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.
Twenty-two years from now, on a bright day in a dim room, your husband will utter his last words. He will tell you he is sorry for the time he squandered chasing fruitless theories, time made precious to him now by the power of hindsight. "You were my greatest discovery," he will say.
The two of you will spend the nine years prior to his end on a new beginning, one free of his long nights tinkering in the lab and obsessing over notes. He will be yours for the duration of long walks through blossoming gardens, sunny days that do not cloud over save for those rare moments where he will stare unfocused, his poor, brilliant mind a million miles away as it tries to discover where his science failed.
My body remembers what I cannot.
My hands move to the sides, legs move apart, knees bend.
He can't be more than fourteen. Couldn't have been, my mind corrects. Now he's dead in the sunburned street, a sticky sweet puddle of blood growing larger with every second.
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.
The two-year-old in the corner clutches her collection of candy wrappers and odd papers to herself as if they were dragon's horde. The stripped vault I've closed us in--me and twenty-seven children--shudders once, twice, and the already dim lighting wanes; the two-year-old looks briefly up toward the lights set around the edges of the metal ceiling, but is far more interested in the crinkling sound of her treasures.
We've been in the vault too long. The sealed room smells of a day's worth of urine and worse. Resilient, adaptable, none of the children cry out at this latest attack. The wispy hair that frames the two-year-old's face seems to glow even in the low light, and I find myself wondering if all two-year-olds look as cherubic. Not that I really care.
"Sebastian, come look!" Madeleine called her brother to come and see what she had found. It was not the first time.
"Not now, Maddy. Pitches'll sack me if I'm late again." Sebastian pulled on the palm guards he had made from a tire. They protected his hands and helped him grip the sharp edges of the metal drums he spent his days fashioning into walls and roofs. It had been a great find. As well as the palm guards he had been able to put new soles on their sandals and make Maddy pads for her shins and elbows. She was always picking up scrapes and bruises gleaning with the other scavs who were too young or too old for other work.
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.
There is a monster under my bed. I know because it followed me home from school.
I could call for help, but I'm afraid what Dad will do. He was so mad about my suspension. He never hits me, but even when he was through with his 'Jason-dammit', he kept shouting at the TV.
"Happy Birthday, Elspeth!"
She's just come back to her office to drop off a stack of papers to grade, and Luisa's greeting has interrupted her departure. Right away, the words are wrong: the "happy" and the "birthday" too cheerful, and the name too formal. Everyone calls her Elle, and Luisa of all people should know that this is a birthday she is loath to acknowledge. As far as Elle is concerned, all important people achieve success before they turn 30, and one year closer to her deadline is nothing to celebrate.
On the observation deck of the terraforming ship Lifebringer, Commander Therro watches the surface of the planet below burn on the screens before him. Flames writhe and smoke boils, and sometimes he catches a glimpse of tall, thin figures moving through the destruction without concern. They're the cause of it, after all.
He flicks a switch to change his view. Abruptly, he sees one of the twenty-foot tall humanoids walking stiff-legged across the screen. This one is apparently female, breasts and hips are visible beneath the thin blue fabric that shrouds her, although having seen the creatures in the flesh she's too towering and sinewy for him to think of her as a "her."
"Excuse me," said the man sitting beside me at the bar.
"Yes?" I replied.
I am rooted to the ground beneath me, stationary, a statue. The rise and fall of constellations traces broad arcs against my unblinking eyes. The memory of my body in motion sometimes seems unreal.
But other memories only become more real with the passage of time.
Mary had spent her entire life on the dropships. This was only her second rainstorm, and it was as terrifying and wonderful as the first has been. So much water, and so loud. She had seen them on the vids, of course, and she and Ronald had even sometimes stood in the shower and pretended to see and feel the rain, letting the water run on and on (a near criminal act on the dropships), but it hadn't been the same.
The others in the room hardly seemed to notice, even when another bolt of thunder sounded, sending tremors through her body. But then again, they hardly seemed to notice anything, the air, the way the surface constantly changed between your feet, the sunlight. They had sun equivalent light on the dropships, but that, too, hadn't been the same.
"There's supposed to be a margin of safety. These capsules are overengineered."
He took his hands from the controls to hold his head.
Dear Editor,
Enclosed please find my story about your unfortunate demise. Understand, this is not a death threat. You really are going to die, and there's nothing either of us can do about it (which, by the way, is also not a death threat).
As he stopped off at Marty-Mart, Aubrey saw that someone had scrawled across the store front: Martin Paxson has only one testicle but he's a righteous dude. You can trust him.
Paying old Mr. Paxson for smokes, Aubrey tried not to laugh.
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.
The boy scratched his chin. He nodded to himself; then he moved a group of pieces a few centimeters on the board. Seconds later, the computer reacted by rearranging the opposing force into two separate, smaller groups. The boy thought this was a good sign. He would know better after two or three more moves.
Philip used to play the game frequently with his father. His father was a great strategist--he taught Philip well. His father had praised Philip's skills. Philip was an exceptional player--especially for one so young. Indeed, at eight years of age, he could outplay most adults. He wished his father were still alive so that they could play the games together.
After the earthquake, Steven drove to his grandmother's house to check on her. He knew the damage was bad the moment he walked in the door. The entryway tiles were covered in a puddle of spilled memories--a week in the hospital, his grandfather's last ragged breaths, the funeral service in the pouring rain. The iridescent sheen of the memories was dotted with shards of broken glass.
So many memories lost, all because his grandmother had used vases instead of something more sensible. He'd tried to talk her into metal, but she liked to look at the delicate swirls of color in the memories. Plastic was completely out of the question, too tacky to put on display.
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 David Barber
Pauli Neutrino Telescope, Antarctica, 23.05 GMT, 22nd July.
Particle-noir winds from Sattigarius blow through the superconductor array frozen deep under the Ross Ice Shelf, howling like ghosts in the machine.
Published on Jan 31, 2013
by A. J. Barr
***Editor's Warning: There is mature language in the story that follows***
It happened with annoying regularity, often enough to make it difficult to maintain a relationship.
Published on Jun 29, 2012
by Matthew W Baugh
Published on Dec 5, 2011
by James Beamon
Published on Apr 1, 2013
by Anatoly Belilovsky
Published on Oct 22, 2012
by A.G. Carpenter
Published on Mar 9, 2012
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 Jonas David
They came to a stop. Bismuth helped him out of the car. His leg sent him a spike of pain as he stepped onto the grass. They walked through the crowd toward the white door, the people parting to let him through. Cobalt saw his classmates and friends; some smiled and nodded at him, some looked away whispering. All looked nervous.
They reached the door and Bismuth opened it. "A new Citizen will exit from this room."
Cobalt stepped through the doorway and it latched shut behind him.
Published on Jun 12, 2012
by Davyne DeSye
Published on Mar 26, 2013
by K.S. Dearsley
Published on Dec 26, 2012
by James S. Dorr
Published on Aug 9, 2011
by Nicky Drayden
Published on Dec 14, 2011
by Jakob Drud
Published on May 16, 2012
by Amy Greschaw
Published on Apr 12, 2012
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 C.L. Holland
Published on Oct 11, 2012
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 Oliver Buckram
"Three coffees," Zu told the waitress.
"Point vell taken," said Ludolph to Archie, resuming the three-way conversation, "but vere do you see strange patterns?"
Published on Apr 13, 2012
by Terr Light
Published on Jan 15, 2013
by Ken Liu
Published on Mar 12, 2013
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 Mari Ness
Published on Mar 27, 2012
by Don Norum
Published on Dec 29, 2011
by Luc Reid
Published on Aug 1, 2012
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 M. Adrian Sellers
Published on Apr 29, 2013
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
by Phil Temples
Published on Dec 3, 2012
by Caroline M. Yoachim
Published on Jul 12, 2012
