Sylvain de Guilherand secretly uses a captive water spirit to provide indoor plumbing to Louis XV's Versailles, but the spirit is childish, playful, and getting bored.
Ambition
71 free-to-read stories tagged “Ambition”
Sera does a great job at search and rescue, but she has conflicts with her handler, who has trouble coping with an enhanced intelligence dog.
Content warnings 1
animal-harm
Mia marks her birthdays as powers of 7, which gives her lots of time to work out her issues with her mother.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abusedeathsubstance-use
Coop is eager to make a difference in his first mission as a new lieutenant on a search-and-rescue ship, but the rest of the crew doesn’t seem to work very hard or care very much, and they definitely don’t appreciate his meddling.
"The rocket ship blasted off from the Devereaux Airstrip on the outskirts of Ottawa and headed straight into the stratosphere. Ruth Mulu, one of four passengers, stared at the cappuccino machine and tried not to throw up. Adeline Devereaux, the Canadian...
Content warnings 2
homophobiasexual-violence
Astronomers spot what appears to be a new cluster of stars, except that it’s growing hour by hour.
In 1933, Doug quits his job to go on an expedition to Antarctica to kill the Great Shoggoth and retrieve the priceless treasures of the lost city of Leng.
Content warnings 2
animal-harmviolence
"Loire Valley, 1520 Estienne’s shadow fell over me, and I could not, of a sudden, recall the stitch I was making. He had invited himself onto the ladies’ porch without announcement. Odette’s voice faltered. “Take—” She was reading from the Queen of...
Content warnings 2
misogynysexual-violence
"This is a story that Iya, the eldest and given to such fancies, told the younger children when all of them, even those from Kehinde (whose people live pressed against the ceiling, although to them it seems the floor), could gather and be made to listen....
"Roy Harris perched on a stool in front of his new shop door, very carefully filling in the letters that Martha had sketched out on the window. She had a steady eye for that sort of thing. He could stay within the lines, but don’t ask him to put the lines...
"Reza Saintsbury used tweezers to place each seed smack in the middle of the sterile aeroponic pads. Each pad went into the vertical germination chamber, where it was spaced precisely two inches apart, one on top the other, for the first five days of...
"It takes a Black woman to tell the truth about another Black woman, whether she likes that woman or not. If the woman in question is loved, the story reaches mythological heights, she could do no wrong, she was brown skinned and beautiful, intelligent,...
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
"I heard this story from my late friend Shelby Weinberg. Like myself, Shel was a science fiction writer. If his byline doesn’t ring any bells, though, don’t feel ignorant; not many SF fans knew him by that name. Even the pseudonym he used, Hamilton Yale,...
"My name is Alfred Kramer, known for the better part of my life as “Lefty.” I was born April 13, 1920, in Owatonna, Minnesota. Today is my birthday in 2020, meaning that I’ve reached the unlikely age of one century. I currently live in a geriatric facility...
"The mood in the control room was tense. When everything depends on the next hour or so, people grow quiet and focused. In a little less than an hour, the DART spacecraft would arrive at the asteroid Didymos, and all their effort would go out in a final...
"Watch it, trash!” a young chemical engineer snapped as he bumped another student. “I’m sorry.” Awi Trashpusher Nonumber had a blind spot behind him. Though an adult, only four of the six eyes on his pale, skinny, cylindrical body had developed. The...
In 1899, little Charlie knows he’ll inevitably have to work in the mill, but what he really wants to do is learn to play the banjo.
Content warnings 2
goreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Guaranteed basic income has divided society into Doers and Don’ts. Jacob’s circle of Don’ts spends all their time playing video games, but their harmony is broken when one of them starts dating a doer.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"Sirius kho Delsi swam in the muddy water filling the abandoned conduit leading to Wisdom Lake, a tear-shaped pond enclosed inside the Imperial Preserve. Fingering the cracked walls in total darkness and bumping against gooey obstacles had taken longer...
"After so many decades of humanity dreaming about the first expedition to Mars, who could have guessed that we would not get within thirty million miles of the place? We were approaching the Mars Lagrange Point 5, which trails sixty degrees behind the...
Content warnings 1
suicide
"He took the elevator up to the nineteenth, just like the email said. Elevator ding, white tile, and he crossed the hall through a set of glass doors. “Can I help you?” the receptionist asked from behind a curving white counter. “I have an interview at...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"Susan Rose stands alone, save for me and a photographer, on the currently sun-facing side of Mars. She has a paintbrush in her right hand and a heated, vacuum-sealed bag of water in her left. The 60x90cm canvas in front of her is tied down to an aluminum...
"April 1970 olded newspapers marched like soldiers in military precision across the conference table in Deke Slayton’s corner office. Headlines blared, “PARALYZED APOLLO 13 SPLASHES DOWN,” “INJURED ASTRONAUT HOSPITALIZED,” and “APOLLO IN RETROGRADE.”
"The minister’s wife arrives at the Bahrain Ministry of Nanotechnology in a black limousine with dark, tinted windows. She normally eschews the hijab, but today, she’s wrapped in a black abaya with a full face covering, a useful method of concealing her...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
sexual-contentviolence
"Above the ship’s clearalloy cupola loomed Io, a pimpled canvas of desert camo so close Katy imagined she could smell its sulfurous plumes. Ahead, ocher bands slashed the sunlit limb of Jupiter like mud on a bloody scythe. Against this backdrop, gleaming...
"Madam Zieliński, we’d really appreciate it if you could embark for the Guyana Elevator at your earliest convenience. A helicopter has been sent to offer you passage.” You can tell I’m an old, respected engineer because when they give me orders, they’re...
"On this fine November day in 1967, Natalya Orlova took the oath to become a citizen of the United States, thereby clearing her last hurdle for acceptance into the astronaut training program. After nearly three years of giving her all to NASA, today should...
"As the vehicle tumbled past him, Bashim saw the passenger’s grinning white teeth in a face masked by desert dust and violet Worldshapers. The tailpipes coughed fire, so close Bashim could feel their alcohol heat. The sheared-off wheel bounced past, a...
If Kova can convince the Washe to sign the agreement with the Fiscality, she’ll save their species from extinction and advance her career hugely, but they’re reluctant to sign, her ship is under attack, and there’s something really weird going on.
"There could not have been a better time to be alive. Every nation on the planet had evolved into a democracy, we hadn’t been tangled in a war for over a hundred years, and technology had removed virtually every possibility of poverty. Work if you like, go...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Maggie has a plan to reverse climate change by capturing methane up in the arctic and selling the carbon.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
abuseviolencewar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
abuse
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content note (click for details) body horror edited by David Steffen Everyone wants to be a part of Sasha. It’s the greatest thing ever and will basically make you a legend at school and completely change your life. People still talk about Jessica B, who...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorself-harm
The airship’s spotlights played off the vast rocky sides of the shaft that plunged deep into the Earth’s core through the lithosphere and eventually to our destination: the Center of the Earth! I yawned. We fell so slowly, the sides of the shaft several...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Jempo took a deep bow on the iron platform. His body flopped forward, limbs like thick braided wire. No obvious weapons in his large and rubbery hands. Little digital eyes and a bright smile that lit the rounded ball he had for a head. More clown than...
(Editorial Note: Starting with this month’s story, we will only post ebooks in the EPUB format as Amazon phased out the MOBI format a few years ago. Also, moving forward, we will be tagging our stories. We plan to tag our backlog of stories over the next...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
“God” is not the word I’d use. But it is the only one that suffices. There are all kinds of gods: the old and the new; the useful, the useless; the capricious and the dependable; the wrathful and the meek. They all had one thing in common—whether they were...
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
Damn Shackleton and damn Amundsen and damn Hillary. All that attention, just for tramping around in the snow? I will show you how a real surveyor finds his glory. I will show you the stink and the viscera of glory. It is bone dust in the air, from a...
Content warnings 3
cannibalismgoreviolence
The railcar rumbled as it descended into the sewer levels of the fortress city, Aguiyi. The cramped railcar smelled strongly of bleach and grease. Hazard and Safety Commission workers filled the available seats, bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder, with...
PseudoPod 970: At the God Show is a PseudoPod original. 6:15 A.M. “It’ll be Pternoch the Fisher,” Sheila overheard one pilgrim say to another. “Why did we bother coming?” “May the Green Damsel stitch your mouth shut until your blasphemies cease,” said the...
Content warnings 3
cannibalismdeathviolence
In the near future, the corpse inside the abandoned deep-sea submersible Blue Cube becomes another landmark of the Challenger Deep. Content warning: Mentions of death Copyright khōréō magazine 2024. Story by Prema Arasu, edited by Kanika Agrawal. Audio...
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
Someone has to be the best at something, and when a new technology begets a new sport, it may as well be her. Content warnings: Knife violence, blood, death Copyright khōréō magazine 2024. Story by E. A. Xiong, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio edition...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Rival figure skaters use dangerous body modification technology to outperform each other in the rink. Content warnings: Racism Copyright khōréō magazine 2024. Story by Claire Jia-Wen, edited by Zhui Ning Chang. Audio edition read by Lauren Choo and...
He craned his neck, trying to see above their spiked shoulder pads and fitted caps. At the door, security gods brandished assault rifles.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
PseudoPod 861: Swing Batter Batter is a PseudoPod original. A baseball clubhouse is a weird place. You’ve got California prep school kids rubbing elbows with good old boys from Texas and Louisiana, and guys from the Dominican and Venezuela mixing with guys...
Content warnings 1
violence
“The Dancing Partner” is excerpted from Jerome’s non-genre novel Novel Notes where it is the second half of Chapter 11. The serialization of that chapter first appeared in the March 1893 issue of The Idler. “This story,” commenced MacShaughnassy, “comes...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
“The Red Lady” was originally published in the 2023 anthology Collage Macabre presented by the Future Dead Collective SHOW NOTES The Whoniverse The Full Lid ‘Art is never finished, only abandoned.’ – This week’s closing quote has a fascinating, and very...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathself-harm
“Arcanum Miskatonica” was originally published in Lovecraftiana Vol.3, No.1, April 2018 and reprinted in the 2023 anthology The Nameless Songs of Zadok Allen & Other Things that Should Not Be edited by Jessica Augustsson From the editors: The Nameless...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
Liz and Owen jump at the chance for a weekend away, house sitting in suburbia, only to find something... strange... about the mirror in the house. "Ours but Not Our Own" by Joshua Tong is a delightfully haunting meditation on suburbia and the paths our...
"Hold it right there, gasbag.’ The red balloon turned. The beam of a searchlight from high above momentarily crisscrossed the dark alleyway, catching the smooth surface of his face and the scotch tape scar on the left. ‘… Oh, it’s you,’ he said. Three big...
Content warnings 3
deathsubstance-useviolence
“Old Haunts” originally appeared in the 2022 collection How to See Ghosts & Other Figments Kim Parks considered himself something of a connoisseur of the haunted attractions that sprang up every year around Halloween. While he was getting his masters, he...
Content warnings 1
body-horror
“Corporation” opened the collection Burn the Plans released by Cemetery Gates Media in February 2022 Sunlight blooms in the sky, rising up from behind all those glass and steel buildings. It burns away the dark blue. The Windows are still tinted from...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoresexual-violence
“As Well as the Infirm” was originally published in Dark Moon Digest, April 2020 From the author: “The title comes from a section in the Hippocratic Oath: ‘I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathgore
“Little Worm” was originally published in the anthology Black Cranes Ping-ping-ping-ping. The incessant chiming underscored the cabbie’s music and the occasional blare of a horn. Theresa wondered what the hell it was as she braced herself. There were no...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onepregnancy-loss
“The Black Stone Statue” was first published in Weird Tales, December 1937 We can’t help but wonder what Counselman would think of Annihilation. Directors, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass. Gentlemen: Today I have just received aboard the S. S. Madrigal...
Content warnings 3
deathsuicideviolence
“Charged” was first published in Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells (Tor Books, 2011) The reader, Joe Williams, would like to dedicate the reading to their Father who recently passed away: “Allan Williams was Joe’s hero. Never short of experiences to share or...
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
PseudoPod 769: Songs in a Lesser Known Key is a PseudoPod original. From the author, “I’ve played saxophone and clarinet in big bands for more years than I care to admit to. And while I have performed Artie Shaw’s Nightmare once or twice (and as far as I...
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesssuicide
PseudoPod 771: The Human Chair is a PseudoPod original. “The Human Chair” was originally published in Kuraku, October 1925, as “Ningen Isu.” As this story is in the public domain in its original Japanese, we thought a new translation would be a fascinating...
PseudoPod 772: Flash on the Borderlands LVII: The Loving Gaze of the Abyss is a PseudoPod original. “Five Films Reviewed by Dr. Frankenstein’s Creature” was originally published in Weird Tales in 2012. The poem “Advice I Wish I’d Been Given When I Was a...
Content warnings 3
child-abuseself-harmsexual-violence
PseudoPod 778: Live From The End Of The World is a PseudoPod original. Highway 28 vanished and reappeared as the windshield wipers fought a losing battle against Hurricane Francis. This storm was Harriet’s big chance. She only hoped she’d live through it....
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.