If I had only learned to drive, or better yet, refused to visit my parents in their apocalyptic bunker, we’d be happily at home, cuddled on the couch in front of the Criterion collection.

The Poet Laureate was fetched from his retirement in a lighthouse on the far shore of the Founder Mer to compose a song of eighty-six interlocked stanzas like steps on a stairway spiraling down into a cool dim quiet. But on the forty-seventh stanza of its recitation, the Governor squinted into the space over the Poet's shoulder and said, "listen, any deeper and we shall hear the words those beasts sing as they pass" and demanded that the previous stanzas be read in reverse; "back to the surface," he said.

Dear Aunt Harriet, If you’re reading this note it means you survived. That’s wonderful news: I always loved you the most. The notes I sent out with Aunt Anita and the cousins are friendly letters, I promise, us being kin and all, and I surely hope they survive too. But I’m happiest about you.

While learning the ropes from a crafty Jazz Age bank robber, a young stowaway discovers their authentic self, a hidden gift, and that there are no straight lines when you run the fox roads...

Planet Lion by Catherynne M. Valente in Uncanny: A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy Issue Four.

I’m not superhero fodder.

The ocean is a woman and it is dreaming, dreaming, Ekaterina thinks as she holds the hardsuit’s arm open, ready to clip a sample.

Three pieces of toast—dark on one side, light on the other. A cup of coffee. Rosh’s preference is Blend 14, with hints of Sub-Saharan Africa and caramel, delivered tepid with more milk than expresso.