Short Stories - 2011

Life Plus Seventy - Ken Liu
"She was still in her stage outfit, a tight, bright red leather hobble dress with rings of meter-long spikes around the collar and waist that looked frightening and couldn't have been comfortable to wear. I doubt she could have sat down even if she wanted to..." More

Penrose - Ashanti Luke
"The man pulled through the lev run alongside the Retroburger and stopped next to the window as the level three lev-pad slowly lifted their mag-lev to match the window of the cashier who was already handing them their meal..." More

The Floating Otherworld - Tom Doyle
"Mid life's road, and it's August in Tokyo. But that isn't why you're sweating. You're alone with Kaguya-san, the night receptionist..." More

Mars Rising (Excerpt from Novel) - Mark David Major
"The Sovereignty had endured for a millennium. Many believed it would survive for the next thousand years. The three planets, Terra, Mars and Venus, their colonized satellites and other outposts of humanity in our solar system composed the Sovereignty..." More

Where Even Fools Fear to Tread - Ashanti Luke
"For as long as anyone in the village could remember, the Unicorn had always lived there, and whenever anyone became lost in the wilderness, the Unicorn would always show up..." More

Beached - J. Bell
"We’re cruising above Mars at I don’t know how many feet, except it’s a lot. I’m not a soldier or a techie or staff. My dad is the commander..." More

Influx Capacitor - Eric J. Juneau
"Eleven-year-old Martin had nothing to do on his day off from school. So he sat alone in his room, doodling in his diary and watching talk shows, since it was too early for cartoons..." More

Manifest Error - Gary Cuba
"Diogenes rediscovered the wayward bio-stasis chamber while struggling with the ship's balky cargo transfer lorry. The chamber, tucked inside a machinery plenum behind the lorry's docking nest, evoked a distant memory..." More

To Be the Queen - Shelly Li
"She sprawls her wings across the milky white netting, her body stretched across two poles, brown and spindly and rooted into the asphalt ground. A thin curtain of wax covers her face..." More

Fulghum's Synthitar - Kevin Kvas
"It was Uncle Vanya’s sincerest conviction that all the particles in the universe had conspired to make his life miserable, he having been born into the poorest family on the smallest, most worthless colony any harvest moon had ever seen..." More

Ad Block - Ken Liu
"Michael Lane was pushing the "door close" button when a hand reached around the door of the elevator. The doors, obstructed, obediently opened back up..." More

For a Song - Sunny Moraine
"Andy Gaijin leans over the fire; he's drunk and leaning so close that I wonder if he might singe the fibers of his coat. But I don't worry about it. It's not my coat..." More

Hull Breach - Robert Drake
"Sculptured metal rose petals abloom against a desert night. That's what happens to the hull when a starship generator blows. It's the pressure, not the heat. Superheated plasma locked up inside of a metal box. Doesn't leave much for salvage. Doesn't leave much for history either..." More

Mistaken Identity - Alan Baxter
"A concussive crack exploded into Bob's ears with a bone deep whine making him stagger involuntarily to his left. As he bumped hard into a brick wall, his left shoulder distantly registering the pain of impact, he saw a slow motion fountain of dark, viscous blood erupt..." More

Promise - David Hebden
"Eli was walking well ahead of Betsy down the wide path through the forest when he looked back..." More

Forever - Robert J. Sawyer
"Five planets could be seen with the naked eye: Sunhugger, Silver, Red, High, and Slow; all five had been known since ancient times..." More