Hana paused on the moving sidewalk and lifted her multi-faceted eyes to the crystal dome over her head. She never tired of staring at the blanket of stars outside, so unlike her subsurface hive-world of […]

Alone, Art felt a deep sense of peace as he looked out at the stars. Often, on his way to an ore rich basin, he’d stop his truck and gaze out at the firmament. Ten […]

The TV behind the bar showed a shaky phone video, framing a flying saucer hanging in the sky. It looked like a refugee from a bad 50’s science fiction movie. “Fifteen minutes ago, authorities evacuated […]

A Small Ecological Disaster: A Children’s Storybook Adventure!   It should have been a children’s story. Once upon a time, there was a farmer. This farmer grew corn. This farmer had bugs. Keep the sentences […]

The early models were little more than crumbs. Kneaded and baked planetside, they ventured only into the shallows of The Great Empty, plying the hops between Terra and Luna, Mars, or occasionally as far as […]

Phil could sell anything to anyone. New Milwaukee, like most habitats orbiting Earth, was a moldering dump that smelled like rancid grease wrapped in locker room funk, but that was precisely why Phil had come. […]

I cry when you come to the door. It has been almost three weeks since you were hit walking home. And now, here you are, in t-shirt and khaki slacks, with the hesitant half-grin you wear […]

The mathematician split his time evenly among observation, calculation, and sleep. He never did conform to the can’s twenty-four-hour schedule. He had been accustomed to a thirty-hour day, and apparently saw no social or functional […]

The next time I saw her was two years after she died. My wife was thirty-two years old when cancer took her. She was diagnosed with Glioblastoma, an insidious tendrillar growth that grows in your brain, […]

I wasn’t always a fearless zombie hunter. I missed the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. I’d quit my job after a series of sexual harassment episodes perpetrated by my perverted boss that the HR department […]

His full name really was Tex Colin Davis, “Colin” was not exactly a middle name. “Colin Davis” was the family name given to it by Bruce Davis about four generations back when he got modestly […]

Let’s see what’s been happening lately, shall we? In the same moment, fifty-thousand people sneezed simultaneously, as though they’d planned it. And the very next moment, spread across the two planets and twelve moons of […]

“You’re Myr Anderson?” “You seem surprised,” said the woman at the door. “You said I should meet you here, at your office, at one o’clock.” “I am surprised,” I admitted, looking at my watch. “Because […]

Commander Georgiana Owen rolled over in bed to answer her comm. “Good morning?”   “It is a brand new day, Commander,” said Warrant Officer Gabriella Castille’s halting monotone. “According to Sergeant Franklin. Also, 07:00.”   […]

May 7, 2227 The shuttle Callisto rocketed out of the atmosphere. James Cabot and Michael Lee watched the Earth shrink through the window. The Second Space War hadn’t stayed in space. Ash and dust obscured the […]

  I wasn’t born a Belter, but I’m probably about to die one. Maybe someone will come looking for my carcass when the shooting stops, but it’s not a good bet. There’s a lot of […]

  Goddamn unicorns. Spontaneous mutation triggered by a new artificial sweetener started turning people into unicorns. The mutated gene somehow plucked the concept of mythical fantasy creatures out of fractured synapses, causing men and women to transmute […]

Wei knew what she wanted to do with the lights as soon as she found them in the storage closet. The town across the lake was falling into a state of ruin far beyond any […]

Kayonga Tedesco forced himself to put aside the emotions coursing through his consciousness after the confrontation moments earlier with the commander of Callisto Base. He was taking all his concentration to pilot the shuttle Pinega into […]

We walked by the canal at Nyhavn harbor, Copenhagen, looking for a good place to eat. The sun had nearly set in the distance, and neon drones covered the street in red, blue, and green […]

1.   It was a beautiful, sun-drenched Saturday morning when 42-year-old Charlie Duncan opened the front door of his single-family home and strolled down the walkway, between the flanking rose bushes, to retrieve his newspaper. His back ached […]

( Audio Credits: Reading by Sam A. Mowry, Soundscape by David Ian ) He checked through passport control, an unbearable line that seemed to grow instead of shrink, but he finally handed his Ident capsule […]

If she could only talk to her mother, Kris thought, she could figure out what to do, what to say, what to think even. How to handle this situation like her mother, Captain Donna Lynd, […]

  “But why?  Why should they die?” asked Eteract.  “You say, Gurovvu, that it’s their own doing, and that we have no obligations here.  That much is true, but still, we could do something, if we […]

  Gren hurried down the wide corridor, his hooves clicking against the cold stone tiles in a frantic staccato rhythm that matched his agitated state of mind. “Who installs stone tiles on a naval flagship? […]

  For Rosalyn   June 3, 2072   She woke. In the flow of seconds, she suppressed a cry of dismay, of terror, of loneliness. Elisabeth was three years old. She was in her bed, […]

    “What price would you pay to fix your greatest mistake?” The question hung in the air between us, the weight of it at odds with the situation we found ourselves in. I looked […]

       “Friend, what is your opinion of Emperor Justinian’s new reprobate re-education program?” “Reprobate I understand; re-education I understand; but what is this thing called an opinion?” (An ancient witticism, attributed to an […]

The comm-pad on the table between them chimed, a new notification scrolling across its otherwise dark screen. Ya’teng picked it up, a pained look spreading across his face before he slammed the device down in […]

  And so, in these latter days, you come here to our mines. You, the first children of creation, the children of the sun. The bright ones. The mirror-shiny helms you wear mean we could […]