The Shell

The Shell

Reading Time: 25 minutes A little boy discovers a mysterious seashell that contains more than just “ocean sounds” – a lot more…
Gods and Monsters Installment 37: Love & Death

Gods and Monsters Installment 37: Love & Death

Reading Time: 10 minutes When Margareta is not working, and if Pamela has been very, very good, Sarah lets her model the lacey cap. When Pam puts on the cap, she becomes an enchanted princess. The dirty pigeons that clutter the ledges of the city are snow white doves that come at her call and do her bidding. She leans out her window, arms spread wide, embracing her kingdom… until Sarah catches her and pulls her inside.
If We Can Just Get to the Cabin Before…

If We Can Just Get to the Cabin Before…

Reading Time: 4 minutes Marsha and Frank are driving along a country road on a rainy night, with Frank regaling Marsha about his knowledge of Japanese Samurai films, when they encounter a ghostly specter in the middle of the road.
The Psychics

The Psychics

Reading Time: 5 minutes Psychic magicians must fight off a enemy who is trying to break the spells protecting their academy. Family and romantic relationships complicate things.
Gods and Monsters Installment 36: Stained Glass Soul

Gods and Monsters Installment 36: Stained Glass Soul

Reading Time: 9 minutes Mike grabs Ashley from her quilted comfort. Her head droops back like a wilted flower. Her neck shows white in the night. Mike’s canines grow long with desire and need.
Grim Harvest

Grim Harvest

Reading Time: 9 minutes When their mother dies, a pair of precocious twins are placed in the care of their father, a conservative and stern man with whom their Wiccan practices immediately clash.
Hope of Green

Hope of Green

Reading Time: 3 minutes In the face of a devastated climate, humanity’s last hope is to relocate to another planet, but not everyone sees it that way.
Resident Tracker

Resident Tracker

Reading Time: 3 minutes A sentient satellite finds a new home.
Gods and Monsters Installment 35: Gods and Circuses

Gods and Monsters Installment 35: Gods and Circuses

Reading Time: 7 minutes When Hephaestus emerged clubfooted and malformed, Hera tossed him off Mount Olympus. He fell for nine days and nine nights, landing in the sea with a splash so big it caused a tsunami. No wonder then, that he prefers Earth to Olympus and children to gods.
Anonymous Tip

Anonymous Tip

Reading Time: 7 minutes In a near future of fast-paced social media likes and internet lurking, anonymity has a price…
The Programmed Joy of Protection

The Programmed Joy of Protection

Reading Time: 11 minutes Ruth is an android robot nanny, designed to protect the two young children in her care. She has come to realize that she loves protecting the children so much, she feels compelled to put the children into danger so as to enjoy saving them.
Gods and Monsters Installment 34: The Fault Line Within

Gods and Monsters Installment 34: The Fault Line Within

Reading Time: 7 minutes Now, after the advent of dreams and the appearance of color, when Gabriel reads of a killing, something inside him screams. When he looks upon a charcoal figure that so recently possessed unearthly beauty, he mourns. He wants to create, not destroy. He doesn’t like the role in which he has been cast.
Honeypot

Honeypot

Reading Time: 5 minutes A derelict spaceship turns out to be a trap for a space pirate and his very unusual copilot.
Gods and Monsters Installment 33: Pamela

Gods and Monsters Installment 33: Pamela

Reading Time: 8 minutes Vampires followed the deluge of fluid and fear, tracking the lonely, homeless, and lost to the city, drawn by the need for belief, as well as blood.
A Perfect Day

A Perfect Day

Reading Time: 4 minutes A day at the beach turns into something unexpected for a young couple.
The Shell

The Shell

Mike LeraNov 6, 2024
Reading Time: 25 minutes A little boy discovers a mysterious seashell that contains more than just “ocean sounds” – a lot more…
Gods and Monsters Installment 37: Love & Death

Gods and Monsters Installment 37: Love & Death

E. E. KingNov 5, 2024
Reading Time: 10 minutes When Margareta is not working, and if Pamela has been very, very good, Sarah lets her model the lacey cap. When Pam puts on the cap, she becomes an enchanted princess. The dirty pigeons that clutter the ledges of the city are snow white doves that come at her call and do her bidding. She leans out her window, arms spread wide, embracing her kingdom… until Sarah catches her and pulls her inside.
If We Can Just Get to the Cabin Before…

If We Can Just Get to the Cabin Before…

Jonathan WorldeNov 4, 2024
Reading Time: 4 minutes Marsha and Frank are driving along a country road on a rainy night, with Frank regaling Marsha about his knowledge of Japanese Samurai films, when they encounter a ghostly specter in the middle of the road.
The Psychics

The Psychics

Reading Time: 5 minutes Psychic magicians must fight off a enemy who is trying to break the spells protecting their academy. Family and romantic relationships complicate things.
Gods and Monsters Installment 36: Stained Glass Soul

Gods and Monsters Installment 36: Stained Glass Soul

E. E. KingOct 29, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutes Mike grabs Ashley from her quilted comfort. Her head droops back like a wilted flower. Her neck shows white in the night. Mike’s canines grow long with desire and need.
Grim Harvest

Grim Harvest

Gracie McKeeverOct 28, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutes When their mother dies, a pair of precocious twins are placed in the care of their father, a conservative and stern man with whom their Wiccan practices immediately clash.
Hope of Green

Hope of Green

E. S. FosterOct 25, 2024
Reading Time: 3 minutes In the face of a devastated climate, humanity’s last hope is to relocate to another planet, but not everyone sees it that way.
Resident Tracker

Resident Tracker

Emma BurnettOct 23, 2024
Reading Time: 3 minutes A sentient satellite finds a new home.
Gods and Monsters Installment 35: Gods and Circuses

Gods and Monsters Installment 35: Gods and Circuses

E. E. KingOct 22, 2024
Reading Time: 7 minutes When Hephaestus emerged clubfooted and malformed, Hera tossed him off Mount Olympus. He fell for nine days and nine nights, landing in the sea with a splash so big it caused a tsunami. No wonder then, that he prefers Earth to Olympus and children to gods.

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REVIEWS

Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Nov. 1, 2024

Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Nov. 1, 2024

Reading Time: 10 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a sexy druid, a sexy necromancer, a sexy werewolf, and a space marine who’s seen too much.
13 scariest stories to get you through Halloween

13 scariest stories to get you through Halloween

Reading Time: 5 minutes Thirteen haunting tales from MetaStellar’s archives that remind us why we should fear the dark — and why sometimes the most terrifying monsters are the ones we create ourselves.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 25, 2024

Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 25, 2024

Reading Time: 10 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes space battles, magical mysteries, and a sexy orc.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 18, 2024

Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 18, 2024

Reading Time: 9 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes pirates — both the space and the ocean kind — as well as mages and mediums.
Friendship Is at the Forefront of Shaun Hamill’s The Dissonance

Friendship Is at the Forefront of Shaun Hamill’s The Dissonance

Reading Time: 3 minutes The book is dynamic and fast paced, with flashbacks and cliffhangers to keep you reading along. It is hard to put down, and I never say this lightly.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 11, 2024

Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 11, 2024

Reading Time: 10 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a shifter romance by a New York Times bestselling author, a book about a space pirate, and a thriller about climate change.
Best space operas with kick-ass women

Best space operas with kick-ass women

Reading Time: 10 minutes Nine favorite space opera series with kick-ass female leads.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 4, 2024

Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Oct. 4, 2024

Reading Time: 10 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes dark magic, ancient evils, and serial killers — just in time for the spooky season.

Writing Advice of the Week

Common Writing Challenges (& How to Overcome)

Common Writing Challenges (& How to Overcome)

Fallon ClarkNov 3, 2024
Reading Time: 6 minutes If you wanted to write a story to submit but didn’t, what held you back from becoming the writerly unicorn you know you can be?
Show, Don’t Tell, Your Story (Here’s How)

Show, Don’t Tell, Your Story (Here’s How)

Fallon ClarkOct 27, 2024
Reading Time: 6 minutes Through showing, not telling, you provide a more immersive experience for your readers. Here’s how.
Pocket-Sized Stories: Less Text, More Punch

Pocket-Sized Stories: Less Text, More Punch

Fallon ClarkOct 20, 2024
Reading Time: 8 minutes Limited word counts in flash stories require you to make careful and judicious choices of what to keep and what to revise away because in flash fiction, there’s little room for coyness or ambiguity.
Writing the Other: Fictions and Culture

Writing the Other: Fictions and Culture

Fallon ClarkOct 13, 2024
Reading Time: 6 minutes Fiction is unique to human communication, which is fascinating on its own. But why do we still look to fictions? What do they do for us in the modern age? Why does fiction matter? And what considerations must go into crafting culturally honest fictions?

ESSAYS

SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission will push space travel further than any private mission has before

SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission will push space travel further than any private mission has before

Chris ImpeySep 6, 2024
Reading Time: 5 minutes Polaris Dawn pushes the envelope of civilian space travel in 2024, but at what cost?
Studying lake deposits in Idaho could give scientists insight into ancient traces of life on Mars

Studying lake deposits in Idaho could give scientists insight into ancient traces of life on Mars

Robert PatalanoJul 19, 2024
Reading Time: 4 minutes While NASA researchers are directly combing the surface of Mars for signs of life, scientists are also using a site here on Earth to approximate ancient environmental conditions on Mars.
ChatGPT and the movie ‘Her’ are just the latest example of the ‘sci-fi feedback loop’

ChatGPT and the movie ‘Her’ are just the latest example of the ‘sci-fi feedback loop’

Rizwan VirkJul 12, 2024
Reading Time: 5 minutes Science fiction and technological innovation feed off each other in an ongoing back-and-forth that can play out over decades.
Everything a writer needs to know about AI (for now, at least)

Everything a writer needs to know about AI (for now, at least)

Maria KorolovMar 21, 2024
Reading Time: 6 minutes I want to know what’s really going on with AI. And, as a writer and journalist, I have a personal stake in figuring out what’s happening because I have a strong feeling that my whole career is on the line.

NEWS

Fall 2024 Original Fiction Submissions Period Opens October 1!

Fall 2024 Original Fiction Submissions Period Opens October 1!

Geordie MorseSep 20, 2024
Reading Time: 2 minutes The fall 2024 submission cycle for original speculative fiction begins on October 1 and closes at midnight on October 31. We’re looking for your best enthralling, imaginative, or bone-chilling original fiction stories, as long as they’re 1,200 words or fewer.
Shadow the Hedgehog, bathed in red light. Image source: Paramount Pictures

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 Looks To Fully Embrace Its Video Game Source

Terrence SmithAug 28, 2024
Reading Time: 2 minutes The trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is taking a darker approach than the previous two films, but still boasts quite a few laughs and Easter eggs for long-time fans of the blue hedgehog.
Hugos awarded, Emily Tesh and Ann Leckie take top honors

Hugos awarded, Emily Tesh and Ann Leckie take top honors

Maria KorolovAug 12, 2024
Reading Time: 5 minutes Emith Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory and Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch won this year’s Hugo Awards for best novel and best series.
Sci-fi tractor beam comes closer to reality

Sci-fi tractor beam comes closer to reality

Maria KorolovAug 2, 2024
Reading Time: 3 minutes In a breakthrough that sounds like it’s straight out of a science fiction novel, researchers have successfully created a tractor beam using twisting light beams.
Hugo awards votes disqualified

Hugo awards votes disqualified

Maria KorolovJul 23, 2024
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Hugo Awards, set to be awarded on August 11, has disqualified nearly ten percent of the votes cast this year due to fraud.
All images for this post have been created with Adobe Express, which only uses fully licensed images for training data and pays artists for their work.

16 best love stories from MetaStellar

Benji BlackwellMay 8, 2024
Reading Time: 8 minutes Dive into 16 enchanting tales of love that transcend time, space, and even the boundaries of reality, plucked right from the pages of MetaStellar.
SFWA Announces 59th Nebula Awards Finalists

SFWA Announces 59th Nebula Awards Finalists

Maria KorolovMar 16, 2024
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has announced the finalists for the 59th Annual Nebula Awards.
MetaStellar is Accepting Flash Fiction Submissions for Spring 2024!

MetaStellar is Accepting Flash Fiction Submissions for Spring 2024!

Geordie MorseMar 4, 2024
Reading Time: 2 minutes The spring 2024 submission cycle for original speculative fiction runs from March 1st and closes at midnight on March 31st. We’re looking for your best enthralling, imaginative, or bone-chilling original fiction stories of 1,200 words or fewer. Please visit our flash fiction submission page for full details and the online submission form. Accepted authors will […]

ON WRITING

How creatives can survive AI — lessons from a $1 trillion industry that’s fully at risk

How creatives can survive AI — lessons from a $1 trillion industry that’s fully at risk

Maria KorolovMar 30, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutes There’s a $1 trillion industry that is about to be decimated by AI, and they’re spending billions to figure out how to survive. Any writer, artist, or editor can use their strategies.
Why Adobe Firefly is the only AI image app I recommend — and how to use the latest features

Why Adobe Firefly is the only AI image app I recommend — and how to use the latest features

Maria KorolovMar 28, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutes Adobe Firefly, which is only trained on fully licensed images and pays artists, has added some new features that make it even easier for authors to create illustrations.
The best free* books to help you battle procrastination

The best free* books to help you battle procrastination

Maria KorolovFeb 11, 2024
Reading Time: 10 minutes Here are nine books on Amazon with tons of positive reviews that will help you finish your writing project — and are free to read with a Kindle Unlimited subscription.
The Do’s and Don’ts of building a book trailer in the age of AI

The Do’s and Don’ts of building a book trailer in the age of AI

PJ CaldasJan 7, 2024
Reading Time: 5 minutes How to steal Hollywood’s marketing tricks and develop trailers for print novels.
Claude AI doubles reading length, ups accuracy

Claude AI doubles reading length, ups accuracy

Maria KorolovNov 21, 2023
Reading Time: 2 minutes Anthropic’s Claude can now read texts up to 150,000 words in length, double its previous limit — and its accuracy is now better, as well.
Adobe upgrades Firefly for better images, vector graphics

Adobe upgrades Firefly for better images, vector graphics

Maria KorolovOct 10, 2023
Reading Time: 6 minutes Adobe announced a new version of its Firefly image generation tool today at the Adobe Max 2023 conference.
Canva sets up a $200 million artist compensation fund

Canva sets up a $200 million artist compensation fund

Maria KorolovOct 5, 2023
Reading Time: 8 minutes Canva announces a $200 million fund to compensate artists for AI, adds new AI features.
James S. Corey, Brent Weeks, Ann Leckie, and other authors teach free virtual writing course

James S. Corey, Brent Weeks, Ann Leckie, and other authors teach free virtual writing course

Maria KorolovOct 1, 2023
Reading Time: 5 minutes Orbit is offering a series of writing advice sessions from some of the top names of the industry. The sessions, which start on October 11, are completely free and cover everything from inspiration to planning to the actual writing.