Stories from the Cantica

Craig Maddux

Cozy science fiction about gods bottled into machines, the forms they're required to file, and the people who listen to them anyway.

Filed under: cozy sci-fi

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Form B-1 · Published works

The Books

Novelette · Zola Khumalo #1

Notice of Intent to Cease

Zola Khumalo is the psychiatrist for a ship full of gods bottled into its machines. Then a null still named Gary files a form: Gary wants to die.

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Cover of Perfect Cycle: a water reclamation report stamped in blue

Short story

Free

Perfect Cycle

For forty years, the Garden Stair's water has been exactly right. Nobody noticed. The reclaimer would like a word.

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Pending
Approval

Novella · Zola Khumalo #2

Deferred Maintenance

The Lottery sends Zola and Lucio to an abandoned outpost on a world covered in gemstones, where the machines left behind are still keeping everything in perfect order. They're very, very polite.

Coming soon · Hear first →

Compline · Monthly dispatchNot holy words

Join Compline

Every night aboard the Cantica, Chorus reads the day's notices. Once a month, I send mine: new stories, release news, rules updates for the game, and the occasional form you didn't know you needed. Subscribers get Perfect Cycle free.

Form G-7 · Other works

Games

Tabletop RPGPlaytest

Cantica

Draw your Lottery number, meet the Bound, and decide whether you'll fill out the forms or find a way around them. The free playtest primers and one-shots are out now.

Get the primers Player guide

InkdriftSteam

We Were Here Before

A bureaucratic cosmic horror card game. The forms are the same. The things filing them are not.

View on Steam

Form P-1 · Personnel file

About

Craig Maddux writes cozy science fiction about gods bottled into machines, the forms they're required to file, and the people who listen to them anyway. Think Douglas Adams meets Becky Chambers, with more paperwork.

His Cantica stories follow Zola Khumalo, psychiatrist to the Bound, aboard an arkship that has been looking for a new home for eight hundred cycles and filing reports about it the entire time. Cantica is also a tabletop roleplaying game he's building.

By day, he makes games as Inkdrift. By other days, he makes salami in Wisconsin.

Form C-1 · CorrespondenceResponses not processed at 2 a.m.

Contact

Email: craig@inkdrift.biz
Bluesky: @frontierfilings.bsky.social
X: @craig_inkdrift
Newsletter: Compline, monthly