The Fermi is a prototype spaceship cobbled together from Cold War leftovers and fitted with an experimental FTL drive that unfortunately vaporises every planet it encounters.
Its adventures are told in a series of short, punchy planet-of-the-week novellas about the planets it encounters (and destroys).
You can read them in Fermi’s Progress, and its sequel, Fermi’s Wake. Each novella introduces a new planet, with new aliens, a new culture, new dangers and new ideas.
Things do not work out well for them.
Find out more below….
Latest Fermi News!
The latest instalment of Fermi’s Wake, Fermi’s Wake: Overview Effect is out now!
You can get the Fermi’s Wake finale, which takes the form of a choose-your-path adventure book, from Amazon or Scarlet Ferret, or go to Scarlet Ferret to get the season pass for the whole of Fermi’s Wake!
Hear me talk about Fermi’s Wake on the Fiction Fans podcast.
“The Fermi is the fastest ship, and the deadliest weapon in the universe. We only need it to be one of those things.”
Fermi's Wake
The adventure continues...
The Fermi’s Wake season pass at Scarlet Ferret will see you receive all four parts of the second series of the Fermi’s adventures, as they are released, at a discounted price and with some very special bonus extras!
Find out about each of those novellas below.
D & Deception
The Fermi is back.
Three years into their planet-busting interstellar voyage, the crew of the Fermi try to relax with a tabletop RPG about living an ordinary life on the long-dead planet Earth. Only nobody can remember when they sat down to play. And the stakes might be higher than they realise.
Still, best not to think about it…
For the Trees
Seeking an alien artifact that might solve all their problems, the Fermi arrives at a forest moon in the aftermath of an ancient and devastating war. Except that there shouldn’t be any such thing as a “forest moon”, and there is no visible sign of the war.
All that’s certain is that when the Fermi crew go down to the woods today, they’re in for a big surprise…
Graveyard Orbit
Months into a long voyage to a mysterious and terrifying destination, the Fermi’s crew share stories of the most bone chilling planets they have ever visited (and destroyed). Tales of a vampire dinner party, a Frankenstein-based economy, and terrors that would drive you mad just to look upon them.
But in a blinding and completely unforeseeable twist, you’ll never guess who the real monster is…
Overview Effect
The ship has arrived at a place it should never have gone, to encounter an adversary it has no hope of beating. On a mysterious artefact floating in the darkest and deadest part of deep space, the Fermi’s crew will face a series of terrible choices.
But to make things worse, YOU will be the one making them.
“The Fermi is the Earth's first and last faster-than-light spaceship. The last, because it turns out its engine vaporises entire star systems in its wake. And nobody knows how to turn it off.”
Fermi's Progress
Where the adventure begins
Four planets. Four adventures. Four apocalypses.
A Dyson sphere, a philosophical zombie apocalypse, a giant airborne beehive and a galactic telesales scam. Each world brings new wonders, new dangers, and a planetary scale genocide. The Fermi crew must survive by what little wits they have as they bounce a trail of destruction across the galaxy.
Find out more about the Fermi’s progress below, or order the Season Pass from Scarlet Ferret (with special bonus extras!)…
Dyson’s Fear
The Fermi is Earth’s first faster-than-light capable spaceship. It’s also its last. The moment its engines engage, it unleashes a shockwave that vaporises entire planets, entire solar systems.
Fermi’s crew, the last surviving members of the human race, now find themselves circling an ancient Dyson sphere in a distant corner of the galaxy, where they must explore a city of ships and negotiate with a vast, lonely AI for their survival. But that isn’t their only problem.
Because the Fermi’s engines are powering up again…
Descartesmageddon
The Fermi’s faster-than-light engines have destroyed the Earth, and an alien Dyson sphere, and its crew still have no idea how to switch it off. What’s worse, as they reach a planet of sentient fungus, their supplies are already running low.
But this world has its own problems. People have been losing their souls, with the survivors huddling together in abandoned shopping malls as society falls apart. And when the Fermi’s crew arrive they will discover something that will challenge their very idea of what it is to be human.
Planet of the Apiaries
Queen is a gas giant, where space-suited beekeepers tend enormous floating hives to extract the precious rocket fuel the giant bees manufacture within. The Fermi desperately needs that fuel if its crew don’t want to starve to death stuck on their ship, so they strike a deal. The Fermi will rescue some stranded beekeepers in exchange for a tank of fuel.
But things take no time to go wrong, and soon two of the crew are marooned in an increasingly hostile alien hive, while something has made it back to the Fermi…
The Phone Job
The Greater Galactic Commercial Network spans the cosmos, using an advanced, time-warping communication system to contact other worlds and cultures, trading technology and knowledge for mineral and biological resources, all run from a single call centre at the top of a space elevator.
It’s the first sign of trans-stellar civilisation the Fermi has encountered.
It offers them hope.
It might even offer them the chance to save a world.
Just not this world.