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Stories, Podcasts, Interviews, and Articles, 2024:

New Story

August 31, 2024, in Science Fiction

“All We Ever Had”

M. A. Akins

 

My dad did his best to never miss work, a Sunday at church, a wedding, or a funeral. Not even when he could have avoided all kinds of problems by just staying home. Not even when the president announced the world was going to end.

            His example helped me get out the door that day. And all the weeks after.

Now, the last day, I walk out of my apartment carrying a plant I gifted my girlfriend during an online date. I keep it with me since I’ll never get to meet her in person. I put the plant in the basket of my mountain bike.

I have a while before my shift starts, so I pedal slowly and take a last look around the city.

 

New Story

July 24, 2024, in Fantasy

 

A Hero’s Tale

E. Florian Gludovacz

 

“Your most expensive beers! Line them up!” I examined each bottle closely, paying special attention to the caps. I chose the flashiest six and pushed away the rest.

I opened the first bottle, carefully setting the cap aside, and emptied it in three long draughts that soothed my parched throat.

“The name’s Cormyn. THE Cormyn, legendary hero, though times have been hard and heroing isn’t what it used it be. Heck, I didn’t even want to be a hero, I just wanted to visit exciting places.”

“So what’s with the bottle caps?”

“Ah, now that’s a story. I’ll tell it to you while I finish my beers…”

 

New Story

 

Kepler Award
2023 main category winner

 

June 27, 2024, in Science Fiction

“The Ninth Tentacle”

Geoffrey Hart

 

The mussels dragged us upslope to one of the carved coral shapes with eight radiating branches that resembled octopods. We’d long since stopped struggling; the mussels vastly outnumbered us, and where could we flee? Even if our airsuit remained functional, we’d have to cross the barren land, hoping to arrive before the lash of Secundus’ killing sunlight.

One by one, the mussels drove spikes through our tentacles, leaving us splayed out on the rough coral, fire running up and down our tentacles.

Their work done, they left us to die.

 

New Story

May 27, 2024, in Fantasy

“A Promise of Salt and Sky

Robert Luke Wilkins

 

Muirenn stood atop the moonlit cliff, her raised hands bloody from the shell fragments she grasped.

She pulled back her arms, and the cold, salt air of the ocean surged over her. Then she swept her arms forward, and the island air rushed out.

Hear my plea. Speak to me!

Back and forth she drew the wind, as the ocean crashed against the shore. In the spray and the moonlight, three translucent figures formed.

 

New Story

“In Space No-One Can Hear You Play Alto Sax” is a winner in the short, short category for

The Kepler Award 2023

March28 28, 2024, in Science Fiction

“In Space No-One Can Hear You Play Alto Sax”

by Hesper Leveret

 

The departure lounge is vast, echoing in the sterilized air with the voices of thousands of people waiting for their assigned shuttle up to the ships.

Everyone is a stranger.  We just all have the same dream of settling the new world we call Goldy – a Goldilocks planet in the Dorado constellation. 

But we don’t have to wait until we’re 100 light years from Earth to start working together.

New Story

“Call of the Void” is a winner in the short category for

The Kepler Award 2023

February 28, 2024, in Science Fiction

“Call of the Void”
by Bridgette Dutta Portman

 

Jones’s suicide will be the last. Commander Hennepin will make sure of that.

He digs Jones’ grave as the mottled orb of Jupiter hangs overhead.  It’s full today, as it is every eighty-five Earth hours.

Hennepin avoids looking at it. Not that he’s afraid. But both of the prior suicides happened when the planet was in its full phase, with the entirety of its swirling clouds lit up by the distant sun.

 

 

A New Story

In Eldritch

 

January 29, 2024, in Eldritch

“Under the Ghost Star”

by Erik VanBezooijen

 

A Vlakk witch’s 13th birthday is always momentous. For on that day, her mentor gifts her a special insignia and frees her to seek her own destiny.

But on Kuma’s 13th birthday, beneath the crossroads, beneath the Fivefold Catacomb, she faced the Death Spirit, who in a voice like grating coal blocks, told her “You shall remain here in the dark earth, be my most ardent worshiper, supplying my sacrifices, and the roots of this place shall feed on your soul and mind, your body and bones forever…”

And Kuma answered the Death Spirit…

 

 

Stories, Podcasts, Interviews, and Articles, 2023:

Here’s hoping for a

Happy New Year

for us all.

New Story

December 31, 2023, in Fantasy

“New Year’s Angel”

E.E. King

 

The first time Able saw Ana, he thought she was an angel. Maybe because the light outlined her in gold and lit a halo around her hair.

Or possibly because her smile was so radiant she seemed more than human.

But probably, it was due to the large, white wings strapped to her back.

 

New Story

in Stories for Young People of All Ages

The Flip Side”
by Hall Jameson

 

I had arrived in a box with an orange kitten the Keepers called Carrot and a speckled kitten they called Dot. Me, they called mostly, OhNo! but sometimes, StopThat! or GetDown!

Then I fell off the beam in the Basking Room, and landed in a very different place…

 

A New Story

 

October 25, 2023, in Fantasy

 

Terms and Conditions

by Douglas Schwarz

The man who appeared at my elbow after the accident was obviously a demon.  I had other things on my mind though, like the paramedics desperately trying to keep my body alive.

Then he told me he was there to collect me according to the terms of my contract. 

What contract?

 August 31, 2023, in Science Fiction

“The Tattooist of Triton”

by Hesper Leveret

 

‘No flash,’ said the man, shaking his head. ‘I want something… custom.’

 

 May 28, 2023, in Science Fiction

“Wish Upon a Star”

by Rob Nisbet

Annie sat on her garden swing letting her eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, just like Daddy had shown her.
The brighter stars appeared first, then the smaller, fainter stars, until the black sky was dotted with the tiny flecks of light.
It was a perfect night for star gazing.
No moon, no cloud.

Inside, something was happening.
Men from Daddy’s work were talking with Mummy. And Uncle Trevor had come round.  There was something wrong

Something they all wanted to talk about without her listening

So, Annie had been bundled out to look at the stars.

 

A New Story

In Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales

April 30, 2023, in Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales

“Soul Arbitration”
by Rustin Lovewell

Hel arrives first.

The ground at the northern beachhead opens like an inverted gate, rocks and black pebbles sloughing away in a fall that drowns out the crashing surf.

My skin prickles.

I clutch the armrests of my stone seat as the goddess emerges from the depths,

moonlight reflecting off her bone crown.

Mist clings to her garments like phantom hands.

New Story

March 29, 2023, in Science Fiction

“Presto Change-O”

Warren Brown

 

Just playing checkers in the park.

Talking about the latest toy they would produce.

All by themselves.

New Story

 

Valentine’s Day 2023

February 14, 2023 in Science Fiction

Tomorrow Is a Difficult Proposition”

by Kris Bowser

 

“We’ll talk later.” I tell you, with such casual smoothness you have no idea how poor my grasp of “later” actually is.

Then I expand out to formless thought-feeling-presence. I am around your ship, through your ship. I have no edges, no body, only a calmness like shade and meditation and cool water.

I unfold within a nebula, a fair harbor for thought, while patterns form in the blooming and exploding of stars as millennia sweep by.

I return to where you were, but find I have lost you.

You could be anywhere. I’m hazy on the time as well, and so I search backwards and forwards.

I rush through all the reaches of the cosmos where your people have explored and built civilizations, and I rummage through planets and systems like opening and shutting drawers in rapid search.

And all I have to aid my search is a set of dingy keys.

 

New Story

January 31, 2023, in Science Fiction

“BCALLI, SINGER OF THE STRING”

George Guthridge

 

I directed the 800,000 planetesimals in my sector of the inner edge of the Öpik-Oort Cloud encasing the Solar system. 

We were deployed to keep the germs’ madness quarantined until they blew up their world.

Always on our toes and never sleeping, millennia passed quietly, as it does on watch,

just an occasional comet shooting off toward the inner system.

Then came a song.

On the String.

∼     Main Terminal  

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