Stories

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io It had been a very near thing. Alexander Jones spent several minutes enjoying the simple pleasure of still being alive. Then he looked around. via Pocket - THE SHERIFF OF CANYON GULCH via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2C80Lkz

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io The first robot in the world came walking over green hills with sunlight aflash off his polished metal hide. via Pocket - Quixote and the Windmill via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2UpWoIM

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io “What?” Bardie Makem looked up from the Jefferson militiaman who had bled to death. She wondered why the corps-mech couldn’t read its own monitors. Except that it was supposed to return any remains. Families always preferred to know their relatives … - A Sleeping Humpty Dumpty Beauty by Anne McCaffrey via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2TDTa77

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Early in his promising career as a new writer of hard sf (and the promises have been more than kept), Larry Niven wrote this story of the first two men on Venus, though, since this was Venus as the latest planetary probes had shown it to be, so “on”… - BECALMED IN HELL by Larry Niven via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2J2cHKk

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io WILL THE SPACE OCEAN HAVE GEMS? Let’s get Columbus out of the way first. But don’t worry, he’ll be back for a curtain call. via Pocket - WILL THE SPACE OCEAN HAVE GEMS by Hank Davis via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2TDSAWZ

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Pete felt so bad about Tobur getting killed on his account, that Uncle Gunnar and Aunt Edith were afraid at first they’d have take him to a psychiatrist in Stellamont. But they finally talked him around. “It wasn’t your fault, Pete,” Uncle Gunnar sa… - The Green Thumb via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2J1L6sT

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io WE HAVE ALWAYS had our broken men, and I suppose we always shall. Nobody pays them any special heed. They are harmless, almost invisible, bits of wreckage that drift about until they sink from sight or the waves cast them ashore to lie among empty s… - Dereliction by Poul Anderson via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2TxlE2D

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io “Why not?” he asked, suddenly wondering if this was going to be as much fun as he had thought. It had been a sort of disappointing trip from Sol, days and days locked inside the metal walls of the spaceship. via Pocket - The Acolytes via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2TDT7rX

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io The first contestant worth mentioning wore manticore fur. The fibers, a deep shade of gunmetal, tapered to points of polished basalt. Ruffs of black cockatrice feathers bounced at his collar and cuffs as he swaggered down an aisle lined with twisted… Strange Horizons - The Skinwalkers Ball By Hammond Diehl, Art by Helen Mask via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ITWze9

by Michelle Geoga Penelope was already thinking having some babies would make her feel better then she found one at the Kmart, a sleepy one with long dark lashes, tiny fist balls clen…

By now you’ve probably seen “Cat Person”, that New Yorker story going around about a young woman in her early twenties dating a shitty dude in his mid-thirties. via Pocket

Author: Brooks C. Mendell Day jobbers think offices clean themselves. They show up in the morning at their desks, put down their gourmet coffee on coasters their kids made, flick the mouse and check the Inbox without wondering who swept the floors o…

Beneath a stark winter hue that washes but never cleans a young woman lays naked, the cold winds filthy besom scratching as it dusts her with crystals that flurry as ash. The upward gaze that meets it is as vacant as it is piercing. via Pocket

via Pocket

A Devil’s Trade | 365tomorrows via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2PX4o1t

The Sinking of Stones. – The MDQ via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2RktGa3

NASA died two hundred and three nautical miles above the planet Mars. It died when Daniel Chen, the last surviving crew member of Pilgrim 2, ran out of breathable atmosphere. At that point, Chen pulled himself close to the nearest camera lens. via P…

Farren opened the door to the bailiffs and let them in. They pushed into the apartment wordlessly, and began to itemise her former life, ticking boxes on clipboards while they opened drawers and rifled shelves. via Pocket

I’m fourteen the first time I bargain with the indigo snake. I find it basking on the rocks that are piled against the south side of our house, a lazily drawn line of black, like a cursive letter that has gotten away from itself. It lifts its head a…

Tribute - Lightspeed Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ytSJAH

The Zeppelidrone hovered soundlessly outside the window blinking its countdown, indicating less than twenty minutes to make our decision to sign the contract. via Pocket

The Astronaut Tier – Jonathan Laidlow – Metaphorosis Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2yzgB5U

Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake - Lightspeed Magazine via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2O5XzZG

I’m sorry I waited so long to tell you this, but I really hate your vacation cabin. Everything about it creeps me out. The sound of crickets at night makes my skin crawl. via Pocket

Use the photograph above as the inspiration for your flash fiction story. Write whatever comes to mind (no sexual, political, or religious stories, jokes, or commentary, please) and after you PROOFREAD it, submit it as your entry in the comments sec…

“London is ours! Zero-ing in on infamy!” announced Haggard Elsson, winking to the air steward and striding purposefully from the First Class exit from BA0171 with his Executive Assistant Freya trailing him, awkwardly wheeling both of their suitcases…

Paris is a city of many things — lights, sounds, whispers… and cats. Cats haunt modern Paris like fur-clad ghosts — whiskered faces through window panes, gray mousers plying their trade in alleyways, rooftop cats and cats who sleep and dream curled …

I let the children play with the lions because I decided that it was part of their education to examine life from another planet. This was after I ordered a box of domestic cats but many of my students, the boys in particular, didn’t know their own …

Grampa Don hated houseflies. To hear him talk you’d think there weren’t no flies in Chicago, but we visited once and there were flies a’plenty, I assure you. But when Grampa stayed with us he was forever complaining about flies in the house. via Poc…

Her fingers are young but they feel wrapped in the heft of ancient mountains as she writes. Her nails are blotched with ink but she remembers the taste of the paint, that which she mined from beneath their tips as she thought with the edge of her te…