Stories

Author: Philip G Hostetler Maggie’s been gone for a while now. But not into a black hole this time. Normally she’d discorporate into the metaphysical unknown but this time, she’s just been… …happily traveling. I miss her, like a solar system misses it’s rogue planetoid, flung out beyond and returning every 4,000 years as a […]

It's so dark. Black-orange-bloody-bruised. Flashlights throw long beams across the sand. Police lights flicker blue and red, blue and red, blue and red, and the Ferris wheel on the pier glows an obscene neon. No one thought to turn off the calliope. It echoes off the empty boardwalk, cheerfully macabre.

A Jar of Malice By Gregory Marlow 1982 The morning light woke me as Mamaw slid in through the front door carrying a small flour sack. Mamaw’s couch was made of Brillo pads that left crinkle imprints on my cheeks as I peeled away from the cushion. I had kicked my quilt and pillow onto […]

It’s tough being a monster nowadays. With the constant threat of terrorism, global warming, and yet another Michael Bay film, the average person just doesn’t have enough fear left at the end of the…

Author: Daniel Aceituna The new AI phone app used the latest research in non-linear regression to predict the future. Local data combined with GPS and relevant global data was all it took to give a remarkably accurate prediction of what would happen within the next minute. One billion downloads occurred in the first week alone. […]

“The Invention of Clouds” by Becky Mandelbaum I was ten years old when I invented clouds. I did it for my little brother, who was sick at the time and had nothing better to do than study how the light lived and died outside his bedroom window. I had invented a spider for his windowsill […]

An AI car is caught between its ruthless employer and the people she hurt…

Muna shuts the storeroom door as quietly as she can. Holding a just-waxed bundle of letters to her chest, she sticks out her head to check the bookshop floor. If she walks between the shelves on the far right, she can slip out unnoticed in ten heartbeats. The main door of the bookshop is propped open, the sun shining after what feels like a year of sodden clouds and sludged streets---she can’t wait to feel its warmth on her skin.

The backdrop of the greatest concert performance of all time was catastrophic solar behavior that devastated the Tau Ceti system in 4032, knocking the technology of the three inhabited planets to the stone age and putting fourteen billion sentient beings in peril. Of course the news swept the United Systems and generated an outpouring of grief, support and promises of aid, but promises fell short and soon people moved on to other stories.

I'm sure there was a vision. There had to be, as that's the whole symbiotic exchange. It’s how Mother worked her fortunes. While the syopterae feed on our smoke-saturated brains, we go to Tera. We experience visions there. Past or potential futures. I don't remember one that first time. I do remember Mother wiping the streaming tears from my eye, her own dead eye darting fish-like and upside-down as she bent over my face.

Maribel had not spoken of that day in the thirty-eight years since it had happened. But she thought the pig-boy deserved to know what would happen. “When they pronounce him guilty,” she said, “Father Domingo will come and get you. He will want you to pray at the shrine of Saint Rafael for the power of transmogrification. He will tell you the words to use. Then he will take you to the village square. Everyone will be gathered and the man tied up there. You’ll make the man swallow a cup of something and command his devil to take the form of a javelina.”

Author: Mina ALENA’S ADOPTED MOTHER, CAROL: We consider ourselves blessed with our adopted daughter. It hasn’t always been easy – we had to teach her not to stand out. It’s hard to dim your light, but she understood by the age of three that she would be taken away from us if her gifts were […]

Sometimes, Narae can almost convince emself that the AI’s Voice was a dream. Some kind of minor stroke misremembered, a neurological glitch retroactively given recognizable shape.

I’d always known Calam would run. He had all the signs. A taut restlessness, body brittle as an overstretched lute string, when we stayed too long in one place. A gloom in his eyes…

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The little lights bob and weave, but they’re definitely getting closer. I check behind me – the remains are unidentifiable: just more victims of this horrific incident. How close should I let them get? No, wait. I sit down, putting my back against an upturned desk. Oh, yes: I take […]

Continued from Part 1) Jenna gave herself a few moments to seethe in silence before she spoke, to make sure her voice was calm. “I can’t move.” “Did you hear that?” Daron took a swig of his water…

Author: David C. Nutt Dear Alive, To begin with, I absolutely hate the word zombie. I also hate the terms walking dead, animate corpse, and un-dead. I prefer the more PC term altalive. Look, I don’t know who is tapping into this- a researcher, psychic, or hacker, just get the word out. We ain’t dead. […]

The statue was nothing like Enefai remembered.

One year after the war’s end, the royal court welcomed a hundred orphan boys into our ranks.

Nino Cipri’s story this week will wind its way into your thespian souls. ~ Julian and Fran, July 16, 2023 Ain’t Houses, Ain’t Names” by Nino Cipri Lynn is lucky to be in the spring play at all, since as far as Mrs. Velasco or anyone knows, she didn’t show up for auditions.

To celebrate Tor.com’s 15th Anniversary, we’re reposting some gems from the more than 600 stories we’ve published since 2008. Today’s story is “The Devil in America” by Kai Ashante Wilson. Scant years after the Civil War, a mysterious family confronts the legacy that has pursued them across centuries, out of slavery, and finally to the idyllic peace of the town of Rosetree. The shattering consequences of this confrontation echo backwards and forwards in time, even to the present day.

Barely afloat, our house thrummed with the possibility of sinking. You shook, I shook. Mr. Shindey almost stood, surprising his cat. He wanted to help.

To celebrate Tor.com’s 15th Anniversary, we’re reposting some gems from the more than 600 stories we’ve published since 2008. Today’s story is “Blood Is Another Word for Hunger.” Anger is an energy. A young girl, a slave in the South, is presented with a moment where she can grasp for freedom, for change, for life. She grabs it with both hands, fiercely and intensely, and the spirit world is shaken.

To celebrate Tor.com’s 15th Anniversary, we’re reposting some gems from the more than 600 stories we’ve published since 2008. Today’s story is “The City Born Great” by N. K. Jemisin. New York City is about to go through a few changes. Like all great metropolises before it, when a city gets big enough, old enough, it must be born; but there are ancient enemies who cannot tolerate new life. Thus New York will live or die by the efforts of a reluctant midwife...and how well he can learn to sing the city's mighty song.