Science Fiction
Science fiction, even as a subgenre is a vast, underexplored country filled with unusual denizens, many of whom simply defy classification. Long way of saying this is the catch-all category for any stories that don't fit into our topic listings above. If too many of these selections start to form a natural cluster, we will allow a new topic to be born. Until that time, enjoy the varied, murky melange that defines the undefined herein.
The model is privileged to work at the Albury-Wodonga Academy of Fine Arts and Neuroscience. Work permits are few and she needs to send half her ration to family up in the burning lands round Newcastle way. She has excellent references, but that doesn't count for much; the proof will be in her flesh, her stamina, her strength of will.
She removes her clothes in a dark change room. Someone has let a can of drink fall on its side and sticky Cack congeals on the bench--a waste of good, if foul tasting, nutrient. She removes her clothes, top half first: a soft crochet hat, elbow high fingerless gloves and three layers--soft hemp undershirt, polyurethane mid layer, thick wool shell. The whole lot pulled up and over her head in a single gesture, an easy, familiar motion. She folds them neatly and places them in her bag. She pulls off her shoes, lines them up on the scratched linoleum, then removes the bottom half: poly-leggings under button-fly goat leather, hemp underwear, wool socks, removed in a similar single gesture. Folds the pants in on themselves and places them in her bag. She stretches one arm, then the other, shakes her legs and thinks through possible poses and energy she will bring to the class. She lives to do her job well--she loves to see how artists develop and grow and make classes come to life with potentia.
The small grey man walked into Ben Murphy's office and stared at him with enormous black eyes. Ben had seen a lot during his fifteen years as Sheriff of Chaves County, but nothing like this naked, spindly-limbed, huge-headed critter. For that matter, he couldn't rightly say whether the thing was a man or not, despite the lack of pants. Still, Ben knew the value of remaining calm and helpful, whatever the situation.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
I remember the day my father died. I imagined I could see him smiling down at me, as he soared high above. For a brief moment he had flown, just as he'd said he would--like Daedalus on wings of silver. Then suddenly it had all ended and he'd gone falling to earth, plummeting and spinning like a broken bird. I'd watched it all because as my mother screamed, she'd forgotten to shield my eyes.
Daddy was a tinkerer, that's what mother used to call him. He was a welder by trade, and I remembered him coming home in the afternoons, dungaree overalls and jacket smelling of sweat and soot. But in his spare time he did love to tinker, to talk about machines and the way things worked. I was amazed at how he could take things apart and then rebuild them--knowing where every cog, washer, and screw went back with ease. He could talk about Jules Vernes and da Vinci for hours. And he made sure I knew about Elijah McCoy, the black inventor whose picture he kept in his garage. That was where Daddy made his inventions, odd contraptions he'd fashioned out of old appliances and parts he'd scoured from junk heaps. Most of them didn't work. A few sputtered and died or even blew up right in front of us. But that never stopped him. He kept going through his few successes and many failures.
She had always been somewhat pale in complexion. But now, as she stood before me in moonlight outside my front door, she seemed positively without color at all.
I do not mean her lips, of course. Drusilla's lips have always been a deep, blood red. Some say she does not even need to use lipstick. And her hair, dark chestnut, which some say she dyes, reflects as well as much a notion of violence and death as it does of healthy life.
Fina kept her aim steady. This would be the eighth time she'd watched Neil die--his face contorting in agony under the blue-white haze of the Abbey's limelight. The tight zoom of her camera caught every detail, including the wrinkles in the fabric backdrop bearing meticulously painted palm trees, the tufts of batting peaking from sloppy seams on the prop horses, and even the tremble of her husband's hands as theatrical blood dripped from the wound in his abdomen.
Neil's death scene wasn't supposed to go on for this long. Fina tensed as the unnerving sound of seams ripping whispered all around her. She worried that there wouldn't be enough time to capture the end of the play. Her entire project would be ruined.
"Excuse me," said the man sitting beside me at the bar.
"Yes?" I replied.
"There's supposed to be a margin of safety. These capsules are overengineered."
He took his hands from the controls to hold his head.
It is a week after the funeral. Daniel Marsten is interrupted by the phone ringing as he reads to his young son from a book of Greek myths. He kisses the boy quickly on the forehead before rushing to get the phone. He knows it is his sister-in-law, calling about the boy. She will be arriving soon to whisk him away from this mountain retreat, and take him to a world of soccer practice, booster clubs, and lemonade stands manned in company with his cousins. She will take him away to a world where there is still a mother, even if it isn't his. Daniel convinces himself this will be enough.
The boy, whose name is Jason, and who never thinks of himself as the boy, knows it will not be. He wants to stay with his father. He loves the mountains, as his mother did, and he loves the observatory where he is not allowed to go, but which he dreams of nonetheless. He loves the stories his mother told him of scanning the night sky for stars and life and dreams. Soccer practice pales in comparison. And his father does not have to leave the mountain.
I have a crush on a boy from yesterday.
"I want to get inside your alienation," said the woman in the coffee house. "I want to know it."
"No you don't," he replied.
Freefall was the best part of a jump.
As she fell, Gina Wright looked down at Earth, half shadowed beneath her as dawn crept toward her landing target in Kansas, and relished the knowledge that she was about to demolish the world freefall record by more than 20,000 miles. This was going to be so much better than her spacejump from the old International Space Station. She would have forty minutes of freefall before she even entered the atmosphere.
Science Fiction
Science fiction, even as a subgenre is a vast, underexplored country filled with unusual denizens, many of whom simply defy classification. Long way of saying this is the catch-all category for any stories that don't fit into our topic listings above. If too many of these selections start to form a natural cluster, we will allow a new topic to be born. Until that time, enjoy the varied, murky melange that defines the undefined herein.
by Liz Argall
Published on May 20, 2011
by Matthew W Baugh
Published on Dec 5, 2011
by J. Chant
He cleared his throat, a thunderclap in the silence.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you for indulging an elderly man, and express my gratitude that so many have attended. To those watching from all over our planet, I hope humanity can share this moment. That is why, instead of publishing in a journal where only a fraction will read and understand this breakthrough, I have chosen this unusual method of communicating a scientific discovery."
Published on Sep 20, 2010
by P. Djeli Clark
Published on Apr 5, 2011
by James S. Dorr
Published on Aug 9, 2011
by Nicky Drayden
Published on Dec 14, 2011
by Jeff Hecht
He held it as delicately as an injured bird. "This is very old," he said, turning it over and looking at the stamp pasted on the old Aerogramme. "The postmark is smudged, but the year looks like 1989. I see no date on the letter. Where did you find it?"
Published on Sep 1, 2010
by Matthew Johnson
Four stars
Dinner for two $120-160 with wine, tax and tip
Published on Sep 27, 2010
by Christopher Kastensmidt
Published on Nov 7, 2011
by Andrew Kaye
After years of controversial experimentation, Dr. Abram Winthrop successfully manipulated the building blocks of human life. The process started in a petri dish, grew too big, moved to a test tube. The test tubes got progressively larger, and from then on it was incubators and operating tables with leather straps and buckles the size of a child’s hand.
Dr. Winthrop and his assistant gave the artificial human a dose of accelerant five times a day. And vitamins, because vitamins were important. Every night before they closed the lab, Dr. Winthrop and his assistant took a tissue culture to make sure the skin was growing properly. It always was. The assistant made a note of it.
Published on Nov 30, 2010
by Will McIntosh
Jahn turned to Leisle. "I'm so sorry." He wrapped his arms around her. For a moment she melted into him, then she was coiled rope, pushing him away.
Published on Dec 10, 2010
by Don Norum
Published on Dec 29, 2011
by Shannon Luke Ryan
Deep in the tropical rainforests of far north Queensland, two tiny cocoons hung from a thick purple fungus. The cocoon on the left began to twitch and shudder, moments later so did the other.
A split appeared in the left cocoon, and two bright yellow wings could be seen as a little butterfly slowly emerged and took a perch on the spongy purple mushroom. It was joined less than a minute later by another, as the second cocoon split and disgorged a larger red and green winged butterfly.
Published on Nov 9, 2010
by Diana Sherman
Published on Jan 6, 2012
by Julian Mortimer Smith
Published on May 5, 2011
by John Robert Spry
Published on Aug 8, 2011
by Eric James Stone
Published on Jun 28, 2011
