Miss Nobody Never Was
Everybody thinks that bartenders steal. You know what? They’re right. Maybe there’s an upright barte...
Power Armor: A Love Story
It was quite a party. The women wore gowns. The men wore tuxedos. Anthony Blair wore power armor.
Dead Fads
The dead have fads. I work in Deadtown, at a bar mostly frequented by the Dead. They call me PD for ...
My Wife Hates Time Travel
From the very beginning—which I guess is also the middle and the end if you follow the bent logic in...
The Correspondence Between the Governess and the Attic
The changeling hides in the window seat. On one side of her is glass, gauzy with rain. On the other,...
The Foster Child
I came, the hope of my tribe, to the City of Absolutes, in the year of the zero plus two big and a n...
Leaving Night
Very quietly, in the dark of night, people began disappearing. Later research showed that they vanis...
In the Dying Light, We Saw a Shape
.@neiltyson calls them “space diatoms,” but I say “space whales.” They’re beaching themselves on our...
None Owns the Air
“Push! Push! Damn it, put your backs into it!” Kino Ye’s voice rose to a panicked screech as the fou...
Fireborn
Onyx turned her face up to the sky as she walked with her friend Jasper beside a mule-cart on the ro...
Detours on the Way to Nothing
It’s midnight when you and your girlfriend, Elka, have your first fight since you moved in together....
Coma Kings
So I guess the story begins, fittingly, with someone handing me a Coma rig and saying, play me. Two ...
Elementals
No one knows how many airlings there are, most likely not a great many, whatever a great many means....
Salamander Patterns
I hadn’t meant to become an astronaut, but these things happen. I worked hard, because I liked worki...
The Thing About Shapes to Come
Monica’s new baby was like a lot of new babies these days in that she was born a cube. She had no ex...
Exuviation
I saw him as soon as I stepped into the room. He was trembling. He was moaning softly. His hands wer...
Her Husband’s Hands
They opened the box and showed her Bob’s hands, resting side by side on a white pillow. The left one...
The Old Equations
I miss you already. But you know that. What you don’t know is just how proud I am of you. You were b...
Mama, We are Zhenya, Your Son
I fell asleep in Dr. Olga's big room, in the red university building by the Botanical Garden. I had ...
Arvies
STATEMENT OF INTENT: This is the story of a mother, and a daughter, and the right to life, and the d...
I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno
We have a history of missed connections, you and I. Years ago, when you called goodbye from the shut...
Amaryllis
I never knew my mother, and I never understood why she did what she did. I ought to be grateful that...
The Cold Equations
There could be no alternative—but it required a few moments of conditioning for even an EDS pilot to...
Four Short Novels
Eventually it came to pass that no one ever had to die, unless they ran out of money. When you start...
The Knight of Chains, the Deuce of Stars
The tower is a black spire upon a world whose only sun is a million starships wrecked into a mass gr...
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side
He was standing absolutely still by a service port, staring out at the belly of the Orion docking ab...
Gene Wars
The slime mould he’d created, a million amoebae aggregated around a drop of cyclic AMP, had been tra...
Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese
I sat by the side of the road in the afternoon sun and watched the cranefly struggle. A breeze, hot ...
The Giving Plague
You think you’re going to get me, don’t you? Well, you’ve got another think coming, ‘cause I’m ready...
The Sympathy
The apartment was in his name, and the Accord was in hers. It took Lauren less than a minute to step...