Tabitha has been walking a long time, trying to wear out seven pairs of iron shoes; Amira has been sitting alone on a glass hill that suitors try to climb.
Content warnings 2
abuseviolence
Slow Burn
214 free-to-read stories tagged “Slow Burn”
The inventor of trans-multiverse travel invites hundreds of instances of herself to a conference. It’s great fun until one gets murdered.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
As civilization is dying on Earth, a woman building a monument on Mars by remote control gets a message from a Mars colony long thought to be dead.
Content warnings 4
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicwar
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.
Content warnings 4
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.
Content warnings 3
deathillness-and-pandemicviolence
"Paulie rushes out the elevator doors the moment they part, only to skid to a halt at the sight of his father’s wife. She shakes her head, but he doesn’t need the confirmation. If Tricia is out here and not in the hospital room with his father, it can only...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
In a world desperate for wood for fires and paper, a man and his brother look for a tree good enough to make a world-class violin.
Content warnings 2
illness-and-pandemicviolence
Months after mysterious aliens scattered their spacecraft across North America, no one has a clue what they want. Avery knows what one of them wants, though: it wants a tour.
Content warnings 3
animal-harmdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
In a magical Old West, young Ellis has a love for the desert and an affinity for dead things. Both of these attract unwelcome attention from strangers visiting from back East.
Content warnings 4
abusebody-horrordeathviolence
Lao Dao processes trash in a fantastic future "third-space" Beijing. To get money for his daughter's education, he makes a dangerous trip to first-space--a city that unfolds when his own Beijing sleeps.
Until a visiting starship arrived, the other mermaids thought Essarala was silly for wanting to explore the galaxy.
Content warnings 1
death
Zanna settles into a remote mountain cabin to write her next book. No internet. No phone. No distractions.
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
The Regent rules as a tyrant, and he has separated Saffron from her husband to force him to bake the amazing confections that let you relive bits of the past.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
The crew of the new Mars mission are coming to the hotel where Emily works, and her mom is starting to say strange things about her involvement with the last Mars mission.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
Alyssa seeks out the aliens who can give her an augment that will let her exchange thoughts and feelings with other humans. But why does she want it, and what is the cost?
Content warnings 2
body-horrordeath
Salman pursues the truth behind stories his grandfather told him about an impoverished princess he used to know back in Pakistan and the Jinn that protected her.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"The tenth time Jakey broke the rules, he put a sandwich in the mailbox where the window boy could get it. Mom had taken her sleep-quick pills and gone to bed after dinner, on account of her headaches. And Dad was dozing in front of the TV, chin on his...
Content warnings 5
abusebody-horrorchild-abusedeathviolence
"Old as she was, the Kiskadee had done three full delivery runs without a single safety incident. So naturally, with the crew relaxed after a fourth successful delivery and launch, and eight cycles after Reece slingshotted the starship around Tavaco to...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
An enhanced chimp and her human partner investigate an apparently pointless murder committed by a woman who was under remote control from an unknown source.
Content warnings 5
abusebody-horrordeathsuicideviolence
"1926 Washington, D.C. Shaw District “There’s a man on the front stoop.” The words spilled from her in a much more mundane way than Judy had expected, considering how her neck was fluttering with her excited pulse. Alvin looked up from the new Langston...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathviolence
"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,...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
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.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Adam has 70% of the memories of the man who created him, but something vital is hiding in that missing 30%.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
A woman about to leave on an overseas business trip, calls home from the airport and discovers that “daddy” isn’t there and her six-year-old son is all alone in the dark…
Content warnings 1
abuse
"Atop a ladder was Naeto, reaching for the lights. The lights flickered as his touch neared. Down below, Gozi held the ladder, rooting it to the ground. A small breeze came, and the ladder tilted, and the ladder swayed, but Naeto did not waver. Gozi was...
"When her bell sounded at midnight, Firion the wizard grasped her stoutest staff (crowned, for non-magical reasons, with a razor-sharp chunk of amethyst) and put her lips to the doorjamb. “Who goes there?” Nothing but the slap of rain against stone, like...
Only one nation has nuclear weapons, but their rules against using them require that things be so desperate that the President be willing to kill a child to get the launch codes.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Fun adventure on Old Venus. Dharthi risks her life in an unexplored part of Ishtar Terra looking for evidence of a vanished civilization that would save her career.
Content warnings 1
violence
A professional caregiver’s commute takes an unsettling detour when car trouble forces her to pull over on the highway, where she begins receiving distressing phone calls from strangers…
Content warnings 1
death
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.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
"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...
Content warnings 4
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...
Content warnings 1
death
Saga does maintenance work on an old, living starship. Skidbladnir is doing poorly lately, and Saga’s boss is determined to save her, even if no one else wants to.
Selemei’s push for a law to allow women to stop having children when it risks their health upends the complex caste-based society she lives in.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Helen comes to Meersee in Germany to be a governess for her friend’s nephew. The child is young and peculiar, the staff are old and peculiar, and more peculiar things turn up by the minute.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Sometimes a unicorn assisted Judge Kao Yu, and because he was so just and honest, he never feared its judgment. Until now.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"A dual-carriage road descends from a flyover bridge in Thamesmead, bearing sluggish traffic on both sides. From inside bus number 229, a woman looks out of the large windows and thinks the other vehicles look like toy cars. For all she knows, the 229...
Content warnings 5
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-onemental-illnessviolence
In one small town, the delicate balance between predator and prey is threatened when five girls are murdered on prom night.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it. Samantha Finnes was a minor...
"Darius sells three pocket robots on the first Tuesday of October, and another three on Wednesday. At this rate he’ll be able to pay for his legs by Christmas. He does lose one robot to theft: someone figures out how to jimmy open the door of the display...
"Brother-Adita paused at the top of the ridge and rotated one eye to take in the shells climbing the path behind them. They gestured beyond them with a limb, a habit picked up from their young, excitable sibling. “Quarter-march, west-north-west,” came...
Content warnings 3
deathslaveryviolence
Samantha searches Paris to try to find what’s killing fallen angels.
Content warnings 5
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
People who don’t like living underground in the colony can live inside giant “whales” that float high in the planet’s atmosphere. That’s usually pretty safe.
Content warnings 1
death
"Upon my return to the village, it was my husband, Adamet, who took me gently by the arm and guided me across the docks spanning our marshes until we reached the preburial cottage overlooking the sound. We stood side by side in the shadows of the cottage,...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"I express greetings and most joyful salutations! I do not mean to interrupt you if you wish to be without company. It is only that I noticed you have been drifting alone for six flares of star-home-past-great-star-birthplace, and that is many flares! Your...
Off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the region’s survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers originally created as a playground for the wealthy. Now the towers’ most affluent rule...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"If you were to drive to my sister Violet’s house today, you would find yourself at a very different place from the one I encountered on my first trip. The road up the mountain has been paved, for one thing, to make it more accessible to the tourists who...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
In this prequel novelette to the critically acclaimed The Water Outlaws, nine-year-old Li Li is introduced to a web of community secrets and family intrigue when she helps her mother bury the corpse of a man that has somehow wound up in the storeroom of...
Content warnings 4
cannibalismdeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
A photographer’s obsession with an unsettled subject exposes two friends to a darkness that won’t be contained by frames…
Content warnings 3
child-deathsuicideviolence
A young hockey player charged with murder on the moon seeks asylum on Earth, but unhappy Lunarians are trying to find him.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathmental-illnessviolence
Humanity is under attack from intelligent creatures we never knew about from the abyss of our own oceans. Cally is a researcher trying to communicate with them when the underwater facility she’s on is attacked and she has to escape before it disintegrates entirely.
Content warnings 3
deathsexual-contentviolence
After a disaster in the Oort Cloud left her family penniless, young Holly works on a farm on Earth to pay for her college education while waiting for her uncles to raise funds to put the family back in business.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
Somewhere near the every-changing Mocking Tower the Imagi Vert has hidden a sword that holds the soul of the late emperor, and a thief has come to try to steal it.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
An older medic with scant resources fights to support her community as they survive life behind the company wall.
Content warnings 2
sexual-violenceviolence
"The maadiregi at the temple of the talking drum say that there is a word in old Sauúti, the high language of our ancestors, that when spoken backwards, allows the speaker to fly. To take to the sky like a bird, unshackled from the persistent pull that...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"The campsite looks like it wants to eat them. A fire pit yawns in the middle, an ashy-grey mouth ringed by rocks like rotting teeth. The trees crowd in, sizing them up, knifing the daylight. One gulp of that smoke-and-pine air, and Henry shudders head to...
Content warnings 2
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him—but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares. Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice...
Content warnings 3
abusetransphobiaviolence
The sister of an abducted child is haunted by a sinister figure who may or may not be real…
"He could hear her voice more clearly now, as though the notepad were merely a synchronizing gear between the two minds caught in his head. She sounded sick and frightened and tired—like a young woman trapped alone in a strange place, not like a witch...
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Joy nearly got lost on the root-knotted red dirt path off of Highway 99, losing sight of the gaps between the live oaks and Spanish moss that fanned across her hood and windows like fingertips. Driving back to her family’s cabin twenty years later...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"Charlie wasn’t a ghost standing in the corners of the house, but at the same time he was everywhere. He had been haunting my thoughts since we received Uncle Jamey’s emails and the plane tickets. Now, everyone gathered at our mother’s house, my childhood...
Content warnings 5
deathracismsubstance-usesuicideviolence
A young sailor wants to learn what the stars really are, and if it’s true there are people living there.
After 700 years of isolation, the colony faces invasion from fellow humans. Fleeing from the destruction of her home town, Senne hooks up with four soldiers trying to find what’s left of their unit.
Content warnings 4
body-horrordeathsexual-violenceviolence
On a cold October midnight, teenage Susanna takes her dog and a musket and sneaks away into the woods. Things happened ten years ago when she got the dog. Bad things. And now the reckoning is due.
Content warnings 3
animal-harmchild-deathviolence
An Australian detective investigates a woman who apparently killed her husband and children before disappearing.
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathviolence
When Reyna kills a rot hound, she knows her dead sister’s prophecy is coming true, and there’s not much time to convince the rest of the hold they all need to flee.
Content warnings 4
deathslaveryviolencewar
Bilqis, the only real doctor in a dying community of religious exiles, finds something strange when she examines a pregnant woman.
Content warnings 1
pregnancy-loss
A disabled human veteran takes in a disabled AI veteran. The AI doesn't talk anymore due to trauma, but Tawn tries to get through to it, even though his mother thinks it's dangerous.
Content warnings 1
war
Raised by her grandmothers, Aviya thinks about her future, and thinks about trying to find the source of a magical scrap of "cloth of the wind."
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Alvin’s scripts arrived in yellow envelopes. They were hand delivered, placed inside his letter box as if part of the regular mail, but with no address or stamps on it. The scripts were typed on unlined paper. They were short, never longer than a page,...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Muna shuts the storeroom door as quietly as she can. Holding a just-waxed bundle of letters to her chest, she sticks out her head to check the bookshop floor. If she walks between the shelves on the far right, she can slip out unnoticed in ten heartbeats....
"Tarma had only just begun the Widow Fenton’s flax when the Shadow Undying rose once more. At first she thought that the shutter on the upper window must have come unwedged, since the light shouldn’t have failed so early in the day. But the unholy chanting...
Content warnings 1
death
"Up on the spoil heap Morag found a robot. This wasn’t that unusual in and of itself. She was always finding them, or parts of them anyway, frozen in contorted attitudes like dinosaur fossils, plastic housing cracked and aluminum limbs splayed. What was...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Modern bodies are made in large quantities. Factories line the edge of the Fissure Basin. Workers scoop sand and mud into large churning vats, feeding extruders that empty into molds in the standard shapes. Factory supervisors smooth out imperfections and...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Tana was in a humid cave checking the rind on a round of Tomme when the messenger arrived to tell her that the war was lost and her wife was to be hanged. She took her time rewrapping the cheese before she responded. Still too soft. Another week, she...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Good art changes you. And that was the point, right? That’s what the social media ad that caught my attention wanted me to believe: Our Shoes: You couldn’t understand our struggle... Until now. I had read the line over and over again during a rare...
Content warnings 1
racism
For the residents of this mycological ecosystem, creating art feeds the World around you and requires working in harmony with your inner voice. When one artist’s voice begins screaming, he’s forced to travel farther than he ever has before to reconcile...
"As the people began to die, desperation drove us to the depths of the sea for cures. We mined mineral-rich vents until the tube worms went extinct, stripped polymetallic nodule fields bare, squeezed sludge out of sea sponges to treat the new diseases,...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"I don’t realize how far apart I have grown from my mother until, upon meeting her again, I have to force myself to hug her. When I heard the news, I packed a few things from my personnel apartment at the Omega hospital and booked a ticket on the next...
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
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.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In 2028, Kitty has a role in a play about a mass murder committed in 1978, but when she visits the setting of the crime, she’ll pulled into the past right before the crimes take place.
Content warnings 3
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Connor works at a restaurant in New York where he has a magical touch with food (literally). Problems with his family keep interfering with his career, though.
Judith takes a job as companion to a young man who appears to be terminally ill and has retired to a family estate by the sea.
Eva and Didecus lived together happily in exile on an obscure planet, but they were important people once, and the universe has a way of coming looking for important people—even when they thought they were retired.
Content warnings 2
deathslavery
Jeri’s ready to trade her old spaceship for a new, more efficient model, but she loved her old ship and wants to be sure she doesn’t end up scrapped for parts.
Content warnings 1
violence
After memory-loss plague strikes the world, Gouda helps clients track missing family members they can barely remember—even though she can’t even remember her own last name.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Mara has made a deal with a scavenger girl to help her rescue her best friend, who left the underground habitat to try to talk to the aliens and never came back.
Content warnings 2
body-horrorviolence
Ancient nanotech controls a few humans to enforce harsh anti-technology rules on a reluctant population. Colton escaped its control at the cost of losing all emotion, and he struggles to be accepted by a caravan that’s trying to evade some of the restrictions.
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
The world is gradually being destroyed by what seems like an alien plague that attacks people and software alike. Caitlin lives in a seaside Scottish town, nursing her dying lover.
Content warnings 2
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
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.
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 4
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicviolence
Aliens decide to rule the Earth indirectly, picking a middle-aged woman from an insurance company to be their intermediary.
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
Unknown Compartment There is no door where there should be a door—no hall where there should be a hall. The house has reconfigured itself, again, and I find myself before […]
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathviolence
"For a long time now I’d been practicing liecraft five or six times before breakfast. I’d roll over to Khao’s side of the bed and murmur through the curls of hair winding around his ear: “Go back to sleep, it’s only just daybreak.” Other times I’d hide his...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-abuseviolence
"Ms. Otter came to Kearney when the day was dying, and her shadow ran down the broken road ahead of her like a line of bad luck. Jeremiah saw it when he paused to get a drink, his stained hands leaving brown fingerprints on his canteen. It was hot—all the...
"Flyer 247-3 hasn’t flown in five days. In these five days, she has become accustomed to the hum and whine of the air filtration system cranked to its highest setting. She has become accustomed to her cell, four paces long, four paces wide. Its lack of...
"Scarlett’s eyes had to be perfect. Jon was the artist who’d made her, so it bothered him to think that so much of Scarlett would be crafted by other people. Scarlett’s limbs were carved from silicon polymer and coated in a soft synthetic skin from the...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorsexual-contentviolence
"The little girl was blonde and had very blue eyes. She stood on the steps to the house and stared at Mara without expression. “It lives in the closet,” the little girl said. “Klara…” her father said. He looked apologetically at Mara. “Please,” he said....
"One day, the Curator salvaged a robot. It was a model ST-19, a military machine, designed for search and destroy missions. The Curator found it outside in a knee-deep snowdrift. The robot’s ship had crashed into a hill two kilometers away, the explosion...
Content warnings 1
death
"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...
Vashti is a pathogenic diplomat—an ambassador to the world of viruses, whom she communicates with through a machine that can translate their chemical signals into images, tastes, smells, sounds, and memories. She begins a negotiation between the US...
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"The company alarm sends Cass flailing out of bed with its first chime. If she lingers under the blankets, she’ll disturb Maya: if she doesn’t get up before the second alarm, the volume ratchets up to eighty decibels, and the smart thermostat will crank up...
"Leo Gregory is losing altitude. He coasts on the thermals of a legacy fading behind him: a documentary here, a retrospective there, some greatest-hits collection down in the corner for the dilettantes. Oh, the work has lost none of its grandeur: his...
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
"Gamma stretched out through the quantum foam. Virtual photons and electrons tickled her subtime body. If she were to reduce her mass to pure quanta then, hypothetically speaking, she would be able to touch the entire universe at once. Practically...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"She laid in bed and stared at the bottom of the bunk above her, riddled as it was with sticker and tape residue, which was stubborn as piss. The human race could contrive to send her to Venus, but it had not been clever enough to figure out how to remove...
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
A boy, desperate to escape the drudgery of life in his small town, gets caught up in the machinations of a traveling time keeper, and slowly watches his town and his life unravel by the seams.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"It is in the summer, during the monsoon season in Taipei, when the pigeon keeper’s daughter moves into the apartment on the top floor of a building on an alleyway in Wenshan District. From her window, she sees not only Taipei 101 in the distance with...
"Nostalgia died a quiet death, wrapped in cellophane and power cords. The future had killed it. The ghosts of yesteryear’s fragrances no longer haunted, no longer hung and clung to the passersby. Instead, those ghosts lay shriveled like salted slugs in the...
"Commander Maeb Len knows that, more than anything, an army needs hope in order to struggle onward. They need a vision to fight for and faith that the future will be better than the past. Better than the present. The People’s Army itself is one such hope....
Content warnings 2
deathwar
"That first autumn it felt as if the whole world had been made for them—which, of course, it had. They walked down the avenue of oaks that reached above their heads like Gothic arches, red leaves drifting lazily down to collect at their feet. Ashwin was...
Content warnings 3
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"The egg must have hatched overnight, though he could see no sign of a hatchling anywhere. Only empty shell bits remained, strewn here and there across the tatami."
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
The Augur can tell your future just by studying the skin on your body. His prophecies are detailed, and he’s only been wrong once. But when he raises an orphan girl, he’s bothered that she wants to follow in his footsteps.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Anell takes a job with a great house researching immortality, but she secretly works on her own research involving reproduction.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
As Charlotte’s husband sinks into early Alzheimer’s, he becomes more and more obsessed with a cult religious figure known only as The Reverend.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
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.
In the aftermath of the king’s assassination, the guard commander and high mage struggle to discover who was behind it and what to do about it.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Val leads an almost solitary life keeping the lighthouse at an inland lake. A man needing help with his magic interrupts her routine and brings unwelcome reminders of the life she lost.
A young god buys a common patience stone from a crow. A girl takes the task of removing a thousand needles from a sleeping panther. Both of their lives will change forever.
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.
Content warnings 1
death
In 1915 Ohio, 14-year-old Emmett's night terrors get worse after he finds a dead body in an abandoned well.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"Sparrow retired from the battlefield at the height of her powers and couldn’t be persuaded to change her mind. She was done with fighting, armies, blood, death, and taking orders. Now, she ran a salon at the edge of Florelia, Tira City’s entertainment district."
Content warnings 1
war
"Two hours out of deadsleep is too soon to be staring at the butchered corpse of a dead god. Neel looks down as the kalipeeli begins its descent to Chowpatty Beach and feels his stomach flip."
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathgore
"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...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
In a post-nuclear event Silicon Valley, a man grieving the loss of his wife struggles to find comfort when he is forced to communicate with his neighbors’ AI devices, rather than the people themselves.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Even though the armistice has held for nearly a year now, I know it could shatter at any moment, trapping me here behind enemy lines. The war raged for nearly fifty years—the simple inertia of violence dictates a renewal of hostilities sooner or later....
Content warnings 2
violencewar
"April, Mawlamyine. The Shepherd leads her flock through a city half overgrown with weeds. Weeds overwhelm the railway bridge, covering its deck. The pink wood sorrel has taken root in the road’s cracked flower beds, depending on the lay of the terrain to...
Content warnings 1
death
"The world-organism is awake and has spent the last decade playing round after round of tic-tac-toe with itself. Hearing this the first time, Anais reacts like anyone would to a stranger sitting next to them on a plane, insisting on conversation for the...
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesssubstance-use
"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...
Content warnings 1
war
"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...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
"The entire time they were walking towards the Dragon Stairs, Giền said nothing. She merely changed shape in Thanh Lan’s arms—not growing heavier and heavier, which Thanh Lan could have understood, but by turns lighter and heavier, her shape shimmering...
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
"Nobody noticed the first few. They walked. One by one, in the beginning. Isolated instances. On every continent, mid-meal, mid-shower, mid-work, mid-fuck, right out the door of a pulled-up car in the middle of a freeway—ordinary people turned their backs...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
PseudoPod 807: The Bleak Communion of Abandoned Things is a PseudoPod original. I accept the house in lieu of a settlement. I don’t want Ashley’s dirty money. The house is the least ill-gotten thing she owns, an isolated property she won in a card game and...
Content warnings 3
abusedeathmental-illness
"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...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Haunted by stories he hears while on jury duty, a documentary filmmaker finds himself in an abandoned mall at the dead of night.
"The blade of Legrue’s scalpel flared in his headlamp’s narrow beam, casting glints of light across the slender hand strapped to his cutting table. “Deed done?” the woman asked, a warble in her voice. Legrue adjusted his magnifiers. He had not eaten in...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-deathdeath
A group of five friends rent a cabin in the woods—the next day only four are alive. What happened and why is something the survivors are desperate to unravel.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"For the longest time I could only get sliding jobs. It didn’t depress me, though; it seemed like a natural place to start. There was still time. I was sleeping rough in Wellington when I got my first job. I hitched from Palmy into the Hutt and started...
The Path Through Time” is Jules’s favorite part of the museum, a marvelous exhibit that brings the past to life, from the present all the way back to the prehistoric. Tonight at his aunt’s wedding reception as Jules walks along the path, it comes alive...
"Disaster, betrayal, and the ship already blasting its horn. The family clusters around the packing crates, destitute, stunned. We must go regardless, says their father, this is the last ship, what else can we do? Their mother nods, frowning so as not to...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
"Michael is afraid to go farther. Pudgy pushes him on. They walk through the shrouded city, the sound of footsteps all but obscured. Pudgy holds hard to the band of the broken fedora that perches crooked atop Michael’s bent head; the knees of Pudgy’s...
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.
Gil teaches students how to communicate with the Numens, vast, star-spanning alien intelligences indistinguishable from gods.
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
When Candice gets upset, she sometimes spontaneously combusts and then comes back to life. She needs to get this under control because her family can’t afford the medical bills.
Content warnings 2
deathillness-and-pandemic
"They’d built a new Vault of Potions after the flood—of course they’d had to, with the thaumatically cursed mess that had become of the old one. Still, it made me twitch and reach for my wand, walking along the familiar tree-lined quad and hearing the...
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
A wealthy woman has the multiverse searched for divergent versions of herself who’re near death, offering to add them to her personality, and they always accept. Up until now.
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
In a culture that teaches that you should commit suicide when you’re at your peak, a young man kills himself after winning a prize and his parents prosecute his teacher.
Content warnings 2
deathsuicide
Benedetto makes his living running a calligramancy shop, where he makes magic via writing. Today, he snapped, closed the shop, and started an elaborate spell of unknown purpose.
Content warnings 1
child-death
The village people suffer from the Duke’s construction of the big tower, and even thought the villagers disapprove of her, old Gert can’t help doing things for the little children who come to her for aid.
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
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.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
A nobleman offers Navid’s family a vast fortune if they’ll make him a magic coat more powerful than anything they’ve ever made, and in the span of a single month. It will change their lives, one way or the other.
In a future where successful people spend most of their time in cyberspace, Martha struggles to make ends meet servicing the systems that take care of them.
Content warnings 1
death
A family has problems when their little daughter falls out of sync with the usual times everyone else wakes and sleeps. But it’s not just her.
A young man fleeing the ruin of his career returns to his home village seeking the first girl he ever loved and a resolution to a mystery that has haunted him.
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.
When the young magistrate arrives at his remote posting, he sees that some of the villagers are amazingly strong, and he decides to learn how to make the magic potion that makes them so.
Content warnings 1
violence
When an unkillable black crow haunts the princess, Wynn goes beyond the kingdom to find the only weapon that can destroy it.
Content warnings 1
death
The city is dying and its immortal human inhabitants seem inclined to die with it. Except for Kayn.
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathsexual-content
Chenguang and her new partner find something unexpected during a survey of an abandoned world lost to pollution a long time ago.
Charlie's team has been out of touch with the Mars mission for a month. While she's attending her mother's funeral, a mysterious 47-second-long message arrives.
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
A two-man team must risk a spacewalk when meteoroids threaten crucial portal-spanning telecommunications cables that hang a hundred meters beneath the ocean…and forty-five billion light years away.
"The formula for how to end the world got published the same day I married the girl who used to bully me in middle school. We found out about it the morning after, on the first day of our honeymoon in Cozumel. I got out of the shower in our small bungalow...
Content warnings 2
mental-illnessracism
"…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...
Content warnings 3
sexual-violencesuicidewar
"She rose, feeling the aches where the dead had touched her, and gathered him in her arms. She’d hold him tighter this time. Oh, he’d fight her all the way, but they could get back on their way to the isle and the elf-king, and it would be over at last."
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"The angel Azrael rode the dead horse across the broken land under the light of a half moon until he came across a graveyard that seemed to have no end. Wooden crosses stretched away to the horizon, more than he could count. Many of the crosses were bent...
Content warnings 3
deathgoreviolence
"Not so very long ago but before you were born, an idle lordling went riding through one of the great forests that sweep across the Isles. You may guess which forest, and which man, but I will not tell you. ... None of the stories his mother had told him...
"On a Thursday night in Harvestmonth, when the moon rises round and bronze as a new betrothal promise watch, is the warlike thrice-veiled Mother of Mákhesthaines, crowned in her black silk mantles embroidered with skulls, permitted across the Holy Square...
Content warnings 1
death
"Abigail sat at the centermost position at the cafeteria table. For her, it was unintentional. For us, it was by design. Abigail had no idea about the effect she had on people, obviously. It’s a blessing of having seen yourself in every movie, magazine,...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorself-harmviolence
An acclaimed musician and her apprentice travel to the newly freed country of Skinnere to play a complex and culturally fraught song that will lay bare the wounds of empire, occupation, and sacrifice of its players and listeners.
Content warnings 3
body-horrorracismwar
She was 15 when a dragon abducted her. 16 when a prince rescued her and married her. Now she's 55, returning to the cave where she was held.
Shi handles elderly clients who are recruited to help steer starships through space. Her job is winding up, and one of her last clients presents a special challenge.
Content warnings 1
mental-illness
When newlyweds Courtney and Josh rent an old Victorian in Baltimore, they're told to stay out of the attic. But they hear noises up there at night. Footsteps.
Content warnings 1
violence
This episode features "Aly" written by Grace Chan. 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/chan_05_26 Support us on Patreon at...
Content warnings 2
mental-illnesswar
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 […]
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...
Content warnings 3
body-horrordeathgore
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...
Content warnings 2
deathwar
Author : Sierra Bibi Narrator : Laurice White Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Escape Pod 1043: The Smokejumpers is an Escape Pod original. Includes wildfires and peril. The Smokejumpers By Sierra Bibi When Fern jumps from the plane into...
Content warnings 1
death-of-a-loved-one
Amelia’s favorite time of day is before dawn, when all the beauty is hidden by shadow. She rises from her bed every morning, shivering in the hushed air, and gets dressed in the dark. Sometimes she has to redo the buttons, but she doesn’t turn on the light...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
Content note: suicidal ideation I am a star, falling. “Awake now?” My eyes open to words as an unknown face greets me, small with a curious gaze. She parts full lips to bare teeth and I tense. A threat? No. A smile. I stare back. “I didn’t think you’d...
Content warnings 3
slaverysuicidewar
Kate was cursed by her cousin on his deathbed to never stay. She and her cousin Bo didn’t hate each other—far from it. They’d grown up together: same small farming town in the inland northwest, population 394. So small that when Bo finished high school, he...
Content warnings 2
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Author : Anne Ivy Narrator : Elizabeth Green Host : Alicia Caporaso Audio Producer : Wilson Fowlie Previously ran as episode 292 and first published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Read the full text here! Rated R Read the full text here! The post PodCastle...
Content warnings 3
goresexual-contentviolence
Everyone knows the Walls around the cities fell. What some people don’t remember is that the first one fell because of a laugh. It sounded like a ringing bell. Not like it came out of a baby at all. That was the first thing I told the scholar boy. He was a...
Content warnings 2
racismviolence
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...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
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 […]
Content warnings 3
deathviolencewar
Content Warning: religiously motivated ableism and homophobia, both internalized and external; self-harm; and depictions of ritual sacrifice including drowning, hanging, and burning, not very graphic. Alone but for the crows, the priestess peers through...
Content warnings 3
deathhomophobiaself-harm
After a months-long drug-fueled party across Europe, I found myself homeless in the town of Portishead, abandoned by my so-called friends and estranged from my family. Some bad luck, but mostly my own fault. I thought back to my days as a Harvard student,...
Content warnings 2
substance-useviolence
Author : Albert Chu Narrator : Hugo Jackson Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “When the Oracle Speaks” was first published in Metaphororsis, July 2023 When the Oracle Speaks (Part 1) by Albert Chu One year after the war’s end, the royal...
Content warnings 1
war
Author : Deborah L. Davitt Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Reflected in Mirrored Skies” was published by Compelling Science Fiction (Special Kickstarter Companion issue Nov. 6, 2018) Reflected in Mirrored Skies...
Content warnings 1
death
Peace by Piece By Erin Cairns Frank thought all the battle-drones had been deactivated. Certainly, none of them had ever looked around with curious little twitches of their front-facing cameras before. This one whirred and clicked like an anxious bird,...
Author : Dale Smith Narrator : Louise Ratcliffe Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Joy” was previously published in Interzone Digital (June 2023) Joy by Dale Smith Joy knelt on the promenade, shifting the rifle into her shoulder to get a...
Author : P. A. Cornell Narrator : Isabel J. Kim Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 991: After the Rain is an Escape Pod original. After the Rain by P. A. Cornell I love a heavy summer storm. I love it when the rain falls so...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Content warnings 3
body-horrormental-illnessself-harm
"We are very, very disappointed.” It was her third try, and it still came out feebly. “We thought we made it super clear that any, any change in material, maker hand, machine, or method, however small or irrelevant it may seem, must be notified...
Content warnings 3
body-horrorchild-abuseself-harm
Author : Renan Bernardo Narrator : Julia Rios Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Summer Brooks This story was originally published at Apex Magazine #134 in December 2022. The Walking Mirror of the Soul by Renan Bernardo My desire was written all over...
Summitting the Moon By Pragathi Bala T-7 days The moon Landed, the Rut appeared, home equity plummeted, jobs disappeared, and Ghis liked riding the moon. It was the last item on this tragic list that her wife couldn’t accept. It was the leaf that broke the...
Content warnings 1
pregnancy-loss
Sturdy Ladders and Lanterns By Malka Older As a freelance marine behavioral researcher most of Natalia’s jobs went something like this: She swam around in some large but controllable environment with a cephalopod, paying attention to its body language and...
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...
The Contrary Gardener By Christopher Rowe Kay Lynne wandered up and down the aisles of the seed library dug out beneath the county extension office. Some of the rows were marked with glowing orange off-limits fungus, warning the unwary away from spores and...
The Contrary Gardener (Part 2 of 2) By Christopher Rowe (Continued from Part 1) Even in the ‘Ville, even in a family of master cultivators, tickets were not easy to come by, so it was not unusual that Kay Lynne had never been to the Derby. What was unusual...
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...
Content warnings 1
illness-and-pandemic
Hey, George By Elizabeth Guilt "Hey, George." I remind myself that that is not my name; it never was. I will myself not to react, not to break stride, as I stroll along beside the beach. Old habits die hard, and the best neuro-reset in the world can't...
Bishop's Opening (Part 1 of 4) By R.S.A. Garcia 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...
Bishop's Opening (Part 4 of 4) By R.S.A. Garcia The attendants set little bowls shaped like flower petals in front Sebastian and Olly. Steam drifted upward, redolent of fresh herbs and a hint of lime. Bits of white flesh speckled with green seasonings, and...
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...
Content warnings 3
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...
Content warnings 1
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...
Content warnings 3
child-abuseslaveryviolence
Deepo 12 By Jeff Hewitt Nothing made Deepo 12 feel more alive than doing its job. Its actuators sighed as another cassette slid from its workstation, tinted blastic masking the rainbow sheen of the wafers inside. Dim strip lights curved over the protective...
Content warnings 1
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...
Content warnings 1
violence
Author : Aimee Picchi Narrator : Ibba Armancas Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived” was previously published in the Zombies Need Brains anthology “Apocalyptic” in June 2020 Solo Cooking for the Recently...
Content warnings 3
abusebody-horrorviolence
"The shoes are leather with delicate lines and pointy toes. Elegant shoes for elegant feet. They might have suited her too if she had yesterday’s feet. Chicken’s feet. But today her feet are that of an otter’s, stubby and covered in wet, glistening fur....
Content warnings 3
body-horrorgoreviolence
A young American in the early 20th Century visits a remote principality and is shocked at their notion of justice.
Content warnings 2
deathviolence