Stories

Three months after the two men had pushed a needle into his thigh, Sheru learned something new about being sad. It happened just after the last of the strange dreams. They were not the kind of dreams that you’d expect a dog to have. The dreams he’d …

Look at what we woke. We feed them lies and watch them burn for it. via Pocket

No one will sleep until the Princess learns the Stranger’s name. Liù the slave girl, who has loved the Stranger since before his exile, when he was a Prince, when he smiled at her—Liù alone knows who he really is. via Pocket

Strange Horizons - The Metal Eater of Luminous Smoke By Minsoo Kang via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2K1a8rm

I believe that every child in the city should learn to climb trees. City folk train their children to swim and to dance, to run and play games, to cross the horizontal plane in every possible motion, but they always ignore the vertical. via Pocket

Strange Horizons - Hide Me in the Shadow of Your Wings By Christopher Caldwell via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2K6NObS

Strange Horizons - The People Who Sleep Beneath the Waves By Malena Crawford via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2K6NXvW

Strange Horizons - Venus Witch’s Ring By Inda Lauryn via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Ou5KQY

Strange Horizons - Dying Lessons By Troy L. Wiggins via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ApJVPF

Strange Horizons - Every Good-bye Ain’t Gone By Eden Royce, Art by Geneva Benton via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2mVOPKE

Strange Horizons - Quietly Gigantic By K. C. Mead-Brewer via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2LFZ5kC

Pamela swallowed a cactus and grew spines. They shot up through her pores, inches long and thick and stiff. They lay flat with the hair on her head. Everywhere she had hair, she grew spines instead. She enjoyed it, that first day, feeling them push …

This story was first published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination (Nov/Dec 2016) and was shortlisted for the inaugural Nommo Award for best African SF short story. via Pocket

Wanda knew better than the mesmerism that swept the spacestation. She had seen plenty of it in her long life. Wanda knew what close proximity did to one another, and their ideas. see them, wanda? they would all whisper look how they all float around…

Yellow caution tape around the crucifix says: DO NOT CROSS. The irony’s not lost on me. Neither is the stench—a nauseous mix of worn hymnals, wooden pews, and the dried blood of a slain deacon. via Pocket

Strange Horizons - Tamales in Space, and Other Phrases For the Beginning Speaker By Gabriela Santiago, Art by Kali Gregan via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2PGIoYj

via Pocket

Strange Horizons - How High Your Gods Can Count By Tegan Moore, Art by Nora Potwora via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2ypuPoW

Strange Horizons - The Palace of the Silver Dragon By Y. M. Pang, Art by Galen Dara via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2QkRudx

The girl does not come to Mebuyen, so Mebuyen goes to the girl. She is standing ankle-deep in the river, looking down, her mouth open. via Pocket

I was just trying to boxtroll that asshole into quitting, like I’d gotten the two guys before him to do. I swear I wasn’t trying to get him all dead and shit. It wasn’t my box that did it. via Pocket

Me gills hurting me now. Dem spots just below me ears what does plump up wid pressure and let me know dey been working too hard for too long. Let me know is time to rise. I must soon break de surface of de water and fill up me lungs wid air. via Poc…

Out there, in the darkness, a huge invisible animal stretched, expanding, taking possession of the air, the water, the fragile rock structure. A sudden blow, like the breath that extinguishes a can…

There are people who await their ending, in their own beds, ready for the dust to sneak into their rooms and pantries, bedrooms and basements, to lie upon the old blankets, to fill their nostrils, …

Heather Lindsley’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, and Strange Horizons. This story first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, was reprinted in Year’s Best SF #12 and Escape Pod, and has been translated into Polish and Romanian. Lindsley is also a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ …

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

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io By Divine providence, we captured the mermaid with neither loss of life nor injury to any seaman, nor any harm done to the specimen. So easily we might have passed her by without even noticing her; but the sharp young eyes of Small Jack espied her a… Strange Horizons - A Journal of Certain Events of Scientific Interest from the First Survey Voyage of the Southern Waters by HMS Ocelot, As Observed by Professor Thaddeus Boswell, D.Phil, MSc.; or, A Lullaby (Part 1 of 2) By H… https://ift.tt/2UyjfSg

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Strange Horizons has had many faces since we began in 2000, and those faces are always changing. I often refer to us as the collective—or composite, Yoon Ha Lee style—which at any given time involves 50+ creative volunteers, committed to voices new,… Strange Horizons - Fond Farewells By Vanessa Rose Phin via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2HwR0kc