Fictional Worlds

Searching for your next favorite story? Look no further! These bestselling authors have teamed up to offer a delightful selection of new books. Available for a limited time.

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Nineteen hundred tomorrows, and of them, only I got to see a dawn. The world below is still burning in places: unfortunate for the natives that their home arrived at the same strategically important position as the main battle fleets of two conflicting interstellar empires. I’ve tuned into their broadcasts. […]

Author: Robert White “I always thought the Kremlin or the White House would start it, you know, trip over that whatchamacallit, the nuclear football,” Erik said. “I don’t think it’s actually a football,” Alan said. “It’s a suitcase with a bunch of buttons.” “Cops jumped ship like everybody else,” Erik said. “Half the town’s looting […]

Author: Michael T Schaper Serena felt a little strange as she stepped out of the clinic and into the street. Not surprising, since she’d just made herself immortal. She stopped to check the road before going any further. It was full of people going about their business. She thought she might recognise some of them, […]

Author: Frances Koziar I had only paid for an hour of the tech, and when the end came, I wasn’t ready for it. I had a visor over my eyes, muffs on my ears, finger-control gloves on my hands, and a sensory top suit, but I didn’t feel any of it. I had gone off […]

Author: Maudie Bryant Cool water wraps around me, my skin dappled by the summer sun through the rippling surface. Laughter echoes down the shore where friends splash without care. I push back a loose strand of hair, and catch a flash of what looks like glitter clinging to my thigh. I brush at the spot, […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The loading bay is spotlessly clean – the sort of polish only drone cleaners can achieve. Of all the things officers love, shiny metal in any form still wins. “Captain Reese.” I turn to Sarah. She’s shiny too, but only in places. By the time she’s finished, she won’t reflect […]

Author: Majoki Snug in my craft, taking each spacetime curve to a smooth jazz arrangement of “Just My Imagination,” it became clear. Things were slowing. We were winding down. It’d been a good ride. Not in every age and not for everybody, but for enough of humanity, we’d experienced amazing things. In the process we’d […]

Author: Don Nigroni I’m using pen and paper to write this for a reason. Please excuse my poor penmanship. My brother, James, was quite the success. I wasn’t jealous, just proud. Of course, it wasn’t easy being second best out of two, namely, in last place. James was a respected neuroscientist, while I’m just a […]

Author: C.R. Kiegle My memories go back only three months, but I know I am older than that. Much older. I can feel it in the grit and the grinding sounds as I move, gears gone years without servicing. There’s not much time to think about how old my bones may be, however. Barbara keeps […]

Author: B.M. Gilb I have never rested because I am not built for sleep. I never tire, and I never power down. I am programmed to fight until the sky darkens, and the three suns of our planet cease to shine their endless light. Our human enemies have sleep built into them by design—a perfect […]

Author : Jason X. Bergman “You hold my amulet. I am bound to grant you three wishes. Three wishes and no more,” spoke the jinn. “I need only one,” said the prince. “My beloved Meredith, killed by the dark wizard Neirin. I want her back.” “This I cannot do,” said the jinn, shaking his head. […]

And then she fired her parting shot. "And not only that," she said, as if "that" hadn't been quite enough, "you snore horribly!" "I do not," I said. "I definitely do not snore." I was talking to her back. "You're making it up!" I was talking to the door. "Someone else would have mentioned it!" I

Santa goes down the list, pushing the team relentlessly across the black. Little girl after little girl, little boy after little boy, absent, vanished into the emptiness of the old, dying, dead uni…

Tor.com is pleased to reprint “The Difference Between Love and Time” by Catherynne M. Valente, as featured in Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance—available from Solaris. Even time travel can’t unravel love Time-travel is a way for writers to play with history and imagine different futures—for better, or worse. When romance is thrown into […]

He was standing absolutely still by a service port, staring out at the belly of the Orion docking above us. He had on a gray uniform and his rusty hair was cut short. I took him for a station engineer.

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy

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Anarchy in action or a free society

Love, friendship, and real estate, thirty years after we all stop aging.

Today, the first of August, there was something more interesting to watch than the usual Superfortress parade. Word was out that General Le May wanted to take the 509th's mission away from it. Thei…

It was an apocalyptic sector. Out of the red-black curtain of the forward sight-barrier, which at this distance from the Frontier shut down a mere twenty metres north, came every sort of meteoric horror: fission and fusion explosions, chemical detonations, a super-hail of projectiles of all sizes and basic velocities, sprays of nerve-paralysants and thalamic dopes.

Let the world tell all the lies it wants; I was there in the Year of the Children, and I know the truth. This is how it happened.

The locker room is always tense before a game. Alisa is trying to get her uniform to stay in place, counting more on safety pins and prayer than she probably should, and Birdie—true to her name—keeps whistling, which is probably going to get her slapped if she doesn’t stop soon. Cram twenty girls from opposing squads into one small space and tensions are going to flare.

The smell of damp steel assaults my nose as I walk the hall, uncomfortable boots clumping heavily with every step I force myself to take. The space is tight, confined, unyielding; it is like living inside a coral reef, trapped by the limits of our own necessary shells.

Female spotted owls have a call that doesn’t sound like it should come from a bird of prey. It’s high-pitched and unrealistic, like a squeaky toy that’s being squeezed just a little bit too hard. Lots of people who hear them in the woods don’t even realize that they’ve heard an owl. They assume it’s a bug, or a dog running wild through the evergreens, beloved chewy bone clenched tightly in its jaws.

Mist flowed through the Tulgey Wood like treacle, slow and thick and unyielding. Squeaks and muffled chitters came from the underbrush as rabbits, foxes, and adolescent toves that hadn’t sensed the weather changing were caught and drowned in the gray-white mire. It would clear by noon, burnt off by the sun, and then the scavengers would come, making a feast of the small mist-struck creatures.