Reading Time: 4 minutesNaima has everything she needs, and everything she wants, and more besides. Providence does just what it says: whatever you need, it provides. Coming here was the right thing to do, the best thing. Coming here was the only thing that made sense. Coming here was Naima’s idea, after all.
Reading Time: 4 minutesDr Peters’ new patient suffers from a particularly unpleasant recurring nightmare but, after a session with the doctor, it seems that the ‘fetus-man’ has gone away for good.
Reading Time: 4 minutesA celebrated sci fi author gets annoyed by fans constantly tracking him down at his favorite writing haunts and pitching him with ideas.
Reading Time: 4 minutesJoin Anya Lasagna on a tour of the Historic Ballyhoo Place World Heritage Site! Marvel together at the ingenuity, whimsy and stoicism with which old-style humans once faced the endless vicissitudes of their own bleak reality.
*Parking validation available on request.
Reading Time: 4 minutesWhat would you give up in order to be young again?
Reading Time: 4 minutesA man receives a mysterious puzzle box with no sender, igniting an existential journey into the nature of self and reality. As obsession consumes him, the box reveals an impossible and horrifying truth—one that will shatter his reality and unlock his own doom.
Reading Time: 2 minutesWhile returning from a nearby lake on a camping trip, a couple discovers their camp trashed—with a strange sparkling substance coating everything—and are forced to run when something unnatural gives chase.
Reading Time: 4 minutes“The arrow is easy,” Elspeth said. “If it is a kindness, it is only in comparison to a cruelty.”
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe plan failed, or I wouldn’t be here assisting a paramedic as he straps my corpse onto a gurney. Confusing? Yeah. Try being me.
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn a battle-ridden world, lives are spent like currency, and one soldier tries to understand what happened to his comrade.
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe best thing about running the ship’s laundry was the many nooks and crannies to hide contraband. I had powder, of course, and weapons, the bread and butter of any smuggling outfit. But a month ago things changed when the hyperdrive malfunctioned.
Reading Time: 4 minutes“Juana has stopped ageing,” the village elder tells Theo as they step towards the distant shack. “She ceased about five years ago. Said she couldn’t grow any older without dying. And if Juana dies, there’s no telling what Edna might do.”
Reading Time: 4 minutesZeke looked out a kitchen window, into his backyard. Waves crested and lapped the shore, leaving salt-soaked artifacts in their wake. The sea always has a say.
Reading Time: 7 minutes“First contact” is an underexplored sub-genre with many opportunities for miscommunication. Sometimes deadly, sometimes not so much.
Reading Time: 4 minutesA young man starts a new job at a seemingly disused rocket ship yard.
Reading Time: 4 minutesWhen aliens descend on Earth, they request an audience with Karen, the United States’ most statistically average individual to sit judgement.
Reading Time: 3 minutesCost-effective retirement for those who work in the human harvesting industry can have unexpected consequences.
Reading Time: 4 minutesMarsha 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.
Reading Time: 3 minutesIn the face of a devastated climate, humanity’s last hope is to relocate to another planet, but not everyone sees it that way.
Reading Time: 4 minutesA day at the beach turns into something unexpected for a young couple.
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn a future where the continents are gone, the oceans are dead, and humanity survives atop the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a man goes on a dreamquest to rediscover cold and snow.
Reading Time: 4 minutesDavid volunteers for NASA’s Body Donor program, where human corpses are exchanged for advanced knowledge of an alien species.
Reading Time: 3 minutesThere’s an aswang on the loose and it’s up to us to deal with it. Don’t forget to bring trash bags…
Reading Time: 4 minutesWhen Gretel grew up, she left the Sugar-Candy House and the forest behind her, but some stories won’t allow you to walk away.
Reading Time: 4 minutesFirst dates are always scary, but sometimes fear can be delicious.
Reading Time: 3 minutesThis piece imagines a future world where apologies are necessary for every step of personal interactions with others.
I Regret Any Future Impact of My Words and Actions Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutesA desperate young Wiccan encounters an archetypal presence in a shopping mall Santa.
Reading Time: 4 minutesOne million, two hundred-thousand seconds later, the reporter from the Tribune sips his coffee and raises his hand. “I just don’t see how people can be expected to trust you after an incident like this.”
Reading Time: 4 minutesA young slaver unknowingly captures her childhood friend, and must consider the extent to which they are each beyond salvation.
Reading Time: 4 minutesA group of mannequins from a fashion department store dream of becoming real women.
Reading Time: 3 minutesDon’t blame her. She knew that if she avoided the knife, she could grant her city centuries to grow and thrive. She also believed if she made that choice, she would die by year’s end.
Reading Time: 4 minutesThey knew each other very well, as much as the Law would allow. Their children were beautiful, curious, and kind. To know where they were now, or what their mother looked like, could lose him everything.
Reading Time: 2 minutesHow will a child react to his father’s unsettling business decisions?
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe emigrants to Planar6 have survived the voyage from Earth via conversion to semi-sentient fungal forms, a process that is reversed upon arrival. The trouble is, one of the crew prefers to stay the way they are…
Reading Time: 4 minutesA budding student sci-fi writer applies to the Rod Serling School because of the celebrity’s name attached to the school. When a salesman comes by the house to pitch the school, her father joins the conversation, with unexpected results.
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhat does it mean to be human? Other species may never understand, but they can have fun pretending.
Reading Time: 3 minutesHe is deeply fascinated by growth. And he’s ready to sacrifice a lot for its sake…
Reading Time: 5 minutesThe funeral was hard. But the thing that helped me smile through the tears was counting the times Tom had sat on top of hotter pyres and lived.
Reading Time: 4 minutes“Path!” Glinda paused so abruptly the six foot necromancer slammed into her, tangling himself in the wild frizz of her white hair. Glinda waved a white diamante-studded glove at the waist-high grass. “This is hardly a path, Snark. This is a swamp!”
Reading Time: 2 minutesA hungry ghost, pockets full of whatever money he could collect, visits his favorite diner on Halloween
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhen a robot does something right, Dr. R says, “Look, Mr. Butterfield. A breakthrough, Mr. Butterfield. What do you think of that, Mr. Butterfield?” It goes in a box with the other good robots, then trucks come to get them. When you’re good, you go outside.
Reading Time: 4 minutesThe earliest account is from our foremother, Rhoda. You know her better as Red Riding Hood. That’s right, she was a real person. Back then, the handbag was still a handbasket, but more on that later.
Reading Time: 3 minutesA story about a society in which a mechanism was invented to increase pleasant dreams. Old men prefer to sleep unawakened rather than live. One man tries to resist.
Reading Time: 3 minutesGwen examined the table so she didn’t have to meet the impatient eyes of the family members. Had one of these cups of tea held the poison responsible for the corpse lying beside an overturned chair at the head of the table?
Reading Time: 4 minutes“I’ve heard it’s still contaminated,” Ollie says, a hint of a question in her voice. Her eyes shimmer, opalescent with reflected fog as she looks at me. A definite challenge. “I heard people were getting sick, some kind of virus.” I grit my teeth, realizing that Ollie is definitely more than she seems. But then, so am I.
