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

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

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

She had never slept so well as when she was in space. Even when she dreamed that gray, dome-headed aliens were tapping at the windows of the shuttle. Karen sat up in the bed when she heard the bot coming, though it took some painful effort. via Pock… Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy When Home, No Need to Cry by Erin K. Wagner via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2Eq9zCI via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Aimee’s big trick is that she makes 26 monkeys vanish on stage. She pushes out a claw-foot bathtub and asks audience members to come up and inspect it. The people climb in and look underneath, touch the white enamel, run their hands along the little…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Towering cliffs topped with bright lush greenery. Cold clean waves crashing against the stone below, sleek gray clouds swirling through the unbound sky above. A woman dances along the edge, her long hair and scarf whipped wild by the wind. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Serolar existed in a state of curfew and of anticipation. Steam-powered mini-dirigibles issuing directives from the Governor’s Palace traveled from quarter to quarter every afternoon. Every seventh-day or so, klaxons wailed while the dirigibles advi…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io My name is Tetley Abednego and I am the most hated girl in Garbagetown. I am nineteen years old. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io It’s a very old trope in fantasy stories and games: the wizard or healer who needs an incredibly rare, delicate, or deadly flower, leaf, root, or bark for a critical bit of magic, and the plant from which it grows may only be found an inconvenient d…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io You couldn’t talk about the Helmets, which looked pretty ordinary displayed in a glass case in the lobby of the Smash Pad, the converted mattress warehouse where we practiced. via Pocket

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io "Always." At the moment I'm standing in my darkened cabin at base camp in Mare Nubium. By headlamp only I carve a chess piece—a knight—out of moon rock. I'd crushed one earlier after Tchaikovsky called me out on a dumb move. The screen and radio cut…

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io “That’s Ifenwa,” the captain said, pointing at a smear of light almost directly overhead. Inlesh repeated the name dutifully to himself. “That’s Ontok.” A pentagon of bright sparks halfway up the sky. “They’ve each got their own names, but you don’t… Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart by Sam J. Miller Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy via Instapaper https://ift.tt/325fgRm

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io My grandfather was a rickshaw coolie. He was born in China in the late 19th century, in a tiny village upriver from the coast of Fujian province. It was a time of misfortune. The rice harvests had failed. The landlords were heartless. His mother had… Xingzhou by Ng Yi-Sheng Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2YsmaxV

My daughter fell from the top of the world. She tripped, she gripped, she slipped, and she fell. Into three kilometers of open air. I have a desk. Everyone on the atmospheric entry project thinks it’s the quaintest thing. They can’t understand it. v…

The path to enlightenment is through obedience to wisdom, and who is wiser than the Everlasting Emperor? via Pocket

[CC] Welcome online, Cybernetic Elbow Model CI953-L. This is your introductory Initial Boot orientation. You are currently in a locked and muted configuration while external medical systems run diagnostics to see that your replacement procedure has …

It was the end of all chaos. The room was clouded with murky smog. Ling Xi had coughed herself awake. via Pocket

When we set out to weave a new world from the old, broken one, we knew we pledged the lives of our clutches and our clutches’ clutches to wandering the wastes. via Pocket

It was midsummer when I arrived in Corcaigh from Sadbhsfort, and the famine parties were in full swing. I don’t know if you remember the posters for them—in a vibrant shawl, a red-headed woman stands, holding a twin in each arm. via Pocket

The rooftop is quiet except for the hum of a plane passing overhead, heading to a faraway elsewhere. The sharp stench of ammonia rises from the bucket hanging from your window-cleaning belt. via Pocket

The sky was a thick nuclear gray over the parkade where Bo and Violet were scanning the streets for Bo’s othermother. Violet sat on the hood of a battered white Nissan, while Bo watched from the edge with his elbows hooked over the railing. via Pock…

There is a silent war that is waging on every surface of the planet, in every droplet of water, and on the skin and within the bodies of everyone you know. It’s hypothesized by some that this war began near the dawn of life on Earth. via Pocket

Little fists, clenching: one of the cameras, set to motion-cap, zoomed on them automatically. Two others watched the adults, mother, father on opposite sides of the room. The machines watched the players: half a world away, Stavros watched the machi…

Earth began to rise over the lunar hills as the Mighty Slinger and the Rovers readied the Tycho stage for their performance. via Pocket

A Lei was a young worker at the 045 Meat Union factory on Continent Three in starship Rhea. When the dinosaur uprising overwhelmed the factory, he used a hunting rifle to drop two great beasts that got in his way. via Pocket

It was a century ago today that you found the spark of life in this freeze-dried valley of death. via Pocket

“You sent this good for nothing wimp to me?” Her pointed finger inched upwards in the air until it settled on my face. Meixiu pulled back her finger and formed her other hand into a cup, tracing her right finger along the inside of the palm of her l…

Halfway up the winding cliffside guideway, Zhang Lei turned his bike around. He was exhausted from three days of travel and nauseated, too, but that wasn’t the problem. He could always power through physical discomfort. via Pocket

For weeks, Sprite had told herself that Ratchanee Malakul was helping her hero get better, but no. “You have to accept that Jaran is never going to have sex with you,” the lifeguide told Sprite, as she was leaving on that last day. “You’re wrong,” s…

At the nurses station, Qina and Auntie Han were the only two left on duty. Everyone else had already gone home, relief flooding their faces as they exited the ward. Qina wasn’t her usual carefree self—but who could blame her? She was in the middle o…