Make the universe a better place! Join Daily Science Fiction for only $15 / year, or donate any amount.

Enter any portion of the author name or story title:

[ go to advanced search ]

SUBSCRIBE TO DSF

your email will be kept private

Get a copy of Not Just Rockets and Robots: Daily Science Fiction Year One. 260 adventures into new worlds, fantastical and science fictional. Rocket Dragons Ignite: the anthology for year two, is also available!

DSF stories are available in monthly digests for Kindle!

Publish your stories or art on Daily Science Fiction:

Check story status

Everything we've published! Click on a topic to read...

Science Fiction

Fantasy

Hither & Yon

The Future of Future Planning

Dear Jezzy

Tasting Menu

Tales of the Rose Knights

Careers for Magical Creatures

Captain Percina Saunders

Clickbait for Paranormals

Alien Salvage

From Diaspora to New Jupiter

Childhood at Crossroad Station

Cara Watt, P.I.

Maradia's Robot

The League of Magical Felines

Not just rockets & robots...

"Science Fiction" means—to us—everything found in the science fiction section of a bookstore, or at a science fiction convention, or amongst the winners of the Hugo awards given by the World Science Fiction Society. This includes the genres of science fiction (or sci-fi), fantasy, slipstream, alternative history, and even stories with lighter speculative elements. We hope you enjoy the broad range that SF has to offer.

comment on today's story, or read what others say:

The Relic

by Ethan Noll

author bio

Ethan Noll writes short stories and poems. There are very few things that he enjoys more than crafting a creative and aesthetically pleasing sentence. Writing gives him an opportunity to express ideas that he can't usually verbalize in his daily life.

[close author bio]

I saw it sitting in the corner of the bar: a hulking metal contraption, one of the first models ever made. Once it had been considered a technological miracle, but now it was nothing but a piece of vintage decoration.

Enjoying this story? Don't miss the next one!

SUBSCRIBE TO DSF

Not Just Rockets and Robots &
Rocket Dragons Ignite
DSF Anthologies now available for sale!

I started thinking about what life was like back then, before time machines were perfected and mass produced. It was probably a lot more exciting. Nothing has really surprised us since.

The End

This story was first published on Thursday, November 26th, 2020

show author story comments

I wanted to write this story using as few words as possible. As a devout fan of punk music since my preteen years, I've always appreciated simplicity and brevity in art. I don't have the attention span to write an epic novel, but I do my best to distill epic themes into little, bite-sized stories. In this story, I focused on the evolution of technology, how even the most groundbreaking innovations gradually become mundane with the passing of time. I hope you enjoyed it.

- Ethan Noll

[close author story comments]

BECOME A MEMBER!

We hope you're enjoying The Relic by Ethan Noll.

Please support Daily Science Fiction by becoming a member.

Daily Science Fiction does not have a paywall, but we do have expenses—more than 95% of which are direct payments to authors for their stories. With your $15 membership, less than 6 cents per story, we can continue to provide genre fiction every weekday by email and on the website to thousands of readers for many years to come. Tell me more!

Support Daily Science Fiction

RATE THIS STORY

Please click to rate this story from 1 (ho-hum) to 7 (excellent!):

show this story's ratings

Please don't read too much into these ratings. For many reasons, a superior story may not get a superior score.

4.0 Rocket Dragons Average

SHARE THIS STORY

JOIN MAILING LIST

Please join our mailing list and receive free daily sci-fi (your email address will be kept 100% private):

SUBSCRIBE TO DSF