Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Jack stood a few feet to the side of the station wagon, the door hanging open, the engine having just rattled and coughed into silence. Ahead, bathed in the yello…

Author : Bruce Lin “They’re all dancing,” Charlie said. “It’s a robot dance party!” He giggled, and tried to dance too. Joan observed her son with measured curiosity and abundant concern. “A softwa…

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer “Wow, you’re so small,” said the pink humanoid creature looking at me. It had created eyes for itself and a very primitive nervous system to replicate as many …

Author : Fred D. White After crossing the interstellar void for more than half a century Captain Carey, now fully awake, and his passengers, still in cryo, escapees from the toxic nightmare that Ea…

Author : Mark Renney Thomas was having a bad day. The bugs were everywhere, he was rife with them and he was writhing. He hated this – he knew how he looked. He had seen others like it, in a …

Author : Amy Sutphin She was perfect in every way. Her soft blond curls framed her perfectly proportioned face and amber, almond eyes. Not a single blemish marred her perfect skin. Yes God had made…

Author : Vanessa Kittle Something was wrong. Bear sniffed the air. There was no meat where meat should be. The sky was bright but there was no meat. The flocks of watchers were not watching. His st…

Author : Jeremy Koch Little was known of Planet Bes save that it was a world of impenetrable darkness, and according to the chronometer in Simonova’s exoarmor, she had already been there for …

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer I’m standing a little too close for his bodyguard’s liking, but it’s crowded in here and I have to be sure. I stumble a little and Ileo himself reaches a hand to he…

Author : David Henson One morning I have a horrible pain in my right side. I go see Dr. Ivan, my organ manager. She concludes my body is rejecting my liver and quickly puts in another. Less than a …

Author : Jonathan Wooldridge I finally finished converting enough of the ore to fuel for the flight home. My knee had healed almost completely from the landing, and the patch in the tank looked sol…

“There’s a storm coming,” Leaphorn said, and moved to close the shutters. Zhang removed his ear-buds and glanced up from his monitor, looking out the window. Beijing looked as cle…

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer Dr. Kathleen Haley walked into the dimly lit Advanced Physics Laboratory at Cambridge and spotted Dr. Thomas Mitchell staring intently at a one meter in diam…

Author : Charles Paul Wallace I thought I’d got lucky. She was my type, you know? Late ’20s, not-too-pretty-not-too-plain, intelligent…and, apparently, interested. I was in one of…

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Levon leaned against the shower tube, letting the jets of water assail his body from all sides. As the sweat of the previous night’s activities rinsed away,…

Author : Jay Knioum, Featured Writer He thought he heard crows. When he found the noise, it was just a loose telephone cable blowing against the remains of a wire fence. Crows wouldn’t have s…

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer A torrent of sea water gushed from the six meter in diameter penstock into the Sirenum Ocean, Mars’ largest body of water. Twenty-eight minutes earlier…

Author : Geoffrey Cashmore “See? Look, I said already. It don’ hurt.” Herb watched again as the bump on Tommy’s hand faded from pink to grey then back to pink each time he clenched his fist…

Author : George R. Shirer “When I was a kid, we didn’t have to slog all day to get places,” said Grandpa Whiteman. Johnny adjusted his pack and kept his eyes on the road. The blacktop was cracked a…

Author : David Henson “Honey, are you going to use the DreamMaster tonight?” Sally says to her husband. “You bet. I’ve scripted a football match,” Jim says, laying the…

Author : Jules Jensen She needed a couple more voice samples. And then this would be the perfect catch, exactly what the buyer wanted. She sidled up closer to him, and nodded to his wife as she bro…

Author : Benjamin Fischer Alana examines the next child. The young girl dodges her eyes. Alana frowns and gently grabs her by the chin, forcing the little Asian girl to meet her gaze. “Have you b…

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer “We are Avalon. You cannot get through the Chalice Fields that defend this green and ascendant land. Grael technology will never be yours until you accept that your…

Author : Connor Harbison The villagers accepted the occupation as a fact of life. After all, where were they to go? The spaceport was heavily guarded, the surrounding jungles were filled with raven…

“Half-man, half-dinosaur!” A voice-over perfectly matched with the combination of human and tyrannosaurus genes that hovered above Zyi Izaiah Eizenberg’s holo snapped him awake. &…

Author : Morrow Brady I scared myself again. But only briefly. Bored with routine, my mind zoned out. Wandering like a hungry dog. Dragging extraordinary notions to hell and back with me at the cen…

Before we go any further, let me stop to ask you some questions. I’m so excited to have met you, but there’s something I want to tell you before you enter the port. You see, I haven&#82…

Author : Rick Tobin The short walk from the trees near the campus to the administration building winded him. The air was too thin for Linet. Once inside the conference room, Linet pushed the tall p…

Author : Lynette Aspey My grandfather was a stone disciple. I only began to understand what that meant when he stopped speaking and began to stiffen. Yet, even then, when the cost to him was clear,…

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer “Transmutation, or more absurdly ‘transmogrification’, that’s the crux of the biscuit, isn’t it?” The speaker stood in the mid…