Battle of the Linguist Mages

“It reads like Snow Crash had a dance-off with Gideon the Ninth, in a world where language isn't a virus from outer space, it's a goddamn alien invasion.”
—Charles Stross

Isobel is the Queen of the medieval rave-themed VR game Sparkle Dungeon. Her prowess in the game makes her an ideal candidate to learn the secrets of ‘power morphemes’—unnaturally dense units of meaning that warp perception when skilfully pronounced.

But Isobel’s reputation makes her the target of a strange resistance movement led by spellcasting anarchists, who may be the only thing stopping the cabal from toppling California over the edge of a terrible transformation, with forty million lives at stake.

Time is short for Isobel to level up and choose a side—because the cabal has attracted much bigger and weirder enemies than the anarchist resistance, emerging from dark and vicious dimensions of reality and heading straight for planet Earth!

About the Author

Scotto Moore is a Seattle playwright, whose works include the black comedy H.P. Lovecraft: Stand-up Comedian!, the sci-fi adventures Duel of the Linguist Mages and interlace [falling star], the gamer-centric romantic comedy Balconies, and the a cappella sci-fi musical, Silhouette. He is the creator of The Coffee Table, a comedic web series about a couple that discovers their new coffee table is an ancient alien artifact that sends their house shooting through the void. Moore is also behind the popular Lovecraft-themed meme generator, Things That Cannot Save You (“a catalog of your doom”), which spawned his novella, Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You.