For 401, Patrick and John welcome back authors EC Myers and Andrea Phillips – two of the creative minds behind the new Serial Box project – Alternis.

About Alternis: Game designer Tandy Kahananui has been developing Alternis for nearly a decade, perfecting its monsters and dungeons. But she never imagined her game would be co-opted as the basis for an ambitious top-secret project to keep the world from plunging into war, where nations compete digitally for real-world resources. Team USA has been consistently losing, and the government needs a secret weapon to help them climb the leaderboard. When Tandy is conscripted into playing a key role and fighting for the future of her country, she quickly realizes she is in way over her head…and not everybody is playing by the rules. Can she help Team USA hold its own? Can she even survive?

About Andrea Phillips: Andrea Phillips is an award-winning transmedia writer, game designer and author. She has worked on projects such as iOS fitness games Zombies, Run! and The Walk, The Maester’s Path for HBO’s Game of Thrones, human rights game America 2049, and the independent commercial ARG Perplex City. Her projects have variously won the Prix Jeunesse Interactivity Prize, a Broadband Digital award, a Canadian Screen Award, a BIMA, the Origins Vanguard Innovation Award, and others. Her book A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling is used to teach digital storytelling at universities around the world.

Her independent work includes the Kickstarted serial The Daring Adventures of Captain Lucy Smokeheart and The McKinnon Account, a short story that unfolds in your email inbox. Her debut novel Revision is out on May 5 from Fireside Fiction Co. and her short fiction has been published in Escape Pod and the Jews vs. Aliens anthology.

About E. C. Myers: E(ugene).C. Myers is the author of four young adult novels: Fair Coin, Quantum Coin, The Silence of Six, and Against All Silence. His science fiction and fantasy short stories have been published in a number of magazines and anthologies such as Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Space and Time magazine.

He attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2005 and is a member of the professional writing group Altered Fluid. He currently lives with his wife, son, two doofy cats, and a deaf Australian Shepherd in Pennsylvania. In his increasingly scarce free time, he blogs Star Trek Re-watch reviews with Torie Atkinson at TheViewscreen.com, is an assistant editor at Nightmare Magazine, critiques manuscripts, reads constantly, lurks on the internet, plays video games, and pursues other extracurricular activities that prevent him from getting sleep.

This week’s picks:

* Andrea: Kami 2 (Mobile Game)

* Eugene: Russian Doll (Netflix)

* John: Farscape (Prime)

* Patrick: Tiamat’s Wrath by James SA Corey

Links:

* E. C. Myers on Twitter

* Andrea Phillips on Twit...