Sci-Fi

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The sirens start to wail behind us. I hate this bit. “Time to do one!” Adey swings his backpack onto his shoulders as he starts running, dodging the spotlight of a hunting drones as he goes. Must be nice, being that fit. “Auntie Jin?” I look down at Little Em. […]

Author: Hillary Lyon “Hey, citizen!” A voice rasped from the shadowed alleyway. Bhodi glanced at the man but kept walking. “I said, hail citizen!” Bhodi stopped to look in the man’s direction. “Yeah, you,” the man rasped, waving Bhodi over. He approached the old man, assuming he wanted to sell him a contraband gadget. Grinning, […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer “Have you decided, Jared?” Eagle. The disk spins high into the air in the low gravity, polished metal reflecting the light from the fires about him. Jared smiles. If he had the acuity of vision, he could probably distinguish the reflections from the spotlights of the waiting army. Watching from […]

Author: Majoki I fancy myself quite a reader. I mean, I read everything. Everything. Even “Know your 8-inch Howitzer” published in 1984 by the Department of the Army, Headquarters, US Army Armament, Munitions and Chemical Command. I’m not particular. I wasn’t programmed to be. I’m a brute force. Scraping and scooping up every bit of […]

Author: Cliff McNish Eventually, once we’d screwed up everything in the ecosystem, Naomi and I were the final ones left – the last man and woman on Earth. Unfortunately, we didn’t get on. We felt some vague responsibility to repopulate the world, but kept avoiding sex. We did it politely, but even so. ‘Mm, what […]

Author: Timons Esaias This would be a nice planet, if not for all these places where the seabottom is sticking up out of the worldocean. It is most unseemly and immature. We are trying to be generous about it, trying to convince ourselves that this planet is too young, that the worldocean will tear down […]

A man using a social media app that reaches across dimensions to talk to himself in different timelines, discovers some of his problems are universal...and some are not...

Always had the sages known that they would come. The first princess, in her bed of jewels and smelted gold, had dreamt of them; dreamt their terrible faces, their terrible claws, their endless hunger that is greater than the mountain and deeper than the deepest-diving seam. She had wept in the night, to have such dreams, and some say that her death---as the deaths of all princesses since her---came hard and early, because she could not know the peace of slumber.

We have traveled here, to this most innocuous of country landscapes, to make good on a promise made by my grandfather, Carlton Whitmore, to a girl he loved in his youth. How foolish that sounds, writ down so! But it is true. Grandfather met her on the banks of the Bolton Strid, where she stood naked and confused, water drying on her skin. His notes state that she knew no modesty, and that “she was pale as the belly of a deep-river fish."

Tasha’s avatar smiled from the screen, a little too perfect to be true. That was a choice, just like everything else about it: When we’d installed my sister’s new home system, we had instructed it to generate avatars that looked like they had escaped the uncanny valley by the skins of their teeth. It was creepy, but the alternative was even creepier. Tasha didn’t talk. Her avatar did. Having them match each other perfectly would have been . . . wrong. “So I’ll see you next week?” she asked.

The fourth and final installment of a new serialized novella from Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey...

The third installment of a new serialized novella from Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey...

The second installment of a new serialized novella from Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey...

Introducing a new serialized novella from Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey...

An android who knows nothing besides his work in a factory, is given one final week to explore the world before he is forced to undergo mandatory reprogramming, in this bittersweet precursor to TJ Klune’s IN THE LIVES OF PUPPETS, now available in trade paperback!

Author: Mark Renney Darren had come to dread having to decompress. He wasn’t alone and yet no-one was talking about it, even the media were quiet on the subject but then hardly anyone now was exempt. The evidence was everywhere and decompressing people had become a commonplace sight across the city. Old people, old bodies, […]

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The corridor is just far enough off-true that it messes with your vision and balance if you’re not careful. Or if part of you relies on an exoskeleton to function. “You okay there, Zeno?” I flick a glance and grin towards Leroy. “I’m seventy-one, godammit. Been doing this war shit […]

In Which Caruth is Correct by Carolyn Zhao

She seemed a fairly ordinary woman, The Woman from the Other Side of the Moon. She came into the coffee shop every afternoon around three and ordered one of two things: iced tea with lemon or a small coffee with room.

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The microwave is telling tales on me. I had an extra chocolate pudding I took from the restaurant. The family left and it was just sitting there unopened. So I took it. I’m recycling. But the bloody microwave scanned the barcode. I heard it: ‘mmmzzt’. It knows the pudding didn’t […]

Author: Jenny Abbott For Harold Culpepper, the concept of dying had, until now, seemed like a relatively abstract event—something everyone had to do at some point, but tried not to think about and avoided discussing in polite settings. But now, as he lay bleeding by the darkened roadside, he was forced to reassess things. Struggling […]

Author: Mark Renny When Time stopped it was harsh; a blurred still but dense and difficult to navigate. When it happened to Damien it was fleeting, only for seconds really, a few minutes at most and he simply stood still and closed his eyes and waited it out. They, the men and women in the […]

Author: Henry Peter Gribbin My name is Ben. I am a middle-aged schoolteacher from Pittsburgh. I am also a homeowner. I recently bought a house that sits on a busy street in a thriving community. The previous owners were an elderly couple who recently passed. The husband was a successful stockbroker who made his fortune […]

Author: Lynn Finger “How much to fix this glitch?” I said. “You can’t afford it,” he tossed back. We were suspended in our respective amplifications, parked in an enabled space elevator made from light. We were formed and holding in the black expanse, our talk focused by the radios in our helmets. I, waiting to […]

Author: Michael Edwards The Introduction. “He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.” — Lao Tzu As for me, it may sound rather grand, but I am called a seventh degree master of The Mountain Pathway tai chi system: movement, mantra, and meditation. Since I cannot live forever, I have encoded […]

Author: Suzanne Borchers Cedric BotIV noted the blanket of artificial feathers had slipped off the old man’s shoulders. He lifted them back onto his master. Master preferred to dream of flight and the soft feel of his blanket mellowed his dreams. Cedric BotIV whispered, “Fly, soar, and touch the sky. Dream of cottony clouds. Fly, […]

Author : Rob Burton I watch Kamille comb her beautiful dark hair, and I can’t help but wonder what horror now grows inside her. She’s from a fine family, well respected travelling merchants, with enough money to have selected the best from amongst many possible children, with some low-level inconspicuous enhancements thrown in for good […]

Daily Science Fiction is an on-line magazine specializing in science fiction, fantasy, and everything in between. A new story is published every weekday and sent to subscribers via e-mail, and stories appear a week later on dailysciencefiction.com.

Author: Nisheé An enormous clear lake mirrored the cosmos. Water and sky danced in unison as the rhythm of the waves echoed from the sapphire mountain cliffs on the other side. A warm breeze blew through the rows of magenta palm trees that lined the white sand shore. An occasional beep from our trusty aqua-droid […]

Author: Tobias Hope Young The falling star landed about fifteen years back. Killed everything in a ten-mile radial. Science folks say it did this by changing the center of cavity in the area. Ya see cavity is the thing that keeps us from floating away, and the center of cavity is at the center of […]