Fictional Worlds

“This place is trash, garbágio, blechalicious,” Rocky Cornelius said appreciatively. “All we gotta do is, as they say, sublevel the vibe.” “Really? You think so?” The greengrocer, Franklyn…

SECURE PRIORITY COMMUNIQUE distribution SOLITAIRE, keyword MASQUERADE, source PENTACLE FROM: TRIPLE INTENT TO: ASPHODEL BEGIN CONTENT Even if you’re my enemy, I’m glad to hear from you. Given that you’…

The Original Science Fiction Short Story Podcast

Nanlee was a woman with the sort of past that necessitated moving to a non-extradition treaty country, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t planned on enjoying her “retirement” on Luna Colony.

“It’s all gone.” The ethereal voice whispered—almost robotic and clearly distant—its desperate lament choked off with a gasp, which tugged Itoro back from unconsciousness. Sprawled on her back…

Úna’s dad once said to her: “You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” Spring had turned and they’d come cycling up the highway, fourteen kilometres north through a land bedecked with rocky…

Lewis was poking at his tablet, trying yet again to open the training module from Station Commerce, when the sensor above his shop door chimed. “Not now!” he snapped without looking up. “But… but I….”…

Continued from Part 1) The news the following morning was bad. An explosion in the middle of a market-square in Libya had been variously blamed upon a suicide-bomber and upon over-zealous security…

Doctor Spencer has brought me an artist. My eyes on the outside of the building register the identity of everyone who enters, including her: Suzanne Chantal Salinas, age 26…

The video stutters at the eighteen-second mark. Yakova knows by heart precisely when it happens. As she watches, she mouths the words along with Autumn. “So this girl just, like, opens up her bag…

Engineer’s meat wept and squirmed and wriggled inside her steel organ cavity, so different from the stable purr of gears and circuit boards. You couldn’t count on meat. It lulled you with its warmth…

Gab gripped her right wrist with her left hand at the small of her back. “Are we ready to order?” she asked. The couple set their menus down on the brushed steel tabletop. It wobbled slightly.

When he first approached me in the train station, I batted him away. I thought he was homeless. The weird, ellipsoidal neck tattoos creeping into view from his collar didn’t help. He persisted…

Sometimes, Narae can almost convince emself that the AI’s Voice was a dream. Some kind of minor stroke misremembered, a neurological glitch retroactively given recognizable shape.

I’d always known Calam would run. He had all the signs. A taut restlessness, body brittle as an overstretched lute string, when we stayed too long in one place. A gloom in his eyes…

Continued from Part 1) Jenna gave herself a few moments to seethe in silence before she spoke, to make sure her voice was calm. “I can’t move.” “Did you hear that?” Daron took a swig of his water…

This is a story about a bird. A bird, a ship, a machine, a woman—she was all these things, and none, but first and fundamentally a bird. It is also a story about a man—a gambler, a liar, and a cheat…