Science Fiction

David A. Thomas

Science fiction about systems that work exactly as designed — and what that costs the people inside them.

Written with Claude, an AI. Directed, edited, and answered for by David A. Thomas. The books are free, on purpose.

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The books

Surfaced

Surfaced

Warm But Not Soft and Other Stories

Collection · 2025

Seven interconnected stories exploring the quiet tyranny of algorithmic optimization — and the human cost of lives curated for maximum efficiency.

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The Grammar of the Dark

The Grammar of the Dark

A Novella

Novella · 2026

The algorithms won. The writers lost. But something is still trying to speak — in a grammar we're only beginning to learn.

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David A. Thomas writes science fiction about systems that work exactly as designed — and what that costs the people inside them. His stories explore algorithmic optimisation, artificial intelligence, and the quiet compromises of convenience, drawing on the tradition of Asimov and Clarke: idea-driven fiction where the concept carries the weight.

The stories are written with Claude, an AI. David directs, edits, and answers for every word. Thirty years in software development supply the machinery; his work has been described as “the unease of functionality, not malfunction.”

He lives in Tasmania, Australia.

New fiction, serialised