461 free-to-read stories tagged “Far Future”
The colonists on Dust usually hunker down for their years-long winter, especially when the companion star, Umber, blasts the surface with radiation, but a critical package from Earth needs to be retrieved now.
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In the ruins of far-future Earth, Mink’s tribe desperately needs the resources of a large building that vanished humanity left, but she needs to purge it of “ghosts” first—and it has lots of them.
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
After its side won the space battle, an indentured robot with an uploaded intelligence finds an important refugee who makes a dangerous offer it can’t refuse.
abusedeathwar
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.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
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.
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?
deathviolence
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.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar
"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...
deathviolence
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?
body-horrordeath
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.
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.
deathviolence
"A ship glides through the night, behemoth mother, swollen with ten thousand human lives. Her path is a single shining vector. There has been no stopping, no rest for the decades she has traveled, and there will be nothing but void for the two years to...
child-deathpregnancy-lossviolence
"Once a decade, a titanium-nosed shuttle plows through the rings of the planet Tartarus with a new batch of prisoners destined for the Orpheus Factory. The debris that makes up the rings is so thick that it thunders like a hailstorm, deafening the...
body-horrordeathviolence
"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...
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
By treaty, people on Erax never talk to the Oceanics, so when an Oceanic turns up at a south polar base to deliver a few dead human bodies, it’s trouble for sure.
genocidegoreviolence
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.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Doc, there’s a ... hole growing in me,” the alien said through the spherical interpreting machine hovering over them. Semau barely registered the word “hole,” so taken was she by the sight of the alien. If she were just a tad less caring about propriety,...
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
A Heptarchate undercover mission lead by one of Jedao’s friends has gone missing, so Jedao goes undercover to try and rescue them.
deathsexual-contentviolence
"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,...
"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...
The human terraformers didn’t realize there was native intelligence until it was too late to save them. Now it’s just a question of what to do with the time that remains.
deathviolence
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.
En route to α Centauri, the ship AI awakens a psychotherapist to help a crew member who thinks she’s seeing monsters.
Mallory Iheji would do anything to watch her favorite artist’s lost movie, “The Hydraulic Emperor.” But what would she really sacrifice for it?
Thuy seeks her daughter's remains in the twisted parts of unreal space where salvagers pick over the remains of wrecked starships.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Mia marks her birthdays as powers of 7, which gives her lots of time to work out her issues with her mother.
A young woman is murdered in Armstrong City, Luna, and both the police and organized crime want to understand why. Captivating.
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.
violence
A two-person crew embark on a mind-bending deep space mission inside a living wormship capable of burrowing through space. What lies on the other end is unknown—as is what they will do once they get there.
body-horrorviolence
"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...
child-abuseviolence
"Thuỷ stood in her cabin in The Goby in the Well, her bots arrayed on her shoulders and clinging to her wrists, and watched the heart of the nebula. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about it: the Great Mulberry Nebula was large, sparsely dotted with...
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"The causes of the disaster are these: First: The estimations of this planet’s temperature were incorrect. The beacon should never have been placed. This planet is no more capable of supporting human life than our own polar wastelands. Second: My...
death
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.
abusedeathviolencewar
Whenever the captain dies, the new captain inherits his/her memories back to the start of the mission, but only the good ones; the sin eater gets the bad ones.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"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...
"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...
deathslaveryviolence
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.
deathwar
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.
violence
People who don’t like living underground in the colony can live inside giant “whales” that float high in the planet’s atmosphere. That’s usually pretty safe.
death
The end of the world starts when an ambitious marketing guy gets a cryptic assignment to create an ad campaign to "make ugly sexy."
deathsexual-content
"I think of you most when the sun sets on Atlas. The skies are so bright there you can feel the colors on your skin. I find myself repeating this to my granddaughter, Lila. The night she was born, I took her onto the terrace to watch the daylight roll back...
death-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"I don’t know if I can die. Maybe when this comet reaches the sun, I’ll keep right on being. Or maybe then, finally, after so long, I will stop. I am not ready to find out. I want to be immortal. To never die as those on your planet do. This place isn’t...
deathviolence
An AI car is caught between its ruthless employer and the people she hurt…
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...
"In the cloud forests of Paek Sigma II, the inhabitants do not keep time, but stretch and slice it. The first humans who arrived on the planet were amazed by the fauna. There’s the stone-armored petradrakon, draped in twenty thousand scales each a meter...
violencewar
"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...
death
Anna’s an AI expert who’s called in to figure out what a new upgrade is causing AI-captained ships to destroy themselves.
death
"Things began to go badly for the crew of the USFS Erwin around the time Dr. Marchere’s coffee mug spontaneously reassembled itself. Dr. Louis Marchere was not, at that moment, conducting some manner of experiment. Well, he was, only not on entropy and the...
death
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.
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.
Exchange of pathogens has largely replaced traditional sex, but the archipelago has run out of new diseases, so four friends go to the mainland in search of new plagues.
child-deathsexual-contentviolence
On the eve of her 20th birthday, Sacrid Henn’s parents send her to an AI prison for her failure to conform. It’s a pleasant prison, but prison nonetheless, and she’s determined to get out.
abuse
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?
violence
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.
deathillness-and-pandemic
Aria just has a few days to save the whole universe from being swallowed up by Zarzak, the infinite love machine.
deathviolence
"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...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
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...
"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...
"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...
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...
deathviolence
Alena has momentarily escaped her world and its imminent gravitational collapse by cheating her way into the selection process of the Board of Cosmogamy. By passing this stringent exam, she may finally learn the secrets of building a universe from first...
"They were all hard at work, preparing for the long sleep. The sunlight-scattering sulfate aerosol constantly injected into the atmosphere since the time of the Geoengineering Generation had not been enough, providing little more than periodic acid...
death
"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...
violence
After eighteen years, a colony ship reaches Neptune, and the children born on board wonder what their future holds.
A young sailor wants to learn what the stars really are, and if it’s true there are people living there.
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.
abuse
As the last stars in the universe are dying, an entity piloting an enormous starship that used to be the Earth tries to decide what to do next.
death
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.
body-horrordeathsexual-violenceviolence
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.
The Dunyshar are stranded on an outpost, but NuTay dreams of going home to Earth.
Around 2650 AD, the narrator interviews a wealthy recluse who lives above the sunken ruins of Boston.
"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...
Perihelion and its crew embark on a dangerous new mission at a corporate-controlled station in the throes of a hostile takeover…
child-abuseviolence
To celebrate her grandmother, all the captain of the Sopinha de Feijão wanted was to build a street market on a distant moon. But now the captain is dead and…
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"We watched the stranger fall from the sky. Our daughters sent us frantic signals as they tracked her burning trail. She crashed on the beaches by the deeper ocean, her once beautiful white and silver carapace blackened and bent. Her lights flashed once,...
"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...
"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...
death
"The aquarium is different every time I die. Exhibits reshuffling like a deck of cards. The blood loss, though, that’s reliable. Death ninety-three was the jellyfish room: all those ghost bodies and moonsilk, limned radiant in the blacklight, jetting about...
abuseviolence
"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...
deathillness-and-pandemic
"Lacuna knew winter. Winter was the vast distances between the stars. Winter was the cold of space. You couldn’t measure cold; it was not a thing in itself. It was only the absence of heat. As darkness was only an absence of light. Yet both of these—the...
death-of-a-loved-one
"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...
body-horrordeathviolence
"A worker of the Megachile pluto tribe—insecta, hymenoptera, leaf-cutter, resin bee— rumbled heavily through the air. Biome morning: light stretched thin as a veil of citreous bio-skin on the stone of Aconie’s cliffside cave. The M. pluto, large as...
"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...
"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...
"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...
child-deathviolencewar
"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...
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...
"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."
"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...
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....
Awenato is the only Uma’u on the space station after terrorists kill the rest of the diplomats from his world, including his lifemate. He wants revenge, but first he has to figure out how to just get by.
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
A crew member describes the songs he and his friends made when they put together a band centuries from Earth and centuries from their destination.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
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.
deathslavery
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.
violence
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.
violence
Original humans killed off all the people on Karalang 15,000 years ago, but the captain of Karalang’s last surviving warship just woke from cryosleep to get his revenge. But there’s an intruder on the ship.
deathgenocideviolence
Sa races in dangerous places throughout time and space, but she’s getting old, the challengers are ruthless, and there are a lot of ways to get hurt in this sport.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
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.
abuse
Shemesh returns from his mission on planet Kadesh to face inquisition by the Exiliarch. What really happened when he met the heretic there?
violence
Eleven years ago, the Blue-Lily plague devastated the Empire. Now Yen Oanh attends to unfinished business with a dead mind-ship and a living survivor.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
An aging robot, on a journey to visit a friend, reflects on their adventures together.
death
"When I was little, I drew dragons and leviathans in my room, stomach down on my bed or tipping my chair back and staring at the ceiling like the lines would rearrange into inspiration. Now I swipe my fingerprint through three levels of security and...
death
"He told me his mother was a spacecraft. We had just made love, and our bodies were spent and sweat-slicked, the scent of our seed mingling in the stables with the sweet musk of the drowsing horses. Our lids were heavy, but his muscles grew tense in my...
death
"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 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...
"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...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Notebooks, Conchas, y Un Café con Leche Those are the items that make up your world the day the girl with the side buzz and brown bomber jacket says to you, in the back of a crowded cafetería, “Explícame pues—¿Qué sabes acerca del concepto de la...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Dirtsiders mostly do not understand orbital mechanics. They say stupid things like, “Space travel is a racket. My cousin emigrated to Mars last year and her trip only took three months. Now they’re saying I have to pay for seven months transit. Spacers...
child-abuseviolencewar
"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...
deathwar
"If a robot stands alone in a field, staring into the forlorn distance as it obeys the last order it was given by a human, that order being, “Don’t move until we come back for you,” which it can remember uttered with a cruel sneer by a man who has taken a...
abuse
"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...
"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...
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...
"Our generation ship never grows. Our faces—varied as the stars that swaddle us, far from everything we knew—never age. Do we learn, cut off from all the past? Do we change? I’ve asked myself these questions, and so many more, over the...
suicide
"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...
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...
"The flutist peered over the ridge ahead of them. Wreathed in the sheerest cloth of fog, a city rotted. It was not a big city, maybe a town, maybe a village. The flutist was not of that age of plenty where plentiful things had names and could be easily...
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"Herein is the account of the evening the crew of the Forever Trying invited the Grand Faerie Lord of Vast Space and Its Great Mysteries into our home. I, Felix, Chronicler of the ship, endeavor to capture a true and accurate record of transpired events on...
"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...
deathviolence
"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...
"The technical term is “generation ship cascade failure.” Cryogenic collapse. Millennium drive breakdown. Failed ship-in-a-bottle revolution against the corpostate hegemony. I call all the outcomes whalefalls, though. Because that’s what they are: the...
deathviolence
"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...
"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...
deathviolence
"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...
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...
deathviolence
"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...
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...
"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...
"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...
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"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...
"Security AIs heard whimpering, diagnosed the source, then alerted the rest of the household. A baby moggie had fallen inside one of the nearby recycling hubs. Of course the children hurried outside to see, and being noble souls, they dragged the...
"Ursa Major got right the fuck out of our universe on the very afternoon she learned there were other options. It was the lucky break of her life that she just happened to be there, a short sprint from one of those points where the alien aethertrain...
"When Jenea and I sneak out to the observation deck of the SSE Patroclus after lights-out, I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he waits until I’m distracted by the stars and tells me he set himself on fire. I tear my gaze from the outer edges of the...
body-horrorself-harmwar
"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...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
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.
"They say the universe was created when a Giant lit a matchstick. That her great sigh fanned the flames that danced and wept into stars and constellations. They say some seas are blue and Slugs are naturally submissive. They also say that I cannot exist....
child-death
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.
gore
"Heaven welcomed me with the smell of disinfectant and a strange strumming tune. Funny; I never believed there was an afterlife, let alone like this. I was cold, beyond shivering. My body was made of stone, and my mind trapped in it. Or was this Hell?"
suicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
A century into its journey, a ship’s cameras transmit images of cannibalism back to Earth, and the authorities debate sending a destruct signal.
cannibalism
J11-L arrives at the target planet 95,000 years after the race that built it died, but it proceeds with its terraforming mission nevertheless.
The Arch Hierophant of the Cooperation needs to handle the question of a dead prophet’s divinity, so he doesn’t need the distraction of dealing with an illegal civilization in a distant star system.
A half-ghost gets a premonition that the Emperor has died, and his ghost ship flies off to Homeworld because whoever gets the Emperor’s ghost first gets free wishes.
deathsexual-contentviolence
A vignette about what happens on a Venerean cloud colony when an old man dies in his sleep and those who love him come to bid him farewell.
death
A human astronomer decides to investigate why some stars seem to be disappearing.
1,000 years after the final war, the robot overseer of a repository of knowledge on an asteroid at the Earth-Moon L4 point finally gets a message from Earth.
In the wake of her husband’s death, Anke leaves the Oort cloud for a job on Callisto, bringing her kids with her. A planned side-trip to Triton goes awry, and they made a hard decision.
Sahar makes a living in Titan gathering the products “Boppers” leave, but she joins a Titan-adapted person to hunt for a very special artifact, despite the danger from pirates.
On planet Skale, the seasons are three years long, and as winter ends, Jadey finds that spring brings real challenges to the ranch she works on.
In the future, lottery winners will get their hearts’ desire, whether it’s turning into a bird, going to Mars, or vanishing into thin air.
violence
Jin is a mercenary hired to protect archeologists investigating an ancient ship built by the extinct human race.
child-deathdeathviolence
Xin’s orderly life on Eighth Colony changes forever when she ushers a mutilated body through the portal.
deathviolence
The AIs contract Lydia to check out an unusual planet and the secretive corporation that's supposed to be developing it.
Young scientist trying to develop time travel encounters an alien intelligence that lives outside of time.
death
Interspersed with the narrator's account of her work on an intelligent AI for a Saturn mission, she describes how her daughter fell three kilometers on the moon.
Graff and his crew face a particularly nasty challenge – an opponent so low-tech they might just have the advantage in this fight.
deathviolence
A team of pilots is trained to fly ships in a war where it’s become cheaper to send humans instead of machines.
deathwar
"On the necropolis space station of the Tau Andromeda planetary system, the keepers of the tomb attended to the dead and the dying. They cleansed, prepared, and prayed over the bodies. They performed the last rites, paying intricate attention to the...
death
"They are travelling in the great dark before them nothing behind them stars just the two of them the man that captains and the ship that sails darts flies through space —whoever said space is empty did not know what they were talking about space is full...
body-horrorsexual-content
"Dekar Druid lives in an infinite library. Besides Ebizenum, who is in a special category of their own, he is the only living person in the library’s single tower. Outside, a forest surrounds the tower. There’s a lake a short walk to the north and a peak...
"Once upon a time, on a spaceship traveling through the divide between galaxies, a married couple was bickering about whose job it was to clean the mouse shit that’d accumulated in the reactor tubes."
"Attention, please,” the Manager says over the office intercom. “The Auditor’s shuttle is scheduled to dock in one hour. I repeat, one hour. Warehouse staff, please ensure that all inventory is in place.”
"The buffet was infinite. It existed in a pocket dimension, via some sort of technological jiggering of the sort that you have heard about before and, unless you are totally anal, don’t want to hear about now. You could probably summon an explanation that...
cannibalismgoreviolence
"Seven months since the war and two since winter should’ve ended, and Lake Erie is still frozen thick enough for me to walk out and gather care packages dropped from orbit. Soon enough, those metal husks will spill out harvests from Luna, Titan, Mirabilis;...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onewar
"Sirius kho Delsi swam in the muddy water filling the abandoned conduit leading to Wisdom Lake, a tear-shaped pond enclosed inside the Imperial Preserve. Fingering the cracked walls in total darkness and bumping against gooey obstacles had taken longer...
"Gardener ladled dark-purple porridge into her primary digestion sac, staring absently out the viewport at black space and the distant smudge of the planet they had come to study. The simple meal and the gesture it represented soothed her after a long,...
death
"The first time Knucklebone tried to kill himself, he’d already been dead for one hundred and thirteen years. He’d died in a workplace accident, which meant it was within their legal rights for the Cogsmith Railroad Company to bind his soul to his...
suicideviolencewar
"The Starsinger, the Starsinger, the Starsinger, he sings. His histories have long been recorded—in every pit stop he has visited. In every station he has stayed. It may be just a minute of the traffickers slapping the Bini out of his mouth, or them...
child-abuseslaverysuicide
"Hi Lisle. Hope you’ve had some coffee. The topside comms array is still glitching, and engineering hasn’t lifted a finger to run diagnostics. They say the work order has to come from your end. Shouldn’t take long once they get it. Happy simulated morning to you!"
"Ambassador Shǐ Guì Sūn Yán and Prime Minister Xiang Hu Li Yáng floated in the crystalline water tank at one side of the courtroom. Beyond the anchoring shelves for the judges, the bulbous organic diamond window looked out onto a swollen, orange, solar...
"Police detective Hector Kovack couldn’t take the bullet back. He lay in the gray, predawn ooze of a hungover Martian Tuesday morning, twisting the thought with all his might. Or trying. Drunk, hungover or sober, the truth wouldn’t twist. No matter how...
substance-useviolence
"Instead of indulging in the festivities, I spent the evening evading Lamprecht, while Herschel evaded me. I had come to Bath not just to soak my body in healing waters, but to bathe my mind in new thoughts, to browse with the great William Herschel at the...
"1.8 billion miles from the sun, my roots dig deep into the soil of a small garden. I am a curious thing—an aspiration. Everything else on Miranda is ruthlessly utilitarian, but I am ornament. I am beauty. This garden nominally exists to facilitate some...
"Hey cuz! It’s been too long. Love to come out and see your digs. The message hung in the air, glimmering in her Heads Up Display overlaid across the moss garden she was tending. The chill that swept over Euryale made the hair on her arms stand on end and...
deathsexual-violence
"Black Quadrangle, Mesolithic era Unknown Charcoal on sandstone This work, created c. 15,000 BC (17,000 AS), precedes earliest surviving written texts. It was rediscovered alongside human remains and burnt carbon deposits, suggesting a role in a burial,...
A deluxe riverboat welcomes the galaxy's wealthiest tourists to the drought-ridden Amazon — but no one's seen her mysterious captain. "The Maiden Voyage of the Piranha Belle" is a flash exploration of colonization and survival. Content warnings:...
deathgoreviolence
"A syringe with a magnetite needle that would frighten even the boldest of souls. A torture device. But for my sister Kata, it would be a piece of the divine that shouldn’t be on the Aldarish Society Museum for Byrnyan Culture. That pretty much sums up how...
"The first time Gabriel Halstead tried to kill me, everyone thought it was an accident. So did I, truth be told. That kind of thing gets a couple people a year, even here. The number of EVAs we all do, you don’t even need a failbuddy to cause it....
"Good morning, Akasma.” I say these words to my spaceship every day, whether it is a good morning or not, because she is the only being I can safely talk to, and she has said she likes my voice, froggy and raspy though it may be. My spaceship is not, for...
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Elodie finds a pair of old opera glasses in the empty husk of an abandoned silo. The gleam of the metal catches her flashlight beam and throws it back, and Elodie squats and fishes out the glasses with tentative fingers. The silo is huge and dark around...
"Maestro Sezan Mistro was sweating, despite the temperature in the hall, as he stepped onto the podium for the sound check. There was a lot riding on this concert. Armandi Tylo, in uneasy partnership with the Federated Governments of Earth, had spent a...
"She left her heart in Paris, a kidney in Berlin. In Barcelona, blinking in the sunlight, she felt tiny new ears grow down one side of her face. The sound multiplied. Vale vale vale! Rapid-fire Spanish, Catalan, Asteroid Pidgin, a robotnik beggar shaking...
body-horror
"The simulation blossomed around Nadja Gavrić like a hypercube unpacking itself into three dimensions. The plain metal floors of the Roses’ cargo bay turned the shiny white of faux marble. The walls closed in, became a circular chamber. Display cases...
"The low rumble of the train cut through the night and the living flesh of The City, carrying its passengers ever further from the gleam of parliaments and providence. The stop towards Wild Park grew ever closer, represented along the wall of the train by...
body-horrorgoreviolence
"The planet was dead and alive. It was the strangest thing to look down on. Ed Linklater squeezed his way into the narrow forward observation nacelle. The nacelle was shaped like a coffin, which wasn’t a nice thought. Anyone claustrophobic would never...
"The number one thing to remember about matchmaking on Station 9 is to keep your hyper-synesthesia under control. When the client sitting across from you huffs and purses her lips, and trails of gray and beige puffs follow her every move, under no...
"Konstantinov’s Company found the hostages just a few hours after setting out on the trail of the True raiders who’d taken them. Leaving behind the tar sands mine, its extraction plant, and the smoldering ruin of its tank farm, the fresh graves and...
goreviolence
"Crunches and shrieks buffeted the Magellan LLC smartship as it plunged into Enceladus’s kilometers-thick ice crust, making their way to the subsurface ocean and the rival LuxeSpace corporation’s station situated there. Warning signals flashed through...
war
Commander Niaja vrau Erezeng is up against an enemy that doesn’t just destroy all the beings, ships, and planets in its path, but also consumes their greatest arts, scratching them from existence everywhere…
deathwar
"Six minutes and a behemoth. That is all that stands between us and freedom. I glance at Abiola’s face. The helmet she wears prevents me from seeing her expression, but I catch the steely determination in her dark eyes. She’s ready. There’s no backing out...
deathslaveryviolence
Emotional Resonance By V.M. Ayala Arbor’s favorite part of a mission was always the first view of a planet. Even after seven hundred years of being a giant robot, it never got old. Green and blue clouds churned over purple seas, imposing storms that...
deathviolence
"According to orbital observations, the aliens wouldn’t rise from their hibernation caves today. The three moons weren’t in position yet. Leena dialed a cup of coffee, checked her instruments, and settled down with her knitting. Observing the Amphim’s...
deathviolence
"The aftermath of the great war deposited me on a breathtaking port city called Aeskir, on a dazzling world called Aevii. This was about as fine a place to end up as I could have hoped. Many thousands of worlds across human space had been scoured of life...
genocideviolence
"Latent summer stirred while spring lay dormant. April had come to the Kingdom of S’ong and brought with it spells of rain. Tadpoles in the pond recently developed hind legs; above, a stray shower had been drumming at the water pit-a-pat. The rain-rinsed...
deathwar
"We found you, and you alone, in a universe that had forgotten to die. Or rather, a universe for whom death had been set just out of reach. When my people grew aware of our universe’s impending mortality, we developed slipspace travel, to pass through the...
"That dying anchor said some mysterious ‘he’ was looking for her. Chakatie tried to think of who that could be. When she’d been an anchor in charge of her own land, she’d thought she’d been even-handed. But traveling with the day-fellows had revealed to...
body-horrordeathviolence
"Ambassador Porleth Heng considered herself a blessed woman. Unlike most members of the Confederate Diplomatic Corps, who had indentured themselves to that service out of economic hardship or an ache to escape the terrible conditions on their respective...
deathsubstance-use
"Like their battleship, Maddox was born for war. They emerged from the nursery with one purpose alone: to expand the Consortium’s borders, a bloody mission that had lasted generations, and would last generations to come. Any civilian raised in the...
"The Grieving House rises like a lighthouse from the artificial snowdrifts, its windows blazing honeyed gold. The clean lines of it look too much like a grave marker. The House was built to give the bereaved some sense of togetherness and let them guide...
violencewar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
suicide
"The Exhibit of You is the central attraction of an institution you could call a museum, in a population center you could call a city, beloved by creatures who you could call people. We know that this is annoying sentence structure. If you cannot penetrate...
deathsuicide
"The dome star was the only light in the nighttime sky. Ben Stokes watched from the tower at the center of the common area as the star flickered and buzzed. Bulb is about to burn out, he thought as the soft pulses of light feathered the edges of park...
death-of-a-loved-one
"The Snow Woman was away, far away. The winds that blew round the frozen world would take “days” to bear her to where Kitsune sheltered, even though both lay beneath the blue light of Ryujin, which the Chinese call Hǎiwángxīng and the white folks call Neptune."
"The first of Irene’s memories I eat is the night she learned I had been murdered. It was karaoke night—not the official one for the cruise ship passengers, but an illicit one Irene organized for a few of the other crew. They weren’t supposed to be in the...
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"For Future Generations" by Rachel Gutin What do terrestrial traditions mean when you have to leave the only world you've ever known? This contemplative sci-fi explores the choices a rabbi must make for her congregation. Copyright khōréō magazine 2021....
"Mom always insisted everyone is family at Tollnacher Stimmacher, but I’m the only one she ever adopted. Twenty-five years ago, I was an orphan on the Earth colony, Lulularia. Mom raised me as her own despite my being human and her being a robot. Ever...
Graff’s official role is muscle for the Visigoth – but his personal mission is internally cataloguing all of his experiences to relay to the other beings from his home planet when they cross paths. His professional life rarely clashes with his identity,...
deathviolence
"Stars snap into place outside Lura’s cockpit. A red giant twenty degrees off her ship’s nose has visibly shifted position. The nebula above her has grown more diffuse. She exhales, clicks the button to log another successful breach, and lets herself blink...
death
"Sister," pants the white fox as it dangles upside-down from the railing, its tail like a question mark, its grin like something the devil had won from Saint Peter. “You’re getting soft.” I pinch my midriff and shrug, winking an eye. “I’ve been busy.” “No,...
violence
"You wished to see me, Minister?" A lone figure stood in the center of the auditorium, an amphitheatre with sloping sides and row after row of indentations that at the moment were occupied by only a few senior officials. "Yes, Nurse. Thank you for coming...
"Hadrian rattled with the computer equivalent of an uncontrollable laugh for all of three minutes and thirty-seven seconds. That was the time interval required for me to redirect one of those ubiquitous errant titanium asteroids from low orbit and throttle...
"I know only an irrational panic. I try to collect myself only to find my faculties are not my own but that of an internal imperative guiding my, quite incomprehensible, actions. Run a parallel diagnostic, recalibrate magnetic relay B4, load the ballistic...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"We have only legends now for when our ancestors first saw the monster. They saw it shred light as it approached, then devoured whole worlds. They ran the calculations—they still used machines for that, used machines for everything—and they knew our rock...
death
When young Ira arrives for her appointment, she is prepared to be transported to The Gateway to Heaven, 6,070 light years away. But the technicians shepherding her through the process fear there’s more to it than what’s advertised.
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
racism
"If you had a warp drive, it would be easy. The mathematics are strange the way ley lines are strange, invisible yet divinable. You’ve pulled your way up sterner mountains, fingertip by fingertip. You’ve already compensated for stellar motion, spacetime...
"Three days into their journey, and the strangers—humans and one janusian couple—felt as if they had become respectable friends. A convincing illusion, and essential. The male janusian, rooted firmly into his wife’s broad back, was eager to outline the situation."
war
"Ankuin knew she was in a sim by the mineral taste in her mouth. The other tells were more subtle: the fractal pattern of moss on the cave wall, the cyclical rhythm of the rain on wet fronds, and the lyrical birdsong piercing through the dense forest. Most...
deathgoreviolence
"The wide yawning sky. We stare at unfamiliar stars, seeking familiar patterns in their strange configurations. Here is a cup and there a bear. A queen reclined and all the fish in the endless seas. The universe is more boundless than we know. Maybe than...
"Let me tell you how I first met Seax-of-Peony, Empress of the Known Moons."
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
child-deathgoresuicide
"Start with a romance: a man and a woman who are wildly and irrevocably in love with each other. Or two men. Or two women. Or two people, because life is beautiful and complex. Just know that these Lovers are important. The fate of the galaxy rests on...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onewar
Bob, one of the bat-like Zoeys on New Horizons, helped architect the peace treaty that ended the war with the humans, but some Zoeys who don’t want peace plan to use his son against him.
"One hundred and fifty years ago, before plans for the star port on Ius Prime were finalized, ships launched out of Ciudad Orilla on the northern-most edge of Yaguni. One of those ships, the Maria Segunda, took off on a Monday to explore the rim of the...
Old Plant thinks very slowly, but it’s the oldest on the planet, and it thinks profoundly. It struggles to communicate with a group of very short-lived creatures, though, and they seem to be changing the planet.
Gorman travels the galaxy engaging in all the risky sports that only the very rich can do, but he’s haunted by an annoying robot that keeps trying to interrupt him with a birthday card.
Three little girls look for Martian monsters in the empty lava tubes under the Mars Colony. It’s off-limits, but there can’t really be anything there, can there?
When Astrill finds a cat-like alien attached to the outside of their spaceship, things get complicated for him and the other smugglers, and the more they learn about their visitor, the worse it gets.
If Kova can convince the Washe to sign the agreement with the Fiscality, she’ll save their species from extinction and advance her career hugely, but they’re reluctant to sign, her ship is under attack, and there’s something really weird going on.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"There could not have been a better time to be alive. Every nation on the planet had evolved into a democracy, we hadn’t been tangled in a war for over a hundred years, and technology had removed virtually every possibility of poverty. Work if you like, go...
Years ago, Irem went to the stars, but the results were disappointing, and now she’s trying to settle back into an Istanbul grown strange to her.
"Pinander has been reciting “Song of Manifold Suns”all morning, in overgrown, forgotten garden nooks or neglected library aisles, far from the mutterings of other desperate students. Ancient knowledge comes to life within him."
deathsuicide
Gil teaches students how to communicate with the Numens, vast, star-spanning alien intelligences indistinguishable from gods.
deathsuicide
After the AIs won the war, they still found ways to keep humans busy, and Cal’s starship is responsible for finding and evaluating human colonies that were lost during the war.
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Over 100 years in China, we track Qiao Fue and his illegitimate daughter Lian Mee as they separately try to revolutionize AI and bioengineering.
ableism
"We are good Mothers, or at least we will be once the embryos emerge from their confines. They dangle from the spaceship’s ceiling in pink bulbs like silkworm cocoons. Now that we landed, Ship will become the bones, sinew, and flesh that will birth five...
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Faith’s daughter, one of the first born on the ship, doesn’t look like the other children, and Faith wonders if it’s related to the strange dreams she has.
On an agricultural planet, on the night they celebrate the harvest, a young man plans a secret rendezvous with his forbidden lover.
deathviolence
A ship bound for Europa is rerouted to Titan to help with an emergency at the colony, but on approach, the AI demanded to be given a human body, and the new entity isn’t sure what’s going on.
misogyny
The narrator works to salvage the memories of someone who’s upload to virtual reality didn’t go smoothly.
death
A young man enjoys his life in 22nd-Century Canada, but he’s anxious that no one find out he used to be a slave.
slavery
The Great Freeze has left the Earth almost lifeless for 20,000 years, but robots have awakened a genetically modified human to start a warming process—if they can figure out how to.
death
Zep invents a board that can surf through time, and he and Del have an excellent adventure.
goreviolence
Ardissians have a special gland that lets them survive death as “ghosts.” Lucian is dying, and Katherine thinks she can implant the gland so he can survive his own death.
deathviolence
A team trying to save humanity travels tens of thousands of light years to steal someone else’s star.
illness-and-pandemicsuicide
Someone killed the last member of an intelligent species, and Greysl investigates on behalf of the human-led Partnership.
Quányuán colony struggles because the planet is much drier than expected, but the last colonist born on Earth likes taking walks outside, and she’s joined by a young girl who’s curious about her world.
death
In which we learn of the lives of immigrants to a fantastic city built on the surfaces of stars—stars that are stuck together into a cluster.
On Cat station, people tell stories of a super-competent engineer, Tatter D’MaLeon. Supposedly she can fix anything, for those who can pay her price.
body-horror
A godlike being descended from human uploads downloads into a “limbsuit” and goes slumming with real human beings aka has a date.
A couple of children are lost on the dangerous Barren Isle, which still has the original flora and fauna of Coyote. The search and rescue team will have their hands full.
child-abuseviolence
Hengis knows his civilization will collapse when technology fails and magic takes its place, but there’s one last case he wants to solve before the lights go out.
A few years ago, the Gray Sun killed millions to silence the subversion of Li Sin’s revolutionary poetry. Li Sin faked their own death to escape, but somehow the Gray Sun learned the truth, and now it hunts again.
deathviolence
Kingfisher searches an endless icefield for a woman he can’t forget. He’s been searching a long time—tens of thousands of years at least. But he’s not giving up.
During a dinosaur uprising on the starship, a young worker in the meat-packing plant engages in a battle of wits with an intelligent dinosaur who wants to replace humanity entirely.
Zhang Xuan steals a starship to go hunt for her brother Kai, who went off to look for living alien civilizations in the galactic core and never came back.
The city is dying and its immortal human inhabitants seem inclined to die with it. Except for Kayn.
body-horrordeathsexual-content
A badly-damaged Fleet ship of long-obsolete design appears out of foldspace. There seem to be 200 people on board, but they’re not trying to communicate. Captain Dauber has to try to rescue them, even though it may be a trap.
death
On a planet where different body parts live separately unless they have reason to cooperate, the arrival of human beings causes alarm and confusion.
Chenguang and her new partner find something unexpected during a survey of an abandoned world lost to pollution a long time ago.
Nell left Koohar long ago, but now she’s trying to help the people fleeing from the ruins of the planet.
death
Long after the fall of humanity, a dragon/horse robot wakes up and explores the ruins of Beijing.
On Ariel, some people have modified themselves to fly. Other people can't accept that. Anna is going to need to choose sides.
pregnancy-losstransphobiaviolence
Surreal science fantasy, in which three goddesses come to Paris, prince of a mathematical Troy, and ask him to decide to whom to award an apple.
deathwar
An alien-human symbiote tries to sort out complicated feelings at his former friends' wedding. Content warnings: Brief mention of suicide Copyright © 2025 khōréō magazine. Story by Sharang Biswas, edited by Danai Christopoulou. Audio edition read by Eli...
sexual-contentsubstance-usewar
"On Miphre, a planet hardly larger than a moon, jagged mountaintops stab above the cloud cover and harbor small ecosystems in the palms of their hands: rock eels and ribbon mosses and seabirds with rodents clutched to their breasts, each one nestled...
animal-harmbody-horrordeath
"…but what is it like, having a war criminal as your past life?” Sadie Salazar, Licensed Life Speaker, should have been professionally above the prurient interest lighting her hazel eyes, and much too old for the giddy excitement that lifted the corners of...
sexual-violencesuicidewar
"Outside the viewport, light and shadow stitched a tapestry across the surface of Himalia. The shuttle ticked the countdown, thrusters firing to control descent to the docking cradle at Base Camp. I videoed everything, but the footage looked like a million...
"She should go back inside the watchpod. Maree and Blaise didn’t have to be dead. The air hadn’t been gone that long. And even if their current bodies were hopeless, damaged beyond repair, probably the back-up system was uncorrupted. Probably its uploads...
body-horrorgoresexual-content
"I watch the King sleep beside me and worry over the rapid movements behind her eyelids. The air in the bedroom smells faintly of something burning. My mouth is dry—I wet my lips and hold my breath so as not to disturb my King’s sleep. I can hardly see the...
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
deathsuicideviolence
"You are no poet. The rest of your clan were. But that was before Half-Brilliant came and began eating them. Before Half-Brilliant began chewing up your people and their minds and spitting the bloody remains over snow-white canvases. Now It is the only...
body-horrorslaveryviolence
"You, on the day of your birth. You blink into existence, and the first thing you hear is: We are at war with the Uilai. The Uilai must be eliminated. Well, “hear” is an understatement, for the sentiment is injected through multiple channels: auditory,...
abuseviolencewar
When the portal collapse isolated the colony, the colonists struggled to survive on a world where the dark forests lured people to their deaths, turning them into “demons.”
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violence
Nata’s one of the best smugglers, in space and because of the war, she’s in great demand. This latest deal, though, pays so well for so little work there’s got to be something fishy about it.
deathviolencewar
The Scholast fell to earth in the Low Waters Kingdom and called on them to prepare to defend themselves from an invasion from another world.
deathviolencewar
An interview with a simulation of the dead artist, Satka, who still has a big online following years after her death.
deathsuicidewar
Out on Europa, Marius has vanished and Kotto has come to rescue his partner, Bolaji.
body-horrordeath
1. A photograph in black and white, taken with a Zenit vintage Soviet camera. Taken outside what would much later become Tong Yun City, in the days when it was still just a cobbled-together mass of crash-landed jalopies, connected with primitive tubing...
death-of-a-loved-one
In time, the entire shift’s 138 Express inbound transfers are processed, and I’m free to service passengers from other lines. These transfers are unremarkable. These passengers aren’t refugees.
An astronaut caught in the accretion disk of a black hole sends desperate messages to his lover and children back on Earth. But time is running out to escape — and there are forces in the universe far stronger, and stranger, than love. Content warnings:...
body-horrorhomophobiasuicide
Ashwan To be born in the year 2615 on the 21st of March was fortuitous, but to be born at 14:59:30 hours on that same day made you a God. […]
abusebody-horrorviolence
This episode features "A Life Measured in Seconds" written by Anne Wilkins. Published in the June 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/wilkins_06_26...
abusebody-horror
Cannon-D’s body was spun from a 3D printer. It compiled fiber by artificial fiber, a loving replica of the protein strands and carbons that would have made up the real, […]
suicide
This episode features "A Vintage Kind of Death" written by Alex T. Singer. Published in the October 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/singer_10_26...
suicide
It was, Anna had to agree, a most excellent house. As the estate agent led them from room to room, Nigel admired the tall-shelved library, the long, ever-flowing swimming pool […]
abuse
This episode features "All the Ruined Doorways of the Moon" written by Eilis O'Neal. Published in the August 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
abuseviolence
You’d expected the gravity on Vixiv-11 to be fractionally more than that on Earth. It is not something you ever notice much, even in the beginning, beyond an exhaustion that […]
1 Mayzelle hurried from her hab-hut, tacked shut the canvas door, and hustled down the bamboo steps. She’d sworn she wouldn’t stand for this anymore. She’d sworn. In the clearing, […]
This episode features "Conquerors" written by Nick Wolven. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/wolven_05_26 Support us on Patreon...
Tell me a story where it all goes right. Say that we only ever stopped at the station with the largest wingspan and busiest fuel pipes, the fifty-something spears jutting […]
deathviolence
This episode features "Crosstalk, Elysium" written by Carolyn Zhao. Published in the March 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/zhao_03_26 Support us on...
deathviolencewar
Layla was bleeding out. Her neurons began to supernova and transmute into a new electrical form. A maglev of old memories zipped past her. She was thinking about that one […]
body-horrorgoreviolence
This episode features "Decimation Circles" written by Raahem Alvi. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/alvi_05_26 Support us on...
body-horrorgoreviolence
When the surgeon showed me my pearl, the pearl that was to be mine, I thought it was a joke. The dragon pearl was a pinkish, milky drop the size of my pinkie nail, made of some jelly-like substance somewhere between liquid and solid. It was contained in a...
Author : Aimee Ogden Narrator : Isaac Harwood Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “What Any Dead Thing Wants” originally appeared in Psychopomp (February 2024) Copious helpings of harsh language descriptors found here. What Any Dead Thing...
violence
Author : Aimee Ogden Narrator : Isaac Harwood Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Copious helpings of harsh language descriptors found here. Don’t miss Part 1: Escape Pod 1026: What Any Dead Thing Wants (Part 1 of 3) What Any Dead Thing...
body-horrordeathgore
Author : Aimee Ogden Narrator : Isaac Harwood Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Copious helpings of harsh language descriptors found here. Don’t miss Parts 1 and 2: Escape Pod 1026: What Any Dead Thing Wants (Part 1 of 3), Escape Pod...
death
Author : Rodrigo Culagovski Narrator : Julia Rios Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Escape Pod 1030: The Smell of the Planet I Was Born On is an Escape Pod original. The Smell of the Planet I Was Born On By Rodrigo Culagovski There are two...
deathwar
Author : Victoria N. Shi Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “milt” first apeared in Fission #5 by the British Science Fiction Association (June 2025) Contains Injury/body horror, climate grief, implied sexual...
body-horrorsexual-contentviolence
Author : Jacob Seinemeier Narrator : Elie Hirschman Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1034: “An Honour to be Nominated…” is an Escape Pod original. Mild profanity “An Honour to be Nominated…” by Jacob Seinemeier TRANSGALACTIC...
Author : Kelly Robson Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Adam Pracht We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017. We Who Live in the Heart By Kelly Robson Ricci slipped in and out of consciousness...
Author : Kelly Robson Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Adam Pracht We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017. We Who Live in the Heart (Part 2 of 3) By Kelly Robson (…Continued from Part 2)...
Author : Kelly Robson Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Adam Pracht We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017. Quantum Superposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition...
deathviolence
Author : Tim Pratt Narrator : Isabel J. Kim Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “The Many Rebirths of Karina Morita” first appeared in 2025 on Tim’s Patreon Sponsored by Mixtape Stories The Many Rebirths of Karina Morita by Tim Pratt My...
Author : Sharon Joss Narrator : Torin Andrus Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Love in the Time of Dust and Venom originally appeared in 2013 Fiction River – Time Travelers. Includes a form of assisted suicide. Sponsored by Mixtape Stories...
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Author : S. L. Myers Narrator : Dani Daly Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1044: Rhona’s Tavern and Spacetime Portal is an Escape Pod original. Occasional use of harsh language Escape Pod is proud to say that we have...
deathviolence
Author : Frank Baird Hughes Narrator : Jairus Durnett Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Escape Pod 1045: The Graduates of Formost 891c is an Escape Pod original. Contains examples of animal surgical modification. The Graduates of Formost...
animal-harmdeath
Author : Kameron Hurley Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “When We Fall” was originally published on Kameron Hurley’s Patreon, and also featured in Escape Pod 611 in January 2018. Intense, life-threatening...
Author : C. W. Maurer Narrator : Nicola Chapman Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Riftwork originally appeared in Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls Who Invent and Imagine anthology in July 2025. Includes tight, underground spaces. Riftwork...
Author : C. W. Maurer Narrator : Nicola Chapman Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Riftwork originally appeared in Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls Who Invent and Imagine anthology in July 2025. Includes tight, underground spaces. Riftwork...
Author : Kathleen Schaefer Narrator : Heather Thomas Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1059: A Little Freedom Makes Us Rebels is an Escape Pod original. Mild mentions of parental abuse This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones!...
abuse
Author : Trae Hawkins Narrator : Pippa Alice Stephens Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1061: Pigeons and Robots and Pensive Worlds is an Escape Pod original. This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get...
Author : Hans Ege Wenger Narrator : Eric Valdes Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Escape Pod 1062: Extrasolar Ghost Tours: Safety Questionable, Lizards Guaranteed is an Escape Pod original. Extrasolar Ghost Tours: Safety Questionable,...
Author : Marie Vibbert Narrator : Torin Andrus Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1065: Sister Cities is an Escape Pod original. This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off your purchase. Sister...
Author : A. W. Prihandita Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being originally appeared in Clarkesworld 218 (November 2024). Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being...
Author : A. W. Prihandita Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being originally appeared in Clarkesworld 218 (November 2024). Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being...
LOGIN CREATE ACCOUNT username: squirglover46 password: **************** for security reasons your password must contain minimum 1 number, 1 diacritic, 1 universal babelkey and at least 8 distinct phonemes. password cannot contain your username, date of...
body-horrorsexual-content
Vacule Grievouss, as anyone would suspect, wasn’t bequeathed much in the way of opportunities by his parents. He was the child of two stack zappers operating out of the newly […]
child-abuseslavery
This episode features "Feed Them on Your Dreams" written by E.N. Auslender. Published in the August 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/auslender_08_26...
abuseslavery
Qopa was once a world of marshes. Visitors hear this often, in tones that range from apologetic to bitter, wistful to matter-of-fact—especially when they are shown the vast clay pan […]
goreviolencewar
This episode features "Fistful of Antimatter" written by Rich Larson. Published in the September 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/larson_09_26...
goreviolencewar
1 Bakili awakes before the sky outside the window has shown the early fish-belly white of dawn. He stealthily gets out of bed, alighting on tiptoe, kisses his sleeping wife’s […]
violence
When people ask me where I’ve been for the last year, I always enjoy seeing the look on their faces when I tell them. “Titan? That’s so far away. There’s nothing out there.” “Wait, did you say they didn’t even pay you? I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.” “Oh,...
slaveryviolence
Iridescent algae glowed upon the ice and rock of the world, signaling the start of a new day. The patterns of their light, which we had trained over many estrous […]
body-horrordeathviolence
Green Plumed Orbital Line A; viridis metamorphos A Common sighting; Flies along the forty-fifth latitude every 12 minutes Traveler’s addendum: Last functional line along a northern latitude; southern latitudes TBD My crawler runs out of energy as I reach...
abuse
“They farm starlight.” “Bullshit.” “Okay, they’re going to farm starlight. For now they’re running fusion rigs. But that’s not their long-term plan.” “No one in the sunforsaken Oort has a long-term plan. Other than slow suicide. You know what they told me,...
This episode features "Nesting Behavior of Imported Species Troglodytes aedon on Planet Americearth" written by R.L. Meza. Published in the July 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
body-horrorgoreviolence
I was a month into the Endangered Species Initiative when my case manager decided I was acclimated enough to Martian society to start working. When she told me what the […]
racismviolence
This episode features "Passenger Pigeons, Dodos, Neanderthals" written by Jordan Alexander. Published in the August 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
racismviolence
Author : Jay Kang Romanus Narrator : John Chu Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Eric Valdes PodCastle 927: The One Who Carries Abinakhee Has Died is a PodCastle original. Content note for drowning Rated PG The One Who Carries Abinakhee Has Died by Jay...
deathviolence
The only sound Zero heard in their helmet was their own hyperventilating and the gentle pings from their pegasus. > waiting . . . > waiting . . . > communication received > confirmation of countdown initiation: 30 seconds
deathgoreviolence
This episode features "Scion" written by Thomas Ha. Published in the March 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ha_03_26 Support us on Patreon at...
body-horrorgoreviolence
I have done my best to transcribe the account found in the recently excavated cenotaph, but, as you’re aware, these experiential simulations don’t easily lend themselves to direct reproduction. Nonetheless, […]
death
This episode features "Scion: Afterword" written by Thomas Ha. Published in the March 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ha2_03_26 Support us on...
This is our struggle. We scuttle on the sand before the softly breathing salt-burdened sea with the lichen on the rocks a bright poison green and great white butterflies screaming under a red sky while we dream of justice and watch the ghost of a...
CHAPTER ONE Captain Ignatius Faber’s eyes were full of halos, and each scratch in the Philoctetes’ viewscreens caught the light, bleeding across his retina like stars. His vision had weakened […]
deathviolencewar
This episode features "The Floating Republic" written by Rebecca Campbell. Published in the June 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/campbell_06_26...
deathviolencewar
There is no formula for forgetting. No precise way to erase the pain. Complete healing is impossible. Because there is always a little needle sticking inside. A pain so slight […]
death-of-a-loved-one
This episode features "The Forgetting Code" written by Malena Salazar Maciá. Published in the April 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/macia_04_26...
death-of-a-loved-one
All the world was blue. Above, below, surrounding, within. The blue of the sky when Bethony broke the surface of an endless ocean to breathe in sweet, oxygen-rich, unpolluted air. […]
cannibalismdeath
It was night on Endymion, and the pollen hovered, blue and luminescent, in the trees. Isaac’s camp lantern also burned blue. It was designed to interfere with the sensory systems […]
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
This episode features "The Life and Times of the Extraterrestrial Potoo" written by K. J. Khan. Published in the July 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
death-of-a-loved-one
Something has happened. It is amazing. It is unheard-of and inconceivable. It is many, many, many things, gathering a plethora of adjectives that indicate its ability to cause astonishment and confusion among those who behold it. It is a mountain-sized...
The creatures who shared your art with us had to explain many things to make it minimally comprehensible. This by itself made sense. You are who and what you are, and we are who and what we are, and the physical differences between us are profound. We...
suicide
The most surprising thing about my journey (well, the first most surprising thing) is that the dream I experienced while traveling lasted a thousand years, a single dream stretching all the way to the Iota star in the Gemini constellation. I dreamt of...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Draw a rectangular shape. Put a cylinder around it. Add a few small rectangles to any lines, such that they straddle them. At least one on the rectangle, and another on the cylinder. These are airlocks. The engine should look like a lighter stacked on top...
body-horrordeath
1. Sky of Change Three hours ago, Dharsh had woken in his seaside colony with little more than a vague sense of himself. Now, he teetered on an obsidian ledge […]
This episode features "The Trajectory of Memory is Forward" written by Rajeev Prasad. Published in the April 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
body-horrorviolence
This episode features "Those Who Left History" written by Wanxiang Fengnian and translated by Stella Jiayue Zhu. Published in the March 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
self-harmviolencewar
From his exclusive residence, Zhou Xiaoliang’s diary: I know you will never read this, but I have to pretend I am writing for you. Or else what’s left to do? […]
deathsuicidewar
This episode features "Three Cases from the Cosmic Psychiatric Clinic" written by Pan Haitian. Published in the June 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
deathviolence
The Tree Man’s Rebirth At the threshold to the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system, Deep Space Gate was the largest station humanity ever built. The station psychologist Chu […]
abuseanimal-harmviolence
This episode features "To Walk This Distant Shore with You" written by A.D. Sui. Published in the September 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
Three aliens float across from Tabitha, their bodies undulating softly, wetly, like enormous raindrops filled with chrysanthemums. Petallike structures push against their transparent membranes, forming rounded shapes within, which curl […]
body-horror
The railcar rumbled as it descended into the sewer levels of the fortress city, Aguiyi. The cramped railcar smelled strongly of bleach and grease. Hazard and Safety Commission workers filled the available seats, bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder, with...
I warn my child about speaking to the humans: it kills them. Why? Awakened From Glacially Eroded Foliated Schist With Garnets And A Uranium Heart asks. Their bodies are like […]
This episode features "You Are Invited to Our SPRING CELEBRATION" written by Thoraiya Dyer. Published in the March 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...
You know you are fucked when you see fragments of the broken radio on the floor. Your damaged ship lay nose caked into the sand, and coupled with your sprained ankle that hums an excruciating pain, and slight concussion on your head—your chances of...
A storyteller in the distant future shows the reader different vantage points, in hopes they might "see" the web of connections between past and future, reader and story, responsibility and joy. Content warnings: Acknowledgement of genocide, animal harm...
A father bumbles his way through family domesticities as he makes his way to the airport. His children do not know he is not their father at all, but a stranger with a gruesome past, hard-earned advice, and a primal longing for a stolen life. Copyright...
violencewar
The Combat Pilot's Dictionary By Arden Baker Boot Rookie pilot. See also - nugget. You called us ‘boots’ when we turned up to the flight deck that first morning I laid eyes on you. The halogen lighting shone down onto the makeshift parade ground with a...
deathviolencewar
Author : N.K. Jemisin Narrator : Stephanie Malia Morris Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Valedictorian” was originally published in After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia. It then appeared in Escape Pod 450, and in a...
abuseviolence
Baron Quits The Payloaders By Renan Bernardo This story starts with a gig. Half a million people from all corners of the galaxy, hands in the air, heads banging to our vibrant noise. You probably saw the venue on some feed already. It’s the Amplitude, our...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onepregnancy-loss
Author : Kal M Narrators : Valerie Valdes, Eric Valdes, Dominick Rabrun and Alasdair Stuart Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Butter Side Down originally appeared in Writers of the Future (volume 40) – May 2024. Butter Side Down (Part 1 of...
violence
Author : Kal M Narrators : Valerie Valdes, Eric Valdes, Dominick Rabrun and Alasdair Stuart Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Butter Side Down originally appeared in Writers of the Future (volume 40) – May 2024. Butter Side Down (Part 2 of...
violence
Twilight By Lilly Harper Like the tide going out, the dream slipped between her toes and carried with it the smell of petrichor and the sound of birdsong. Even without knowing she was dreaming, she had known she was waking up; the subliminal chatter of her...
Author : Hiron Ennes Narrator : Tatiana Grey Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 986: Lyra, From Many Angles is an Escape Pod original. Lyra, From Many Angles by Hiron Ennes When they came, it was in a craft the size of a golf...
Holding Patterns By Jennifer Hudak I dream about the trees sometimes. I think we all do, even though none of my generation were alive when the forest was actually growing. We don’t dream about them the way they are now—stunted and dormant—but the way they...
Author : Alexis Ames Narrator : Eric Valdes Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Sanctuary” first appeared in Kyanite Press, Winter 2020 Sanctuary (Part 1) by Alexis Ames 1. The king of the galaxy died the day before the biggest holiday of...
violence
Author : Alexis Ames Narrator : Eric Valdes Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Sanctuary” first appeared in Kyanite Press, Winter 2020 Don’t miss “Sanctuary, Part 1” Sanctuary (Part 2) by Alexis Ames 3. Eilan slept for thirteen...
The Carina Nebula By Kelsey Hutton I heard the soft shit shit shit just when I’d almost floated past the blue hatch door that led into some kind of storage room. I had to laugh. I mean, how many times have I said that? Plus the voice sounded older, a...
"Damian Marshall was a prisoner to his own brain. He was beating his fist against the glass of his cell, hoping someone could hear that this was not the real him. It was never meant to be this way and, truthfully, he had a heart swelling with love to give....
mental-illnessviolencewar
“Data Ghost” originally appeared in Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology When the station stats popped up on the screen, the Interface said, Anomalous. Deni batted at their ear and muttered, “No, no, quit it.” In the second cockpit seat, Winnie...
body-horrordeathgore
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
substance-use
Someone has to be the best at something, and when a new technology begets a new sport, it may as well be her. Content warnings: Knife violence, blood, death Copyright khōréō magazine 2024. Story by E. A. Xiong, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio edition...
deathgoreviolence
The T-4200 (Part 1 of 2) By J. R. Johnson Carleton T. Lowengren, low-level civil servant, single twenty-something and refugee from the war-torn Outer Rim, woke to the remnants of a gaming binge and a killer headache courtesy of his interface. The implant...
The T-4200 (Part 2 of 2) By J. R. Johnson (...Continued from Part 1) Carl scrambled to follow Mango past the loading dock to the parking corral. Her T was an early model with a lot of light-years on it, but its shell still shone and its maxillae were...
Author : Merrie Haskell Narrator : Amanda Ching Hosts : Valerie Valdes and Norm Sherman Audio Producers : Summer Brooks and Eric Valdes Originally published in Apex Magazine, February 2013, and was previously published in Escape Pod 404 (July 2013)....
Author : Jack Windeyer Narrator : Matt Dovey Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 930: Fulfillment in Purpose is an Escape Pod original. Zima Blue Zima Blue episode of Love, Death & Robots Get Excited and Make Things! Ezekiel’s...
Old People's Folly (Part 1 of 2) By Nora Schinnerl Setti knew the woman for a ghost the moment she appeared. It was the pink hair that gave her away, short and spiky. Real people didn't have hair like that. Also, you couldn't see the scratchmarks on...
child-abusehomophobia
By Nora Schinnerl (...Continued from Part 1) Kite was still curled into a bundle of blankets in front of the stove when Setti woke. The old woman sniffed, torn between surprise and annoyance. She'd have figured him for a quitter, sneaking out before dawn...
child-abusehomophobia
Author : Grace Chan Narrator : Isabel J. Kim Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu” originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine (May 2022). Contains some harsh language. Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu by...
deathgoreviolence
Author : Stetson Bostic Narrator : Samuel Poots Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 945: Walking with Thorny is an Escape Pod original. Walking with Thorny by Stetson Bostic Hitchhikers clung to Tasi’s pants as he neared the...
Author : Rachel Meresman Narrator : Isaac Harwood Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 948: Thank You for Doing Business with the Xyb’lor Principality is an Escape Pod original. Thank You for Doing Business with the Xyb’lor...
A Foundational Model for Talking to Girls By Brian Hugenbruch “Hey Marty,” Mom asks, “got a moment?” I cringe whenever Mom's voice has that tone to it. I don’t know what she’s going to say; but if I’ve learned anything in my thirteen years on this...
Author : Samantha Henderson Narrator : Mur Lafferty Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Chandra’s Game” originally appeared in Lone Star Stories (2009), and in Escape Pod 373. Chandra’s Game by Samantha Henderson Joey Straphos, Papa Joe,...
body-horrordeathviolence
Vault (Part 1 of 2) By D.A. Xiaolin Spires Chenguang hikes up her sleeves before vaulting over the pile of fuzzy moss and greets Lukas with a nod. The chloropolyurethane fabric flaps in the slight breeze and the double suns beat down onto her arms. Lukas...
body-horror
Vault (Part 2 of 2) By D.A. Xiaolin Spires (...Continued from Part 1) “Lukas?” Chenguang’s voice echoes in this expanse of dark. A vortex of light opens to her right and she sees a warped head and legs emerge from a point in the dark. It’s Lukas. As he...
Author : Marissa Lingen Narrator : The Word Whore Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Originally appeared in Analog (2011), and in Escape Pod 366 (Oct 2012) Some of Them Closer by Marissa Lingen Coming back to Earth was not the immediate...
Author : Benjamin C. Kinney Narrator : Heather Thomas Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story originally appeared in the anthology “The Internet Is Where The Robots Live Now” (Paper Dog Press, November 2018). Elegy of Carbon by...
violence
Author : Julia Rios Narrators : Abra Staffin-Wiebe and Tatiana Grey Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “To Catch a Flieff” was originally written as a bonus for backers of the Bridge to Elsewhere Kickstarter (an anthology of stories set...
Author : Julia Rios Narrators : Abra Staffin-Wiebe and Tatiana Grey Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “To Catch a Flieff” was originally written as a bonus for backers of the Bridge to Elsewhere Kickstarter (an anthology of stories set...
Show and Tell By Greg van Eekhout Teacher is an old-fashioned bug with a blue carapace and eyes like two domes of gold beads. She is very pretty and smells like follow, but when she flutters her wings you better look smart or you'll get her stinger in your...
violence
I’ll always wonder: did the Timeless come here for the Bog? Or did the Bog come here for them?
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"The Field Guide for Next Time" by Rae Mariz is a nonlinear tapestry of a story and the most experimental piece that khōréō has published to date. Copyright khōréō magazine 2023. Story by Rae Mariz , edited by Rowan Morrison. Audio edition read by Carolina...
Common Speech By Elise Stephens Dr. Jaiyesimi Obiaka tugged at her sweat-damp collar, wiped her eyes, and tried to focus on the copied pages of the final experiment she and Ganiru had created together. Just looking over his familiar handwriting blurred her...
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicviolence
Author : Grace Chan Narrator : Andrew K. Hoe Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars was originally published in Clarkesworld Issue 178 (July 2021) He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars by...
A Cosmonaut's Guide to Talking to Your Parents By Adriana C. Grigore You have (3) unopened voicemails on your personal line. Last received 31 minutes ago, Aurea Minor Time. > Read? > No. Switch to broadcast. > Engage deep space satellite? > Yes. On, say…a...
illness-and-pandemic
Author : Lavie Tidhar Narrator : Kyle Akers Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (December 2020) Wild Geese by Lavie Tidhar With rustling wings the wild geese fly Round...
deathviolence
Author : Rachael K. Jones Narrator : Christiana Ellis Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant” originally appeared in Lightspeed in December 2017, and in The Best American Science Fiction...
body-horrorcannibalismgore
Author : Amal Singh Narrator : Kaushik Narasimhan Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “A Series of Endings” originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (December 2021) A Series of Endings by Amal Singh This is the story of Roopchand...
death
Six Ways to Get Past the Shadow Shogun's Goons, and One Thing to Do When You Get There By Stewart C. Baker 1. Dust 'em "Listen, little lady," the guy in front of the door is saying with a sneer. "There's two types of swordsman..." Chiyome's already heard...
A Layer Thin As Breath By T. K. Rex “Valley. Can you still hear me?” Julian’s voice filtered through her dying radio. The Prince of Cats was a speck of light, dimming through the gold-grey film that, atom by atom, was devouring her helmet. Valley tried to...
body-horror
Harvest the Stars By Mar Vincent The summer Sif turned one, the starships were ripe on the vine. They hulked in fields ringing the town where Tuja had always lived. A place far from big cities, where the starlight they fed on came pure and bright. “The...
Author : Grace Chan Narrator : Rebecca Wei Hsieh Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Death By Water” originally appeared in From the Waste Land (PS Publishing, Oct 2022). It was shortlisted for the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction...
body-horrordeath
When you follow your dreams into the stars, there are places—and people—you must leave behind. "Sorry We Missed You!" is a touching meditation on family, identity, and dreams set aboard our favourite spaceship in the universe: The Flying Potato. Copyright...
death-of-a-loved-one
Bex chose a university parsecs away from family and friends. Alone and overwhelmed, she finds comfort and history in an unlikely place. "This Excessive Use of Pickled Foods" by Leora Spitzer is a warm story about sharing pasts and building futures...
Fourth Nail By Mur Lafferty Regina Phillips’ job on the orbital station God's Eye was that of a nighttime systems engineer. She had to warm her desk chair and make sure nothing broke. It was the highest paying, most boring job around. So she sat in shocked...
violence
Author : Phoenix Alexander Narrator : Nicola Chapman Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 832: Mouthfeel is an Escape Pod original. Mouthfeel by Phoenix Alexander 2050 After she left him, he found cells of hers...
The Heroine Kokofe By Ife J. Ibitayo Kokofe awoke an hour before dawn, crusty-eyed and groggy. She wobbled to her feet and washed her face. Her simuclip projected her reflection before her eyes. Already dressed, her pink all-weather blouse draped over her...
deathgoreviolence
Author : R.S.A. Garcia Narrator : Maxine Moore Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (Issue 172, January 2021), and is a finalist for the 2022 Ignyte Award for Best Novella...
deathviolencewar
Author : R.S.A. Garcia Narrator : Maxine Moore Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (Issue 172, January 2021), and is a finalist for the 2022 Ignyte Award for Best Novella...
war
Author : R.S.A. Garcia Narrator : Maxine Moore Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (Issue 172, January 2021), and is a finalist for the 2022 Ignyte Award for Best Novella...
child-abuseslaveryviolence
Author : R.S.A. Garcia Narrator : Maxine Moore Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (Issue 172, January 2021), and is a finalist for the 2022 Ignyte Award for Best Novella...
slaveryviolencewar
Universal Archive of Human History: FAQ By Arturo Sierra The Gran Gliese Universal Archive of Human History contains over 5.7×1035 books and an innumerable collection of shorter works. Moreover, it is continuously growing, thanks to additions from...
Author : Jordan Chase-Young Narrator : Justin Thomas James Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of The Colored Lens (October 15 2020). The Vaulting Vandals of Termina Celeste (Part 1) by Jordan...
body-horrordeathviolence
Author : Jordan Chase-Young Narrator : Justin Thomas James Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story appeared in the Fall 2020 issue of The Colored Lens (October 15, 2020) The Vaulting Vandals of Termina Celeste (Part 2) by Jordan...
deathgoreviolence
An Incident on Ishtar By Brian Trent Her family tried very hard to never use the word “crazy” with her. So therefore, they didn’t say it was crazy that she was applying for a Venusian post as Tier 3 Balloon Specialist. She tried explaining her reasons to...
violence
Pickled Roots and Peeled Shoots and a Bowl of Farflower Tea By Chaz Brenchley there’s rue for you, and here’s some for me Just that morning, she’d had a novice shave her head for her. He was a promising lad - no, more than promising, he was a promise...
violence
Author : Amal Singh Narrator : Kaushik Narasimhan Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “A Home For Mrs. Biswas” previously appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (April 2021) A Home For Mrs. Biswas by Amal Singh Once she saw the red sands stretch...
death-of-a-loved-one
The Princess, NP By Brian Hugenbruch I sat in the Commander’s office at Hexa Station, in clothes that stank of subspace, and the only polite thing I could do to drown out the universe was compute obscene sums in my head. It didn’t stop the sounds from...
abuse
Author : Adriana Kantcheva Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 857: Salvaged is an Escape Pod original. Salvaged by Adriana Kantcheva I have her body. If I’d also had her life, would I have lived it in the same way? I make the...
Author : Caroline M. Yoachim Narrator : Miyuki Jane Pinckard Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producers : Devin Martin and Eric Valdes Discuss on Forums Previously published by Uncanny Magazine Rated R “The Traveler’s Guide to the Goblin Fells is an expansion book...
death-of-a-loved-oneracismwar
“Flowering Evil” first appeared in Planet Stories, Summer 1950 Captain Bjornson shook a grizzled head. “I never saw a plant I liked the looks of less,” he said. “I don’t know how he got it through the planetary plant quarantine. You take my advice, Amy,...
body-horrorgore
"Cultureship" by Esther Alter What do common roots mean in a future where humanity is so far-flung that Earth is more fable than fact? An exploration of the fragmentation of belief, historicity, and community. Copyright khōréō magazine 2021. Read by Sena...
sexual-content
Balancing the Equation by Justin C. Key June 18, 2031 Lauren led her two-year-old son, Sean, slowly to their car while carrying three full bags of groceries. "Up," Sean said, showing her his palms. "Up, Mama, up!" "Ask one more time and you're getting a...
child-deathdeathracism
The Dame With the Earth at Her Back By Sarah Pauling That’s the trouble with Teegarden’s northern latitudes: the sun never sets in summer. The red glow assaults Maryellen’s stage long after midnight, pushing in through the picture window alongside the...
Author : Marika Bailey Narrator : Eden Royce Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums “Seed Vault” was originally published in Strange Horizons (Nov 2019) Seed Vault (Part 1) By Marika Bailey 1. FIRE I should tell you about the...
deathviolencewar
Author : Marika Bailey Narrator : Eden Royce Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums “Seed Vault” was originally published in Strange Horizons (Nov 2019) Seed Vault (Part 2) By Marika Bailey The desert rain has lulled me and I...
deathviolencewar
Report of Dr. Hollowmas on the Incident at Jackrabbit Five By T. Kingfisher The following report is from the Jackrabbit Colony, Five Tau, regarding the incidents occurring during 7-5-11-8881, fifth rotation, involving Marine Midwife Unit Eleven-Gamma....
Author : Catherine George Narrator : Abra Staffin-Wiebe Host : Benjamin C. Kinney Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine (December 2019). Annotated Setlist of the Mikaela Cole Jazz Quintet...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Ascend, Exalt, Love, Propagate, Rise! By Sarah Kumari The Glory smolders through Jehanne's bloodstream, pulsing its encouragement. The rivals who have survived along with him–officially 'Fellow Eminents' now that selection is over–twitch and moan as their...
body-horrorsexual-violenceviolence
The Machine That Would Rewild Humanity By Tobias S. Buckell On a boat on the way to the Galapagos Islands to visit the world’s oldest tortoise, I got a call that the Central Park Human Reintroduction Center had been bombed. I’d read somewhere that the...
violence
Tiger Lawyer Gets It Right By Sarah Gailey Vladislav Argyle rested his head on the cool titanium surface of the defendant’s table. It dipped a little under the sudden weight of his skull, then hummed as the antigrav lifts adjusted their power to...
deathgoreviolence
Author : Lina Munroe Narrator : Joniece Abbott-Pratt Host : Brent Lambert Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 808: Win Again is an Escape Pod original. Win Again by Lina Munroe “I want a do-over!” Zira crumpled her opponent’s collar...
Author : DaVaun Sanders Narrator : Laurice White Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in the Dark Universe anthology (November 2015) Contains violence and harsh language The First Doom (Part 1) by...
violence
Author : DaVaun Sanders Narrator : Laurice White Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in the Dark Universe anthology (November 2015) Warning for violence and gore The First Doom (Part 2) by DaVaun...
body-horrorgoreviolence
Author : DaVaun Sanders Narrator : Laurice White Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums This story first appeared in the Dark Universe anthology (November 2015) Contains violence and harsh language The First Doom (Part 3) by...
body-horrorgoreviolence
A Consideration of Trees By Beth Cato As a xenoarbitrator, I was accustomed to working with concepts and situations deemed peculiar by most of humanity. Often, though, my own species confounded me most of all. "I fear you misunderstood my advertisement." I...
child-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Author : Hamilton Perez Narrator : Karen Menzel (née Bovenmyer) Host : Summer Fletcher Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh Discuss on Forums Previously published by The Dark. Rated R. Our Mortal Undressing by Hamilton Perez I. Discovery I suppose I’m...
deathgoresexual-content
Chasing the Start (Part 2) by Evan Marcroft ͼ-Sa, this is a bad fucking idea-ͽ Sa would die to admit it, but she must agree. This was perhaps a bit much for squashing a spider. The air boils with radiation. The sky is all storm, great scarified burls of...
violence
Consolidation By Langley Hyde Lot 1796. Adult. Human. Female bodied. Standard limbs/digits. Immune/health function: class 7, can accommodate high-risk activity. Personality type: reactive/adaptive, ideal for customer service/high-level social interaction....
body-horrorviolencewar
In-Body by Vincent H. O’Neil “You’re not supposed to be doing this, Colonel.” Dentzler kept his eyes on the low table and pretended he hadn’t heard. “You said her In-Body chip was damaged?” “When the grenade went off.” Ensign Teel pointed at a spot under...
deathviolence
The Sun From Both Sides (Part 1 of 3) By R.S.A. Garcia Once, a woman loved a man, and a man loved a woman. They lived in a forest, in a small stone-grey hut, set far enough back from a river to escape the seasonal floods. Every day, they woke on a too-soft...
slaveryviolence
The Sun From Both Sides (Part 2 of 3) By R.S.A. Garcia (Continued from Part 1 - Escape Pod episode 757) Once, a man left his home to find his home. It was not an easy journey, but going home never is. He gave up all that he was, and all he knew, to...
deathviolence
The Sun From Both Sides (Part 3 of 3) By R.S.A. Garcia (Continued from Part 2 - Escape Pod episode 758) "Grandmaster Lucochin." He started awake, his hand tightening on something. Someone. The Knight hung motionless over him. He had it by the throat, his...
slaveryviolence
Vlad’s an immortal vampire and his girlfriend Eliza stays in suspended animation most of the time while they travel the stars looking for a planet where they can be happy together.
Deep under the lightless ocean of an alien planet, you study the only lifeform ever discovered there.
body-horrordeathgore
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.