Moral Arithmetic: Stories

By T. H. Mercer

Four people. Four institutions. Four small refusals.

Naomi is a postdoc cataloguing a defunct radio telescope program when she finds the signal her predecessors spent their lives listening for. Declan is six weeks into a contract that already costs more than he was told it would, and is being offered a longer one. Elena has staked her career on refusing to delete an artificial mind she trained, when keeping it alive becomes inconvenient. Ethan is watching his country slip below a threshold he set for himself two years ago, on a spreadsheet only he has seen.

Moral Arithmetic is a collection of literary speculative fiction about the quiet negotiations people make when the systems they live inside stop deserving them. From SETI labs to corporate war zones, T. H. Mercer follows characters who keep showing up for the work even when the work cannot show up for them.

For readers of Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others and Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H3KLF19K
• ISBN13: 9798199241090
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 8.0"