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

Fill in the Blanks’ I’d had enough. And it was getting dark. And he was still talking. “They have no concern for our well-being. Why should we? After seeing that. You saw it, right? What are we supposed to do?” he said. via Pocket

It was the little things, really; lack of energy, clothes that didn’t fit anymore, excessive perspiration, the fact that I hadn’t seen my penis since 1973. via Pocket

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer Ninety-eight gazillion miles from anywhere I want to be and some teenage alley-captain and his squad manages to get the drop on me. That’ll teach me for daydreaming…

She didn’t walk every day. Only when she had time and they didn’t need her. Only when her weary body could force itself out the door to walk below the ridgeline. She told herself she walked for fitness. She knew she really walked for the fitness of …

The rabbits are government-issued. Shambolic bunnies. Bunnies with smeary eyes, with a faintly sulfurous smell about them. Bunnies splotched with white fur on brown. Bunnies full of gumption munch through buckets of grass and weeds. Don’t anthropomo…

The deer came back over and over to places it didn’t understand. The deer hated the lamp at the end of the pier. The deer wanted to die. via Pocket

Ammuya birthed five hundred gods, followed by a monster. That was her first mistake. The gods tormented the monster because they feared it. They bound it inside a black hole, and the monster’s hatred seethed. Eventually the monster raged so fiercely…

Welcome to Recommended Reading’s new Monday Commuter, our home for flash, graphic, and experimental narrative. This year we’ll save that drowning boy in the backyard pool. His arms are growing tired and his voice is hoarse from crying and chlorine. …

I sometimes visualize the tension within stories as a maze of elastic bands stretching from character to character. At any moment, someone might step backwards, pulling a band tighter, making everything more fraught. And at any moment, another might…

Art’s funeral is full of crying girls. Law thinks this should tip some of them off, but there it is. Crying girls everywhere. White flowers in their hair. Black dresses and the scent of clean underwear and Ivory soap. There’s a ghostly snake wrapped…

Edna Selwyn’s old house still hadn’t sold. It had been eight months since she died, and the house had been on the market for six. It’s true that the place was in bad shape, and Edna’s daughter had been too cheap (or too deep in mourning) to have it…

This could have been the opening to a spy thriller or a rollicking cyberpunk novel, full of chase scenes and neon lights. It certainly felt cyberpunk, being hustled back through the airport to a waiting taxi, surrounded by over-enthusiastic grifters…

An earlier version of this story, with a different title, was shortlisted in the Atlantis Short Story Contest (2013). So many solid bodies, too solid; so many murky lives. My aching lonely journey has lasted centuries. At last, I feel, the end appro…

Once upon a time, on a little island off the coast of the Korean city of Busan, there lived an old hunter in a house at the bottom of a mountain. via Pocket

This work first appeared in Bewildering Stories, Issue 636 (September 2015). Alexander Pines stamped into Louie’s Bar and Grill, shaking unseasonable snow from his Timberland boots, and exchanged a few quiet words with the bartender. via Pocket

This work first appeared in Voluted Tales, #15 (August-September 2014). The night descended on the river stealthily, transforming water into a dark mass of waves and misery. 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…

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

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 …

By the time you get this missive, the deed will be done. I think it is best this way—an old-fashioned letter and a fait accompli (that’s “an accomplished fact” for you, Raymond ? ). I know it may come as a shock to some of you. I know, Mom, you’re g…

Castle Jordan stands in a place that makes sense according to the logic of castles. It has a good view of a remote area, the better to spot siege-minded armies on the march. But castles do not fit the logic of the moon. Exposure and isolation aren’t…

But I don’t want new eyes, he thought. The surgery isn’t bad, as surgeries go. The one he had when he busted his knee ten years ago, as a teen, was much worse. Or maybe it was worse because of what it had meant: that he’d never go out on the ice aga…

Okay, this rogue robot recovery gig is getting old and I’m saying this as the tech geek of the team. So that should tell you something about our situation. via Pocket

Bella arrived late at the party, carrying a doll in a box in pink wrapping paper. She’d owned the doll when she was young, and she’d hoped Natalie would like that. Now, she wished she’d bought something. Her sister’s husband answered the door while …

Design a spaceship. Or a space station, if you prefer. Imagine an artificial planet, or a galaxy. But start with a spaceship. Start from nothing except the vacuum of space. via Pocket