Fictional Worlds

Look at what we woke. We feed them lies and watch them burn for it. via Pocket

No one will sleep until the Princess learns the Stranger’s name. Liù the slave girl, who has loved the Stranger since before his exile, when he was a Prince, when he smiled at her—Liù alone knows who he really is. via Pocket

Strange Horizons - The Metal Eater of Luminous Smoke By Minsoo Kang via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2K1a8rm

I believe that every child in the city should learn to climb trees. City folk train their children to swim and to dance, to run and play games, to cross the horizontal plane in every possible motion, but they always ignore the vertical. via Pocket

Strange Horizons - Hide Me in the Shadow of Your Wings By Christopher Caldwell via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2K6NObS

Strange Horizons - The People Who Sleep Beneath the Waves By Malena Crawford via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2K6NXvW

Strange Horizons - Venus Witch’s Ring By Inda Lauryn via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Ou5KQY

Strange Horizons - Dying Lessons By Troy L. Wiggins via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ApJVPF

Strange Horizons - Every Good-bye Ain’t Gone By Eden Royce, Art by Geneva Benton via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2mVOPKE

Strange Horizons - Quietly Gigantic By K. C. Mead-Brewer via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2LFZ5kC

Pamela swallowed a cactus and grew spines. They shot up through her pores, inches long and thick and stiff. They lay flat with the hair on her head. Everywhere she had hair, she grew spines instead. She enjoyed it, that first day, feeling them push …

This story was first published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination (Nov/Dec 2016) and was shortlisted for the inaugural Nommo Award for best African SF short story. via Pocket

Wanda knew better than the mesmerism that swept the spacestation. She had seen plenty of it in her long life. Wanda knew what close proximity did to one another, and their ideas. see them, wanda? they would all whisper look how they all float around…

Yellow caution tape around the crucifix says: DO NOT CROSS. The irony’s not lost on me. Neither is the stench—a nauseous mix of worn hymnals, wooden pews, and the dried blood of a slain deacon. via Pocket

Strange Horizons - Tamales in Space, and Other Phrases For the Beginning Speaker By Gabriela Santiago, Art by Kali Gregan via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2PGIoYj

via Pocket

Strange Horizons - How High Your Gods Can Count By Tegan Moore, Art by Nora Potwora via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ypuPoW

Strange Horizons - The Palace of the Silver Dragon By Y. M. Pang, Art by Galen Dara via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2QkRudx

The girl does not come to Mebuyen, so Mebuyen goes to the girl. She is standing ankle-deep in the river, looking down, her mouth open. via Pocket

I was just trying to boxtroll that asshole into quitting, like I’d gotten the two guys before him to do. I swear I wasn’t trying to get him all dead and shit. It wasn’t my box that did it. via Pocket

Me gills hurting me now. Dem spots just below me ears what does plump up wid pressure and let me know dey been working too hard for too long. Let me know is time to rise. I must soon break de surface of de water and fill up me lungs wid air. via Poc…

A Magazine of Speculative Fiction

By Michelle Ann King, read by Anaea Lay 2 June 2014 Direct link: Tomorrow, We'll Go Yak Herding (mp3...

By Susan Jane Bigelow, read by Anaea Lay 19 May 2014 Direct link: Sarah's Child (mp3) In this episod...

I have outlived my parents and my little brother. My memory isn't what it used to be.

Nur remembered a paragraph from one of Tirosh's poems, from the single book he published, two years before the twentieth century came to an end: "The morning rises: another train station…"

He turned his gaze to the sculpted figures above the building’s entrance—mutilated and broken segments of human bodies—but no matter where he looked the dream was still inside him, he couldn’t get …

I haven’t even taken off my heels when my mother’s call comes in. I wonder if I should answer. The door hasn’t closed yet, and Gary is still reporting the house conditions: no milk in the fridge, s…

Bound onto a nickel disc, each one of us closes the golden circle in our separate ways to become part of an enduring fable.

The girl’s name is Lina and she works in an ice cream parlour at an airport. One morning, seeing that they’ve almost run out of pistachio flavour, she decides to open a new container and in that co…