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Stories of scifi, fantasy, and fear,
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Art for "Final Mission"






Fiction
• At Lightspeed: "The Panda Coin" by Jo Walton. Science Fiction.
"Karol hung in the lock and yawned, which he’d have told anyone was his way of readjusting to the air pressure inside Hengist. Many around him were yawning too. All outworkers knew that a pressure yawn had nothing to do with tiredness."

•  At Lightspeed: "Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology" by Theodora Goss. Fantasy.
"Remembering Cimmeria: I walk through the bazaar, between the stalls of the spice sellers, smelling turmeric and cloves, hearing the clash of bronze from the sellers of cooking pots, the bleat of goats from the butcher’s alley. Rugs hang from wooden racks, scarlet and indigo. In the corners of the alleys, men without legs perch on wooden carts, telling their stories to a crowd of ragged children, making coins disappear into the air." Audio version at same link.

• At Strange Horizons: "Chopin's Eyes" by Lara Elena Donnelly. Speculative Fiction.
"Chopin's playing captures all her senses. It leaves nothing of her keen, novelist's observation to note the tremor fleeing from his hands, or his shoulders lifting from their stoop. She misses the moment when the muddy hazel of his iris hardens to bright smaragdine. Later, she will learn her friends believe his eyes to be black; or rich, dark brown; or even, Franz protests, a clear grey-blue, clean and wide as the sea." Audio version at same link.

• At Tor.com: "Sleep Walking Now and Then" by Richard Bowes.
"Sleep Walking Now and Then,” by Richard Bowes, is a weird, futuristic novelette about an interactive theater production in The Big Arena (aka New York City) and the mystery surrounding its inspiration."

Audio Fiction
• At Beam Me Up: BMU 413: "Ringminers' Daughter" by Duncan Shields. Science Fiction.
"Each ringminer scoopship was like a baleen whale. They had wide mouths to collect all the crystals and sift through them for valuable minerals. It was tedious work but the rewards were there. It tended to turn the rings grey after a century of mining but didn’t damage them other than that. The ecolegal fights had been fought and ringminers were a profession for now."

• At Protecting Project Pulp:  “Final Mission” by John D. MacDonald, Narrator: Fred Himebaugh.
first published in Planet Stories, November, 1950 "In that precise, antiseptic, post-war society, thirteen hell-raising old space-warriors were as obsolete as bass knuckles in a debate. . .and somewhat more of a nuisance. So brass-bands played, and brass-hats brayed. . .and a coffin ship left for the stars. . . "

• At StarShipSofa: “Trading Rosemary” (Part 1) and (Part 2) by Octavia Cade. Science Fiction.
"Rosemary was justifiably proud of it. Begun by her great-grandfather, it had passed down through the family, with each generation adding to the collection— at considerable personal expense. She had contributed many exquisite pieces herself, and introduced order and organization into what had been a fine mess. Each coin was now carefully preserved, and suitably labeled according to its age, provenance, and properties. They were boxed in slim rectangular cases with burnished leather covers, and arranged according to catalogue, so that if one particular coin was required it could then be easily plucked from among its thousands of companions without hesitation or mishap."