// Author
Allen Schade
Historical nonfiction and science fiction, written by a hardware engineer who decided the most interesting machine was a story.
Allen Schade spent the better part of two decades building the machinery behind the internet. Across roughly fourteen years at Google he worked deep in the hardware, qualifying and deploying servers and storage at hyperscale, helping stand up next-generation datacenters, and spending two years in research and development on Google's virtual-reality team, designing the way people would reach into virtual worlds. He later led datacenter operations for a major game publisher, architecting the systems that keep millions of players online.
Then he got his hands into something slower. He founded Powell Artisan Bakery, a cottage micro-bakery devoted to real bread. Long fermentation, live sourdough culture, stone-ground local grain, an engineer's precision applied to a craft that refuses to be rushed. The same instinct that asks how a thing actually works, now turned to a loaf.
Writing is where those threads meet. His debut, The Price of Discovery, rebuilds nine real voyages from the Age of Exploration out of the explorers' own logs, and it opened at #1 in its category. His science-fiction series The Iron Gardener turns that same curiosity loose on stranger worlds. He is also building games under the Studio Schade banner.
He lives in Powell, Ohio, with his wife, their son, and more half-finished projects than any reasonable person should attempt at once.
The Price of DiscoveryThe Price of Discovery
The Iron GardenerThe Iron Gardener
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Books I Love
A few that rewired how I think about the future.
Snow Crashcover · view on GoodreadsSnow Crash envisioned the Metaverse as a decentralized virtual world that belonged to nobody and everyone at once. This stands in opposition from Facebook's corporate push to monopolize the idea. While Stephenson's world thrived on individual freedom and technical skill, Meta's version is an attempt to control and profit from a concept that is fundamentally un-ownable.
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A Psalm for the Wild-Builtcover · view on GoodreadsThis helped define “cozy sci-fi” by trading tech-dystopia for a gentle, hopeful world. In Panga, humanity uses technology mindfully to support sustainable living and community rather than replacing human connection. By focusing on a tea monk and a mindful robot, Chambers shows a future where tools serve our well-being without stripping away our purpose or making us less human.
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Legends & Lattescover · view on GoodreadsA warrior hangs up her sword to open a coffee shop, and it hit close to home. Viv trades a life of high-stakes combat for the honest work of building something by hand and a community around it. It's a quiet argument that a life of craft and connection can be richer than one of conquest, a trade I've not yet had the courage to make.
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Children of Timecover · view on GoodreadsAn intelligence that feels alien and yet believable. Their society learned to think and cooperate in ways ours never has, and it offers a way past the flaws pushing humanity toward self-destruction. It left me convinced that the minds least like our own might be the ones best equipped to save us from ourselves.
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