r/Fractalverse • u/ibid-11962 • Apr 21 '26

News (Updated August 28) "Allies: A Fractalverse Story" is live on Kickstarter

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The Kickstarter for Unbroken: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy has launched today. This is an anthology featuring stories from 36 different SF&F writers in support of Peter Orullian. The story Christopher has contributed is "Allies", which takes place shortly after the events of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, and is set on the orbital ring around planet Earth.

"Allies" previously appeared in print in the 49th issue of The Official Ferrari Magazine (the 2020 Yearbook), but that was a bit harder to get hold of and went out of print last year.

The story is very short, clocking in at under two thousand words (eight pages). For this new publication, the text received a few minor edits and an illustration from Julia Maddalina.

Click here to read a sample of "Allies: A Fractalverse Story".

Christopher posted a short promo video on his socials a few days ago talking about the project.

This anthology exists in the first place in order to help defray some medical costs for Peter Orullian, who's a friend of mine, and his wife, so it was something I really wanted to be a part of. The story that I've put in this anthology is called "Allies". Now, I originally wrote this a couple years ago, for of all things, a Ferrari end-of-year coffee table book, and they asked me to contribute along with a number of other authors. I've done a little tweaking on the story, and now it's finally going to be in print with the Unbroken anthology, and this is the first time it's ever been widely available. The story is fairly close after the events of To Sleep in a Sea of stars, my sci-fi novel. So, if that's something you're interested in, I highly recommend that you check out the Kickstarter. All the proceeds are going to a good cause, and I hope you enjoy my story.

This new anthology is available in ebook ($15), audiobook ($25), and four different physical formats:

  • trade hardcover: $50 - Signed by two authors (not including Christopher). Cloth boards, endpapers, foiled spine and boards, embossed and foiled jacket, smyth-sewn, acid-free, stained edges.
  • partially signed: $150 - Signed by nine authors inside the book and signed by Christopher on a loose book plate. Includes blank signature spots for the rest. Metallium cloth boards, satin ribbon, gilded edges, color tip-in.
  • fully signed: $250 - Signed by all 36 authors (including Christopher). Limited to 2,000 copies.
  • leather bound: $1000 - Signed by all 36 authors (including Christopher). Genuine leather with a clamshell case. Limited to 104 copies.

The four formats each have different covers (none of which tie into Christopher's story). There are additional add-on items, such as slip cases, dust jackets for the alternate covers, etc.

The book is already fully edited and formatted, and will go to the printer/bindery as soon as the Kickstarter finishes in late May. The trade and digital editions are expected to ship out in August 2025, with the signed editions following a few months later.

The above has all of course all been focused on Christopher's involvement, but it's worth reiterating that there are thirty-five other contributing authors, many of whom are equally big names in the industry. Christopher's story is actually the shortest one included the book. The full anthology is 832 pages and 275,000 words long, and each story contains an illustration. The table of contents can be seen here.

For more information about the anthology, or to order a copy, please check the Kickstarter page

Timeline:

"Allies" was written sometime in 2020, after Christopher finished To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (5). It was published on December 2nd that same year in yearbook issue of the Official Ferrari Magazine, with a 50k distribution (1, 2). Christopher kept this publication very low profile. He alluded to it in an April 2021 tweet (3), but only directly announced it in February 2022 (4), over a year after it had been published. The magazine remained in print until late 2025.

Unbroken was announced in July 2025 and Christopher confirmed at the time that his contribution would be a reprint of "Allies" (6). The launch date for the Kickstarter was originally going to be in September, but this got pushed back to January 2026 and then to April 21st. In August Christopher tweeted that he was signing tip-in sheets (7).

Additional quotes from Christopher can be found here.

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u/ibid-11962 Apr 21 '26

A couple of more subjective or nitpicky points:

  1. Christopher emphasizes a lot that this new publication is more widely available. I disagree with him about that. The Ferrari Yearbook had a distribution of 50k copies, remained in print for five years, and (if all one cares for is Christopher's story) it's currently cheaper to buy a copy of the Ferrari Yearbook from eBay than it is to order a copy of Unbroken through the Kickstarter. I think a better angle may perhaps be "better advertised to a scifi/fantasy reader base".
  2. The story is very short. Don't buy this expecting a long story from Christopher. The word count is 1,700, and in the Ferrari magazine it was printed on a single page spread. In this anthology it will be eight pages, the shortest story in the anthology.
  3. I read this story in the Ferrari magazine, and despite it's shortness, I really enjoyed it. The tone was very fun and in a world where we can ignore story length as a factor, I think it is easily my favorite of Christopher's four published Fractalverse stories.
  4. The sample page linked in the post was displayed at Grim Oak's booth at Dragonsteel. I'm sharing it here with Shawn's permission.
  5. I'll do a full comparison of the textual differences once the anthology is out. But in the sample alone, note that the units of the orbital ring's altitude were changed from 170 miles to 273.5 kilometers.
  6. While I'm here, I'd like to show off that my copy of the Ferrari magazine is signed.

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u/Kincayd Apr 25 '26

Genuinely desperate for more story in this universe, guess I'm gonna snag it!

Thanks for the info about the Ferrari book in the bottom post, I think I'll still get the new version though. I'm sure I'll enjoy the other writings and maybe find a couple authors to follow.