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...

The dose hits, blindsiding me with a gentle, warm light, and at once each of my trembled breaths is filled with a sweet taste like water ice. I will float over every ache and smooth over every edge until I indulge in the deliberate, ponderous, redshifted joy of living. And indulge it is. Even though […]

The country was at just over ten thousand deaths the morning that the door appeared. On Kosmo’s phone NPR was interviewing a doctor with a nasal voice about the need for social distancing, while Kosmo himself collected empty cans from around his home office. They were everywhere. Walls of recyclable cans dominated his room. Just […]

“Ambition!” Trevor emphasized, rapping knuckles hard on the wood table. “That is what makes the great men!” He took a satisfied swallow from his mug. Across from him, Barnaby put down the daily he’d been reading and sipped from his own beer. Pulling out a handkerchief to dab froth from his lips, he scratched thoughtfully […]

We’ve travelled for weeks to find something like this—not the planet, but its ring, swirling iridescent with icy blues and silver. A bounty of water.

Continued from Part 1) Kite was still curled into a bundle of blankets in front of the stove when Setti woke. The old woman sniffed, torn between surprise and annoyance. She’d have figured him for a…

Setti knew the woman for a ghost the moment she appeared. It was the pink hair that gave her away, short and spiky. Real people didn’t have hair like that. Also, you couldn’t see the scratchmarks on…

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

War is a dinner party. My ladies and I have spent the dregs of summer making ready. We have hung garlands of pennyroyal and snowberries in the snug, familiar halls of Laburnum Castle, strained cheese as pure as ice for weeks in the caves and the kitchens, covered any gloomy stone with tapestries or stags’ heads with mistletoe braided through their antlers. We sent away south to the great markets of Mother-of-Millions for new silks and velvets and furs.

Author: Allie Nava They say your life flashes before you as you fold into the arms of death, and perhaps that is what happened to me when I lost those eight minutes and twenty seconds. I was a child peddling gleeful “whee’s” on a red bicycle, over a calming ocean of green hillocks. I was […]

Answer 1: Your mother was right. I get pissed off upset too easily, and I can’t be trusted with money. I can make a lot of excuses but the clearest answer is she’s always been right about our fights everything. She thinks your best chances are by her raising you with her folks. The mines aren’t […]

The Lightning Road cuts far across the Cosmos, a streak of dazzling gold amidst the star-studded void.

Author: Elizabeth Hoyle “There don’t need to be multiple universes for me to fall in love with you over and over again,” Michael said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “One lifetime must be enough, though there is no such thing as too much time with you. I’ve seen you as a daughter, […]

At age nineteen, Robot Girl had dropped out of the most prestigious university in the country, had no objectives in life, and was now stuck pet sitting for the lovely lesbian couple at her old church.

Potemora in the Triad By Sara S. Messenger   There are always three: the father, the unfather, and the child. That’s why Vriskiaab threw my unfather off his back after she bore my baby sister, or so Vriskiaab tells me when he stops in the shade of a dune, his massive scales warm under my […]

Author: Morrow Brady I was beside myself, beside myself. I looked across at where I was and could see through me to where I was again. All three of me there. Two lesser versions of the original. And me, the least version, knowing far less than the lesser version. Content to be ignorant of the […]

Author: Hillary Lyon Kaz tumbled through the centrifugal force of the prismatic vortex, finally landing on the planet’s surface with a cruel thud. Medical nanobots lining the interior of his suit immediately went to work, infusing themselves through the pores of his skin, worming their way into his bloodstream. From there, the minuscule bots traveled […]

You are walking down a winter road that carves a gentle arc through a forest of hemlock and fir.

We had thought ourselves safe, but then you found us in our little ship.

Part 1 The soldiers made no secret of their arrival; far from it. The lead pair of riders galloped into the outer courtyard below, scattering the peacocks, who set up a furious and discordant song …

Author: Dave Ludford Had he been walking at a faster pace or with any real sense of purpose Ryan Jennings would have missed it completely. Scuffing the forest floor aimlessly however with first one foot then the other, his meanderings revealed something that he at first thought was some kind of weird seed or pod […]

"Madwomen" from EVERY DROP IS A MAN'S NIGHTMARE by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, recommended by Molly Antopol

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….”…

Aden had never once forgotten his gear for bulk trash day, but he found it touching that Nura still taped a monthly reminder note on the door from the kitchen to the garage. Sweet of her to remember, given how exhausted med school had her these days. He ducked out to the garage to toss […]

During one of the much smaller disasters that preceded the really big disaster, I met a lot of my neighbors online. I can’t remember if we set up the WhatsApp group because of the pandemic or the civil disorder or both. My Minneapolis block had always been reasonably friendly—people would take their kids around on […]

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