“It is supposed to be glowing like that, right?”

“Probably? I think so? Wait, where did I put the coolant?”

The machine glows somewhat ominously, waiting for media to arrrive.

A space opera that makes heavy use of rather nonsensical yet internally consistent technobabble. In it, a spacefaring society is set into six castes based on the ability to integrate quantum brain chips that can do arbitrary calculations by making use of information gathered from possible yet nonexistent timelines. Each caste can utilize an exponentially greater amount of information, and therefore is considered more valuable, as FTL travel requires computations done by a member of the fourth caste or above. As chip potential seems to pass more frequently through the mother’s line (Though it is noted that it has proven impossible to genetically sequence, so this may in fact be false), this society is matriarchal in custom to a rather extreme degree, though seems to have no actual laws, maintaining this state of affairs through social pressure and glass ceilings. Characters struggle with romantic trouble in ways that are internally clear are rather sexist, with most of the plot being high stakes intrigue regarding arranged betrothals that are made clear to the reader are only dubiously consensual on the man’s side of things, which is finally resolved with the main characters fiancé running away to found a new, less sexist colony. The ending implies that the mysterious Empress, the only member of the sixth caste, may be attempting to destroy this attempt.

A fantasy novel that posits a world in which supernatural entities called gods can influence the world through the influence of those who are aware of and worship them, as well as the spread of and proliferation of their domain, usually a single word concept ranging from “Trees” to “Faith in Oneself”, a single word in the original language. The protagonist works for a government agency that censors the names of entities usually or hostile to humanity, such as “Poison” or “Terror”. Eventually, the protagonist comes to the conclusion that hiding the existence of sapient entities out of fear is an atrocity, and dies attempting to reveal the truth to the world. Whether or not he succeeds is left unclear.

A work that might be tentatively classified as fanfiction, but that requires no context of the original works, in which an author writes in epistolary form of her supposed adventures in each after being curse by an evil fairy from the first setting to “never be able to find a home”. As she is torn between world to world, gathering power and resources in each, she grows to that home was never a place at all, but rather wherever she was. As she does this, the curse weakens, and she finally finds herself on the world she was born, and realizes that it isn’t the world that makes the home, but herself. When she does this, the curse shatters, and the book ends on a note saying that  after she recovers from her ordeal, she plans to spread the magic and technology to others for the good of humanity.*

*The word is colloquially used to refer to any bipedal sapient, such as elves or fairies, but not usually aliens.

The machine whirs and burrs, before shooting out a… book? No, three books, apparently.

“Yes! It worked! I did it! I found fiction that isn’t about us, our parents, or our grandparents!”

“It’s not that bad-“

“Gil, the most popular series is The Heterodyne Boys, followed by the new ones about us. If I have to read anything involving-“

“Right, okay, got it, let’s look at the books!”

He quickly grabs the the space opera and starts flipping through it.

“I wonder if we could make something like these… I mean, we do have the dimensional machine here…”

“Fiction now, possible dimensional collapse for the sake of avoiding arithmetic later! Anyway, I quite like it. The politics and romance are quite well done.”

“And not even tangentially about us.”

“And that. Anyway. There’s this… confusing spirit-gods one?”

“I like the one with the cursed heroics!”

”…We should totally do that sometime. Without the curse, I mean.”

Tarvek rolls his eyes

He then starts working on making the machine more stable, in order to keep books (or more exotic materials) from accidentally merging with each other. The others get caught up helping.

A book which resembles a romance novel, but one which is somewhat more pornographic than the Europan norm. The setting is a mid-21st century Earth (the book mentions but only provides teasing details as regards to such subjects as household appliances, computer systems, telecommunications equipment, automated vehicles, industrial processes, and general scientific knowledge), much of which was recently conquered by what seems to the readers to be a cabal of Sparks that, finding themselves in a Sparkless world, decided to appoint themselves with titles of nobility and conquer everything in reach (though the word 'Spark' is not found anywhere, none of the viewpoint characters actually developed the basics of their technology, and there are hints that the cabal is cribbing notes from an outside source).

The main viewpoint character is a bright young woman in training to become a chemical engineer, and the book follows her through her daily life for a chapter, revealing herself to be somewhat plain and meek, but willing to put in the hard work to secure a better life for herself, even though the radical changes in her society caused by the recent war threaten to overturn her plans. The first chapter is cut off rather abruptly as she returns home in the evening, only to be tragically killed by a stray shot in some kind of gang conflict that she happened upon. It resumes as she is brought back to back to life through the power of Mad Science (and becomes notably more attractive in the process)!

Her benefactor (and deuteragonist) is a shy young man gifted with great talents in the field of Nanotechnology (the occasional tantalising hint suggests this is a scientific field which uses tiny mechanistic processes to produce complex quasi-biological systems, though it seems clear that he's mostly tweaking and refining the work of another), who seems to be rather confused as to whether he wanted a test subject or a girlfriend. He's very sensitive about his appearance (though provided pictures show he's more plain and slightly overweight than ugly) and easily flustered, making it very clear that he had not given any thought whatsoever as to what it would mean for him to actually have a girlfriend in advance of deciding to resurrect a dead girl to serve that role. He only manages it at all due to a modification he made to her body as part of the resurrection process, ensuring that she is forced to obey each of his commands. As he is neither particularly certain as to what he wants, nor very good at giving specific orders, and she is unwilling to make any sexual advances on her benefactor/captor, the plot comedically fumbles along the borderlines of her literally interpreting unwise orders to her benefit (often leaving tasks half-done while she relaxes and/or tries to make sense of his research), and him arranging lewd experiments whose consequences he inevitably ends up not quite confident enough to act on. 

As the book continues, it is revealed that the benefactor's lab is located in the castle of a local baron, who is only slightly older than the pair. Said baron generously funds the young man's work, so long as practical applications continue to flow. The baron's arrogance, rudeness, and regular demands for useful progress make him an antagonistic presence... especially since he's also handsome, confident, overtly villainous, and in possession of his own harem of slave girls. His primary hobbies seem to be military conquest (primarily at a considerable distance, by managing robotic armies), and filling his castle with incredibly elaborate mechanical traps (most of which have lewd and embarrassing consequences instead of lethal ones, and it's made clear that he very much likes to watch his helpless victims struggle).

Near the end of the book, the baron, who has apparently grown frustrated with the fumbling will-they-won't-they relationship between the protagonist and her erstwhile benefactor, decides to force the issue by arranging for the protagonist to be stripped, bound, and brought to his bedchambers (presumably to be thoroughly deflowered). The young man rises to the challenge, injecting himself with dangerous and experimental super-soldier nanites, which allow him to burst through concrete walls, shrug off wounds, and fight his way to the baron's chambers (and not incidentally gives him a much more handsome, muscular figure)... upon which the baron congratulates him on his breakthrough, announces that he'd hoped for this outcome, and would be more than happy to release her into the young man's custody, so long as he orders her into his own bed instead. This is done... but the young man once again loses his nerve at the last minute, and instead breaks down crying. The book ends with chaste snuggling, as the protagonist decides to comfort her rescuer unordered, just this once.

Though primarily presented as text, the book includes full-page full-colour images of many important scenes, each of which includes some combination of partial/complete nudity, complex machinery, elaborate bondage, and schematic diagrams (none of which are quite at the right angle to be completely visible). Despite every other chapter offering some imminent threat to the protagonist's virtue, regular employment of nanite formulas with lewd 'side effects', and several traps with disturbingly phallic appendages, the book somehow manages to contain exactly zero penetrative sex (other than allusions to stuff the baron gets up to in the background). Instead, the book is full of scenes like the one where the protagonist is ordered into a large transparent device that tickles and teases her naked body with tiny jets of mist; as usual, he tries to pretend that he put her there for purely legitimate scientific reasons, and she tries to pretend that she's not at all turned on by this treatment, and neither quite succeeds.

This book is part one of a nine-part series, and it is alleged to be a novelization of a series of movies which were themselves based on a true story. A note attached to the back indicates that the rest of the series can be made available in exchange for nude pictures of the three individuals responsible for the creation of this machine (transmitted back through the machine, a process which the writer assures the reader ought to be trivial). Supplementary material, including technical details of all devices alluded to in the book, can be made available in exchange for a vial of fresh blood from each of those individuals.

A book which resembles a romance novel, but one which is somewhat more pornographic than the Europan norm.

Well, first of all, the book is excellent.

Second of all, no, that’s a terrible idea, that’s how you get evil clones and/or even more pornography published about you. That is the last thing that they need. Tarvek has a record of Zero evil clones and plans to keep it that way.

“This is so obviously a bad idea that it’s actually offensive.”

“Well, we could-“

”Gil.”

”I wasn’t going to go along with it! I was just wondering if they had a way of knowing whose pictures and/or blood we gave them?”

“That’s… not a bad idea, actually. I’ll go hunt down some, ah, books, then.”

“I’ve got plenty of blood in my lab, that’s easy.”

Three photorealistic drawings of naked individuals and three vials of blood (from a biology textbook and the laboratory, respectfully), are send through the machine. 

A book about TRAINS, BOATS, AIRPLANES, and ROCKETSHIPS! Its framing device is pretty minimal, the book almost seems to be a textbook in disguise. Or at most, a collection of short stories about what particular vehicles mean to particular people, light and cheery and hopeful and excited. The various characters and their jobs or reasons for being on a train, boat, airplane, or rocketship are pretty clearly mostly set dressing in favor of rambling nerdy rants about how these various vehicles work and what tradeoffs are made in their design and the historical value of particular models and the lovingly researched process of engineering them (with historical context included in the scenes of old-timey engineers discussing things) and what a difference having excellent vehicles makes to individuals in a society and the various situations in which design mistakes happened and a long rant that somehow diverts into tax policy about how much more efficient trains are than cars and much lamenting on how rockets are way too expensive for everyone to get to ride on one. Oddly enough, despite the prose being clearly written by a spark, or someone who ought to be a spark, the vehicles all seem... Pretty mundane and clean and understandable? No supercavitating biomechanical submarines, just hydrofoils, no giant flying airships just jumbo jets with the engineering principles of jet propulsion clearly laid out... Though there IS an enormous nuclear torch rocket hypothesized and sketched but lamentably decried as wildly expensive and unsafe and they'd never let him build it.