A software bug killed 64 people this month before it was discovered. The administrators have brought the system down and a patch is working its way through the emergency release process. via Pocket

It emerges from whatever variety of nowhere that allowed it to traverse the vast distances between the worlds of the Beacon, and I know that it’s a Stranger. via Pocket

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer “It’s a pure stroke of genius that I was able to downsize the stabilizer assembly in time for the conference.” Stuart fiddled with his bowtie with his free hand while piloting the sedan with the other. via Pocket

From the couch, engineer Stanislaw Hast looked past the grey-suited, female psychiatrist and through the broad window. The star, a long dying sub-giant, threw a dusk of burnt ochre over the orbiting city, its rays painting the sunward face of tall b…

Red emergency lighting makes more shadows than seem possible. President Booker leans back from the table and looks sideways at the one shadow he knows. “Clarence Dimitri. via Pocket

The space station was silent in the way that a black hole is black; it was more than just an absence of noise. There was something physical to the silence, a force pulling in all sound and eating it. via Pocket

The harvest moon. The blue moon. The tropical moon. Flat moon—the moon you find in puddles. Strong moon—this is the moon of dogs, and I don’t know why they call it that. Dogs howl at a moon for not being the strong moon. Kite moon, that rides over y…

HK-812 stepped out of her charging pod and gazed out the single narrow window that her 8×14 living space boasted. The brick wall outside was a whole eight inches away from the glass, and the morning sunshine gave the red-brown a cheery tone. via Poc…

I make the coffee in the French press like I do every morning. Then, I regret it by the time I reach the City Freezing Works. A doubled edged elixir, the coffee rouses me from my bed and then inspires uninhibited vomiting by the time I reach downtow…

Perhaps the most famous planet in the colonized Galaxy– aside from Earth, of course– Centauri B Prime may have the highest standard of living in the Milky Way. via Pocket

Somewhere between suicide and another episode of Hoarder Wars, I stumble on a ghost season of Princess Mine. Only two seasons were ever produced; the lead actress passed away before filming started on the third, but there it is, all six episodes, re…

The spokesman for the Nui, Jesús the Giant, considered me with a foreboding and weakly threatening glare. “I have negotiated successfully with races on twenty planets. I know you have something to tell me, Gloria.” via Pocket

First, be antisocial. In kindergarten, when the teacher asks you to share crayons and play nicely with the other children, don’t. There’s no point. via Pocket

Miriam opened the door of the caravan-turned-time machine. Dry, hot air blew in. She shaded her eyes against the brightness. They had landed where they had planned: at the base of a range of hills, nothing around them but arid land that matched the …

In the beginning, humanity looked to the stars, and saw gods. In their golden age, they went among the stars, as if they were gods. via Pocket

Brochures fanned across the lace tablecloth in Grandma’s dining room. Up close, I saw the recruiter’s immaculate makeup starting to crack, the silver showing against auburn at the part in her hair. She slanted forward with briefcase on knees and wei…

The disease passed quickly and no one was spared. First, it neutered the men. Women became infertile. Men atrophied and women thickened. Hair sloughed off and torsos turned flat. The two sexes equalized and thus division was lost. via Pocket

Two neutron stars, ten times the mass of the sun collided, unleashing a cataclysm—an explosive kilonova, whose massive gravitational waves undulated through the dark mantle of spacetime, forging in their course a planetary system composed of fifteen…

‘So, what’s your star sign?’ Mary asked, and took a sip from her glass, she watched him closely over the rim. It was one of her stock questions on first dates. You could tell a lot about a man, depending on how he reacted. His actual star sign was i…

Tapestries hang on the walls of a room where anatomical diagrams and scientific charts would have been, centuries ago. Two men stand reading a display that floats above the supine form on the chrome table at the centre of the room. via Pocket

Author: David C. Nutt “How’d did your last trip go Vincent?” (Sigh) “Not good Director. We keep hitting the same walls. No matter what we do, nothing has an effect.” “Nothing?” “You heard it right chief, nothing.” “Maybe we should go for a larger ef…

Rick saw the Universe in folds. He coded a program that could make anything in origami. You put in, say, a rhino, and it would make the plan, complete with lines for the folds, and when you were finished, it looked exactly like that rhino. Exactly. …

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…