That’s how I imagined the interaction playing out, anyway. In reality, they scoffed and entered into a passive-aggressive line of questioning. This as if my parents’ finances were actually of interest to the other members of my first grade class. vi…

Mei Huang considers the merit of an objection and quickly finds it inadequate. The threadbare comfort of a riposte will not put rice in her bowl, or ingots in her purse. Worse, it might even soil her reputation, diminish her standing. So many hours,…

Once again it was that horrid time of year when the cashmere silk spiders crept from the bowels of the city of the angels and spun their pale web across its spires and domes, and Lukas the vendor of miracle tea felt a deep shudder begin in his testi…

Astor did not want to discuss their coping plan. They didn’t want to think about their coping plan, or the trip itself, or the airport, or the subway, or— “No, thank you.” It had been worth a shot. “Never mind.” via Pocket

It made headlines. It was the talk of social media for a week which is, like, forever. No one knew who and that was cause for amazement too; since World Citizenship came online there simply weren’t any unknowns left. It was crazy! via Pocket

Sean sighed as he leaned his head back against the tree. The good ones always left him with this amalgamation of thoughts and feelings, this clash of excitement and longing with the realization of routine and boredom. via Pocket

From H.G. Wells’s tripod-controlling Martians to Douglas Adams’s poetry-loving Vogons, from the cosmic horrors of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos to the scholarly Sorns of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, science fiction writers and readers alike have long be…

To-Do List for July 18, 2039 Kill my duplicate from another dimension. Get rid of all this stupid kale. Top Five Reasons I Hate Kale Kale is like broccoli that wishes it were lettuce, or lettuce that wishes it were broccoli. Get your own identity, k…

Three and a half hours to interview, 270 miles to LA, 94 mph The mass of writhing tentacles that slithered onto the passenger seat a minute ago probably isn’t a hallucination. Correction: given that I had to blow into a tube to start this rental, it…

She’s four years old, wearing footie pajamas with giraffes on them, and she wants the moon. She’s very specific about when and where. She would like to have the moon on a plate with her breakfast. That way she can look at it while she eats, and when…

The Thing Inside Pluto was displeased. So was Aimee. Its roiling muscle-goo made her queasy, and she’d dressed for pilates, not for two bland government spooks kidnapping her to negotiate with an alien. She lit a cigarette to block the ozone smell. …

Author: Alex Z. Salinas I pressed my palm against the reinforced window in my bedroom. The glass felt cool, exactly like they felt in my previous life. The difference was that on the other side of this one, there was stretched before me an infinite …

The atheist awoke in the machine. Body had he none. Merely a consciousness, who even dead, yet hath his mind entire. A good line, that. Where did it come from? Around him was a sort of prison of flat light, was it light? Prison, because he could not…

Meychezhek is big, even among badhar-krithkinee, a circumstance exacerbated by the fact that I’m both already nervous and kneeling in anticipation of her entrance. Her skin is purple-black, more textured than human skin. Her head crest, flattened no…

Author: David C. Nutt The Bailiff stood and took a deep breath. Once he prided himself on being able to do his entire spiel in one breath. However, with the newest fad of rolling one’s last three past lives into one’s current name…well, breath frequ…

Jiang Xiaoyu didn’t move. “Time to ratchet things up a notch.” Max didn’t seem to have noticed Xiaoyu’s trepidation. “We can’t let your trip be in vain. Now then, down on Earth, you might try to jump the last three steps of a staircase. via Pocket

Alls I want is a goddamn tampon. Is that so much to ask at the end of the world? Yo. Name’s Enfys. This is, uh, my channel as I wander in search of tampons and the meaning of life in what’s left of Western Europe. Seems, I’m, um, immune to the phage…

Ostap is putting the finishing touches on a cartoon tardigrade when Alyce calls him. The render is blown up to the size of a sumo, its butcher-paper skin creased and wrinkled around chubby tendril-tipped legs, its eyeless head dominated by a lamprey…

Author: Jae Miles, Staff Writer Where did your rock ‘n’ roll fable go, Ella May? Did it get lost way back amongst the evergreens, or did it get too close to the railroad tracks, and go under them drivin’ wheels? “Can I help you?” I remember when you…

The queue was massively long. Fridays were always the busiest. Everyone would clock off early so that they could get a decent night’s sleep. Garth was probably thirty people away from the check-in point and the building’s entrance. He checked his wa…

Tomi Mura, a specialist in inter-planetary law, sat aboard a six-person capsule en route to Planet Arazan. The magnetic-field modulator of the small hyperbolically propulsed vessel gave her the sensation of gliding gently through the depths of an im…

I leave the pharmacy, wiping off snot with my sleeve, my head stuffier than a high-school locker room. I carry nose drops, antihistamines, and the good decongestant for which I must flash my driver’s license because lesser meth cooks than Walter Whi…

Since I woke up in the base hospital, there’s been a steady stream of people coming and going and being nice to me in between. The burns on my hands are being dealt with: they don’t hurt at all now. The skin just feels tight under the bandages. via …

Anna and Marisol in Time and Space The big day came, and Anna was tempted to tie up Marisol and stash her in the closet just to be safe, but instead she put on her makeup and her pale blue gown (it was prettier than she remembered) and called, “Mari…

We came to their planet to study them. But we found their understanding of the universal mechanisms to be shockingly limited. We’ve managed to locate only one man, thus far, among billions, who possesses any true grasp of the situation. His name is …

Captain Agnes Parker rubbed the back of her sore neck and rolled her shoulders. If anyone had told her how many tedious tasks a captain had to deal with every week… Currently, she was examining the ship supply lists as certain items kept going astra…

Grampa Leg heaved his large, square frame from the floor and trundled across the family room to where the youngster sat. Deep in concerned thought, the child twiddled his long fingers, picking at the rubbery fingertips. Ma watched from the corner of…

Randall disengages from his charging port when Director Gravasin of the Institute for Research on Eternal Life enters the office. “Good morning, Director. It’s early. Are you getting enough sleep?” via Pocket

“The treatments aren’t working,” I tell my assistant, Marcy. From the observation window, we watch our prisoner writhe on the sterile bed. Marcy increases the output and the patient screams. His tortured body begins to convulse. His eyes are wide op…

1. Before you try not to like it, already make up your mind that you will not like it—this makes it so much easier. 2. When something that you may like pops up in the thing, suppress the urge to like it. Instead, find a scintilla of a detail that is…