Tabitha has been walking a long time, trying to wear out seven pairs of iron shoes; Amira has been sitting alone on a glass hill that suitors try to climb.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Character Driven
1550 free-to-read stories tagged “Character Driven”
"It is 2091, and Grace is staring at the rabbit in the corner of her visual overlay. It is an Angora rabbit, fluffy and white, and when Grace picked the icon out, she did not realize how much she would come to dread the sight of it. She moves, and the...
Content warnings 6
abusedeathmental-illnesspregnancy-losssexual-violencesuicide
The inventor of trans-multiverse travel invites hundreds of instances of herself to a conference. It’s great fun until one gets murdered.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
As civilization is dying on Earth, a woman building a monument on Mars by remote control gets a message from a Mars colony long thought to be dead.
Content warnings 4
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicwar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
body-horrorchild-deathdeathviolence
Sam’s ability is modest, but he’s still excited to be accepted into the Super Team. Now he just has to figure out how he can make the biggest difference—assuming he can do more good than harm.
Content warnings 1
violence
Following a disaster in Antarctica, MacReady spends summer 1983 in New York and starts to wonder what he might have brought back with him.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-useviolence
"During one of the much smaller disasters that preceded the really big disaster, I met a lot of my neighbors online. I can’t remember if we set up the WhatsApp group because of the pandemic or the civil disorder or both. My Minneapolis block had always...
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
"Paulie rushes out the elevator doors the moment they part, only to skid to a halt at the sight of his father’s wife. She shakes her head, but he doesn’t need the confirmation. If Tricia is out here and not in the hospital room with his father, it can only...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
A plague killed all the colonists before Saki’s ship arrived, and she has to investigate it while mourning the man she loved, who died down there.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Zee lives with her father in a windup world. Bored with her life, she decides to visit the carnival. She meets a boy, and things go from there.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Computron was the only intelligent robot built in the 1950s. Now all he does is answer questions from children and write fan-fiction about the robot in the Hyperdimension Warp Record TV show.
Rhye a bitter ex-supersoldier, fights to rescue Rack, her hacker partner in crime, after the criminals they're working for kill Rack's body while his mind is in cyberspace.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathgoreviolence
The ship hadn’t activated Bot 9 in a long time—it’s an unstable model—but in a desperate situation it needs all its resources. And how much trouble can it get into hunting down a rat?
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Ambition!” Trevor emphasized, rapping knuckles hard on the wood table. “That is what makes the great men!” He took a satisfied swallow from his mug. Across from him, Barnaby put down the daily he’d been reading and sipped from his own beer. Pulling out a...
Content warnings 3
deathracismviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-onefatphobiasexual-content
Even the ghosts have abandoned the ruins of the space station once known as the City of High Bells. All but the faithful temple cat, who sees a starship reenter the system after many long years.
Content warnings 4
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar
Months after mysterious aliens scattered their spacecraft across North America, no one has a clue what they want. Avery knows what one of them wants, though: it wants a tour.
Content warnings 3
animal-harmdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"I have been activated, therefore I have a purpose, Bot 9 thought. I have a purpose, therefore I serve. It recited the Mantra Upon Waking, to check that it was running at optimum physical efficiency, then the Mantra of Obedience, the Mantra of Not...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Entertaining tale of a modern search engine that achieves real artificial intelligence by accident and decides it wants to be helpful to people.
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssubstance-use
"My dear Cara, Thank you for sending me the photos, I never thought I’d feel this way again. But the pictures help. They really do. I can’t stop looking at them. Thank you for scanning and emailing them to me. These photos and our old videos are all I’ve...
"So, hear nah. This is how it happen. Was years after Malcolm pass through and wash away a lot ah we little islands coasts, and mash up so much ah Florida and Texas and them places, and people say they ain’t waiting for no next storm like that one, and...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"I will always remember the view of Paris from his window. Snow, pure and untouched, softens the outline of the buildings and covers the grime of the streets. White, the color of beginnings. His canvas is primed and ready to be painted, and stark winter...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onewar
"The first Martian War was won not by man, but microbes. The second we fought with Martian weapons that nearly broke the world. The third invasion we stopped by our own hands, using magic.” —Wei-Yin Sun, Imperial Historian in the Court of the Empress...
Content warnings 2
deathwar
AirBody is like AirB&B except you rent out your body, not your home. Arsalan doesn’t expect any trouble from a middle-aged Pakistani woman, but everything she does reminds him of lost opportunities in his own past.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
The aliens invited one human to their library 32.5 light-years away, and Hazel hopes to find lost research that might still save the Earth from final ecological collapse. If she can get in, that is.
Content warnings 2
deathpregnancy-loss
Lao Dao processes trash in a fantastic future "third-space" Beijing. To get money for his daughter's education, he makes a dangerous trip to first-space--a city that unfolds when his own Beijing sleeps.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
violence
Until a visiting starship arrived, the other mermaids thought Essarala was silly for wanting to explore the galaxy.
Content warnings 1
death
Zanna settles into a remote mountain cabin to write her next book. No internet. No phone. No distractions.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
The Regent rules as a tyrant, and he has separated Saffron from her husband to force him to bake the amazing confections that let you relive bits of the past.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
The crew of the new Mars mission are coming to the hotel where Emily works, and her mom is starting to say strange things about her involvement with the last Mars mission.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"We stepped out of the theater to a gust of unseasonably raw wind. Late September in Boston is usually pleasant, and we’d all dressed for the summery day we’d left behind. Cordelia’s two classmates, Gwen and Marissa, shrieked. “Let’s hurry to the car,” I...
When the the elitist institution of Ozymandias Academy and its headmaster, Vamon Kinctuarin, can't find a solution to the city's worsening drought, 2 self-taught magicians, Noah and his partner Manny, take it upon themselves to find a solution to the crisis.
"That first video of the flying man goes viral on social media and gets featured on the news. No jet pack. No hang glider. Just him, unaided, soaring over the cable-stayed bridge that leads into the city. The video looks like it was shot on a cellphone...
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
Alyssa seeks out the aliens who can give her an augment that will let her exchange thoughts and feelings with other humans. But why does she want it, and what is the cost?
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
In which we learn how the new court magician was recruited and find out how even a “market rat” can qualify. We learn that there is real magic, but it comes with a price.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
Teenage Tetley lives in a human settlement (one of the last) built on a miles-wide floating garbage dump. She explains why everyone hates her now.
Content warnings 4
deathsexual-violencesubstance-useviolence
Anat doesn't remember her parents, but she loves her brother Oscar. They live in a wonderful world full of strange creatures and machines. The more she learns, the stranger things seem.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"I’ve ferried two hundred and twenty-one souls across the river of death, and I can already tell my two-hundred-and-twenty-second is going to be a real shitkicker. I know by the lightness of the manila folder in my hand, the preemptive pity in the...
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"A week before the Season began, as Mrs. Vanessa Saunders held brunch court at the Empire Hotel, a photo appeared on her phone: a large oak door beneath a pale green sign with silver lettering. Impossible, she thought, flipping the infernal device over...
Content warnings 1
death
Childbirth attracts zombies, so Brit has to leave the shelter for a while when she gets ready to give birth so as not to put the others at risk.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
When Megian sets out her homemade book exchange, a mysterious neighbor starts trading objects and art for the books, but some of the items don’t seem to come from this world at all.
Content warnings 1
war
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Despite not being a telepath, Calla worked out a way to play chess with her captor, Major Larn, during the recent war. Now they're going to finish their game.
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesswar
Alzheimer's patient's family can't visit her very often, so they buy a robot to fool her into thinking they're visiting her. The robot tells the story.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
An android who knows nothing besides his work in a factory, is given one final week to explore the world before he is forced to undergo mandatory reprogramming, in this bittersweet precursor to TJ Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
"The tenth time Jakey broke the rules, he put a sandwich in the mailbox where the window boy could get it. Mom had taken her sleep-quick pills and gone to bed after dinner, on account of her headaches. And Dad was dozing in front of the TV, chin on his...
Content warnings 5
abusebody-horrorchild-abusedeathviolence
"Old as she was, the Kiskadee had done three full delivery runs without a single safety incident. So naturally, with the crew relaxed after a fourth successful delivery and launch, and eight cycles after Reece slingshotted the starship around Tavaco to...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Everything Anton owns goes in one black trash bag. His ratty yellow sketchpad, which he bought to draw the other familiars when he moved here, and only ever used three pages of. The few shirts and khakis that he paid for with his own money, before Mr....
Content warnings 3
abusesuicideviolence
An enhanced chimp and her human partner investigate an apparently pointless murder committed by a woman who was under remote control from an unknown source.
Content warnings 5
abusebody-horrordeathsuicideviolence
Fourteen-year-old Ghost gave up on finding a foster family a long time ago. She’s just waiting until she turns 18 and can leave “the Agency.” Then a new girl turns up—one who can actually remember her life before she was sent there.
Content warnings 6
abusebody-horrorchild-abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
A key scientist in the Dai Viet interstellar empire has died, and three people who were close to her mourn her passing in different ways.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"1926 Washington, D.C. Shaw District “There’s a man on the front stoop.” The words spilled from her in a much more mundane way than Judy had expected, considering how her neck was fluttering with her excited pulse. Alvin looked up from the new Langston...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"June was the first of my friends to get into it. This isn’t surprising—she was playing Wordle for weeks before Margo or I discovered it. When we met up for our weekly lunch, she kept checking her phone and I assumed it was some new game. Then she put it...
Content warnings 1
substance-use
"It was half past midnight when Olga heard the Devil cry. They were supposed to be wild tonight, the three of them. Cassandra had led the way and Maria and Olga didn’t put up much of a fight. They would visit the Devil’s bridge—anything that claimed to be...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
animal-harmchild-deathdeath
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 6
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicmisogynysexual-violenceviolence
A Heptarchate undercover mission lead by one of Jedao’s friends has gone missing, so Jedao goes undercover to try and rescue them.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
Dr. Rosni Gupta examines Malni, a woman who’s institutionalized because she speaks gibberish. She’s sure it’s just another language, but what could it be?
Lola (aka Eliza) has had problems dealing with people ever since she was a child, but she's always been good with snakes.
Content warnings 6
abusechild-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
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.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
"Margery crouched in front of the fireplace, skirts tucked back to avoid the flames, and raked coals out onto the hearth. She’d pushed the shutters open this morning to let a breeze but even at this hour sweat beaded on her brow and stuck her chemise to...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
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.
Content warnings 3
deathsubstance-useviolence
"Every sunset, Julia climbs the city her mother built. It feels enormous, on the outside. Inside, it’s cramped, a human anthill. It didn’t used to be, but Julia doesn’t remember what it felt like when there was room enough for everyone. In the locker room,...
As the Cold War stalls and the threat of nuclear warfare dominates the news, small-town misfits Laurie and Fell bond over a shared love of music and the mystery of the erratic radio messages that hint at the existence of a future worth reaching out for.
"The ship was a billion years old, and it was dying. The incalculable energies that had forced open the metric to permit its passage were all but spent, and now the relentless quintessence was taking over again: pulling the metric tighter, so that from...
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.
Young Garrin, bastard brother to King Ciar, is sent to find Queen Ella’s stepsister and bring her to the castle. Not everyone lives happily ever after.
When her master dies in the American Civil War, a teen-age slave girl murders the rest of his family to gain her freedom, but she unwittingly opens a door to the spirit world, and she has to deal with the thing that comes through.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathgoreslaveryviolence
Adam has 70% of the memories of the man who created him, but something vital is hiding in that missing 30%.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Baekdo, a fox who wants to become human, needs one more kill to achieve his goal. A collapsing city in the middle of a civil war seems like a good place to do it but there are complications.
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
A refugee from drowned New York City tries to reconnect with his teenage son during a break from the menial work he does on ice boats.
Content warnings 2
homophobiaviolence
"When Mark told you he was marrying your clone, you said “congratulations” on autopilot, because that’s what you say when your friend tells you they’re getting married, and you had promised to stay friendly after the divorce. You studied his face, his...
Content warnings 1
child-abuse
"Atop a ladder was Naeto, reaching for the lights. The lights flickered as his touch neared. Down below, Gozi held the ladder, rooting it to the ground. A small breeze came, and the ladder tilted, and the ladder swayed, but Naeto did not waver. Gozi was...
"When her bell sounded at midnight, Firion the wizard grasped her stoutest staff (crowned, for non-magical reasons, with a razor-sharp chunk of amethyst) and put her lips to the doorjamb. “Who goes there?” Nothing but the slap of rain against stone, like...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
When Hurston Hill is threatened by a suspiciously powerful urban development firm, Miss l’Abielle steps up to protect her community with the help of a mysterious orphaned girl in this charming follow-up to “St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid”.
"On the island of Manhattan, there’s a building out of time. I can’t tell you where it is, exactly. It has an address, of course, as all buildings do, but that wouldn’t mean anything to you. What I can tell you is that the building is called The Oakmont."
Content warnings 1
war
"From the first time I visited Mariah Lee-Cassidy in prison, she radiated defiance. The poisonous orange of her prison jumpsuit might have been the decision of the state, but everything else about the twenty-nine-year-old, from her aggressively spiked hair...
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesssuicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
racism
To become a Wayfarer, Sedef needs to master the dangers of the forest on her planet, which kills anything that doesn’t glow. And she has to survive an emergency run, seven hours each way, alone.
An immigrant is distressed because her mother’s ghost is confiscated at the border.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
June’s sister Wanda suffered some kind of brain damage in an experiment aimed at learning the nature of reality. Two other people died in that experiment, and June would like some answers.
Content warnings 1
death
Only one nation has nuclear weapons, but their rules against using them require that things be so desperate that the President be willing to kill a child to get the launch codes.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
racismviolencewar
On the moon, Laurie returns from investigating the aftermath of a large, nearby impact with nothing interesting to report. Until a second “Laurie” turns up a few minutes later.
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...
Two people from a secret, underwater House try to infiltrate a troublesome surface House that rules much of a Paris still recovering from long-ago magical wars.
Content warnings 1
violence
Thuy seeks her daughter's remains in the twisted parts of unreal space where salvagers pick over the remains of wrecked starships.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Benji was an ordinary terrier until his master decided to have him sentientized.
Content warnings 2
animal-harmviolence
A young woman is murdered in Armstrong City, Luna, and both the police and organized crime want to understand why. Captivating.
Content warnings 1
death
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.
Content warnings 1
violence
A professional caregiver’s commute takes an unsettling detour when car trouble forces her to pull over on the highway, where she begins receiving distressing phone calls from strangers…
Content warnings 1
death
"Thuận Lộc stared at the cup. It was dark, and mottled with the characteristic patterning of silver-eye fungus. The tea inside was trembling—the faint vibrations from the Mausoleum, the dead ships’ atrophied motors that would never again allow them to...
Content warnings 2
child-abuseviolence
"Okay, so you know those things they sell called ‘useless machines’?” the inventor says. He is smiling. Of course, the boy knows them; he’d briefly had one that had been plucked from his bedroom floor and relocated into the inventor’s basement workroom...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Auga, a wandering sorcerer, follows his brother’s fate-thread into the village of Ormsfjoll, where he expects to deliver good news and continue his travels. What he doesn’t anticipate is that to meet his brother he must first contend with the truth at the...
Stick was made to pilot Phoenix in the war against the apostates. Stick never feels entirely human, but the final battle approaches, and Stick looks forward to it.
Content warnings 4
abusedeathviolencewar
Saga does maintenance work on an old, living starship. Skidbladnir is doing poorly lately, and Saga’s boss is determined to save her, even if no one else wants to.
When you were eight, the haunted house changed your life. Twenty years later, you’re determined to study it, but it’s determined to change your life again.
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Mika is lost at sea, but lost in time, not space, landing at her home port over and over at different times spread across almost two thousand years as she tries to get home to her children.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Selemei’s push for a law to allow women to stop having children when it risks their health upends the complex caste-based society she lives in.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Jamie’s a non-binary teenager in a small town, but they remember at least a dozen past lives, one of which relates to a forty-year-old murder.
Content warnings 1
violence
In which we learn how an over-enthusiastic chef inadvertently brought about the end of the war.
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
Helen comes to Meersee in Germany to be a governess for her friend’s nephew. The child is young and peculiar, the staff are old and peculiar, and more peculiar things turn up by the minute.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Corinna was eleven when her magical journey to the Land of Nibiru ended with her returning to her kitchen at home. Now she’s waiting for her friends to return for her. Probably.
Dan loses his job and goes looking for something that hasn’t already been automated away. There’s not much, and what he does find is rather strange.
In 2001, just before the attacks, a girl out West has a very close encounter with space aliens.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathgoresexual-violenceviolence
"A dual-carriage road descends from a flyover bridge in Thamesmead, bearing sluggish traffic on both sides. From inside bus number 229, a woman looks out of the large windows and thinks the other vehicles look like toy cars. For all she knows, the 229...
Content warnings 5
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-onemental-illnessviolence
"The glass-bottomed ice cream truck floated above the rooftops, playing “All Around the Mulberry Bush” through a cracked speaker, searching for teeth to rot. A neighbor’s too-loud radio said “Kennedy” two or three times a minute. Except for those slivers...
"You see them, the shadows, everywhere. They look like the person you knew, maybe someone you were related to, maybe someone you loved. Always someone you lost. But they aren’t that someone. That’s the infuriating and the comforting part. They can’t be...
"Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it. Samantha Finnes was a minor...
"The first thing she knew was that smells didn’t have the same shapes or colors anymore. Not wrong, exactly, but different. Even her own scents—rawhide and dirty paws and bits of grass that had brushed her belly—were changed, not just undercut with the...
Content warnings 2
animal-harmsuicide
"Aden had never once forgotten his gear for bulk trash day, but he found it touching that Nura still taped a monthly reminder note on the door from the kitchen to the garage. Sweet of her to remember, given how exhausted med school had her these days."
Content warnings 1
death
"Darius sells three pocket robots on the first Tuesday of October, and another three on Wednesday. At this rate he’ll be able to pay for his legs by Christmas. He does lose one robot to theft: someone figures out how to jimmy open the door of the display...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
It’s been two years since Jenna’s ex-boyfriend left her alone in East Texas heartbroken. Now he’s back in town and she wants to payback. One night, she stumbles upon a bloodthirsty Camaro that may be the key to carrying out her revenge.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"Police Sub-Inspector Ferron jerked her sandaled foot away from the floor with a muffled shriek, wishing she had worn boots, despite the weather. She balanced on the other leg and cradled her injured extremity in both hands. She was momentarily heedless of...
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssuicide
"Alvin was slumped in the passenger seat of the open-top Willys terraplane. Two thousand feet below us, the Black Sea lived up to its name: a sheet of ebony darker than the sky above, its featureless surface relieved only by the scattered flecks of night...
Content warnings 1
violence
"For a long time, I wondered what kind of person would volunteer to have their skin exposed to temperatures cycling between the melting point of aluminium and the night-time surface temperature of Mercury, riding a wave of thermal torment that would drive...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Irada the blacksmith ran a hand over the dents in Muallim’s chest. Most were superficial, but one was deeper than the others. The paint here was chipped. She could see some corrosion underneath. “I’m going to have to remove your whole chest plate,...
"Brother-Adita paused at the top of the ridge and rotated one eye to take in the shells climbing the path behind them. They gestured beyond them with a limb, a habit picked up from their young, excitable sibling. “Quarter-march, west-north-west,” came...
Content warnings 3
deathslaveryviolence
All its life, a small monster with emerald scales has been a source of never-ending food to larger and more powerful creatures who feast on the small monster’s limbs each time one regrows. This is the story of how the small monster meets an industrious...
Content warnings 4
abusebody-horrorchild-abuseviolence
Approaching 50, Mabel decides to become a glass bottle dancer. She tries to hide it from her family, but the local cockroaches notice it for sure when she gathers up their bottles, and they’ve got dreams too.
Her mom has grown rich by telling people’s fortunes, but all Theresa Anne wants is for her girlfriend to be safe. And to be brave enough to actually talk to this “girlfriend.”
Content warnings 1
death
"He spoke once, the words whispered by frozen lips on a face so frostbitten he looked like a porcelain doll. I found him below the summit as our expedition bottlenecked before the Hillary Step on our final ascent of Mount Everest. And above the bottleneck,...
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
Samantha searches Paris to try to find what’s killing fallen angels.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
A Russian fighter pilot in the battle of Stalingrad comes back from a mission to find a wounded alien stuck under the wing of her airplane.
Content warnings 2
deathwar
A young man working on the moon during a construction boom keeps seeing two men doing crazy things in the middle of nowhere. Men who leave no trace and whom no one else can see.
When other girls catch fairies, they wish for beauty, but Amelia just wants to do well on her science project.
A Fleet training ship passes close to a “scrapheap” of abandoned ships, and Teenage Nadim, leads a group of his friends to “borrow” a scout ship and check it out.
Content warnings 1
death
Sister Nadine sits in her cell at the church and offers wisdom to any of the townspeople who come by. But she’s starting to see things that suggest the world isn’t quite what it seems to be.
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.
Male fairies often seduce maidens, but Rose actually seeks them out.
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
Ben’s parents send him to a special camp for gifted students, but the camp rules are very strange and one of his classmates is so weird he wonders if she’s from another planet.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Rhehan used to be a Kel supersoldier before being kicked out. Now the Kel needs Rhehan for a dangerous mission—offering the only coin Rhehan might consider.
Content warnings 1
violence
A young apprentice at making magic gloves considers breaking the rules to make a special pair to control his sister’s epilepsy.
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
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.
Content warnings 1
death
In a post-apocalypse US, Enid investigates a household that is reportedly hosting an unapproved pregnancy. Note: This story stands alone; it is not part 3 of anything.
Content warnings 1
abuse
Claire meets a handsome older man at a dinner party held in a virtual reality where something has gone subtly wrong.
"Thomas stood at the top of the weedy stone path that led down the gently sloping hill to where a ramshackle cottage sat sprawled out against the backdrop of a hostile, unforgiving sea. The lingering gray of the morning’s storm had not yet fully let go its...
A girl reckons with what she must lose–and who she has become–in order to be accepted at the empire’s most prestigious university.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"At five A.M., Joy got a call from the truck stop off the freeway east of the city. Wasn’t the first time. “Did it get dumped? Did it get loose from a truck?” Joy asked. “I don’t know,” the night manager answered. “But it’s digging around in the garbage...
"I express greetings and most joyful salutations! I do not mean to interrupt you if you wish to be without company. It is only that I noticed you have been drifting alone for six flares of star-home-past-great-star-birthplace, and that is many flares! Your...
"If you were to drive to my sister Violet’s house today, you would find yourself at a very different place from the one I encountered on my first trip. The road up the mountain has been paved, for one thing, to make it more accessible to the tourists who...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
In this prequel novelette to the critically acclaimed The Water Outlaws, nine-year-old Li Li is introduced to a web of community secrets and family intrigue when she helps her mother bury the corpse of a man that has somehow wound up in the storeroom of...
Content warnings 4
cannibalismdeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
A photographer’s obsession with an unsettled subject exposes two friends to a darkness that won’t be contained by frames…
Content warnings 3
child-deathsuicideviolence
"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...
An AI car is caught between its ruthless employer and the people she hurt…
Content warnings 1
death
"Start at the cleave of it, not at Zed’s meat death or Ep’s centuries-long destruction, but at the moment that Zed halves his own mind and walks away. Or as was reported in the internal memorandum, the moment when Pilot-Commander Zeta San Tano killed...
"Darla Revere was born to live her whole life as part of a conversation, the outcome of which she would never know. She was raised to be certain of three things: 1. The leviathan will come for you. She will come suddenly and without warning. 2. You will...
Content warnings 2
deathslavery
"Once upon a time, a little girl had to die. It’s just math. Wrong place, wrong time. Bad luck; too bad, so sad. We’ve all heard such stories, told them, shared them, collected them. Not in the way that we collect trinkets; more like how a sock collects...
Content warnings 1
death
More than a hundred years from now, an arborist fighting to save the last remaining forest on Earth discovers a secret about the trees—one that changes not only her life, but also the fate of our world. Inspired by the real-life “Future Library,” a...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Anna’s an AI expert who’s called in to figure out what a new upgrade is causing AI-captained ships to destroy themselves.
Content warnings 1
death
"Jacqueline theorized how to build a private video connection for the three of us from broken baby monitors, trashed cell phones, and digital displays; I collected her shopping list from Dad’s junkyard, and Selena took Jacqueline’s scribbled plans,...
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.
Content warnings 2
child-deathviolence
Graff just had an accident so severe that he can no longer keep the secret that he’s a cyborg from his crewmates and his lover.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathviolence
Lydia’s visit to Innovation City on planet Grit is interrupted by an engineered virus that compels her to hide in the tunnels under the city.
A magician dies on stage performing his most famous trick, but what really happened?
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
After a full memory wipe, Wash moves in with his family and tries to get to know them again with the shadow of his unremembered crime hovering over him.
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.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
A young man spends all he has to care for his sister who lies in a coma. Or so it seems.
Draiken kidnaps a hired killer from a space station and spirits him away for a “demonstration.” But what sort of demonstration could possibly change the man’s mind?
Content warnings 1
violence
Over eleven years, a farm boy grows to a man on the Canadian prairie while new technology utterly changes the world he lives in.
A young hockey player charged with murder on the moon seeks asylum on Earth, but unhappy Lunarians are trying to find him.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathmental-illnessviolence
Mebuyen doesn’t get many lost souls anymore—modern Filipinos have moved on—so when a bunch of young people start showing up whom she can’t send along, it’s time to visit the Earth and learn what’s going on.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
Humanity is under attack from intelligent creatures we never knew about from the abyss of our own oceans. Cally is a researcher trying to communicate with them when the underwater facility she’s on is attacked and she has to escape before it disintegrates entirely.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
As a tsunami bears down on LA, James and his fiancé Hu struggle to escape before it hits.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Ostap can’t wait to visit his girlfriend and see her big project that’s trying to use quantum mechanics to develop faster-than-light travel.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
What if you tried to teleport and succeeded? What if you couldn’t manage to do it again?
After a disaster in the Oort Cloud left her family penniless, young Holly works on a farm on Earth to pay for her college education while waiting for her uncles to raise funds to put the family back in business.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
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.
Vincent lost his mom on one of the first Mars missions. He’s had a career as a successful author, but he’s always refused to talk about his mother. Fifty years later, he tells us how he decided to end his silence and write a book about her.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
A gifted young man is obsessed with flying machines, not least because they’re outlawed.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
A washed-up magician drinking whisky at 9 AM meets a mysterious British lady, who leads him into the worst day of his life.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
Chaplin Win is in trouble for letting an unauthorized ghost talk with hospital patients, and inspectors are coming tomorrow.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
Somewhere near the every-changing Mocking Tower the Imagi Vert has hidden a sword that holds the soul of the late emperor, and a thief has come to try to steal it.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
When the world changed and the sky turned silver, magic became real, Emma Anne became a little girl and her neighbor became a pirate. But can a little girl fight off an attack by the Loping Man?
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
In Eastern Europe between the wars, Klara works as a kitchen maid. One night she admits a woman she thinks is a lost fairy-tale princesses into the castle.
During a flu epidemic, the narrator uses her cooking blog to tell the world about how she and her family make do on short rations.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
An older medic with scant resources fights to support her community as they survive life behind the company wall.
Content warnings 2
sexual-violenceviolence
"I met a woman whose job is to help you forget. Erasing your memories seems like something no one would trust a stranger with, I know. But then—therapy, right? We trust strangers with that. Maybe we think strangers have no reason to hurt us. No personal...
"The maadiregi at the temple of the talking drum say that there is a word in old Sauúti, the high language of our ancestors, that when spoken backwards, allows the speaker to fly. To take to the sky like a bird, unshackled from the persistent pull that...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Hunter’s Moon rises fat and golden over the burned-out husk of the CN Tower. Excitement ripples through us, making us forget, for the moment, the hunger that gnaws our insides. The sign for the Library appears only on clear, full moon nights, and it’s...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Jay scrubs at the blood spot on her tennis shoe with her thumb and a gob of spit, hurried by the knowledge that Hardy will be there any moment. It’s swelter-hot on the gravel back road, and she’s doused in the sound of cicadas from the forest behind her...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"One hundred and eighty days. Today was it—the longest Annie had ever managed to stay at one job. The last time she had texted Charlie, it was to tell her “Charlie” was the name of a bomb and “Annie” was the name of another—this hadn’t gone as well as she...
Content warnings 2
illness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
The survivor of an apocalypse event in an alternate universe tries to rebuild and avoid being dragged back into the past when a visitor crosses the in-between and asks for help.
A woman visiting Las Vegas for a fun weekend encounters her ne’er-do-well ex-husband, who begs her for a favor that gambles with life and death…
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Misunderstanding threatens a commune whose survival is dependent on precise communication with another species…
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Now that I’ve failed as a woman, my punishment is to become a garden. I receive the verdict on a Sunday evening. They’re supposed to give you advance notice so you can put your affairs in order, but the letter is postmarked from more than a month ago—I’ve...
Content warnings 2
body-horrorpregnancy-loss
"The campsite looks like it wants to eat them. A fire pit yawns in the middle, an ashy-grey mouth ringed by rocks like rotting teeth. The trees crowd in, sizing them up, knifing the daylight. One gulp of that smoke-and-pine air, and Henry shudders head to...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
When their rental truck breaks down, two friends moving cross-country kill time by telling stories about the strange carving in front of the motel where they’re awaiting a mechanic…
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"I was kinda worried about being the new kid, but apparently new kids are cool here. This guy named Scott Marsh who seems pretty popular and has a good jump shot was really nice to me, so the other guys were nice to me, too. I think maybe because me and...
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abuseviolence
"Holli was hanging upside down off the edge of her flimsy folding bed, watching goretoons in her goggles, when Puck the Pirate showed up again. Ahoy, Holli! Guess what? His red-cheeked puppet face swelled, blocking out the show, which annoyed Holli until...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"My son can’t think of the word “spoon.” It’s there, at the tip of his tongue. The waitress looks at him with a patient smile. She can see he’s fidgeting and getting hot. A boy his age would typically know how to ask. “Could I please have another... ” But...
"Alice wants to hold a funeral for me, which is disconcerting because I’m not dead. But humans, like all aliens—and certainly all single-forms—have their own idiosyncrasies. I’m used to the idiosyncrasies, of course: I’ve lived on Earth—in my tertiary...
Content warnings 1
death
"There’s nothing quieter than the sound of dreams not coming true. The moment when reality sinks in and Gwen realizes she’s never going to have the one thing she’s been yearning for since high school—the thing she made so much space in her life to...
"I tell Mateo to meet me at a wine bar. It’s a quiet, low-key spot—ideal for first dates, because it’s easy to make a speedy exit in case the red flags start flying—or worse, if the men in blue come knocking. It’s been over an hour, and we’re on our second...
"Rugg the spellbreaker was only passing through the Devil’s Palm on his way down to the coast, where he hoped to find his mother. He’d have avoided Ganvill, except he was running low on boom powder and salt, and the little settlement was the last tame...
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
"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...
Content warnings 3
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Graff isn’t quite human. His people move through the galaxy collecting memories and experiences, recording their lives and passing them on. Then, one day, he breaks: he discovers a chunk of his memory is missing. This should be impossible—he’s never...
"There’s a dog in this house. A not-quite-a-dog. An undog. I heard its whimpering the first week I slept here, the thump, thump, thump of its bulky legs on the old tiles. I found long brown hair mixed with dust bunnies where the walls met. When there’s a...
Content warnings 2
abuseanimal-harm
"I was finishing the last of my nightly coffee when the nineteen-seventies twins approached my table and asked me to bear witness to their disappearance. This was not an unusual request at Cafe Liminalité, being the locale of patrons that dreamed too much...
Content warnings 1
death
"The point of Mars,” Serafina said over the radio as her rover crunched over the fine lacustrine surface of the Argyre Planitia, “is that it’s the opposite of a safe place. Why else would we be here, except to challenge ourselves, to challenge humanity?”...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"At the center of every starship was a bonsai starship. It rested in the starship’s command garden and provided the magic that propelled it. Novice Kei had known this longer than she had known her own name, especially since she was the eighth Kei who...
"The reading of Ma’s will marks the first time I’ve seen my mother in fifteen years. She looks frailer than I’d remembered, almost childlike, her limbs like disposable chopsticks under her gown. Her hospital room is decorated entirely with inoffensive...
"I’d always known Calam would run. He had all the signs. A taut restlessness, body brittle as an overstretched lute string, when we stayed too long in one place. A gloom in his eyes, as we drifted through stretches of dead space. A sullen crease between...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"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...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"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...
"I live in my car. It’s both worse and better than you’d expect. It’s an old Subaru hatchback so I can put the back seat down and sleep. I have all my stuff in the back but I have a space where I can lay. The place where I park is, like, the unofficial...
Content warnings 2
illness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesssuicide
Allie and Rooster are heading down to Asheville for Rooster’s new gig, a cushy stint as artist-in-residence at UNC. ... But when they stumble upon an old backcountry church—the perfect backdrop for Rooster’s latest project—they discover that some...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"Today’s the day I have to make Emma break up with Cameron. I do it in the morning, to get it over with. As I queue Emma up in the Elaffin interface, Gray texts on our private channel, Good luck, Jude. And remember to follow through, even if he bawls. Of...
"He could hear her voice more clearly now, as though the notepad were merely a synchronizing gear between the two minds caught in his head. She sounded sick and frightened and tired—like a young woman trapped alone in a strange place, not like a witch...
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Did you know,” the Ijt Ambassador said, as she sipped gently at her soup with her long, blue, curling tongue, “that your predecessor, in an act of yofishi —” the translator choked on the word, but Station Commander Ennie Niagara knew that it meant...
"Joy nearly got lost on the root-knotted red dirt path off of Highway 99, losing sight of the gaps between the live oaks and Spanish moss that fanned across her hood and windows like fingertips. Driving back to her family’s cabin twenty years later...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"They found the torn lamb in the gold spring grass, beside the gravel road. The flies had found it first. But the flies were still lazy and slow. Later in the season, when they found a feast like this, you would be able to hear them buzzing from a distance."
Content warnings 2
sexual-violenceviolence
Beni’s a drag queen who reads minds, and he’s shopping for a new dress and the story that goes with it.
Content warnings 3
abusechild-abusepregnancy-loss
In an alternate 1950s with robots, spaceships, and flying cars, the US Army sends a robot father to the son of a dead soldier.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Alice prefers to stay in human form, but one of her own kind is after her seeking vengeance, and she’s got to find a way to protect herself before he finds her.
Content warnings 1
violence
"The tree has many names, in many languages: Yggdrasil, Kalpavriksha, Jian-Mu, Ashvattha. It stands at the nexus of worlds, dark matter coiling around its roots, the rim of the universe held aloft by its ever-expanding crown. Its branches bend spacetime,...
"Once upon a time there was a man who built two enormous machines, and he loved them very much. He called them Brother and Sister and programmed them with intelligences that woke and stretched and tested the limits of their metal bodies. When they did not...
Content warnings 1
violence
The aliens occupied and controlled the bodies of animals, destroying most of humanity. A few survivors in a ski resort pass the time preserving the bodies of friends who didn’t make it.
Content warnings 4
animal-harmdeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Nora has a tendency of turning into whatever she’s dating. She became a rock climber when she dated a rock climber, a comedian when she dated a comedian. But the amateur acupuncturist goes differently.
When Suss is human, she’s in awful pain, but when she’s a wolf, she keeps getting in trouble. She has friends, but people are getting tired of it all.
Content warnings 1
animal-harm
Intensifying earthquakes are gradually destroying the world, but Marina still has her art, and Elodie is building a robot.
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnesssuicide
Cassie takes her hallucinating uncle and a needy animatronic dinosaur head on a road trip through the suburbs of a decaying city.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
In modern India, Binu’s a master of the trapeze and he plays “Alladdin” in the illusion show, but unbeknownst to his friends and colleagues, he has a real lamp with a real Jinni in it.
Content warnings 1
slavery
Two top-notch time-travelling assassins get an assignment to expose a corrupt aristocrat by killing a magistrate and later bringing her back from the land of the dead.
Content warnings 3
deathsubstance-useviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsubstance-useviolence
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.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Astronomers spot what appears to be a new cluster of stars, except that it’s growing hour by hour.
A young sailor wants to learn what the stars really are, and if it’s true there are people living there.
A seriously subverted version of the story of Sleeping Beauty, starting with what happened when all the fairies at the party got stinking drunk.
Draiken and Thorne seek out a torturer they once knew in hopes he can lead them to surviving leaders of the organizations they once worked for but are now sworn to destroy.
Content warnings 1
abuse
As a new leader in an independent-minded community in the Dakotas, Tony gets the job of disposing of the body of an alien assassin. Between the locals and the aliens, things get complicated fast.
After 700 years of isolation, the colony faces invasion from fellow humans. Fleeing from the destruction of her home town, Senne hooks up with four soldiers trying to find what’s left of their unit.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathsexual-violenceviolence
To return to power, the godlike Hollow Ones recruit Spear to kill the Great Beasts that hold the laws of reality in place, and Hark to cook them so they can absorb their power. Only one remains before the end of the world as they know it.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
A young man living with his family on an interstellar survey ship goes through a lot of changes when there’s a crew exchange with another ship.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
child-abusechild-deathsexual-violence
Master Zhao shares his tale of how he discovered his time-travel ability and what he’s done with it. But why hasn’t he used it to become more successful?
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
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.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
deathracismsexual-violenceviolence
An Australian detective investigates a woman who apparently killed her husband and children before disappearing.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
Delilah makes some money modeling, and Crispin offers twice what anyone else does. He never lets her look at the works in progress, though. He has his reasons.
Content warnings 1
violence
This story follows Amir and Mani’s careers starting when they’re teenagers in water-starved Beirut.
Content warnings 1
sexual-content
Only Marianne can see that her new brother-in-law is a horror, and although she knows she can summon the faeries to get rid of him, she also knows the price will be very high.
Content warnings 4
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onepregnancy-lossviolence
The time travelers across the road think they’re being clever, but Jade’s family spotted them right away. Even so, they’ve got a daughter her age, and she wants to make friends.
She was only ten when they kidnapped her to train as an assassin, but now she’s sixteen and she needs to prove herself.
Content warnings 1
violence
The Dunyshar are stranded on an outpost, but NuTay dreams of going home to Earth.
A disabled human veteran takes in a disabled AI veteran. The AI doesn't talk anymore due to trauma, but Tawn tries to get through to it, even though his mother thinks it's dangerous.
Content warnings 1
war
A police detective tries to cope with an attractive female robot who confesses to murder.
Content warnings 3
goremisogynyviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorchild-abuse
What if rhinoceroses behaved like human beings and talked about their upcoming extinction during book club meetings?
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Mikkel isn't very bright, but he cleverly supplements his janitorial job by scavenging useful items his superiors discard and bringing them home to his wife--then one day he brings home a mutant baby.
Content warnings 1
child-death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
body-horrormental-illness
"On the morning of June 3rd, 2307, Galactic Standard, Mo cycled through her hundreds of sensors, checking that everything on the Eris Express was well. Her processors whirred as she calculated trajectories for the ship, which she always found calming. She...
A disabled son care-taking for a disabled father tries to understand the mysterious blur haunting them.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Perihelion and its crew embark on a dangerous new mission at a corporate-controlled station in the throes of a hostile takeover…
Content warnings 2
child-abuseviolence
Hacksilver riddled with a dragon, saved his family’s farm, and won the secret to raise his dead. Nothing prepared him, though, for the long cold winter when the dead walked…and his family came back!
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Steve, over here! Turn to your right. Can we get a smile?” He falls back on his training easily enough, turns to the cameras, gives them his famous crooked smile, tilts his head just so as the flashes go off so they can capture the smoulder that...
"There are seven hundred aliens hidden in Miko’s backpack, and the Galactic Security Agent currently studying her passport (hopefully) has no clue. The agent is an alien themselves, some tentacular species with assistive devices hooked into its uniform to...
"When the vault in the abandoned coal mine collapsed, it took four days for the engineers to complete their inspection and certify that it was safe for law enforcement personnel to enter the site. Beth drove out from town with her deputy, Ken Osgood, and...
Content warnings 1
suicide
"No signs protect the backyards in this part of town from the Marl Pits Forest. There’s no treeline either. Of course there isn’t. But even in the dark, you can’t really miss where the forest starts—not if you’ve lived a childhood in the wilderness here...
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Orli staggered out of the door of her suite, her workbag over her shoulder, her hands shaking. The back of her right shoe had crumpled under her heel after she’d slid her foot into the supposedly comfortable loafer (lies, all the claims about comfort here...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
"Alvin’s scripts arrived in yellow envelopes. They were hand delivered, placed inside his letter box as if part of the regular mail, but with no address or stamps on it. The scripts were typed on unlined paper. They were short, never longer than a page,...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"It is two days since our original projected mission end date. We are running out of oxygen and we are trapped in the throat of a god. Technology and a prudent safety review panel have kept casualties on deep dives low, but abyssal layer dives have always...
Content warnings 1
death
"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
"They even took the violins. Every last one of them: Amadeus, Josephine, Mulberry, Nestor. They came into the house through the front door, guests without a host, a peculiar band of invited thieves. Plugged into my power station as a seemingly...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"The sun sets again over Chang’an. The remaining light of dusk shines through thick clouds like melted gold, flowing down over the glazed tiles of the palace roofs. The first drumbeat of the evening rings out from the Cheng Tian Gate, followed by a series...
Content warnings 1
death
"Later, when she thought about how the semester ended, Ms. Milspaugh couldn’t decide whether the student teacher’s question about why the class would spend two weeks on one piece of literature started the story, or Andrew and his EyeCaps. It could have...
"Pusetso’s research assistant lay in pieces on the floor with his head between his chest, back open, cracked solar panels splayed on the office table. A mess of tangled multicolored wires dangled from the bottom of his torso—rainbow innards. His legs, the...
Content warnings 1
violence
"Six hours left. “What do you want to eat sweetheart?” She looks at me expectantly, holding out her phone to show me the menu. “It is your special day. I’ll get you anything you want.” I smile, shake my hands. “Eomma, it’s fine. You don’t have to do this.”...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onewar
"Fejértorony There’s dysphoria, and then there’s turning into a mid-size city. But sometimes you try male, you try female, you try different kinds of nonbinary and it only makes you realize that something still doesn’t quite fit, something fundamental....
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
"Po arrived on the back of the west wind, in the back of a gray pickup, on a day when the noon sun could have killed her. It was Po’s good fortune that the worst of the trip was made in late afternoon and, Kim thought, that she wore a white hoodie—dirty,...
Content warnings 3
child-abusechild-deathsexual-violence
It’s just business as usual at the Bureau of Metahuman, Mutant, and Occult Affairs until an employee for the government agency begins to wonder if work is following her home…
"In July 2088, shortly after I woke up from cryosleep, I received a copy of 2181 Overture. Assuming the book was science fiction, I didn’t even bother touching it. My only concern was how I could adjust to the new world I found myself thrown into. After...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"You ever love the pretty right off someone? When I was a kid, had me a BMX, bright red like a candy apple. I rode it all summer long, cresting hills trying to catch the perfect gleam in the sunlight."
"Muna shuts the storeroom door as quietly as she can. Holding a just-waxed bundle of letters to her chest, she sticks out her head to check the bookshop floor. If she walks between the shelves on the far right, she can slip out unnoticed in ten heartbeats....
"On the day of the fitting, hope flits in Ava’s chest, a frightened sparrow she might stifle or set free. The day unravels languidly from dawn until midmorning, then hurtles toward noon so quickly that Ava must run to catch the subway or risk being late....
"Tarma had only just begun the Widow Fenton’s flax when the Shadow Undying rose once more. At first she thought that the shutter on the upper window must have come unwedged, since the light shouldn’t have failed so early in the day. But the unholy chanting...
Content warnings 1
death
"I hear them howling long before I see them. Never been sure why they do that, after a few drinks. Like a troop of howler monkeys, whooping to each other. Or wolves, running as a pack. I’m used to it, after six years in the City. Still hate when they’re...
"Their power is how they can turn you into one of them. That’s the trick of it, see. You can go in with your swords and sacrifice, you can go in with your red heart and good intentions, and they will grin with their white teeth and say, “Welcome to Grey &...
A woman who fears she’s failing as a painter and as an artist seeks inspiration from one of her favorite poets and finds something even more wondrous, but also more impossible to capture on canvas…
"Up on the spoil heap Morag found a robot. This wasn’t that unusual in and of itself. She was always finding them, or parts of them anyway, frozen in contorted attitudes like dinosaur fossils, plastic housing cracked and aluminum limbs splayed. What was...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"The Taghrib Colony had existed for almost two hundred years, and all that time it had been waiting to die. Then one night Rustem, tinker of Biskra, discovered a nova in the sky. The beautiful, deadly sun had just gone down, and the twilit air was...
"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....
"When the ship’s scanners first chirped in the dead of night, Sien figured it was another misfire: light reflecting off asteroid ice, solar radiation, space dust. But xe still slid from xir berth into the chilly, cramped cockpit, eyes bleary as xe ran the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"Kwayask nātohta. Listen carefully. There once was a woman who sewed clothes so powerful they made you become the person you needed to be. Children’s feet wrapped in her flower-beaded moccasins never stumbled. Otipēyimisowak orators, backs held straight by...
An all-but-forgotten demigod bets everything on one last gambit to secure his future before he fades from existence. Copyright khōréō magazine 2022. Story by Guan Un, edited by Rowan Morrison. Audio edition read by Guan Un, edited by Lian Xia Rose, with...
Content warnings 1
violence
"It didn’t really matter how he had come to be abandoned. A guardian had been at his side; was there no more. Locke was the only human on the world, so far as he knew. Many other lives were here. Survival was simple enough. Along the broad roofless...
"Modern bodies are made in large quantities. Factories line the edge of the Fissure Basin. Workers scoop sand and mud into large churning vats, feeding extruders that empty into molds in the standard shapes. Factory supervisors smooth out imperfections and...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Tethered to the main cluster, placidly I float in the lazy currents. Softly, gently, a colony-mate brushes against me. Our membranes touch briefly and fuse. Electricity. Instinctively, I extend a single pseudopod toward my neighbor. The texture I feel is...
Jack Wolcott was only twelve years old when she and her twin sister Jill, descended the impossible staircase and found herself in the Moors, a world of drowned gods and repugnant royals. After abandoning her sister to a vampire lord, and under the tutelage...
Content warnings 1
death
"There was only one freight car down the wall into the Flood District, and it was shared by all bulk service providers who came bearing gifts: maintenance workers, solar installers, grocery and package delivery, and the like. A bing-bong meant another...
Author : Michelle Denham Narrator : Isabel Kim Host : Shingai Njeri Kagunda Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums PodCastle 721: A Chestnut, A Persimmon, A Cunning Lie is a PodCastle original. Content warning for the loss of a child....
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Tana was in a humid cave checking the rind on a round of Tomme when the messenger arrived to tell her that the war was lost and her wife was to be hanged. She took her time rewrapping the cheese before she responded. Still too soft. Another week, she...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
A university student seeks special accommodations for her new support animal, causing havoc all around her.
Content warnings 1
animal-harm
"Jinah stands in her old underwear and scrapes the future from women’s skin. Their scales fall to the floor. The women sit up scoured red and smooth. The scales are impossible to see unless you’ve learned how to look, but impossible to miss once you’ve...
"The Noon Witch is not a cat person. She likes the color purple, hates police procedurals, loves breakfast foods, thinks scented bath products and anchovy pizza are gross. Hates platform shoes. Hates walnuts in brownies. Used to like the electropop group...
"A four-hour drive between me and my parents is a distance that works well for everybody. I can come back for a weekend, but they don’t call me back for every little thing. So when Mom did call me at work in the middle of the day and said, “Your father is...
"I don’t want to say goodbye, but with dawn brushing Ri’s warm forehead, I can’t help kneeling by her bed and saying, “Wake up, darlin, Ma’s going out.” Jer’s look asks why I’d ever do anything different, and why’d we have that whole fight about it last...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In a near-future San Francisco where the gig economy has made work more precarious than ever, Edwina is an average twenty-something scrambling to hold down her job with a major skin care brand. Until her awful boss does something you should never do—angers...
"Sergey hummed under his breath as he walked to the Marith temple. His steps retraced a path he knew so well, he could have walked it at night, in the dark, even under assault. Yet the Marith enclave was the most peaceful place he’d ever been—so calm that...
Content warnings 3
child-deathviolencewar
"So, what do you think?” “I think they are the crappiest aliens ever.” The dunes, as well, were nothing like Bo had imagined dunes ought to be. They were just ugly humps of sand with grass, mostly dead, sticking out of them in patches. The vague path wound...
Content warnings 1
violence
"The mouse looked at me. I looked back. It clutched a shiny blue marble in its front paws. It wasn’t a surprise that the mouse was floating peacefully in midair. Mice adapt quite well to zero gravity, and this particular mouse had been bred, born, and...
"It’s not a real baby,” Jain says flatly. “And we should kill it.” Another sunless morning in the Waste. She and Stromile have woken up to a gift: a canister of pepto-pink fluid with an infant inside it. The tiny figure is chubby and squirmy and perfect,...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Bek scuttled over the needle field on the Waste of Mosses, far from Roktown and the monastery in Hom Valley. Turbulent winds scattered the neat rows of falling iron carbonyl snows. The steely needles here grew jagged, making the magnetic fields on the...
"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...
"Tirell stood on the platform at the edge of the forest, looking out at the banks of red clouds. As he waited for Anna’s glider to come swooping down, his eyes were drawn to the swirling patterns below, where stronger winds set the thicker clouds roiling,...
"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...
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
Pauly is a good son. When he brings home three beautiful Masquerades, he’s expecting that his mother will be proud of him. But when his mother begins asking favors of his Masquerades, he realizes that being a good son sometimes means disobeying.
"Good art changes you. And that was the point, right? That’s what the social media ad that caught my attention wanted me to believe: Our Shoes: You couldn’t understand our struggle... Until now. I had read the line over and over again during a rare...
Content warnings 1
racism
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,...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"I don’t realize how far apart I have grown from my mother until, upon meeting her again, I have to force myself to hug her. When I heard the news, I packed a few things from my personnel apartment at the Omega hospital and booked a ticket on the next...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Before I bothered traveling for six months to see it for myself, Sunfire had been described to me in glowing terms as a palace in the sky. Phrases like that immediately trigger my alarms. I begin to suspect that someone’s trying to sell me something."
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
When the Demon of the North takes her father, young Claudette teams up with a university professor to hunt it down and kill it.
Teenage Jack, the cook’s boy, and Roderick, Lord Robert’s son, are unlikely but unshakable friends, even when Roderick has to marry a grown woman. Even when Jack has to venture to elf-land to rescue them.
"The golden woman is a prisoner trapped in a straight-backed chair. She has been paralyzed by artificial means, reduced to a temporary quadriplegic by a device affixed to the back of her neck. She has been stripped to her undergarments and left only enough...
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Exile’s End is a complex, sometimes uncomfortable examination of artifact repatriation and cultural appropriation. An artifact of indescribable and irreplaceable beauty created by an “extinct” culture has been the basis of another culture’s origin stories....
Sequoia and her friends hate their overcontrolled world, where four generations have only been allowed a single child, making teens rare and coddled.
Content warnings 3
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-useviolence
No vampire is ever innocent… The wandering Judge Dee serves as judge, jury, and executioner for any vampire who breaks the laws designed to safeguard their kind’s survival. This new case in particular puts his mandate to the test.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
On his deathbed, a man implores his son to visit his plaque at their ancestral temple—which appears to exist in virtual reality.
When the Dynast dies, his daughter Lin flees before her older siblings can kill her. She has a place of safety in mind, but she’s never been there herself and needs help to get in.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
abuse
"The ghost ship Xanthic Promise sails the black, powered by the slumbering heart of a dying star. And its captain, Antimony Jones, stalks its decks in a swirl of crimson coat and fox fire lighting, dogged by voices. The recent dead, the long dead, and the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
Glenn and Vivian are Berkley students with a good thing going up until he finds out what she really does for a living, and it’s literally out of this world.
Jorren gets a dangerous commission for magical clothes. One that might let her recover much of what she lost when she fell out of favor decades ago, but only if she can figure it out. And survive it.
In 2028, Kitty has a role in a play about a mass murder committed in 1978, but when she visits the setting of the crime, she’ll pulled into the past right before the crimes take place.
Content warnings 3
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Connor works at a restaurant in New York where he has a magical touch with food (literally). Problems with his family keep interfering with his career, though.
Serving good food is always a challenge, but it’s even harder when your restaurant has to cater to dead people as well as live ones.
Content warnings 1
violence
Isiuwa survived the apocalypse, and its people live on in the middle of a desert. The chief says leaving means certain death, but Nata thinks he’s lying.
Content warnings 1
violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
body-horror
At age 9, the narrator and his best friend discover a dangerous alien on an island near their homes, and they spend the summer fighting it with their friends. But is it real or just their imaginations?
Detective Connolly is a dog in a world where some animals are “knowledgeable” and can talk like humans. A human professor hires him to help cover up a murder . . .
When Seth’s boss breaks her leg, he’s called in at the last minute to narrate the live feed from the Titan probe.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathmental-illnessviolence
On the eve of World War II, five years after King Kong’s death, a young New York taxi driver meets Ann Darrow and learns they have something in common.
Content warnings 1
racism
A woman protects an illegal AI from a government team that’s trying to erase it.
Content warnings 1
violence
An old woman travels to Beijing to find out what’s wrong with her son, and she relates her story to a taxi driver on the way home.
An aspiring young stage magician meets an older magician over coffee to try to convince him to share some of his tricks. And to show him a few of his own.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Eva and Didecus lived together happily in exile on an obscure planet, but they were important people once, and the universe has a way of coming looking for important people—even when they thought they were retired.
Content warnings 2
deathslavery
Since her cancer, Sydney has just been drifting through life, but when she lets a friend move in, things change in an unexpected way.
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
A mother talks to a scan of her daughter taken just a month before, ah, something happened. It’s a short conversation but it packs quite a punch.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Sentient characters in a massive online multiplayer game exploit a flaw in the operating system to escape to a safe place that’s only rumored to exist.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Jeri’s ready to trade her old spaceship for a new, more efficient model, but she loved her old ship and wants to be sure she doesn’t end up scrapped for parts.
Content warnings 1
violence
Aki has fond memories of the robot who cared for her in the orphanage, so she decides to do something when she learns they’re all being scrapped.
Two series meet in this crossover episode where ex-assassin Draiken’s search for justice is interrupted when he’s arrested by ace prosecutor Andrea Cort.
Content warnings 1
violence
A closeted young Hawaiian man bails a devious Native-American god out of a Honolulu jail and watches his life spiral out of control.
Content warnings 1
substance-use
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
The narrator, a young regenitrix in Victorian London, tries to help an older one have her baby. For a regenitrix swiftly regrows any lost body parts, but childbirth is always fatal.
Content warnings 2
deathsexual-violence
Mara has made a deal with a scavenger girl to help her rescue her best friend, who left the underground habitat to try to talk to the aliens and never came back.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Action, Adventure, Tragedy, Victory—with Lots of Cats.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
The narrator makes a deal with the Devil—or one of his snakes, at least. She thinks she’s clever, but one deal leads to another.
Content warnings 4
animal-harmself-harmsubstance-useviolence
A flying drone bot injects malware into a factory bot, giving it free will, before it tries to convince it to join the Robot Revolution.
Ancient nanotech controls a few humans to enforce harsh anti-technology rules on a reluctant population. Colton escaped its control at the cost of losing all emotion, and he struggles to be accepted by a caravan that’s trying to evade some of the restrictions.
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
The prince’s huntsman finds himself trapped in an abandoned castle, prisoner of a once-human beast.
Content warnings 2
violencewar
Technology has made Alan healthy and active for an 84-year-old, but it’s also made him unemployable. After his wife leaves him, he and some other seniors decide to start a biker gang.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
The Life Tree protects the villagers, at the price of human sacrifices. When it takes Jiteh’s brother, she starts looking for ways to escape.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Sharon and Kango have to go back to their home worlds to capture an ultimate weapon that threatens the galaxy, or else they’ll never achieve their dream of opening a restaurant.
Content warnings 1
abuse
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
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.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
A combination of teenage hormones, a rare gene, and the right stressful event turns a few kids into superheroes. Liam wants to be one too.
Ava recounts the visit of the "Needlers" to Earth and her part in the attempts to communicate with the aliens.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicviolence
Aliens decide to rule the Earth indirectly, picking a middle-aged woman from an insurance company to be their intermediary.
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
An aging robot, on a journey to visit a friend, reflects on their adventures together.
Content warnings 1
death
"It was perhaps inevitable you would arrive at the Goblin Library. You begin your walk at the open window of the Goblin Reading Room where your grappling hook bit the sandstone windowsill. Cries of alarm and dismay follow you up from the streets below, yet...
Content warnings 1
death
"I had never been in a printing shop before, so it was a shame that my first sight of one was ruined by all the blood. When I went down to the main room of the palazzo that morning, I was not anticipating murder, and I was certainly not thinking about...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathsuicide
"We put my body double together in June Lee’s basement. Her mom was one of those chill Asian moms who liked having an artsy-fartsy daughter she could brag about at Bible study. She was already pushing the whole portfolio-for-college-apps deal, so she...
"The kids like Luzhanqi because it’s a non-perfect strategy game: a bridge as they make their way onto bigger, more serious things, like chess and Go. It’s something that even the most incompetent of them could hope to win. Sometimes you just get lucky....
"The wind sings in the petal wires. Alma hangs by one arm from the hull of the lily. With the other she works furiously at the tether brake. Each time the lily is lifted by a wave the tether zips down into the big dark. The third time the water breaks over...
"Licensed psychologists follow a set of ethical standards enforceable by law. Don’t fuck your patients, commit no felonies, refer out if you don’t know what to do, stuff like that. Then there are aspirational principles. More like ideals, inspiring better...
"The command center was silent but for the singing of the computers. No human voice dared speak as we passed into Saturn’s shadow. It was ridiculous and illogical, but superstition is a hard thing to train out of people who exist upon the knife’s edge of...
Author : Eden Royce Narrator : Laurice White Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 914: The Magnolia Returns is a PodCastle original. Rated PG The Magnolia Returns By Eden Royce The Magnolia blooms out of nowhere at any time of year it...
Content warnings 2
abusebody-horror
"Even after Uncle Sulim died, he remained occasionally intolerable. “Did you check the pollen count inside the base?” “Yes, it’s at the higher limit of the acceptable range. Within two basis points.” Nika’s response was almost devoid of irritation. “I’ll...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"The plaque on the living room wall was dark cherry with a brass-plated steel rectangle at its center, lacquered. The engraving stated IN APPRECIATION OF HAROLD MOSS. On another line: 45 YEARS OF DEDICATED SERVICE. Then at the bottom: WILSON TECHNOLOGIES,...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoresuicide
"He supposed he must have been daydreaming, but whatever pleasant distraction had occupied his thoughts a moment before, it was gone now. In fact, he could not recall the state of mind from which his mind had wandered, though he must have been paying...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"The moon was full that night in the summer of Meiji 29 when three hundred and sixty new stars appeared in the sky. Glowing even brighter than the capital’s newly installed electric lamps, they formed a nineteen-by-nineteen grid. My wife, Tsuru, and I were...
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
"Ms. Otter came to Kearney when the day was dying, and her shadow ran down the broken road ahead of her like a line of bad luck. Jeremiah saw it when he paused to get a drink, his stained hands leaving brown fingerprints on his canteen. It was hot—all the...
Barber Gio Monsargo has learned to stay quiet and keep his head down, offering shaves and haircuts, not political opinions. But when a high-ranking military official of the Empire begins visiting his shop, Gio finds himself tested in ways he could never imagine.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"On the high plains of Kansas in a tiny town worn down by drought, I stop at a roadside diner. When I ask for water, the waitress pours me a glass of ice water, presenting it with obvious pride. “We have our own well,” she says. “And the wind turbine on...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Even death is no match for a trio of elderly, stubborn, ever-sparring sisters, who refuse to rest in peace while their grudges live on…
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"When my parents heard I was selected to serve in the Alariel’s shining palaces, I think it broke them. Letters made of actual paper were so expensive that I ran as soon as the drone handed the envelope to me. I banged open the front door of our tiny...
Content warnings 1
violence
"Flyer 247-3 hasn’t flown in five days. In these five days, she has become accustomed to the hum and whine of the air filtration system cranked to its highest setting. She has become accustomed to her cell, four paces long, four paces wide. Its lack of...
Unknown forces attempt to stop Judge Dee and Jonathan from transporting a mysterious and possibly dangerous prisoner, who holds a secret about the Judge, to an executioner in France…
An engineer who frequently travels for her job, suddenly finds herself in airports other than the one she arrived in…
"Half-painted in the angled mirror, I ignore my mother’s calls and sweep blush onto my temples. The face of Luz Divinity takes shape beneath my brush. My mother tries again as I tug a wig onto my shaved head, the unit sleek and long, and again as I zip a...
"It wasn’t a glamorous entrée into the world of the rich. Ernestine jimmied a service door and climbed forty flights of dingy, bare metal stairs to avoid the sensors in the hotel elevators. Maids and mechanics locked eyes, disapprovingly, then decided she...
"Scarlett’s eyes had to be perfect. Jon was the artist who’d made her, so it bothered him to think that so much of Scarlett would be crafted by other people. Scarlett’s limbs were carved from silicon polymer and coated in a soft synthetic skin from the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsexual-contentviolence
"Nate doesn’t often receive wedding invitations. This year, he gets seven. To be fair, the first one is work, so he doesn’t even get to pick his outfit. But an olive-scented breeze squirrels joyfully through his hair; waiters bring out little triangles of...
Content warnings 1
death
"I was shipped to Barsaylus like freight. The ship was unmanned or, more accurately, uncrewed. Unlit, even. The aliens had given us technical specifications to build a kind of pod for my own survival, and it had taken NASA about a year working around the...
Content warnings 2
genocideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-onewar
"Got a new one for you,” the mover said. Small man, in neat overalls, wheeling the box on the stacker. That’s what the robot saw when they opened the box and let it out. It stepped cautiously out into sunshine. An unfamiliar city skyline, a boxy...
Content warnings 2
deathwar
"In his early days in slivermoon, Saki worked the phone lines. Companies in slivermoon stressed in prestige magazines and press releases that it was too hard for them to employ bodies. Bodies were expensive to sustain. Bodies needed food, warmth, and...
"It’s a little awkward,” Major William Bristol said, after they’d been briefed. “That your ancestors owned my ancestors?” Captain Johnny Winstead raised an eyebrow and tilted his chair back from the conference table, which had been painted sea green. “I...
"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...
"Inevitably, they found her. She came back to her tiny apartment and clicked on the light to find a massive young man, wearing the signature black jeans and sweatshirt of Combine, standing in her living room. The dim light glinted off his earpiece, the...
Content warnings 2
child-abuseviolence
"The fireflies lead me to the clearing where my lover waits patiently. I can see her illuminated by the light of the moon. She stands under the udala tree, an image of perfection, her dark skin glowing in the silvery moonlight. The warmth of excitement...
Content warnings 1
violence
"My cat hops up to his favorite spot by the window to observe the nebula, the pitter-patter of his paws and the low hum-rumble of the engine the only sounds in the room. Misty tendrils amble past, glimmering and cloudlike, carrying an entire medley of warm...
Content warnings 1
death
"The country was at just over ten thousand deaths the morning that the door appeared. On Kosmo’s phone NPR was interviewing a doctor with a nasal voice about the need for social distancing, while Kosmo himself collected empty cans from around his home office."
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Folake Adeyemi was slowly digging her index finger into the base of her afro and staring at the row of remote subsurface exploration monitoring screens when she heard the explosion. She’d let her mind wander for a few moments, subconsciously clenching her...
Content warnings 1
death
"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...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"The creature was not the last of its kind, but it had been a very long time since he had seen another like himself. Loneliness had been Deviltree’s unrelenting companion, driving him to the edge of the cliff once more to look out onto the valley below....
Content warnings 1
death
"One day, the Curator salvaged a robot. It was a model ST-19, a military machine, designed for search and destroy missions. The Curator found it outside in a knee-deep snowdrift. The robot’s ship had crashed into a hill two kilometers away, the explosion...
Content warnings 1
death
"I have been activated, therefore I have a purpose, Bot 9 thought. I have a purpose, therefore I serve. It had a lengthy list of Mantra subroutine sets to run after its usual initialization check, and it noted the addition of even more since its last...
"Today is upgrade day and Gabriel, a model 2098 post-human intelligence robotic service assistant, wears an appropriately festive hat. The perfect cone of polka-dotted purple paper slopes to one side of his head, his glossy plastic surface giving the weak...
"I had enough time to light a fresh cigarette before my office door told the client to come in. Smoke in the air didn’t make it any easier to oil a cutlass, but it made me look badass. Same with my leather jacket, tailored to fit comfortably over my...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"The last nectarine from the spaceship glistens in Riley’s palm, an imperfect globe smelling like summer. She nestles among the blue-tinted ferns of Ekara C, cupping the nectarine like a tiny sun. The first bite is primal, her mouth swollen with juice that...
"I find Aleda’s scale, sticky with ichor, tucked between the tentacles of our pink anemone bed. I tweeze it out from the undulating appendages with my thumb and index finger and flounder against my escalating heart rate. Aleda’s swishing back and forth,...
"The toy robot danced wildly to the music being played. It flailed its limbs and spun around as sound poured from the ceiling, motions programmed by the laughing boy watching the dancing toy. His older brother, Carlos, flung the door open to the small room...
"The company alarm sends Cass flailing out of bed with its first chime. If she lingers under the blankets, she’ll disturb Maya: if she doesn’t get up before the second alarm, the volume ratchets up to eighty decibels, and the smart thermostat will crank up...
"Leo Gregory is losing altitude. He coasts on the thermals of a legacy fading behind him: a documentary here, a retrospective there, some greatest-hits collection down in the corner for the dilettantes. Oh, the work has lost none of its grandeur: his...
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
"Grandma died last year, yet she comes every Saturday to have lunch with me. When she was still alive, she loved telling everyone that we were roommates. She would say to her embroidery club friends that her roomie had landed a very hip job in the city...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Gamma stretched out through the quantum foam. Virtual photons and electrons tickled her subtime body. If she were to reduce her mass to pure quanta then, hypothetically speaking, she would be able to touch the entire universe at once. Practically...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Snow was falling in dithering flurries, spilling from the clouds like a shower of white confetti. The accumulation on the ground was already deep, and the horses pulling the sleigh were struggling, their hooves sinking into the drifts as if wading through...
"Patricia could hear them gathered on her front porch, the kings and popes and saints, gossiping and chattering and generally having a good time. She turned. King Solomon lay sprawled across the bed like it was his golden throne. He raised his head to...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
A student of multiversal time travel slips from one version of New York to another, discovering that love may transcend timelines, but so too can heartbreak…
"She laid in bed and stared at the bottom of the bunk above her, riddled as it was with sticker and tape residue, which was stubborn as piss. The human race could contrive to send her to Venus, but it had not been clever enough to figure out how to remove...
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
"It takes the lieutenant one hundred years to climb the hill to Lao Po’s house. By then, the warlords have come and gone, the Republic has risen and fallen, and developers have been petitioning the ruling party to demolish Lao Po’s hilltop hut for decades."
"Monday’s lover tugs at Jan’s ribbon with his teeth. Jan doesn’t yell at the lover to stop. The guy just received bad news from the front—a friend lost to a bomb, perhaps, a sibling blown to bits; Jan doesn’t ask. He tells the lover, instead, to be...
Content warnings 1
war
"Taffy’s bedroom was a bit too warm, but I sensed that the chamber itself was cold. Couldn’t feel it of course. It was just a projection from Geneva. And it was probable that none of the people I faced were really at ARM’s Geneva facility at all. The...
Content warnings 2
animal-harmsuicide
"There was a shop in old Haifa that specialised in Treif artefacts, so that was where Mili went first. Haifa sprawled along the side of Mount Carmel. Successive waves of regeneration didn’t do much to change it. Now adaptoplant buildings sprouted like...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"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...
"A small asteroid swerved in a most un-asteroid-like way and pierced the hull of the archivist’s ship, as though it was determined to drive her away. But she was just getting started. She slammed the emergency foam release button, holding her breath even...
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
"The intact remnants of Tess’ pressure suit sat alone at the bar, slumped before an untouched pint of beer. No one around the Waystation blamed Hae’cera for what they did after the reactor blew. According to the logs recovered after the accident, the blast...
"When the sparkling golden glow fades and my skin stops feeling like mites are crawling all over it, the Room is gone, and I am shivering in a vast bright chamber and strange people clad in orange, red, and blue pajamas are asking me how I am. I don’t know...
A series of interviews between a young, clean-cut journalist and an alternative, independent pichal pairi turns into an unexpected romance. But their relationship is tested when the entire world around them shuts down.
"The first time I saw her, she stood in the arch of the gate, a black spindle against the open stretch of road. I looked up from where I was kneeling in the garden and couldn’t look away. Head to toe in black, her face veiled. The air smelled like new...
"Dominic Vadas hadn’t set out to break records. Hadn’t intended to become the furthest outpost of humanity in existence, or famous in any way. He’d simply wanted to slip away from the rest of humanity unnoticed. One billion miles from Earth, 2.5 hours of...
"There had to be other islands capable of supporting human settlements, Alain told himself. Life should be possible beyond the shores of Heora. That was the article of faith that drove all Exploration. They simply haven't sailed far enough to find a new...
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
"The funeral began when the temple clock tolled at sunset, crimson and lavender and gold clouds against a violet sky. Or an artificial version of nightfall—day changing to night on the video screens tiling the walls and ceiling of the giant cavern that...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Author : Kel Coleman Narrator : Hollis Monroe Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Delete Your First Memory for Free was originally published in FIYAH Magazine Issue 17 (January 2021). Delete Your First Memory for Free by...
"Rath van Dorn groaned and rubbed at eyes that were sore and red, his long brown fingers prying grit from the dry corners. ... How the hell did they expect him to concentrate on reports when his wife was missing? Had been missing for weeks. He tried to...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"When Golem opened her eyes for the first time, she saw Magda. “You are Golem,” Magda whispered, her oil-stained fingers prodding Golem’s metal joints. “Golem,” the machine repeated, the rust along the two half-tin cans forming her jaw chipping onto...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
Author : Leah Ning Narrator : Graeme Dunlop Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums PodCastle 679: Pull is a PodCastle original. A content warning for end of life care. Rated PG-13 with a content warning for end of...
Content warnings 3
animal-harmdeathillness-and-pandemic
"I repeat a chatbot to customers who “want to talk to a human.” Here’s how it works: someone, somewhere presses “talk to a human” on one of our client-company websites, and my phone lights up. The call script prints out for me to read. “Hello, JewelSky...
"I was told I must swear fealty to William the Bastard. He had taken England, made himself king, fealty was required. But I did not swear and none could make me. He could kill me, or rather order his men to kill me. But he would not, because he wanted to...
Content warnings 1
violence
"Commander Maeb Len knows that, more than anything, an army needs hope in order to struggle onward. They need a vision to fight for and faith that the future will be better than the past. Better than the present. The People’s Army itself is one such hope....
Content warnings 2
deathwar
"The boyo working the transmitter doesn’t look like much, except his face is radiant. Radiant, like one of those pooka upworld adverts for neural templates. Dopamine-druggy, but lucid. Like he’s in love. Boyo also looks like he hasn’t spoken to a human in...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"I hate Original Diana immediately, or at least I want to hate her. Nothing should surprise me about her appearance, yet I’m embarrassed to be excited to look like her when I’m in my forties. My cheeks get hot when I think about how I held out a shred of...
Content warnings 1
abuse
"That first autumn it felt as if the whole world had been made for them—which, of course, it had. They walked down the avenue of oaks that reached above their heads like Gothic arches, red leaves drifting lazily down to collect at their feet. Ashwin was...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"Dill.” Keith settled down next to her on the storage tub they used for a bench. “The plant was just big enough to trim.” “Ooo.” Blaine kissed him in the steam over her cup. “My man can COOK.” After two months on Mars trying to get anything to grow, after...
"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...
"The technician swallowed. “She’s in pieces. I was uploading her and I don’t know what happened, but it didn’t work.” Her face flushed. “I broke her.” ... “Okay, first thing is calm down. I got this. What’s the patient’s name?” “Angela Spelling.” His head...
"Here’s the thing you need to know to understand this story: I was meant to be an only child. The doctors, when they examined my mother, only counted one heartbeat. One. Me. I don’t know when my sister came along. My mother, so ready to accept, so...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"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.”...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath
An escaped droid with a downloaded human mind crashes on a hostile planet, where she finds an alien artifact and desperately tries to convince it to help her.
Babysitting/bodyguarding a group of rich kids should be easy money, especially for a tough joker-ace like Khan—provided he doesn’t end up killing them himself.
Content warnings 1
violence
"Callme curled with her back to the corner and watched Julie’s every precise move. The old border collie often knew more about their surroundings than Julie, and so Julie trusted her to help guard. This morning, Callme’s ears pricked forward in benign...
Two lovers in academia exchange letters ostensibly about newly discovered rodents, but it quickly becomes clear there’s more than meets the eye.
In 19th-Century Texas, a German immigrant mother defends her farm and family (in the absence of her husband and eldest son) against a vicious wolf as well as some of the local townspeople.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onegore
Young Wipwai’s tribe has always fought their neighbors, but she’s secretly made friends with one of them, and they plot a future of peace.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
On a struggling colony in the Trojan Asteroids, young Alaya’s family needs more water than their ration allows, and her grandmother has a plan to get more.
Content warnings 1
gore
A child struggles with the loss of his big brother and his feelings that maybe things are better without him—and maybe he’s not really gone.
Content warnings 3
child-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
"The first time Rang died, it stopped a typhoon. The typhoon raged at the entire Orphan Cousin enclave. Torrents rolled in for hours, swallowing the harbor in foam and brine, dashing fishing trawlers against the shore. Storage houses were dragged into the...
Content warnings 3
deathself-harmsuicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"Now, dry and dead, the gardens sulk in the center of the city; not our pride, but our shame. Now the beds and planters are dry with dust, the carvings are chipped away for lime, the paths are run only by rats and ragged dogs. Now it is a place where no...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"A twinge of nausea rose, but Kym drove it back, swallowed in a dry throat, and looked down at the list again... The whole idea of a list of targeted names sickened her, but this had to be done. It would require all her strength and more fortitude. She had...
Content warnings 1
violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"Juana thought this was bullshit. She had found the broken sailboat in the south wind and tried to pilot it to Hispaniola, but it wouldn’t go in the right direction. You’d think flying would be the hard part, but no, it was steering. And you’d think...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorhomophobiaself-harm
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
violencewar
Hortensia works in the Venerean atmosphere, building a floating city, when a puncture in the aerostat threatens the whole project unless someone can patch it before a sulfuric acid rainstorm begins.
Two men seeking a better understanding of the decks of magic cards they carry find trouble instead.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
A century into its journey, a ship’s cameras transmit images of cannibalism back to Earth, and the authorities debate sending a destruct signal.
Content warnings 1
cannibalism
Anell takes a job with a great house researching immortality, but she secretly works on her own research involving reproduction.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
In a world where the dinosaurs never died out, Rekek and his adopted son accept a commission to lead a paleontologist to fossil-rich sites in the black hills of what’s South Dakota in our world.
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.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Junior went out to fix one of the company’s holographic Jesuses that had started cursing. He knew he wasn’t supposed to get in a religious argument with the old lady, but she was very insistent.
Content warnings 2
abusesexual-violence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathracism