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Nancy Kress

5 free-to-read stories indexed on Quasar

Semper Augustus

Nancy Kress Asimov's 2020 Novella Dystopia 40,182 words

Alien technology has been a big boon for some Americans, but everyone else has slid into poverty. Little Jennie knows things should be better, and over time, she tries different ways to change her world.

Quantum Ghosts

Nancy Kress Asimov's 2025 Novella Science Fiction 39,485 words

"The motorcade was late. Security, Robert Dayson thought. You couldn’t have too much security, not since the bombings in Atlanta and Portland and Austin. Not with so many fringe groups so threatening about . . . everything. “The Unrest” the media were...

Little Animals

Nancy Kress Clarkesworld 2021 Novelette Time Travel 8,700 words

"I’ve got a signal,” Cora said. “Elena, come look!” I rushed to Cora’s bank of computers. For six long, working-into-the-evening days, we’d gotten only the faintest of quantum signals, nothing usable. Our grant only gave us three weeks on the TU Delft...

Near FutureMotherhoodHistorical Europe

Content warnings 2

deathsuicide

The Alice Run

Nancy Kress Reactor 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 7,255 words

A comatose patient undergoes an experimental procedure that uses favorite childhood stories to pull the patient back into consciousness—but the experiment doesn’t go quite as planned…

SlipstreamPolitical ResistanceIntertextual

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

The Meaning We Seek

Nancy Kress Lightspeed 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 1,023 words

"In the pre-dawn light she lies in bed, gazing through the window at graceful trees silhouetted against a turquoise sky. The air is still, the pretty room orderly and calm. She lies motionless except for her eyes, the soft blue quilt rising and falling...

DystopiaArtificial IntelligenceBleak

Content warnings 1

death