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.

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 […]

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.

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 […]

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 […]

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….”…

Carmen would have expected a gold necklace or tarnished antique, maybe some money or a secret family recipe card, but she’d never dreamed her grandmother would try to immortalize herself through an inheritance like this. via Pocket via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 702 Inheritance - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2qnrR48

Points of Origin Most people who have reached their eighties without raising children have every right to believe that they will go on not raising them, and Judith and I were no different until the day they turned up with the social worker, neatly s… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io I didn’t go back to the Junior Colonists’ Lounge for a whole week. Instead, I spent the time with my dad, who seemed pleasantly surprised that his son wanted to hang out with him. It made me feel bad, like I’d been neglecting him. via Pocket

Raya eases power into the singularity engine and all her senses sharpen with the glorious, brutal reality of the moment: dead ahead there’s the blacklight-purple disk of Wolf-Rayet 104, twenty-eight subjective minutes before it goes core-collapse su… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 697 The Last Stellar Death Metal Opera - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/307B7Wc

If you are reading this, your Loved One has died. We are sorry for your loss. via Pocket via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 696 The Homunculi's Guide to Resurrecting Your Loved One From Their Electronic Ghosts - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/32ugG7t

Every night I come home and I drink. I trade away the hope, the guilt, the fear, even the love–I think it’s love, crazy as it seems. I trade them for oblivion, because otherwise I won’t sleep at all. via Pocket via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 695 This Is As I Wish To Be Restored (Flashback Friday) - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Zx80Lx

Martian Chronicles They say you can’t smell anything through a launch-hood, but I still smelled the pove in the next seat as the space-attendants strapped us into our acceleration couches and shone lights in our eyes and triple-checked the medical r… via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 688 A Most Elegant Solution - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/32iW2I5 I always said I wanted to be one of the first to die on Mars. I never wanted to be the last. But here I am. I can’t even tell the others apart now. I know that inside those vaguely undulating metal cocoons are the bodies of the rest of my team—Marsh…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Naru Dames Sundar writes speculative fiction and poetry. His work has appeared at PodCastle, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons and is forthcoming at Shimmer Magazine. He lives in the redwoods of Northern california. You can find him online at www.shardof… Escape Pod 605 Straight Lines - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2j3bBC4

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 691 Lab B-15 (Part 1 of 2) - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Mw8Y84 The young man was sitting outside the parking garage, and right away Jerry thought that was weird. This was the Arizona desert, middle of summer. People didn’t sit outside. They especially didn’t sit outside ugly parking garages, on strips of hot co…

Sophia squinted in the golden California sun that fell on her through the huge windows of the conference room. She wanted to pinch herself to be sure she wasn’t dreaming. She was here, really here, on the hallowed campus of Semaphore Pictures, in an… Escape Pod 686 Real Artists (Flashback Friday) - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2xdXLjG via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Escape Pod 690 The Things (Flashback Friday) - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/3326mVs The names don’t matter. They are placeholders, nothing more; all biomass is interchangeable. What matters is that these are all that is left of me. The world has burned everything else. I see myself through the window, loping through the storm, wear…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io When Leon Kenner left the planet of Acceptance, he asked me to go with him back to Earth. I belonged with people like me, like him. No, that isn’t where I should start. Stories should be told in chronological order to make them easy to understand. v… Escape Pod 689 Spectrum of Acceptance - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2JE4lXF

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io AUTHOR: Caroline M. Yoachim NARRATOR: Nicola Seaton-Clark HOST: Tina Connolly Caroline M. Yoachim lives in Seattle and loves cold cloudy weather.  Her fiction has appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and Daily S… EP543 Rock, Paper, Scissors, Love, Death - Escape Pod via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2d5nPDh

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io