Author : Rachelle Shepherd We stopped at the Drug Market for clone-cloves, street illegal copies of Indonesian spice and porn-shop perfume. They were thick rolls of black steel with bands of gold in a no-nonsense plastic wrap pack. Even their cellophane slip was less than legal litter, a fine of 50 credits and community service […]

Author : Dakota Brown “We are born out of darkness,” she told herself begrudgingly. “Certainly it holds no true power.” Around her, the frightened masses had gathered (after, of course, a stretch of panicked footfalls and curses towards the heavens). They found each other in the confusion, linking arms and muttering their fears. The generators […]

Author : Rodger Parr If you have ever awoken in the morning to find yourself with the body of a human and the head of an insect then you must surely empathise if not at least sympathise with me. For it was with this strange dilemma that I awoke to one Sunday morning. At first […]

Author : Willis Weatherford The piercing rays of a fiery star filtered through thickly opaque clouds to light Gerder’s face with a rosy hue: his first dawn on NovaTerra. As he peered through the narrow hatch of Probe Alpha 7, allowing his eyes to adjust to the relative brightness, a few motes of dust floated […]

Author : Jenna Bilbrey A breeze rustled through the corn field, drying the sweat from the day’s planting. The sky twinkled brighter than the Fourth of July. A shooting star rocketed past. I wished for my girl to come back from the city. Another, brighter light flashed. Two in one night was a good omen. […]

Author : Sean Kavanagh The 3rd Planet-Formation Cadre sounded like an impressive title, but Dhan – like the others in his team – knew all it meant was that they were civil servants. Civil servants who got to fly about the galaxy seeding life on far flung barren planets, but all for mid-grade pay. For […]

Author : Britny Musson I was singing in my sleep again. “And then there was none, and then there was all.” My throat is dry but the words still manage to croak out. Something is different, today. My sleep is being compromised, my mood is shuddering under the weight of my transition. I try to […]

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer He scanned the desolate horizon through ancient hollow eyes from beneath the brim of a very weathered top hat. All around him was the smoldering ruin that had once been the world of man. Endless heaps of scorched garbage and piles of twisted and rotting corpses were set against […]

Author : Denis Bell Morbid fear, for God’s sake. Driving home from the shrink, Hugh turned on the car radio in an attempt to blot out the thoughts churning in his head. The radio was tuned to WPB. It was Science Monday and they were discussing Hugh’s least favorite subject in the whole world, that […]

Author : Stivi Cooke They didn’t think about that… In all the plans, all the awesome designs, the mind blowing concepts, all the calculations, the deals, the engineering and finally the launch… they forgot that part… As humanity reached out to the planets and the asteroids, landed and started to colonize the Moon (china), Mars […]

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer One world. Seven hundred and ninety-two people. Less than a hundred berths on the ship out. It’s a recipe for bloody mayhem and that’s how they want it. Only the most committed make it to upship. We did basic training for five weeks before being shipped out here in […]

Author : Stefan Aeschbacher The ancient city had been buried for over five thousand years. The digbots were digging at this spot for two hours, fifteen minutes and thirty-five seconds. They were making good progress. So far they had found three plates and a container of unknown purpose. Due to the ideal conditions at this […]

Author : Andrew D. Murrell I awoke. I could still feel the remnants of foreign thoughts gently receding from my consciousness. Then I felt today’s check deposit into my account, twenty one thousand dollars. Minimum wage jobs just don’t pay like they used to do they? I waited to feel the disconnect signal and then […]

Charlie Stross writes: [W]hile working on the novel that was to become Space Cadet, Heinlein warned his agent that the inclusion of an ethnically diverse cast was not only deliberate—it was non-neg…

The title of this post is my considered response to Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. It was my response when I first read it at twelve, and it’s still my response reading it to…

Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen, today announced that by early July 2012, their entire list of e-books will be available DRM-free. “Our authors and re…

The Hero and the Crown isn’t a title that leads you to expect anything unusual, but the novel attached to it is very different from a standard fantasy in some interesting ways. It was publish…

If the medium is indeed the message then it seems like the crossover of a prose writer into the world of screenwriting would be as extreme as a unicorn turning into a panda. And though we can conce…

Concept artist Mark Molnar has been having some fun doing some Dune speed paintings as a personal project…. Makes us wish some studio would give the movie another go.

The Daily Express is claiming today that a “mole” in the Doctor Who camp has revealed that we’re getting a female Twelfth Doctor in the form of Sherlock alum Lara Pulver after a M…

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) have announced the finalists for this year’s Nebula Awards, the Ray Bradbury Award, and the Andre Norton Award. Needless to say, Tor.…

Blackout and All Clear are one book, conveniently bound in two volumes. Don’t read them out of order, don’t read one without the other. In 1982, Connie Willis wrote a novelette called Firewatch. It…

The heroes are eager to sail to Troy for war, but the wind is still. To fill their sails and set out, they must sacrifice Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia — and how does a human girl beco…

Beautiful story, but painful. Sad.

In a universe of harsh interstellar conflict, the practice of interspecies diplomacy — when possible — is important. So being a Colonial Union officer attached to an interplanetary dipl…