Author : Viktor Kuprin Jump drive, hyper drive, quantum drive, there were many names for the exotic-vacuum engine that propelled our ships to the stars. In the CIS Space Force, we called it the Super-Space Drive, the S-Drive. Thirty of us lined up outside the training ship’s control-simulator bay, everyone wearing light suits, helmets clipped [...]
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer David closed the door and slid the deadbolt, tossing his keys on the hall stand. He crossed the small parlor to the sideboard, and as he reached for a tumbler and the bottle of Jamesons, he was startled by a voice from the corner. “I’d prefer you didn’t do [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer I remember his wide dead eyes. It was like a fish had been brought back to life and told to pretend to be human. His legs and arms were folded with too many joints into the rocking chair. He slowly creaked back and forth, disturbing the dust motes in [...]
Author : B. Zedan The woman on watch stood barefoot, a coil of rope slung ’round her waist. The belt at her hips carried a sheathed hunting knife, the handle carved by her mother. Below the knife, as if in magnification, swung a scarred and keen machete. In perfect balance opposite was a rotary tool, [...]
Author : Peter Carenza It was a special day; not merely because Bobby opened his eyes to an absolutely picture-perfect sunny surprise straight out of a travel brochure, but because he had been waiting for today for a long, long time. Rubbing the sleepy crust from his eyes, he swung his feet out of bed [...]
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer Lucifer Morningstar stepped out of his sleek black starship and smiled a sharp smile into the barrel of a particle gun. There were twenty armed guards in the hanger, four on the balcony and the rest on the ground, all of them with their sights on his chest. Lucifer [...]
Author : Grant Wamack Coins, they’re thrown into the small pile that sits in front of a heap of dirty rags. The rags shift and the metal underneath shines in the dull afternoon light. It rises to its feet, specks of dirt fall to the ground, gears groan and its body creaks. It slowly walks [...]
Author : William Tracy Call me Sarah. That was my name, in one of my lives. I have the memories of many lives in me, you know. Male and female, old and young, short and tall, light and dark, human and not human. Presidents and ditch diggers, starship captains and desk jockeys. I know I [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer Lachlan was vacationing with his parents in the Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia when he spotted an object high in the sky that was slowly spiraling toward the ground. It took several minutes before it “landed†in a grassy field fifty meters away. The object [...]
Author : Brian Armitage They met with four hours left. He had hung up his cell phone and stared at it for a second, suddenly out of people to call. When he finally looked up, he saw her across the street, holding the same pose – wondering, he knew, if she had forgotten anyone, but [...]
Author : Roi R. Czechvala My father fought in the Gulf War, the Iraqi War, and the Colonial Lunar Wars. His father fought in the blood bath of South East Asia, and his father fought in North Africa during the Great Patriotic War. So, it was desert, jungle, desert… I hate the jungle. I wish [...]
Author : Asher Wismer I pushed the fedora up on my head and watched the bloody letters with suspicion, as if they might rearrange themselves during a blink. Brick snapped a picture, then muttered, “Josh Ledder. I knew him.” “Not in this reality,” I said. “No, but I know him in ours.” My supervisor held [...]
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer We, the immortals, the brazen, renewing life, we never stop changing, not for ourselves, not for each other. The universe unfolds and we cannot stop it. The language changes and I change and you changed too. And now I’m remembering the old sounds, the half silent aspirated p’s the [...]
Author : Jacinta A. Meyers So here I am, a third-class passenger bound for the floating island of a techno-civ, armed with various skins and plotting infiltration and assassination. Ah, sounds like vacation. Well, except for the intended target, that is. How do you disarm a human trigger? I mean, I’ve done my fair share [...]
Author : Asher Wismer “I invented a time machine,” said Professor Rudnicki morosely. The whiskey in front of him glinted, a cylindrical crystal promising amnesia. My hands moved on their own, needing no guidance, wiping a glass that would never be clean. I looked skeptical. “Isn’t time travel impossible, except to the extreme relative future?” [...]
Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer “Time?” Cal called down to Peter from his perch on top of the ruined building. “Five more minutes, give or take,” Peter shouted up to him, “Molly has never been particularly punctual.” They were waiting about two klicks outside Ironworks. A rusting metal sign informed them that they were [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer The ship’s computer revived me from stasis. It took hours for my body to fully awaken, and for my muscles to respond to my wishes. But what could you expect from a woman that was 345 years old? We had volunteered for this one-way ambassador mission in the year [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer My nervous system registered a strong palm-print between my shoulder blades just before I was shoved hard towards the ground. I landed face-first amongst a scatter of hot shell casings and a reek of spent gunpowder. I heard bullets whine and snap into the thin wall where I had [...]
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Queen Louise XVI’s afternoon reading was interrupted by the message ‘Governess LaPointe requests audience’ scrolling across the page of text which hung in space before her. “Granted,” she spoke aloud, waving the texts into the ether. The comfortable silence was shattered by the staccato barrage of heel on stone [...]
Author : Dee Harding Samsara has worn his locks for 15 years, shining and strong. He has adapted to them by sleeping sideways and letting them learn to clean themselves. Each tangled cluster of keratine farms its own rot, the rain, and the detritus of everyday life. Stray protein quietly becoming fuel for a million [...]
Author : Ian Rennie They turned Valerie off this morning. Nothing flashy, nothing officially announced. Two grey-suited daemons came in, picked up her sprite and walked out with it. When I went to the dorms to investigate, her room was blank, no sign that she had ever been here. I know the drill. They’ll say [...]
Author : Jacinta A. Meyers Lieutenant General Macy McMurphey Delane dreamt of meeting his nemesis. It was a bit of an obsession. He imagined that, across the star-clustered chasm of drifting space dust, on the far edge of the galaxy, there was another command center probably very much like his own. Yes, there must be [...]
Author : Timothy T. Murphy A month before reaching Europa, Heather woke to an e-mail from her grandfather. Her grandfather hated e-mail, so much so that she’d been shocked when he asked her to teach him so they could talk while she was away. He hated cameras even more, so when she opened her in-box [...]
Author : J.R. Blackwell, Staff Writer Jack hated the Minotaur. Ever since he’d gotten off the silver bus to basic training at White Hook, the Minotaur had picked on him. At the Imperial recruitment office, Jack was told that he had some of the highest scores on physical, mental and social tests of any new [...]
Author : Sam Clough, Staff Writer Kema Port. Hot, dry and dusty in general; the uncomfortable atmosphere an unavoidable side-effect of the equatorial location of the port. A walled city, surrounded on all sides by sand and rock, Kema is unforgiving. However, Kema the city is inextricably linked with Kema the spaceport, and by extension [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer Tau Ceti is a yellow-orange star slightly smaller than Earth’s Sun. It’s approximately 11.9 light-years away, in the southern Constellation Cetus. It has three planets. The most notable is the second planet in the system, Ketos. Ketos is midway in size between Earth and Mars, and orbits within the [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer There are people in the depths of this city that have literally never seen the sun. They live in artificially lit shanty-arcologies and depend on shipment piracy for survival. Whatever they can’t grow hydroponically, they barter from the city above, Topside. These people don’t live in the sewers. They [...]
Author : Geoffrey Cashmore “See? Look, I said already. It don’ hurt.†Herb watched again as the bump on Tommy’s hand faded from pink to grey then back to pink each time he clenched his fist. “Well it’s up to you, buddy,†Herb sounded sceptical. “but it sure looks bad to me. You need get [...]
Author : Asher Wismer “…every person in my family,” said Burt. “I’m the only one who hasn’t plugged it in, but I know what will happen if I do.” “Why don’t you get rid of it?” “I can’t,” he said, and the weary lines in his face almost masked his misery. Almost. “It’s like a [...]
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Carson lay still, blood oozing from his battered mouth onto the playground, his ears ringing as they laughed. “Come on freak, get up and fight.” Quentin Taylor, the quarterback had landed the last blow, arm ratcheted back in a hail mary that had exploded into Carson’s jaw. “For the [...]
Author : Jim Wisniewski At first I thought it was the viewscreen. The tiny, flickery viewscreen from a public matterfax at the Sont Mikaal gate station, with its scratched plastic case and the smudged dust of a dozen systems. A dozen systems’ cargo terminals, anyway. Free patterns are public-domain and ancient, made with semicon electronics [...]
Align Software Inc.
Coilhouse magazine + blog
Futurismic
Spilling Ink Review
Wilcox Studios