Melon.

This random and powerful thought turns the sun into a massive honeydew melon, destroying the Earth and ruining Dr. Maximilian Tundra’s day.

In another even more unlikely universe, an alternative Max discovers the mining colony on Callisto has disappeared. Not only has his new home vanished, so has every shred of human civilization in the entire system!

These two Maxes (and a few more) must discover the cause of this decoherence and save other universes – which are annoyingly infinite – from suffering the same fate.

From the award-winning author Mark A. Rayner, Beta Max takes us on a profound and absurd voyage through an increasingly existential multiverse.

Praise for the Tundraverse and Mark A. Rayner

“Snarky as Pratchett, insightful as Stephenson, as full of scathing social commentary as Swift or Voltaire, and weirdly reminiscent of LeGuin … ” ~Ernest Lilley, Amazing Stories

“Rayner is brilliant! His writing is a strange and exhilarating mixture of the cerebral and the entertaining. He doesn’t condescend to his readers, but blitzes us with ideas from an eclectic and diverse range of topics – metaphysical, physical, scientific, emotional, cultural, and random – and then trusts us to wrap our heads around all of it as we join his hero on a journey through the multiverse.” ~Karen Molenaar Terrell, author of Cosmic Connections: Sharing the Joy'

Publication date: November 3, 2026

Also available in paperback, ISBN: 9781927590102