Futureland


Walter Mosley - 2001
    For all its denizens, from technocrats to terrorists, celebs to crooks, "Futureland" is an all-American nightmare just waiting to happen.

The Changeling


Jennifer Lyndon - 2016
    The only constant of her childhood was transience, as she was continuously fleeing, at the insistence of her guardians, and usually in the quiet of night, from one end of the Vilken realm to the other. As a child, Lore never understood the need for caution and secrecy, or the actual threat to her survival. In her adolescence she learns of the royal blood in her veins, and the horrific fate of her parents at the hand of her uncle, the false King. The Changeling is the tale of Lore's rise to power, and the journey she takes to find the love she needs to survive.

Symbiont Seeking Symbiont


Jennifer Foehner Wells - 2016
    The ship she lives and works in is waylaid on a barren planet for repairs. She’s bored, goes for a stroll, and meets someone who would very much like to spend the rest of their life with her.

Karen Memory


Elizabeth Bear - 2015
    See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I'm one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It's French, so Beatrice tells me."Set in the late 19th century—when the city we now call Seattle Underground was the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes, would-be gold miners were heading to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront, Karen is a young woman on her own, is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable's high-quality bordello. Through Karen's eyes we get to know the other girls in the house—a resourceful group—and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, begging sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, and who has a machine that can take over anyone's mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap—a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.Bear brings alive this Jack-the-Ripper yarn of the old west with a light touch in Karen's own memorable voice, and a mesmerizing evocation of classic steam-powered science.

Blood Is Another Word for Hunger


Rivers Solomon - 2019
    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.A Tor.com Original

Wilder Girls


Rory Power - 2019
    Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her.It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.

Totaled (Mother of Memory Book 1)


Kary English - 2014
    There's just one problem. She's dead. An experimental technology might buy her some time. Even if it works, will it be enough to save her? Length: 5,000 words, a short story Genre: near future hard SF, drama Market: written for adults (no sex, no violence, occasional mild/moderate profanity) Get it now or read for FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

The Boy Who Cast No Shadow


Thomas Olde Heuvelt - 2009
    Mr. Olde Heuvelt tells us he wrote it in a four-day rush in between two chapters of a novel which was giving him uncontrollable screaming fits at the time. "To me," he adds, "it's a story about being different and coming to terms with the fact that that ain't such a bad thing. With this story I humbly paid homage to Joe Hill's Pop Art, which I think is the best short story of the 21st Century."

Bugs in the Arroyo


Steven Gould - 2009
    When Kimball comes upon twelve-year-old Thayet, she's been stuck on a rock in a river of bugs for two days, no food, no water, and no way back.This is an excerpt from 7th Sigma.

Beyond the Dragon's Gate


Yoon Ha Lee - 2020
    Now, years later, the military has need of her expertise in order to prevent the destruction of their AI-powered fleet.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Three Moments of an Explosion


China Miéville - 2009
    Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure but violent purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse's bones—designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?Of such concepts and unforgettable images are made the twenty-eight stories in this collection—many published here for the first time. By turns speculative, satirical, and heart-wrenching, fresh in form and language, and featuring a cast of damaged yet hopeful seekers who come face-to-face with the deep weirdness of the world—and at times the deeper weirdness of themselves—Three Moments of an Explosion is a fitting showcase for one of our most original voices.

Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful


Arwen Elys Dayton - 2018
    The results range from the heavenly to the monstrous. Deeply thoughtful, poignant, horrifying, and action-packed, Arwen Elys Dayton's Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful is groundbreaking in both form and substance.

They're Made Out of Meat


Terry Bisson - 1991
    Here’s the correct version, as published in Omni, 1990." -- Terry Bisson

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2016


John Joseph AdamsMaria Dahvana Headley - 2016
    Valente, Dexter Palmer and others KAREN JOY FOWLER, guest editor, is the author of six novels and four short story collections, including We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. She is the winner of the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, and has won numerous Nebula and World Fantasy awards. JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS, series editor, is the best-selling editor of more than two dozen anthologies, including Brave New Worlds and Wastelands. He is the editor and publisher of the digital magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare and is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a new science fiction/fantasy novel imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Table of Contents:"Meet Me in Iram" by Sofia Samatar"The Game of Smash and Recovery" by Kelly Link"Interesting Facts" by Adam Johnson"Planet Lion" by Catherynne M. Valente"The Apartment Dweller’s Bestiary" by Kij Johnson"By Degrees and Dilatory Time" by S.L. Huang"The Mushroom Queen" by Liz Ziemska"The Daydreamer by Proxy" by Dexter Palmer"Tea Time" by Rachel Swirsky"Headshot" by Julian Mortimer Smith"The Duniazát" by Salman Rushdie"No Placeholder for You, My Love" by Nick Wolven"The Thirteen Mercies" by Maria Dahvana Headley"Lightning Jack’s Last Ride" by Dale Bailey"Things You Can Buy for a Penny" by Will Kaufman"Rat Catcher’s Yellows" by Charlie Jane Anders"The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History" by Sam J. Miller"Three Bodies at Mitanni" by Seth Dickinson"Ambiguity Machines: an Examination" by Vandana Singh"The Great Silence" by Ted Chiang

Exhalation


Ted Chiang - 2019
    In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.