Rico rode for months before he picked up the Tinker’s trail. He rode through woods in the South populated by ancient giants, cybernetic dwarves, and trees that grew higher than…
Science Fiction
The Judgment of Cambyses
It was August 2075 in Brussels. A dying arts and antiquities dealer needed an heir – a suitable one, one that wouldn’t squander and ruin the business he had spent…
Who Put the Coke in Coca-Cola?
Coke is it: the best-known commercial product in human history. Uh huh! It’s the real thing. And – for the first 15 years of its life – it contained the…
Demon’s Orbit
“The idea of Laplace’s demon was that if you had had some kind of intelligence with enough processing jam and enough triv about this moment, it’d be able to see…
Where Is Japan, And When?
I am a writer, and so I write. I tell myself this—often—to explain why I persist in my scribbling. For I may fill sheet after sheet with hurried recollections, I…
Always the Young Alien
I don’t know why, but lecturing the extraterrestrials unnerved me. Oh, they assumed the respectful attitude—tentacles tucked beneath scaly feet—and rarely spoke. But if they objected to the lecture, they…
Poetry: John Grey
GATHERER I walk across the endless dry oceansof this planet,gathering rocks in sacks,thinking how if this were earthand I were wandering over its sea bedsI would have drowned by this.…
Fragile
Peer Review of the Treatment of Homo sapiens at the Qortang Xenological Observatory Abstract:It is now common knowledge that on date 765.22:45 Qooroou Silicon Virus was found present in 87%…
The Wire
The knock at his door was expected. It was the short, rotund man he found in the hallway outside his apartment when he answered the knock, that surprised Evan. Dark…
Drive, It Said
This story, read by the author, may be listened to here. It was half-past twelve when the Thing slid into my back seat. A fellow sees all kinds in this…