This was published as a Clarkesworld audiobook podcast in 2020.

    Rose was about to go into the classroom, where she’d left her purse, when she saw a sign on the door—a crude sign in pencil, on a ragged sheet of paper. “Collapse of Western Civilization — Dr. Norbert Beilstein,” it said. “Visitors welcome.”Previously unpublished, Slice of Life—about a college coed’s winter-induced dream—is an early testament to Kurt Vonnegut’s original voice and curious imagination. Cover design by Adil Dara.

    Not everyone can. Who decides? Desperate to save his daughter from a mysterious sickness, Daniel applies for the Methuselah Treatment. If she gets it, his daughter won’t just recover, she’ll live forever. But the drug is tightly controlled, and only the special, the talented, and the truly deserving ever receive it. There is nothing special about Daniel’s destitute ten- year-old girl—or is there?

    Chapters: Harrison Bergeron, Epicac, 2br02b, Welcome to the Monkey House, Miss Temptation, Report on the Barnhouse Effect, All the King's Horses, Who Am I This Time?, Deer in the Works. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: "Harrison Bergeron" is a satirical, dystopian science fiction short story written by Kurt Vonnegut and first published in October 1961. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the story was re-published in the author's collection, Welcome to the Monkey House in 1968. In the story, social equality has been achieved by handicapping the more intelligent, athletic or beautiful members of society. For example, strength is handicapped by the requirement to carry weight, beauty by the requirement to wear a mask and so on. This is due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the United States Constitution. This process is central to the society, designed so that no one will feel inferior to anyone else. Handicapping is overseen by the United States Handicapper General, Diana Moon-Glampers. Harrison Bergeron, the protagonist of the story, has exceptional intelligence, strength, and beauty, and thus has to bear enormous handicaps. These include headphones that play distracting noises, three hundred pounds of weight strapped to his body, eyeglasses designed to give him headaches, a rubber ball on his nose, black caps on his teeth, and shaven eyebrows. Despite these societal handicaps, he is able to invade a TV station, declare himself Emperor, strip himself of his handicaps, then dance with a ballerina whose handicaps he has also discarded. Both are shot dead by the brutal and relentless Handicapper General. The story is framed by an additional perspective from Bergeron's parents, who are w...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=18941

    Linked, equal but opposite, these blades are destined to be wielded by two of the greatest heroes of the Age of Darkness. And as the spears themselves, Appolonian and Dionysian, are equal and opposite, so too are those to whom they were gifted. This is their story too. The warrior-scholar, a savant and a servant. The warrior-king, a savage and a soldier. Their fates entwined in ways they do not understand, they carry the blades as both gift and curse, fulfilment of destiny unseen by any save the Master of Mankind. Read It Because This is truly a Horus Heresy story unlike any other. Chris Wraight crafts an elegiac look at two heroes of the Heresy, through the blades that bond them and forge a destiny that may well extend far beyond the stories that have yet been told…

    Now Joe is a full Guardsman, with his own ship and a snide partner bot who hates humans almost as much as he hates other bots.To the pirates he hunts, Joe is known as the Butcher. His bloody reputation has landed him in the center of a sweeping conspiracy that threatens to stamp out the galaxy’s last surviving human settlements.As Joe races against time to salvage what’s left of his species, one thing becomes crystal clear: You can never escape your past.It all starts on Earth, humanity’s deserted homeworld....

    

    One of the copies of Cater-Zimmermann, Paolo Venetti, arrives at Orpheus; a water-world inhabited by floating mats that perform as a Turing machine.

    Beam Piper with active table of contents.Works include:The AnswerThe Cosmic ComputerCrossroads of DestinyDay of the MoronDearestThe Edge of the KnifeFlight From TomorrowFour-Day PlanetGenesisGraveyard of DreamsHe Walked Around the HorsesThe KeeperLast EnemyLittle FuzzyThe MercenariesMinistry of DisturbanceMurder in the GunroomNaudsonceNull-ABCOomphel in the SkyOmnilingualOperation R.S.V.P.PatrolPolice OperationRebel RaiderThe ReturnA Slave is a SlaveSpace VikingTemple TroubleTime and Time AgainTime CrimeUllr Uprising

    Gabriel Kane goes from a struggling architect to one of the most powerful men in the world; Armonía Solorsano -- a young Hispanic girl who grew up in a dilapidated suburban McMansion-turned-tenement -- invents one of the most important and influential pieces of technology in history; a non-profit organization goes from a charity to a decentralized domestic terrorist group; and the greatest democracy in the world finds itself falling into the ever-tightening grip of a dictator.As five people come together with the shared goal of changing the world, they discover that their approaches are fundamentally and irreconcilably at odds. Their partnership becomes a bitter political and high-tech rivalry from which only one of them can emerge.This novella by Christian Cantrell (about 16,000 words) portrays an intersection of politics and technology which is both extremely relevant, and frighteningly feasible.

    

    Helpless, doomed, into the graveyard of space floats the wrecked freighter Pallas.

    until something utterly unfamiliar suddenly lands in your back yard.Susan is the epitome of the happy housewife, contentedly conducting her daily ritual of cleaning her home and keeping everything just as it should be. Wrapped up in her own little world within those familiar walls, she hardly notices the altogether different arrival in her own back yard. She may ignore the sudden shaking beneath her slippered feet, she might even neglect to spot the conspicuous sight itself—but she can't evade the stench. Something's wrong. Very wrong. And Susan's incapable of determining just what to do about the uninvited eyesore in her back yard. Turning to her best friend for help with the impromptu emergency threatening to shake up her very existence and happy home, Susan combines efforts with neighbor Trisha to decipher the composition and meaning of the frightfully large and utterly unpleasant new arrival. But are these two women really capable of realizing the gift of new awareness they've just been given by an unseen entity? Or will they continue to fail to see the world that exists out there? What a difference a day makes... unless you choose to ignore it. Start Reading Now...What are you waiting for? Unexpected surprises, urban fantasy, unveiled mysteries, a touch of humor, a dab of "new weird", and so much more await you.

    For hundreds of years, the danger of collision has been ignored as mere crackpot theories, until now, and now it's too late. Collision is a short story commissioned by Vanquish Motion Pictures for development in film and television, and is the first in a series of character-rich, mystery-driven science fiction grounded in science fact.

    It can be read in ten minutes. Please don't purchase this expecting a novel for your dollar.This story was written in a small cafe on the corner of Bleeker and Grove in New York City on Tuesday, May 27th. The idea came to me yesterday while walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. I saw the locks on several of the small cables on the bridge. I remembered my time in both London and Paris, taking pictures of all the love locks on bridges there. And I thought about all the couples those locks represent. I wondered how many are still together.Maybe this story isn't worth your dollar. If I could price a work on Amazon for less, I would. It is what it is. I hope this will be the first of many short pieces that I write and publish in a single day while recording what I'm thinking and where I am when I write them. For those who take the plunge, I hope you get your money's worth. Thank you for all of your support.-Hugh