“Miss Snowfall” by Sofia Samatar
In Fallow, a group of people, like the Amish, or perhaps more precisely the Mennonites, build a new Noah’s arc, leave the Earth (which has been poisoned), and drift through…
Life Is a Joke and Death Is the Punchline
a cat to feed named Mr. Butts.
The Great Silence
Ted Chiang’s very short story, “The Great Silence” adds another set of questions to these speculations. Why, he asks, are we so interested in finding intelligence in the stars and…
Ted Chiang Uses Science to Illuminate the Human Condition
I think science and religion could more peacefully coexist if we could agree that they are trying to answer different questions; science is investigating the question, “how does the universe…
The Candy Children’s Mother by A.A. Balaskovits
My grandmother once told me that once you go into the forest, you come back a changeling. Or you don’t come back at all.
There are only 3 fantasies
"There are only 3 fantasies. One is getting something from nothing: magic, technology. Another is becoming something from nothing: destiny, entrepreneurship. Both are silly, but have their place. Only their…
Drabbleclassics 29 – Primary Pollinator (191)
This week for Drabbleclassics Bart Epstein brings your Primary Pollinator, by Nicole Kimberling. When Dr. Lopez came for me, I was plunging the geo lab toilet. She carried a red…
The sci-fi of another language
The meaning of science fiction stories are often tough to pin down. Do they depict the future or the present? Are they personal or political? Imaginative or reality-based? Also, is…
Mmm by Michele Oberholtzer
Listen — one day, a woman and a man lay together. They pushed and pulled and pulsed against each other’s bodies under the early afternoon sun. In that moment, when…