Reposted from BoingBoing: RIP, Jeanne Robinson Cory Doctorow at 5:53 PM Monday, May 31, 2010 Sincere condolences to Spider Robinson and family on the passing of his wonderful, talented wife: the dancer, writer and choreographer Jeanne Robinson, after a long struggle with cancer. The human race has lost one of its finest members. Spider and [...]
Author : Neil Shurley “Will you just cool it about the jet pack?” It was all I could do not to shout at him. Barry’s daily tirade against the state of the world left me feeling nothing but tired. Ever since New Year’s Day he’d go off for at least ten minutes every morning about [...]
Author : James Riley “Oof!” Miller grunted, raising the bar for John to take it. He exhaled deeply and sat up. John casually dropped the weight onto the maglev lifts and patted his friend on the back. “Think that’ll do it?” John asked. “Should. . .” Miller replied, tapping his left forearm twice. A pale [...]
Author : Cesium They were together when the city stopped. Their office perched atop a spire reaching up from the business district. Usually holoscreens afforded them a panoramic, unobstructed view of the city, or of whatever other landscape they wished to see, but those were dead now and only a single transparent wall afforded them [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer The shuttlecraft was careening out of control in the upper atmosphere of an uncolonized Class-M planet orbiting Alpha Mensae. Lieutenant Ashby reached down and touched the control panel to shut off the alarm. “What’s the Manual say we should do now?” “Who cares?” responded Ensign Tappan. “The Manual told [...]
Author : D. Maurer “Coffee?” I asked him; we were watching a recovery procedure. This poor sap died well over five hundred years ago. He was the oldest meat popsicle we had attempted to revive. “Excuse me?” “Would you like some coffee?” “No. No, thank you.” I looked at him and the giant polygon that [...]
Author : Q. B. Fox 17th April 2002, a concrete room, off an unmarked tunnel on the Northern Line. “How long were they down?” Simon looked up from what he was doing, and even in the dim light of the rack mounted servers I recognise the pinched expression. “12 days. A power supply shorted some [...]
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer “Okay, this is some of the best footage of the conflict we have seen. We spent a lot of money to have Johnson’s eyes and optic nerves replaced with the latest equipment including superconducting neural jacks, which can operate at higher temperatures. The liqO2 containment and the rest [...]
Author : Liz Lafferty Seven years I’d waited for my DNA match. Seven years of anxiety about what she would be like. Seven years of stress about whether she’d find me attractive and a suitable provider. Nineteen billion people inhabited the planet. I never understood why it was so difficult to find the right person. [...]
Author : Mark Robinson “But, how is any of this possible?” Despite the scene she’s making all I can focus on is the pink tip of the pregnancy test strip – which we stock on aisle five – that she’s waving around in the air; watching the droplets of pink-tinted urine fleck across the counter [...]
Author : Daniel Fuhr Red rocks crumbled under my heavy boots. I looked around the desolate Martian landscape and destruction thereupon. I could taste the acrid smoke around me as I walked through the wreckage of the downed ship, even through the environmental suit and protective gear, something for psychologists to quack at me about. [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer A small boy sat in his father’s lap staring at the full moon as it rose above the eastern horizon. “Daddy,” he asked, “Where’s mommy?” The father rested his son’s head against the inside of his right bicep and pointed toward the moon. “See that dark circle. It’s called [...]
Author : Elbie Kruger I was born on the Calcarus colony settlement, a city floating 50,000 miles from planet Earth with a breathtaking view of the solar system. Having been born in space there were perks, however there were also drawbacks. You became used to cramped spaces and the lack of privacy, having known no [...]
Author : Ellen Couch “Don’t you love me?” she asked. “You know I do,” I said quietly, “but you’re not mine, you never really were.” I could tell she didn’t understand- how could she? As far as she was concerned, we had the perfect life. Late one night in the physics lab, working on my [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer I had all of the animals in the dome jacked and miked. I issued an edict. Collect every puppy, kitten, or chick for a small reward. It was popular game with the children. They’d go out ‘hunting’ in the engineered woods in the western pie-slice of our world. It [...]
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Arkus had come in from the mining field with less than a day before termination. He’d slipped unnoticed through the security fences and into an airlock in the biotech wing where he now sat, unable to enter and unable to leave. Marc Andreeson had been paged from his sleep, [...]
Author : Stephen Ira Owen was standing on the side of a boy’s driveway. They were both smoking long thin joints, which made Owen’s face pink and his eyes telescopic slivers. The other boy, his round face capped by a black beanie, called Owen “precious.” Beyond the driveway, the snowy ground extended blankly for yards. [...]
Author : W. Robinson I had thought after my last assignment on Epsilon that I was done with the military. Quite obviously the young woman in front of me with the large blue-gray eyes had not received that memo. Stock-built, but short, she stood with her arms crossed as I ran the numbers of her [...]
Author : Jacqueline Rochow We’re going camping. Mum finishes packing my bag as Dad prepares a celebratory stew. I packed the bags already, but Mum insisted on pulling everything out again to make sure that I didn’t forget anything. Food, clothes, gun, bandages, antibiotics – how hard is that? She still finds problems, though. Takes [...]
Author : Jacqueline Rochow We decided to take the draught. My parents didn’t like it. A lot of people didn’t. It was unnatural, people said. It wasn’t the real thing. It was empty. It was selfish. So we didn’t tell them. Stupid? Reckless? That’s what my mother would have said. I was only seventeen when [...]
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer Somewhere south of Toadsuck, Texas, along a washboard gravel road, a middle aged man was walking his dog, enjoying the cool night air and the effects of cheap grain alcohol. Looking up, he witnessed a glowing object streak across the sky. “Mmurph,” was his only comment. The object [...]
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer The alarm of the Olympia Undae Penitentiary snapped warden Jacobs from a deep sleep. He hurried down to the den to access his computer terminal, only to be greeted by a dozen escaped convicts. Jacobs recognized them as members of the Tharsis gang, a group of third and fourth [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer On my 67th birthday, my research finally reached fruition and I invented a portable matter transporter. By wearing it, I could transport anywhere in the world at will. If I grabbed someone, that person came with me. I didn’t need to know where I was going, I didn’t need [...]
Author : John Williams Gas and Sag had clear orders to destroy all life on the planet. Their leader, The Gnik, was concerned that the violence portrayed on its radio and television was setting a very bad example to the rest of the Universe. The exact manner of destruction was left to them. Their Gnik [...]
Author : D. Wang His wings were polyaramid leather woven over carbon bones and monofilament tendon, his gaze the piercing thousand-yard stare of a man who could see through stone, his talons X-ray lasers so powerful their waste heat violated Second Kyoto with every shot. In his time, he’d been God’s own fury and brave [...]
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer I didn’t want to think about it. Just do it. Get it over with. It’s a mission like any other. You can do it man. With a snap, I secured the gloves over my hands. They seemed such flimsy protection. I quickly pulled the mask over my face, [...]
Author : K Clarke As if crashing on this stupid planet wasn’t enough. Pad paced the cell, glaring through the one transparent wall at the creatures on the other side. As if having to survive for three months on this stupid planet wasn’t enough. I just had to get myself caught by the Space Invaders [...]
Author : Jacqueline Rochow Den paced outside the library, the swaying of her tail betraying her unease. Gil merely stood silently, eyes tracking his boss’ movement. “He’ll come out soon,” Den said. Gil nodded in reply; he knew his input wouldn’t affect her musing much. “He’ll see we’re right. It’s undeniable.” It was another hour [...]
Author : Glenn Blakeslee I first saw the torso during my commute down the interhighway. It lay against the concrete median, looking so much like trash that at first I didn’t recognize it. The car was going fast enough that later I thought I’d imagined the outstretched arms and rather noble head, so I tagged [...]
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer They gave us love to control us. He was the bodyguard unit of the human in charge of Prolotek offshore finance. I was the pleasure unit of the same human. The makers found that instilling aspects of human love in our chips made us fanatically loyal to those that [...]
Author : C. Clayton Chandler They came out of the sky like plumes of fire, these green-skinned sickos with their saucers and their death rays shearing the air, burning atmosphere, coasting smooth and cool out of the everlasting vacuum beyond the bounds of gravity, of reality, of everything we’ve ever known or truly believed. Hundreds [...]
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