Fiction
"Katie walked hand in hand with her grandfather along the forest path. Dappled light filtered through the trees. She liked the way his hand felt rough in hers and how his eyes always seemed to smile, even when it didn't show on his face. Whenever she stumbled over a stone, or a root, or her own feet, he'd steady her with a grip that was still firm and strong. He stopped along the trail and pointed to dandelions growing in a sunlit circle among the trees. Yellow petals crowned green stems ending in spiked leaves. Some flowers had already changed to puffs."
"The world is filled with spirits who would take a child. The gundarram, who hide in banana trees and send out their foul breath to sicken sleeping infants. The gargar demons with red fur and black wings, who fly through the rainforest looking for naughty children to snatch. Momimo, who appears as a little lost boy crying in the mangrove swamps, begging children and adults alike for help. There are even spirits who steal the lives of babies still in their mothers’ wombs."
"There: Thebe. Ugly little thing. A potato of ice and crap, streakin' past like the comet it probably once was. Blink and you missed it. Maybe I feel a tug as it zips by, its mass just enough to stir me in my suspension coffin. Or maybe I'm imagining it. You imagine a lot of things out here. You need to."
• "The Waiting Room" by Harris Tobias. Speculative Fiction.
"Got a question for God, take a number."
• "Slight Chance of Thunderstorms" by Jessica Baumgartner. Fantasy.
"This local weather girl is much more than meets the eye."
• "The Fortress" by Michele Dutcher. Science Fiction
"In a barren future, a young woman goes searching for a link to her heritage."
• "Cities of Men" by Rocky Hutson. Science Fiction.
"Retired astronomy professor discovers humankind is making a startling transformation."
Flash Fiction
- At Daily Science Fiction: "Ulder" by Vajra Chandrasekera. Magical Realism.
- At Every Day Fiction: "An Isolated Mechanism" by Moriah Geer-Hardwick. Science Fiction.
- At Farther Stars Than These: "Orion" by C. C. Parker. Science Fiction.
- At Nature: "One Out, One In" by Aislinn Batstone, Science Fiction.
- At Quantum Muse: "The Arrival" by Harris Tobias. Science Fiction.
- At 365 Tomorrows: "The Beginning is Impossible and the End is Impassable" by Nathan Witkin. Science Fiction.
- At 365 Tomorrows: "Wind Chimes" by Sara Norja. Science Fiction.
Audio Fiction
"Johnston Lien stood at the open door of the tram, one elbow crooked around a guardrail, her blue eyes squinting in the morning glare at the sky-piercing needle of the orbital elevator to the south. The sun was in the Cold Dew position, early in the dog-month, when the temperature began to soar and the sunlight burned brighter in the southern sky. Summer was not long off, and Lien hoped to be far from here before it came. As the tram rumbled across the city of Nine Dragons, she turned her attention back to her notes, checking the address of her last interviewee and reviewing the pertinent bits of data from their brief earlier meeting."
"After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18-- , from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as passenger --having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me like a fiend."
"A new world is about to be born.But before it can be born... something will have to die, at the hands of The Gadget"
"We left Tarzan seeking an entrance to the mysterious city of madmen, tracking Bertha Kircher and Lt. Smith-Oldwick. As he races toward the city wall hoping to climb the vines that grow on it, he is hunted and chased by one of the huge valley lions!"
Gaming
"Issue 9 is now available for download. This issue is all about spaceships. We have a couple of awesome deck plan by Joseph Meager that we rescued from a lost Star Frontiers site. Plus submissions from some regular contributiors and a cargo ship by a new author, M. Derryberry. In all, there are three sets of deck plans, a writeup on a fourth class of ships, some space stations, and a review of early atomic rockets."
"Not to worry though—they are freaky crystal-headed children. Inhuman RPG cannon-fodder. ‘Monsters.’ So it’s okay. They deserve it. So you can have fun carving them up. Right?"
