Fictional Worlds

While learning the ropes from a crafty Jazz Age bank robber, a young stowaway discovers their authentic self, a hidden gift, and that there are no straight lines when you run the fox roads...

Planet Lion by Catherynne M. Valente in Uncanny: A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy Issue Four.

The ocean is a woman and it is dreaming, dreaming, Ekaterina thinks as she holds the hardsuit’s arm open, ready to clip a sample.

The title of the book was Principles of Light-Bearing, and Sharide was engrossed in it by the second page. It described how light was the underpinning of the world. She had dreamed of being a weaver, and a fisher, and a soldier, and many different wives, but the life of a seeker of knowledge had never come to her yet. When next she slept, she decided, she would try to find a life wherein she had read this book, and other books, and understood them.

Have you ever found yourself on a midtown sidewalk on some warm July day when a plummeting body splattered on the pavement, directly in front of you? Close enough to feel the explosive shockwave of hot liquid air, pelting your trousers with meat pel…

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She had never slept so well as when she was in space. Even when she dreamed that gray, dome-headed aliens were tapping at the windows of the shuttle. Karen sat up in the bed when she heard the bot coming, though it took some painful effort. via Pock… Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy When Home, No Need to Cry by Erin K. Wagner via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Eq9zCI via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io You couldn’t talk about the Helmets, which looked pretty ordinary displayed in a glass case in the lobby of the Smash Pad, the converted mattress warehouse where we practiced. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Aimee’s big trick is that she makes 26 monkeys vanish on stage. She pushes out a claw-foot bathtub and asks audience members to come up and inspect it. The people climb in and look underneath, touch the white enamel, run their hands along the little…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io It’s a very old trope in fantasy stories and games: the wizard or healer who needs an incredibly rare, delicate, or deadly flower, leaf, root, or bark for a critical bit of magic, and the plant from which it grows may only be found an inconvenient d…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io My name is Tetley Abednego and I am the most hated girl in Garbagetown. I am nineteen years old. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Towering cliffs topped with bright lush greenery. Cold clean waves crashing against the stone below, sleek gray clouds swirling through the unbound sky above. A woman dances along the edge, her long hair and scarf whipped wild by the wind. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Serolar existed in a state of curfew and of anticipation. Steam-powered mini-dirigibles issuing directives from the Governor’s Palace traveled from quarter to quarter every afternoon. Every seventh-day or so, klaxons wailed while the dirigibles advi…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io My grandfather was a rickshaw coolie. He was born in China in the late 19th century, in a tiny village upriver from the coast of Fujian province. It was a time of misfortune. The rice harvests had failed. The landlords were heartless. His mother had… Xingzhou by Ng Yi-Sheng Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2YsmaxV

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io “That’s Ifenwa,” the captain said, pointing at a smear of light almost directly overhead. Inlesh repeated the name dutifully to himself. “That’s Ontok.” A pentagon of bright sparks halfway up the sky. “They’ve each got their own names, but you don’t… Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart by Sam J. Miller Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy via Instapaper https://ift.tt/325fgRm

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io "Always." At the moment I'm standing in my darkened cabin at base camp in Mare Nubium. By headlamp only I carve a chess piece—a knight—out of moon rock. I'd crushed one earlier after Tchaikovsky called me out on a dumb move. The screen and radio cut…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io At sunfall, the sellward, the spellcaster, and the wyrmrider paused at the foot of a dune and peered at the sun wester across the Sahael, the sea of sand. They had walked thirty days and were yet to come upon an oasis, caravan, or waykeep. At this r…