Fictional Worlds

Author: Alastair Millar Heeeeeeey starfolks, it’s me, the Galaxian Gourmet, back to bring you the lowdown on another extraterrestrial eatery! This week, we’re on Marchioness Prime, checking out the famous Black Hole Brasserie, this is an episode you DON’T want to miss! Before we get into that, don’t forget to check out our sponsors, who […]

Author: E.L. Rose There are certain affordances that come with knowing your death can never be permanent. With every new reincarnation, you become a little wiser. The slate never gets wiped completely clean; you’re like a palimpsest of every life you’ve lived before, an old soul being rewritten indefinitely until every fragment of the past […]

Author: Soramimi Hanarejima After breakfast, I put on my smartglasses and launch Unfray. Even though lunch with her is still hours away, I need to get ready, need to gird my psyche. When the app opens, I’m met with an announcement that it’s going the subscription service route. Like so many of its ilk. While […]

Author: Chris Bullard Damn, now I’ve forgotten what I was saying, but it’ll come to me, eventually. Well, when you get to be my age, I suppose you have to expect the occasional “senior moment.” I thank God that my mind can still operate at a reasonable level of efficiency after eight decades of neurological […]

Author: James Flanagan Iain opened the car door for his father, Tom, inviting him to exit. “Three decades I worked for those uncouth S.O.B.s,” Tom muttered. “I raised you kids…of all the betrayals…” “I’ve heard great things about this retirement home,” Iain said, pleading with his father to step out of the car. “It’s affordable…” […]

Author: Kelian Quinn It certainly was some kind of plant. Maybe. I’d gone out to water the small garden my apartment complex had allowed me to have, hoping that I would find something other than dandelions this morning. Even if I didn’t, any moment away from my roommate was a moment I cherished. It sat […]

Author: Meg Carey I’m reaching around in the dark, touching up and down your soft, slimy body as you heave long sighs beside me. You’ve been asleep for a few days now, and I don’t know how long this is supposed to go on for. I press my face into your crocodile skin, I let […]

Author: Lora Kilpatrick When you wake up, they tell you not to look in the mirror. You feel cocky like always, so you float over to the bathroom when they release you. You expect to see the person you were before you died. It comes as a shock to realize you’re just a floating board […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The sirens start to wail behind us. I hate this bit. “Time to do one!” Adey swings his backpack onto his shoulders as he starts running, dodging the spotlight of a hunting drones as he goes. Must be nice, being that fit. “Auntie Jin?” I look down at Little Em. […]

Author: Hillary Lyon “Hey, citizen!” A voice rasped from the shadowed alleyway. Bhodi glanced at the man but kept walking. “I said, hail citizen!” Bhodi stopped to look in the man’s direction. “Yeah, you,” the man rasped, waving Bhodi over. He approached the old man, assuming he wanted to sell him a contraband gadget. Grinning, […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer “Have you decided, Jared?” Eagle. The disk spins high into the air in the low gravity, polished metal reflecting the light from the fires about him. Jared smiles. If he had the acuity of vision, he could probably distinguish the reflections from the spotlights of the waiting army. Watching from […]

Author: Majoki I fancy myself quite a reader. I mean, I read everything. Everything. Even “Know your 8-inch Howitzer” published in 1984 by the Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command. I’m not particular. I wasn’t programmed to be. I’m a brute force. Scraping and scooping up every bit of […]

Author: Cliff McNish Eventually, once we’d screwed up everything in the ecosystem, Naomi and I were the final ones left – the last man and woman on Earth. Unfortunately, we didn’t get on. We felt some vague responsibility to repopulate the world, but kept avoiding sex. We did it politely, but even so. ‘Mm, what […]

Author: Timons Esaias This would be a nice planet, if not for all these places where the seabottom is sticking up out of the worldocean. It is most unseemly and immature. We are trying to be generous about it, trying to convince ourselves that this planet is too young, that the worldocean will tear down […]

Author: Mark Renney Darren had come to dread having to decompress. He wasn’t alone and yet no-one was talking about it, even the media were quiet on the subject but then hardly anyone now was exempt. The evidence was everywhere and decompressing people had become a commonplace sight across the city. Old people, old bodies, […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The corridor is just far enough off-true that it messes with your vision and balance if you’re not careful. Or if part of you relies on an exoskeleton to function. “You okay there, Zeno?” I flick a glance and grin towards Leroy. “I’m seventy-one, godammit. Been doing this war shit […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The microwave is telling tales on me. I had an extra chocolate pudding I took from the restaurant. The family left and it was just sitting there unopened. So I took it. I’m recycling. But the bloody microwave scanned the barcode. I heard it: ‘mmmzzt’. It knows the pudding didn’t […]

Author: Jenny Abbott For Harold Culpepper, the concept of dying had, until now, seemed like a relatively abstract event—something everyone had to do at some point, but tried not to think about and avoided discussing in polite settings. But now, as he lay bleeding by the darkened roadside, he was forced to reassess things. Struggling […]

Author: Mark Renny When Time stopped it was harsh; a blurred still but dense and difficult to navigate. When it happened to Damien it was fleeting, only for seconds really, a few minutes at most and he simply stood still and closed his eyes and waited it out. They, the men and women in the […]

Author: Henry Peter Gribbin My name is Ben. I am a middle-aged schoolteacher from Pittsburgh. I am also a homeowner. I recently bought a house that sits on a busy street in a thriving community. The previous owners were an elderly couple who recently passed. The husband was a successful stockbroker who made his fortune […]

Author: Lynn Finger “How much to fix this glitch?” I said. “You can’t afford it,” he tossed back. We were suspended in our respective amplifications, parked in an enabled space elevator made from light. We were formed and holding in the black expanse, our talk focused by the radios in our helmets. I, waiting to […]

Author: Michael Edwards The Introduction. “He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.” — Lao Tzu As for me, it may sound rather grand, but I am called a seventh degree master of The Mountain Pathway tai chi system: movement, mantra, and meditation. Since I cannot live forever, I have encoded […]

Author: Suzanne Borchers Cedric BotIV noted the blanket of artificial feathers had slipped off the old man’s shoulders. He lifted them back onto his master. Master preferred to dream of flight and the soft feel of his blanket mellowed his dreams. Cedric BotIV whispered, “Fly, soar, and touch the sky. Dream of cottony clouds. Fly, […]

Author : Rob Burton I watch Kamille comb her beautiful dark hair, and I can’t help but wonder what horror now grows inside her. She’s from a fine family, well respected travelling merchants, with enough money to have selected the best from amongst many possible children, with some low-level inconspicuous enhancements thrown in for good […]

Author: Nisheé An enormous clear lake mirrored the cosmos. Water and sky danced in unison as the rhythm of the waves echoed from the sapphire mountain cliffs on the other side. A warm breeze blew through the rows of magenta palm trees that lined the white sand shore. An occasional beep from our trusty aqua-droid […]

Author: Tobias Hope Young The falling star landed about fifteen years back. Killed everything in a ten-mile radial. Science folks say it did this by changing the center of cavity in the area. Ya see cavity is the thing that keeps us from floating away, and the center of cavity is at the center of […]

Author: Ruhsen Dogan Nar “Here it comes, get ready!” shouted Mehmet from atop a heap of dirt dumped two nights ago. Ali’s high-pitched, adolescent voice echoed from the roof of a three-story building at the entrance of a shantytown adjacent to Izmir’s skyscrapers: “I’m ready, bring it on.” Ali, unusually tall for his age, carefully […]

Author: Mark Renney The ‘Visage Wipe’ was promoted as a grand project. The language the campaign used was both simplistic and pompous. It was claimed it would unite us and yet only those aged between fourteen and twenty-four were eligible. For anyone older, it had been decided it was too late and we couldn’t be […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Don gives Ted a grin, then turns back to the dishevelled man standing in front of them. “Tell me again.” Ted snickers quietly. “I liked the bit where she rode in on a dinosaur.” The man sighs. “Short version: we’ve been messing with time travel for too long. We’ve broken […]

Author: Majoki I plotted interplanetary trajectories with a buggy whip. I routed the whole of the Infonet with a dot-dot-dash-dot. I was the perfect blend of the new and old. And loony as a toon. They called me Quantum Annie. My processing schizophrenia can be traced to the great integer overflow of 2038. Becoming self […]