105 free-to-read stories tagged “Biopunk”
A blackmailer forces Helena to make entire fake steaks for him or else he’ll tell the authorities about her business printing fake beef for shady restaurants. She’s never tried to make a whole steak though.
abusegoreillness-and-pandemicviolence
"A ship glides through the night, behemoth mother, swollen with ten thousand human lives. Her path is a single shining vector. There has been no stopping, no rest for the decades she has traveled, and there will be nothing but void for the two years to...
child-deathpregnancy-lossviolence
When an illicit trade deal goes wrong and Quandary is blamed for it, she goes on the run to avoid the crosshairs of a bioengineered killer that only lives for 24 hours. If Q can evade it for that long, she just might survive.
deathsubstance-useviolence
Cecily goes in search of her highschool best friend, who seems to have hidden in China where he’s using her research to try to create enhanced human beings.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
racism
A Chinese woman living in the Bay Area needs to raise money to get her daughter into Stanford. She tries to sell her English-language proficiency, but even after fifteen years, it’s not good enough. But her native fluency in Mandarin is worth a lot, if...
Fun adventure on Old Venus. Dharthi risks her life in an unexplored part of Ishtar Terra looking for evidence of a vanished civilization that would save her career.
violence
A two-person crew embark on a mind-bending deep space mission inside a living wormship capable of burrowing through space. What lies on the other end is unknown—as is what they will do once they get there.
body-horrorviolence
In 2001, just before the attacks, a girl out West has a very close encounter with space aliens.
body-horrordeathgoresexual-violenceviolence
Donny is a young teen in high school, but his augments give him an intimate connection to the Internet—and put him at odds with his teachers and other students.
People who don’t like living underground in the colony can live inside giant “whales” that float high in the planet’s atmosphere. That’s usually pretty safe.
death
"In your head, the dead man wakes up crying. He stutters into awareness just as you manage to stanch the tears welling in your eyes, a response to the pressure of his presence on your limbic system. Your fingers brush, irritated, against the port at the...
Isla’s job at Omega Corp seems to involve walking through a huge place called “Robot Country” to test something, but they haven’t really given her a clue what that might be.
"Mirae sits on her bed, parting her hair with one hand and feeling for the access port on the back of her head with the other. She finds the notched edges of the cap and twists counterclockwise until it comes loose. Her eye twitches as she slides the plug...
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"You don’t look Sweetbaby in the eye when he pushes out from under the tree throw. We know that now. Instead, the ears, or what’s left of them, are a better place to settle your gaze. They’re close enough to the face that you can tell which way he’s...
deathviolence
"If you’re looking for a cheap way to kill all this mold—and who isn’t, right now—look no further than Inkicide Disinfectant Concentrate 64oz (4 Bottles). It’ll curl your nose hairs right up into your skull, but that just means it’s working, amirite? Two...
body-horrorillness-and-pandemic
"I want you to make a dragon for me,” the client said. “I need it ready to go by February first.” Dragon, Feb 1, I wrote down on the paper pad I use to take notes during video meetings. Also to doodle. I’ve always had trouble paying attention in client...
"Charlie wasn’t a ghost standing in the corners of the house, but at the same time he was everywhere. He had been haunting my thoughts since we received Uncle Jamey’s emails and the plane tickets. Now, everyone gathered at our mother’s house, my childhood...
deathracismsubstance-usesuicideviolence
A soldier wracked with guilt about his actions in the war leaps at a chance to do something to end war forever.
deathviolencewar
With tremendous powers of regeneration, Mars is an incomparable killing machine, but he’s on the run, and there’s one special prisoner he’s determined to rescue.
deathgoreviolence
Etta left her sister’s shoes behind at last night’s drunken party, and she’s ashamed to show her face there again, so she hires a man and his octopus to sneak in and steal them from under the bed.
Meant to clear plastic from the sea, the artificial “squids” have put the oceans off-limits to humanity. Not everyone takes that lying down.
death
"Do you remember being born? I expect that you do. After all, it happened only a very few minutes ago. Sensation comes first. Perhaps it was my voice you noticed—a ragged voice, new-carved. These are your first sounds. Sandpaper words, and the even temper...
death
"Yennie glanced out the window. An ice storm, a froth of glassy dust, was blowing in over the bone-colored hills. He was on Enceladus; his therapist was on Mars. He wanted to describe how sometimes his body felt hollow, and other times he felt his skin...
For the residents of this mycological ecosystem, creating art feeds the World around you and requires working in harmony with your inner voice. When one artist’s voice begins screaming, he’s forced to travel farther than he ever has before to reconcile...
"As the people began to die, desperation drove us to the depths of the sea for cures. We mined mineral-rich vents until the tube worms went extinct, stripped polymetallic nodule fields bare, squeezed sludge out of sea sponges to treat the new diseases,...
deathillness-and-pandemic
As the seas have risen, terrible things have come crawling out of them. Jersey wants Mir to come with him and move inland, but she won’t go without her disabled father.
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
Agatha wants a svelte replacement for her plump body, but since she can't get one grown in a reasonable time, she looks into an illegal swap.
body-horrorviolence
"It’s cruel of the soldiers to come when Mama is so sick and so pregnant. I tell this to Dijkstra, and she agrees. Then she goes to Mama and clambers into her lap, which is now too small to hold me and almost too small to hold Dijkstra, and says it in a...
body-horrorchild-deathviolence
In a corporate-run dystopia, a trans girl plucked out of poverty to give birth to a clone meets her replacement.
body-horrorpregnancy-lossviolence
Vashti is a pathogenic diplomat—an ambassador to the world of viruses, whom she communicates with through a machine that can translate their chemical signals into images, tastes, smells, sounds, and memories. She begins a negotiation between the US...
deathillness-and-pandemic
"When Elisabeth takes the baby to the beach on Thursday afternoon, another shambler has got through the fence. “Stay ten meters back,” the guard says, his translucent face mask fogged with the heat. “Yes, yes,” Elisabeth says. “And the child. Ten meters.”...
child-deathdeath
Four different groups of people explore the pros and cons of different ways to reproduce in the future.
death
Meshee is one of eight pregnant women whose babies are being auctioned off against their will.
body-horrorpregnancy-lossviolence
"High above the Amazon Rainforest, Hynd circled, her massive wingspan only visible by the shadow she cast on the battlefield below. She felt the wind pass across her wings, whispering of torrential rain coming; not her concern, so far above the clouds, but...
body-horrorviolencewar
"At 5:43 a.m. this morning, residents of Grackle Pointe Apartments awoke to a malfunction in their complex’s multi-spatial engine due to an unprecedented derecho that swept through the Montrose area of Houston. This resulted in tenants being mentally and...
body-horrordeathgore
"Itsy bitsy,” whispers the girl in the glass tank beside mine. Not a girl anymore, not really, but it’s better for my sanity to pretend she’s still human. That we both are. We had names once—and skin, soft to the touch. In the sterile, blinding white...
body-horrorgoreviolence
A woman talented in the art of spinning–creating pottery by manipulating clay in her mouth–longs to become the best, but wonders if it is worth the sacrifices she must make…
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-oneself-harm
"El detonated the EMP against the feeder’s sensor, a delicate organ that he had only seen in fragments, suspended in cytology slides the shape of dominoes. The lab just days ago had been inundated with new specimens, washed up on the long white beaches...
body-horrordeathself-harm
A fast-moving, futuristic caper about a thief who has planned a job that he hopes will set him up for life by stealing a few biosculptures from a rich couple’s mansion.
illness-and-pandemic
"Salty swell over my head, tugging me back, the raw and tender creases of my elbows against the forearms they're linked with. Brine up my nose, in my mouth. The anchor of my feet in the sand holds me fast with the rest. The water recedes and we breathe, a...
body-horrordeathsuicide
"Two hours out of deadsleep is too soon to be staring at the butchered corpse of a dead god. Neel looks down as the kalipeeli begins its descent to Chowpatty Beach and feels his stomach flip."
body-horrordeathgore
"A woman drags a white doe out of the ice room; it hangs from the ceiling rails by two brass hooks, one caught beneath its pelvis and the other behind the scapulae. As she pulls, the metal wheels whine. When she works in her lab, she is a butcher. She lays...
abusebody-horrorgore
"She’s walking by the river on an overcast day, when sweat runs down her palms, goosebumps all over her neck. The breeze stills. The gray sky turns blood red. Instead of the Sun, through a clearing in the clouds, she finds the Eye. Veins branch across a...
body-horrorsubstance-usewar
"Joy catches my eye, shuffles my direction. Her face lights the dining room. Her curly gray hair is the sun’s corona, and she seems to float above her walker, needless of her stiff little legs. In seeming slow motion she arrives at the seat across from me....
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"The man in the navy Cosmo Corp suit calls it Self-Reconciliation Therapy, this place they’ve dumped you, where the walls are made of mirrors. But they aren’t mirrors, are they? Sure, you raise a hand, and the woman in the not-mirror waves. God, her...
child-abuseself-harmsexual-content
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horror
"In the belly of the ship, the Machinist toiled. Beyond the walls of her workshop, ships of dark metal pursued her across the Atlantic, their hulls unaffected by the gnashing teeth of thunderstorms. Lightning flashed horizontally across the bay. Those dark...
deathviolence
"He is King Lear in the window’s sunshine. There is pastina boiling on the stove in a kitchen as familiar as his soul. Mad monologues push against his fogged oxygen mask, vibrating with his tremoring lips, his ragged breathing, the impossible weight of the...
body-horror
"Q: What (or who!) is Eudaimon? A: We are a nonprofit organization that empowers people to live their best lives. A “life,” in our view, is best defined simply as a contiguous sequence of experiences, and thus the best life is the one consisting of the...
death-of-a-loved-one
"Hands trembling, Shiv Mehta snatched the print copy of his wife’s ribcage off the conveyor belt and lowered the print into an organ tank. Those hands had healed thousands of patients, but these days his hands had gotten good at stealing. Over the last few...
deathgoreviolence
"The low rumble of the train cut through the night and the living flesh of The City, carrying its passengers ever further from the gleam of parliaments and providence. The stop towards Wild Park grew ever closer, represented along the wall of the train by...
body-horrorgoreviolence
"Iris is deep in an empty ocean, gray-green twilight fading to black everywhere she looks—and she can breathe. She’s a thousand feet above the ground, climbing a fractal cliff suffused with flickering veins of electricity—and she cannot. Iris is flat on...
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"Examination rooms are safe. They stay what they are. The memories they drag to the surface make sense. You assume it’s because you’ve been in so many hospital rooms that your brain is packed with too much realism to have space for the random connections...
death-of-a-loved-one
"My sister Sera was twelve standard years old when our parents confined her to our family habitat. They kept her there for over a year, and then they died far from home (expedition, landslide). I’ll never know if they were seeking a cure for Sera, or a way...
death-of-a-loved-one
"The story of Chef Buzzati’s sudden and horrifying fall from the heights of fine dining is well known. However, given that the culinary innovations and legal ramifications are still being debated today, a recap may be in order. Elena Buzzati was born to...
body-horrorcannibalism
"Nobody noticed the first few. They walked. One by one, in the beginning. Isolated instances. On every continent, mid-meal, mid-shower, mid-work, mid-fuck, right out the door of a pulled-up car in the middle of a freeway—ordinary people turned their backs...
death-of-a-loved-one
"That dying anchor said some mysterious ‘he’ was looking for her. Chakatie tried to think of who that could be. When she’d been an anchor in charge of her own land, she’d thought she’d been even-handed. But traveling with the day-fellows had revealed to...
body-horrordeathviolence
"If you’re reading this—on some godforsaken imageboard, or dog-eared book page, or in encrypted base pairs sequenced off 3D-printed oligos—you’re probably grappling with a pretty tough decision right now. Breathe. I’m not judging you. I know how it goes....
pregnancy-loss
"Rhea found the feral child on the edge of the garbage park on the last day of the group’s vacation. Garrison, passed out from drinking the better part of a bottle of hundred-year-old Islay Scotch, had dropped a cigar onto the edge of the canvas tent and...
"The first of Irene’s memories I eat is the night she learned I had been murdered. It was karaoke night—not the official one for the cruise ship passengers, but an illicit one Irene organized for a few of the other crew. They weren’t supposed to be in the...
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"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...
deathillness-and-pandemic
"The blade of Legrue’s scalpel flared in his headlamp’s narrow beam, casting glints of light across the slender hand strapped to his cutting table. “Deed done?” the woman asked, a warble in her voice. Legrue adjusted his magnifiers. He had not eaten in...
body-horrorchild-deathdeath
"Two men in dark sunglasses stepped through the doors of the Monte Carmelo. They stopped and scanned the gloomy inside. Geshem-Nofel-Ba’oranim clocked them and kept to his booth. He knew trouble when it walked through the door looking for him. The two men...
deathviolence
"Nobody remembers exactly when it started. Probably back in the ’90s when they cloned that sheep, back in the ’10s when they started working on cloning people on the DL, back in the ’20s when the retrovirus broke our genetic virginity. If you’re rich you...
sexual-content
Marq knew their spouse would die from the intelligent alien parasite they’d accepted some years ago, but now that the time has come, they have a lot of trouble dealing with it.
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
A future Korea requires government proof of identity before you can access the Internet, and the narrator tells about her sister, who was a subversive trying to enable an uncensored, anonymous system.
The Owen corporation has brought some dinosaurs through their “gate,” and Dr. Crimshaw thinks she can use sign language to communicate with one of them.
During a dinosaur uprising on the starship, a young worker in the meat-packing plant engages in a battle of wits with an intelligent dinosaur who wants to replace humanity entirely.
Rourou is a Chinese little girl who loves her papa but wonders what happened to her momma. And why she can’t remember anything before age 5. And why she speaks fluent English.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In hopes of getting money to complete his transition, Emrick and his boyfriend visit his wealthy estranged father, who operates a wormhole that links to other dimensions.
"On Miphre, a planet hardly larger than a moon, jagged mountaintops stab above the cloud cover and harbor small ecosystems in the palms of their hands: rock eels and ribbon mosses and seabirds with rodents clutched to their breasts, each one nestled...
animal-harmbody-horrordeath
"The girls of our town float down the middle of the street, cheap fabric wings pinned to their clothes. I watch them walk, hobbled by coat hanger curves that refuse to bend with the bow of their backs. I see Min towards the back. She’s been doing this for...
body-horrorsexual-violencesubstance-use
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
illness-and-pandemic
I am not here to talk about how i got my arm, i am looking for hel p trying to fix it . Apologies for typos the f fingers lag a lot
body-horrorviolence
Layla was bleeding out. Her neurons began to supernova and transmute into a new electrical form. A maglev of old memories zipped past her. She was thinking about that one […]
body-horrorgoreviolence
This episode features "Decimation Circles" written by Raahem Alvi. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/alvi_05_26 Support us on...
body-horrorgoreviolence
Author : Victoria N. Shi Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “milt” first apeared in Fission #5 by the British Science Fiction Association (June 2025) Contains Injury/body horror, climate grief, implied sexual...
body-horrorsexual-contentviolence
Author : Kelly Robson Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Adam Pracht We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017. We Who Live in the Heart By Kelly Robson Ricci slipped in and out of consciousness...
Author : Kelly Robson Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Adam Pracht We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017. We Who Live in the Heart (Part 2 of 3) By Kelly Robson (…Continued from Part 2)...
Author : Kelly Robson Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Adam Pracht We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017. Quantum Superposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition...
deathviolence
After the braiding, a low buzzing remains in Memoire’s ear. It reminds her of the low buzzing she heard while they shampooed her hair. They told her she could never submerge her head in water after the braiding. No more swimming. No more drifting on her...
body-horror
New Providence sparkled like fool’s gold in the distance, all gleaming spires and whirring clockwork, nothing like the two-bit townships I usually rode through. My Halfie tensed beneath me, his wolf-hackles rising at the stink of machine oil and steam that...
child-abuseracismviolence
The sun was sinking toward the horizon like a brass penny dropped in muddy water by the time I rode back into New Providence. My Halfie’s mechanical shoes struck sparks off the metal road plates, each impact sending little jolts of pain through my spine....
body-horrorgoreviolence
After a months-long drug-fueled party across Europe, I found myself homeless in the town of Portishead, abandoned by my so-called friends and estranged from my family. Some bad luck, but mostly my own fault. I thought back to my days as a Harvard student,...
substance-useviolence
This episode features "The Trajectory of Memory is Forward" written by Rajeev Prasad. Published in the April 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
body-horrorviolence
Death by Pink in the Lollipop Apocalypse By Ryan Cole In the dark of her bed, curled up in her sheets, Susie tried to hide from the next few days and the reckoning they’d bring: of prom and graduation and the dozens of goodbyes she’d have to force herself...
body-horrorhomophobia
The Girl Who Came Before By David von Allmen When me and my family pulled into our driveway, my five best friends were waiting in our front yard, waving glittery poster-board signs that read “Welcome Home Sam!!!” and jumping around with full-on 13 year-old...
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Author : J. R. Dewitt Narrator : Rebecca Wei Hsieh Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1012: Hot Bot Summer is an Escape Pod original. Contains depictions of war violence. Hot Bot Summer by J. R. Dewitt “God, these bots are...
goreviolencewar
Author : David Hankins Narrator : Eric Valdes Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Felix and the Flamingo” was originally published in the anthology Murderbirds (January 2023). To learn more about Bruiser the Rat, check out “Milo Piper’s...
animal-harm
The Rhythms of the World By Johnny Caputo As always, we’re starving to death. From our place inside the leather pouch tied to Aamsaa’s belt, our two remaining stalks ache with hunger, barely able to hold our withered green-spotted spore caps upright. We...
death
The Scientist Does Not Look Back By Kristen Koopman Feb. 17, 3:40 AM. Audio notebook for new project: revival of a clinically dead patient, 36 year old male, died of hypothermia and shock. The technician at the morgue hesitated when releasing him to me....
body-horrordeath
Author : Monica Joyce Evans Narrator : Julia Rios Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “The Hagfish Has Three Hearts” was originally published in Cossmass Infinities (September 2021) The Hagfish Has Three Hearts by Monica Joyce Evans The...
Author : Avi Burton Narrator : M. Darusha Wehm Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 879: Triptych is an Escape Pod original. Content warnings for gender dysphoria, and threats of gun violence Triptych by Avi Burton Delaney didn’t...
transphobiaviolence
Author : MKRNYILGLD Narrator : Premee Mohamed Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “The CRISPR Cookbook: A Guide to Biohacking Your Own Abortion in a Post-Roe World” originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine (September 2022). Abortion,...
misogynypregnancy-losssexual-violence
Author : Rachael K. Jones Narrator : Christiana Ellis Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant” originally appeared in Lightspeed in December 2017, and in The Best American Science Fiction...
body-horrorcannibalismgore
Harvest the Stars By Mar Vincent The summer Sif turned one, the starships were ripe on the vine. They hulked in fields ringing the town where Tuja had always lived. A place far from big cities, where the starlight they fed on came pure and bright. “The...
Author : Phoenix Alexander Narrator : Nicola Chapman Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 832: Mouthfeel is an Escape Pod original. Mouthfeel by Phoenix Alexander 2050 After she left him, he found cells of hers...
Across the River, My Heart, My Memory By Ann LeBlanc 1. I am Michelle’s artificial pancreas, stolen cleanly and carefully from her gut. The surgeons are quick; before I can finish my hard reset, they place me inside you. I don’t even have time to say...
deathviolence
Ascend, Exalt, Love, Propagate, Rise! By Sarah Kumari The Glory smolders through Jehanne's bloodstream, pulsing its encouragement. The rivals who have survived along with him–officially 'Fellow Eminents' now that selection is over–twitch and moan as their...
body-horrorsexual-violenceviolence
Author : Jaxton Kimble Narrator : Mat Weller Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 788: Broken (Flashback Friday) is an Escape Pod original. Contains a couple intimate moments. Broken by Jaxton Kimble My favorite...
mental-illnesssexual-content
Tiger Lawyer Gets It Right By Sarah Gailey Vladislav Argyle rested his head on the cool titanium surface of the defendant’s table. It dipped a little under the sudden weight of his skull, then hummed as the antigrav lifts adjusted their power to...
deathgoreviolence
Author : DaVaun Sanders Narrator : Laurice White Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in the Dark Universe anthology (November 2015) Warning for violence and gore The First Doom (Part 2) by DaVaun...
body-horrorgoreviolence
Author : DaVaun Sanders Narrator : Laurice White Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in the Dark Universe anthology (November 2015) Contains violence and harsh language The First Doom (Part 3) by...
body-horrorgoreviolence
A Dragon in Two Parts By Kiya Nicoll “‘Shed your skin and spread your wings to fly’,” I read off the sign. The letters were done in a sort of swooshy font and punctuated by yellow and blue yin-yangy things at either end. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable...
suicide