Author: Tracy Aspel Artificial Intelligence is a load of nonsense. No bot or other digital thing can truly conceptualize, devise, and realize amazing work. What does it know of heartbreak, terror, or feelings even us humans can’t fully encapsulate in words? So, for starters ...

Author: Alastair Millar Mixology’s not my scene, but you go where the job takes you, right? The multispecies crowd in the Spacefarers’ Lounge, which bills itself as the premier bar in the Sagittarius Arm, is young, wealthy and out for a good time. There’s loud music, the ...

Author: David Barber Someone asked me once what I remembered best about Mars. It might have been a TV interview, or that woman writing a book about the Ares missions. The sun afire behind closed lids came suddenly to mind, or was that a wishful memory of sighted days? ...

Author: Kevlin Henney This is not love. It was. Once I loved Bryony. Now I love Mary. I sit across the table from the jar, unsure of what I have reclaimed. Time and self and memory? Less real than a butterfly, more solid than a dream. The meeting of a wish and an ...

Author: Maxwell Pearl I cackled. It was easy to cackle. It seemed right, somehow, now that I’d arrived here, now. I looked down and saw the dress was different and hung a bit more loosely than the one I’d put on just a few minutes ago. Well, that was unexpected. The black ...

Author: J.B. Draper When you’re a Stopper, you tone out the background noise. You live in the silence. That’s what Badger told me when I got in the game, but I never thought I’d enjoy the quiet so much. Here, on the corner of a dingy street, the traffic roars and people ...

Author: Alzo David-West AM-I was the only one left. The light was expanding. And the Earth was still. The moment had been foreseen many billions of years ago. The red engulfing sun and the burning planets. AM-I wondered why. Why had it been left alone after the great ...

Author: B.M. Gilb “I don’t like that we’d ‘buy’ Charlotte a friend.” “We wouldn’t be buying her a friend, Leo. We’re essentially adding a new member to our family. Like a dog,” says Amelia. “A robot is not a dog,” says Leo. He stuffs another garbage bag full of dead ...

Author: R. J. Erbacher A meteor did in the dinosaurs. 70,000 years ago, an Ice Age wiped out all but a few handfuls of Homo-Erectus. Almost half the population died in the 1300’s because of the Black Plague. Armageddon had been predicted since man could tell ...

Author: Mark Renney The bullet passed straight through him. Of course it did, he was a Hollow but he was the latest model, state of the art, the most efficient and lifelike replica on the market right now. Lenny groaned, because to all intents and purposes at that ...

Author: Ell Rodman I spent most of Monday morning awake in bed, staring at a clock that reads three hundred and eighty two. Its set into a wall of deep green steel tainted by orange rust. Or did the clock stare at me? I could never tell where the cameras were. Next to me, ...

Author: Elysia Rourke The meteoroid hurtles towards Pioneer’s cockpit every time you close your eyes. Alarms scream—you scream—and slam the controls. All for nothing. Today, your calculations have worn your last pencil to the eraser. That's why you're mixing urine and ...

Author: Majoki It’s a bummer, but whenever you try to cram too much into too small a space, black holes inevitably form. That’s the danger of trying to imagine the largest of numbers. Huge numbers contain a lot of information, and information has weight. Ten trillion ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer There’s a star on the horizon, and it’s golden, not white. Tasmisa is what the people who live there call it. They spent thirty-eight years developing the world-shifting technology that allowed them to escape the destruction of their ...

Author: Bob Brussack On the planet Janus there are two advanced species: the Narses and the Nerses. It's taken for granted by both species that the Narses are good-looking and the Nerses are smart. Be that as it may, and there's reason for an off-worlder to question both ...

Author: David Henson “Hello, this is Claire Rains with Now You Don’t Enterprises, maker of the Light Bender Extraordinaire. Whom do I have the pleasure of assisting?” “Claude Wells. I’m having problems with my new invisibility cloak. I —” “I’m here to help, Mr. ...

Author: R. J. Erbacher The Stormwatch was wrong. There was nothing on the scanners for this. The projection was for only light chop for the nine-hour trip from New York to Plymouth, England. Captain Hendrick squinted through the rain slashed windshield, at the ...

Author: Mark Renney We have been instructed not to refer to her as the alien or the extra-terrestrial or even the visitor. I’m sure she has told the Scientists and Government officials her name or has informed them of the system she and her society use in order to identify ...