotion. For him, life is great—except for his obsession with entropy and its promise that nothing lasts forever.

When he digs too deep into the forbidden archives of Aleph-1—the avant-garde CPU that controls the Infinity Drive—Bartles’ perfect life is shattered, plunging him into an unrecognizable world of blood-red wastelands, empty mega-cities, and receding oceans. A dangerous place inhabited by new apex predators, where the remnants of humanity struggle on the brink of extinction.

Now, locked in the fight of our lives against entropy, Bill Bartles must decide if saving the last of humanity is worth losing the Infinity Drive, and with it, all the knowledge of mankind …

In this stunning debut novel, McGinty brings us science-fiction at its best. Set against an ominous backdrop of desolation and decay, ENTROPY asks the question: with every trivial moment of our time here saved to file, can the human condition continue long after we’re gone?

“I thoroughly enjoyed it. The end is mysterious and baffling, but at the same time dramatically satisfying. Many powerful and beautiful scenes. The quest for what is real and human drives the narrative.” - Alex Austin

“The City and the Thinker are a great change of track. I love the Thinker, wonderfully cantankerous and belligerent yet open to the relationship between his new-found recruit and himself. It's this relationship that sets the sudden revelation but also carries it on the story so well. I liked the pace, the meter of the language. It pulls you along at a good rate and that is important to the structure.” - Jonathan Catling

“The story resonates on many levels, cleverly exploring the concept of entropy, our part within it, and how we try to break the cycle of order to chaos and chaos to order. There’s lots of interesting imagery, much of which has stuck with me in the weeks after reading.” - Scott Vandervalk

Themes: hard scifi, AI, technology, dystopian, post apocalyptic, dying Earth, end-of-humanity

Rating: 18+ adult concepts, mild language, mild sexual references, moderate violence and gore

Mike was born and raised in Kalgoorlie, in the goldfields of Western Australia before moving to Perth to complete a degree in Electronic Engineering. With a good science fiction book in hand and a life-long passion for innovation, Mike has always imagined a future where technologies that are improbable today might be possible tomorrow. When not writing, Mike runs a software development company at cyinnovations.com, loves 1970's heavy rock music, and cheers on his beloved West Coast Eagles AFL team. And he often goes fishing in the Australian never-never. Together with his wife, Mike lives in an empty nest with their black Labrador, Louie.