The Thirteen Quixotic Temples of Light and Darkness
Reading Time: 30 minutes A young woman purchases a set of beads from an old crone and the adventure of her life begins.
The Thirteen Quixotic Temples of Light and Darkness Read More »
Fiction
Deify
Reading Time: 4 minutes Grace is a cult survivor who is called to identify the body of her former cult’s leader and captor.
FRIENDSHIP
Reading Time: 10 minutes A lonely alien seeks friendship and fulfillment at an Alaska farmers market.
Quantum Forever
Reading Time: 3 minutes A particle traveling from the beginning of time to the end and back contemplates the balance between hope and fate. Though powerless to control its direction, the particle still has choices.
Three Centuries. Same Radio.
Reading Time: 3 minutes When reaching out to the stars above, the space beyond or the ether, we allocate disproportionate energy into preparing to cast the nets over catching the fish. What do we do with it?
Hyacinth
Reading Time: 3 minutes The allure of prospecting a deserted Mars becomes so compelling that nothing else matters. Not even love.
The Wolf of the Woods
Reading Time: 10 minutes When Dominic saved his sister from a monster, he didn’t anticipate he would become one too. Now, he might be the most dangerous creature in the woods and if he doesn’t get help, he could hurt the people he loves.
One Thousand Buddhas: But Who’s Counting
Reading Time: 17 minutes Armed with a magic talisman, Nathan must find the next Buddha – a thirteen-year-old boy in Chicago – before humanity is plunged into extinction.
Ollie and the Stickman
Reading Time: 16 minutes When Olivia gets bored in class and doodles a stickman on her arm, she has no idea what she’s in for. When it is brought to life by a rival girl, everything changes.
Osprey
Reading Time: 6 minutes The New Gods were cast out two hundred and sixty-two years ago when humanity enacted the Great Blackout. We had already lost almost everything. Rumors have persisted ever since that they would find a way to return and finish what they started.
Dancing With Etta
Reading Time: 6 minutes A puppet suddenly appears in a woman’s house, and though it is confined to the house only, it follows her like a shadow.
Limb Regeneration Therapy
Reading Time: 3 minutes Will this be the doctor who finally takes on Aki’s limb regeneration? It’s the sixth alien specialist and hope is slowly vanishing from his eyes.
This World of Strange Design
Reading Time: 4 minutes Building a planet used to be harder. There was a real art to it. It required raw talent polished to a diamond’s edge.
Superfine
Reading Time: 4 minutes Lightyears from home, a miner toils on a moon, gradually being hollowed out. They scrape a life, money to support their family, and something like friendship, from the dirt. But when disaster strikes, they are forced to make a hard decision.
The Puppy Problem
Reading Time: 7 minutes Sometimes it’s the little things that come back to bite us.
Cramping Your Style
Reading Time: 5 minutes If you had the power to take down your opponents on the soccer field simply by touching them, would you?
Quabbin’s Child
Reading Time: 14 minutes Alone on a foggy day, among the ruins of an old New England town, a runner has an encounter with the ghost of a small child asking for help.
Hungry
Reading Time: 13 minutes Just how long can young Will Graves hold back on his craving for human brains?
Weekend Treasures
Reading Time: 12 minutes Flea markets have gizmos, thingamajigs and other useful things.
The Bars of Orion
Reading Time: 24 minutes Crossing into a parallel universe is traumatic, but being a good father and learning to let go requires treatment. Originally appeared in Interzone, 2014.
Pumpkin Seeds
Reading Time: 17 minutes Late one night, an orphan sees a strange monster, a man, patiently waiting just outside the minister’s home.
Situation
Reading Time: 3 minutes What happens when a young mage tries to contain a hell breach? Well, it’s hell.
The Boy in the Giant Robot
Reading Time: 4 minutes Once there was a giant robot. Inside the giant robot was a boy.
In the Land of the Blind
Reading Time: 9 minutes In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man can help.
An Unusual Practice
Reading Time: 7 minutes
Dr. Matthew Hamilton just wanted a nice, quiet practice at a small clinic. He never bargained for a reputation as the go-to doctor for supernatural creatures. But his very first patient leads him into a world of werewolves, ghosts, sprites, glass people, imps, and witches. In order for Dr. Hamilton’s unique clinic to succeed, however, he must triumph over malevolent forces who don’t want the supernatural world to have their own “Doctor of the Unusual.”
Kept Woman
Reading Time: 5 minutes After literally sucking the life out of her abusive husband, a ghost wife tells her story of ruin and retribution.
Kind of Super
Reading Time: 10 minutes What happens when your superhero powers aren’t so super anymore?
Top Dog Gone
Reading Time: 4 minutes One day a rabid animal took a bite out of Breeder’s beloved pet and sidekick Top Dog. Top Dog is a muscular, spoiled canine with a colossal appetite. Breeder always let Top Dog play with Creatures, even dangerous and wild ones. He secretly got a kick out of watching Top Dog’s nature grow hellish and animated when he toyed with them. Top Dog also had a talent for dominating Creatures of all kinds. Breeder bragged to Brother often.
Barter Queen
Reading Time: 16 minutes Soledad and her brother arrive at Marytown, a post-apocalyptic stronghold where normal people can live in relative safety–as long as they have a skill to offer the community. The anachronistically well-groomed Queen Mary sees potential in Soledad, introducing both comfort and danger to the siblings’ lives.
How I Came to Be Raised by Balniwan the Fool
Reading Time: 11 minutes Debts are called in high in the hills in this bronze-age fantasy.
Sweet Bells Jangled
Reading Time: 24 minutes Karin heads up a group of disparate and interesting characters exploring tunnels lined with luminous rock that Earth needs. Good suspense with a satisfactorily scientific denouement and love thrown in. What more could you ask?
The Devil’s Triangle
Reading Time: 23 minutes First came the time-storm, which erased half the population. Then came the Dinosaur Apocalypse …
Live Nude Death
Reading Time: 4 minutes A hitman hired to kill the Four Horsemen and prevent the apocalypse has one last target waiting for him in the parking lot of an abandoned strip club. But how do you kill Death?
Bixby’s The Draw Examines Power and Will
Reading Time: 25 minutes A man, twisted by hatred and his own experience, blunders his way into absolute power.
A PLATE FROM THE GODS
Reading Time: 17 minutes The lands were barren, the animals were dead and their bellies were rumbling. In one last attempt, they prayed for salvation, but something else answered them…
Spiral Woman
Reading Time: 3 minutes Inspired by both the art of Louise Bourgeois and a news story about a sex-bot repairman, “Spiral Woman” gives a kind of agency to a member of the already-marginalized servant class of the future.
The Dawn Cluster I: Detriment
Reading Time: 13 minutes Duty and revenge intersect as a displaced crew fight for survival. but the toll of that survival may cost too much. Their fate hinges on the destinies of two men, both teetering between valor and self-destruction.
Enjoy an excerpt from the first novel in The Dawn Cluster, ‘Detriment.’
Burning Embers
Reading Time: 27 minutes A psychic makes the mistake of falling in love with the person she is supposed to protect from assassination.
Williamson’s Cosmic Express Embraces Progress
Reading Time: 16 minutes There is now, and indeed has always been, a tendency of society to split between those who favor progress and those who want things left well enough alone.
Forbidden
Reading Time: 10 minutes “Don’t go in the forest.” “Don’t open your eyes after sunset.” “Don’t look behind that door in the cellar.” Being forbidden from doing something is a common theme in fairy tales, but why? What kind of power does the person doing the forbidding have over the one being forbidden?
All Appearances Aside
Reading Time: 4 minutes You can change your appearance with the touch of a button. But should you?
Renna’s Crossing
Reading Time: 25 minutes The first part of a contemporary fantasy story for young and new adults. Sixteen-year-old Renna Porter and Job, her mysterious tutor in witchcraft, race to a magical sanctuary deep in the Adirondacks, pursued by a demon hunting down the last of Renna’s bloodline.
Castaway on Temurlone
Reading Time: 21 minutes
It is indeed a Universe of Miracles! But not for young Pimsol Anderts, idle and jobless on a depressed, waterlogged world, until he signs aboard the interstellar freighter Miraculous Abernathy. Indentured to the aristocratic Wirthy family—and bewitched by beautiful Mirable Wirthy, the latest clone of the long-dead matriarch Imogene Wirthy—Pim’s adventure has barely begun when pirates attack, forcing him to flee the ship with Mirable in tow …
Vonnegut’s The Big Trip Up Yonder Casts Hilarious Fun at Generation Gap
Reading Time: 13 minutes This tale is an excellent example of Vonnegut’s grasp of the hilarious and sometimes macabre nature of humanity.
Vonnegut’s The Big Trip Up Yonder Casts Hilarious Fun at Generation Gap Read More »
The Apatite Necklace
Reading Time: 8 minutes At a cliff’s edge, an unnamed protagonist has a conversation with their dead mother.
The Erasure
Reading Time: 6 minutes After watching his annoying neighbor be arrested and erased, both virtually and physically, from the world, a man decides to risk everything to help preserve a few fleeting memories of others who have been erased.
No Worlds Left to Conquer
Reading Time: 4 minutes What happens to science fiction when aliens actually do show up on Earth?