Do you remember your last trip to Earth? I remember your fear of dragonflies. You thought they would sting like bees, pierce the membrane with their rigid arrowed bodies, and [...]
Science Fiction
The Buck Swain Management Bible
My name is Buck Swain and consulting is my beat. I make a living as a consultant, a “process” consultant, which means just about anything, but mostly it’s about solving [...]
Judy and Norman
On the way to the cemetery, Judy found a badly dead frog in a rain puddle. His brittle, dry leaf skin hung over his bleached skeleton like a loin cloth [...]
Fadeout
They strapped a man to the ceiling today. I know him. His name is Wasari Ichimura. I tried to talk to him afterwards but he wasn’t interested, and I was [...]
How Deep the Cold, Red Sands
We’ve known for ages it wasn’t the only choice. Why should chlorophyl, with its complicated dependency on secondary reactions, triumph over other, more direct photosynthetic compounds? But nature, as always, [...]
Brain Trust
Mrs. Bang Hue Ngyuen threw a handful of millet over the water; the chickens splashed and squabbled around her. They formed a pattern of white and brown, feathers and water [...]
Homesteader
I knew my job was going to kill me from the moment I enlisted, seven years ago. Some people called me a suicidal environmentalist for joining, but personally, I call [...]
The Aliens are Coming
The aliens are coming. Channel 7 says two weeks from Tuesday, Channel 4 says next Friday, and the government says that based on the rate of deceleration, they might not [...]
Weight Control in a Future Age
They’re narrowing the lanes a little more; it’s nothing personal, just the latest council directive. Pretty soon, Lisa won’t be able to walk them without scraping her thighs against the [...]
The God of the Gaps
I deconstruct Universe 15—now a place of endless frozen night—and record the details its inhabitants’ demise. Their battle against heat death was glorious. At their zenith, a thousand billion sentient [...]
Sea of Ash and Sorrow
Since that day in New York, that day of gray ash and sorrow, when it rained white dust, he’d been looking. There was a black hole in him. Parts of [...]
Letter to an Overly Ambitious Alien Chef of the Future
Leon D’ Razi’chn
Chef and Owner
X’Rstys Restaurant
The Caltog Quadrant
My dear Leon,
Such a pleasure to dine at your charming establishment the other day—as you promised, delightful location, just lovely, particularly for the [...]
Override
They’re not cruel men. They just got a budget to make. Even these days it costs to hoist a man up out the blue. Multiply that by a hundred twenty [...]
In the Time of Apple Maggots
A large white sign stands resolutely against the hot summer wind. WARNING, it reads in red square bureaucratic letters, and then, on the next line, APPLE MAGGOT QUARANTINE ZONE. A [...]
Duster
“You got thrown out of school?” A gruff, male voice surprised her. Cindy spun around and faced a thin young man with yellow glasses, a shaved head and a bright [...]