via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io ECLIPSE 4 for information on how to vote. When Dennis died, he found himself in another place. Dead people came at him with party hats and presents. Noise makers bleated. Confetti fell. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. via Pocket Fields of Gold | Tor.com via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2NX8OoQ

If you want to be friends with The Other Girls, you’re going to have to give something up; this is the way it’s always been, as long as there have been Ponies.

Overtime by Charles Stross

A contemporary tale of love in all its forms — and of one robot’s quest to know it, and himself, on his own terms.

Lethe Press has been a consistent source of queer speculative fiction for more than a decade now, with an ever-expanding catalogue of writers from diverse and engaging backgrounds. In fact, some of…

When the seeds rained down from deep space, it may have been the first stage of an alien invasion—or something else entirely.

Fix the past. Save the present. Stop the future. 2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one l…

The Future is Female! is a historically-oriented anthology collecting sf written by women that spans from the early pulps to the cusp of the New Wave. All but one of the stories included were origi…

Galactic Derelict is another Andre Norton novel I almost-remember reading. I remember the opening, with a Norton Hero(TM) riding into a camp in the desert. I very vaguely remember that this iterati…

The language of the originators defines reality, every word warping the world to fit its meaning…

Being a Lady Astronaut means being twice as dedicated, and twice as good as everyone else. And sometimes, handling a test run that has turned deadly serious.

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Being a Lady Astronaut means being twice as dedicated, and twice as good as everyone else. And sometimes, handling a test run that has turned deadly serious. Mary Robinette Kowal visits an off-stage incident in her The Calculating Stars series. Sep.… Articulated Restraint | Tor.com via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2EZTDbR

When I read Steel Magic, I wondered rather plaintively if Norton would (or could) give her girl character a less trammeled role in the next book. It’s true that Sara gets to be a cat, which is cool…

An excerpt from “Second Chances”, a chilling ghost story from Megan Lindholm.

via FREE Fiction / Raindrop.io https://raindrop.io Lacking health insurance when he was diagnosed with cancer, Shawn Speakman asked friends in the science fiction and fantasy writing community to donate short stories he could use to counter mounting medical debt. via Pocket Read “Second Chances”, a Story from Megan Lindholm Featured in Unfettered III | Tor.com via Instapaper https://ift.tt/2tZMlyw

A powerful near future story about two people on a whale-processing rig: one a researcher, the other a worker—and the discovery they make by listening to whale song.

A woman in New York City finds herself doomed to perpetually celebrate her early-mid-life birthday, cycling through the same rote interactions with friends and searching for a way to escape the pat…

Everyone turns up for a car chase at the end of the world, and the cars won’t start. Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men is a movie of exquisite direction, and I’m madly in love with…

Egypt, 1912. In an alternate Cairo infused with the otherworldly, the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities investigate disturbances between the mortal and the (possibly) divi…

The story of a freed slave and a robot professor, trying to figure out what it means to be in love while they watch old anime from the 21st century.

There is no single archetype of the female time traveler. She may be a young newlywed on her honeymoon, or a septuagenarian acting as a secret government weapon. She is black, or white, or from a f…

When I heard of Chronin: The Knife At Your Back, the first in a time-travel graphic novel duology, I was intrigued. A comic set in 1864 Japan, featuring a time-travelling female college student fro…

2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment.

Time travel occurs in contexts both science fictional and fantastical. Stories centered around it can explore the bizarre paradoxes that it generates, or lose the reader in the thrills or dangers t…

I’m coming to the conclusion that Kate Heartfield may be the author whose work proves the exception to my “time travel stories never satisfy me” rule. Time travel is messy, and in…

A dog detective is hired by a female human to investigate a murder that she committed. But of course, all is not as it seems.

I was about a third of the way through Robert Jackson Bennett’s Foundryside when I realized I was reading a fantasy novel about the future. Not in any literal sense, so far as I know; this is a sec…

In this new biweekly series, we’ll be exploring the evolution of both major and minor figures in Tolkien’s legendarium, tracing the transformations of these characters through drafts and early manu…

A dog detective is hired by a female human to investigate a murder that she committed. But of course, all is not as it seems.

I didn’t grow up reading superhero comics. There wasn’t any real reason why, except perhaps that none of the adults around me did. It does mean, though, that when I talk to people about comics, and…