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The Nameless Queen sipped her port, rolling the blood–dark liquid in her mouth. The night’s rain pattered against the tall leaded glass windows of her sitting room in a gentle susurration. On the mantel, the clock ticked four minutes until midnight. The door burst open, bouncing against the paneled wall. “… must be planted in […]
Initial Survey Report: Planet 6MQ441 (Bakeneko), Alaraph System Logged by: Dr. Savine Abolafiya, Chief Xenoecology Officer, Y.S.S. Duchess Anne Attention: Captain Agathe Ganizani, Commanding Officer Y.S.S. Duchess Anne Satellites: Four Mineral Interest: Iron, copper, diamond, cobalt, scandium, praesodymium, yttrium. Only diamond in desirable quantities. Nothing sufficient to offset cost of extraction. Sentient Life: None Strategic […]
The first strange thing Nadia pulled from her pocket was a piece of fudge. It was a perfectly ordinary piece of fudge. But Nadia hated fudge, and couldn’t imagine how she’d come to be carrying it around. She remembered this in particular because it was a bright, cool autumn day and she’d dug into her […]
1. At ten of five in the morning, Lao Dao crossed the busy pedestrian lane on his way to find Peng Li. After the end of his shift at the waste processing station, Lao Dao had gone home, first to shower and then to change. He was wearing a white shirt and a pair of […]
Craig Perry, university administration employee. Judy Garland, dead. That’s where it started. Dead five days before, in London, “an incautious overdosage” of barbiturates, according to the coroner, and her body had just come back to New York for burial. Twenty–thousand people lined up to pay their respects. Every gay man in Manhattan must have gone, […]
How much kissing and flirting can a story take before it doesn’t deserve to be called science fiction any more? Yes, that was a trick question. Science fiction has often had an uncomfortable relationship with romance. Many readers (and let’s face it, creators) resist the idea of letting love and relationships take up too much […]
The old ways were lost on a dusty road between Orion and Abora, sewn with the splintered skins of stars, tracked in spirals, where once a small boy fit Jupiter in his eye. It became a habit with him, the vast—an ocean fell out of his mouth, and in it he rolled the planets up […]
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