Alternate Universe Fiction

Behind every assassination, there is an anonymous mastermind - a plotter - working in the shadows. Plotters quietly dictate the moves of the city's most dangerous criminals, but their existence is little more than legend. Reseng is an assassin. Raised by a cantankerous killer named Old Raccoon in the crime headquarters "The Library", Reseng never questioned anything: where to go, who to kill, or why his home was filled with books that no one ever read. But one day, Reseng steps out of line on a job, toppling a set of carefully calibrated plans.

Miriam Beckstein is happy in her life as a successful reporter. When she gets iron-clad evidence of a money-laundering scheme, Miriam thinks she's found the story of the year. But when she takes it to her editor, she's fired on the spot and gets a death threat from the criminals she's uncovered. Before the day is over, she's received a locket left by the mother she never knew - the mother who was murdered when she was an infant. The knotwork pattern within has a hypnotic effect on her.

This world is trying to kill Lily Proctor. Her life-threatening allergies keep her from enjoying experiences that others in her hometown of Salem take for granted, which is why she is determined to enjoy her first high school party with her best friend and longtime crush, Tristan. But after a humiliating incident in front of half her graduating class, Lily wishes she could just disappear. Suddenly, Lily is in a different Salem - one overrun with horrifying creatures and ruled by powerful women called Crucibles.

Billy Boustany had the adventure of a lifetime. Now, all he wants to do is to go back to the amazing universe he discovered. But the power brokers over there warned him to stay away and keep his mouth shut. At the same time, Diyami Red Hawk, an idealistic young man from that universe, has connected with Billy’s daughter and is on a mission to build a modern Native American city in our world. But he’s getting nowhere—until he finds support in unexpected places.

The sky is not the limit. From an alley in New York to an interstellar wormhole, the path to the future looks different for everyone. These cosmic short stories from some of today’s most influential Black authors reveal a universe of possibilities.

In Kingsley Amis’s virtuoso foray into virtual history, it is 1976, but the modern world is a medieval relic, frozen in intellectual and spiritual time ever since Martin Luther was promoted to pope back in the sixteenth century. Stephen the Third, the king of England, has just died, and Mass (Mozart’s second requiem) is about to be sung to lay him to rest. In the choir is our hero, Hubert Anvil, an extremely ordinary ten-year-old boy with a faultless voice.

Miriam Beckstein is a young, hip, business journalist in Boston. She discovered in The Family Trade and The Hidden Family that her family came from an alternate reality, that she was very well-connected, and that her family was too much like the mafia for comfort. She found herself caught in a family trap in The Clan Corporate and betrothed to a brain-damaged prince, and then all hell broke loose. Now, in The Merchants' War, Miriam has escaped to yet another world and remains in hiding from both the Clan and their opponents.

Beginning the Star Force Phase 2 timeline, the Mak'to'ran serial details the defeated V'kit'no'sat fleet commander's days following the attack on Earth and the fallout within the Dinosaur empire that results from it. For as bad as the treason regarding the Humans and the bastardized Hadarak is, and the implications that one of the two founding V'kit'no'sat races are behind it, a much larger rift within the empire is being exposed that has the potential to do what neither the Zak'de'ron culling nor the Rit'ko'sor rebellion accomplished. A full Dinosaur civil war.

As summer comes to an end, Evie Von Rathe is determined to begin the search for her parents in earnest. Armed with her knowledge of the otherworldly, her mom’s violet glasses, and a pendant full of doors, Evie begins to piece together clues. When she realizes her mother’s bedtime story might be a roadmap to finding them, Evie follows it back to the Dark Sun Side.

Dazzling, paranoid literary sci-fi for fans of Blake Crouch and Philip K. Dick: Vin, a down-on-his-luck young tech entrepreneur forced out of the software company he started, takes a job house-sitting an ultra-modern Seattle mansion whose owner has gone missing. There he discovers a secret basement lab with an array of computers and three large, smooth caskets. Inside one he finds a woman in a state of suspended animation. When Vin decides to climb into one of the caskets to see what happens, his reality begins to unravel....

A City in Darkness - Four Lost Souls Seeking a Light - July 13, 1977 - The lives of four super-powered people become irrevocably intertwined when the lights go out in New York City, plunging their world into chaos. The superheroes of Just Cause, grown soft and complacent without any supervillains to challenge them, must overcome their personal demons as well as uphold the law in a lawless land of rioters, arson, and murder.

Fans of Godzilla, Pacific Rim, and classic giant monster movies will enjoy this short story set in my story world Daikaiju Universe, where, on a planet Earth much like our own, horrific, ridiculously large, ambulatory forces of nature have been a periodic fact of life since the 19th century!

A parallel universe. South Texas. Narcotics are legal, and there’s a new contraband on the market: ancient Olmec artifacts, shrunken indigenous heads, and filtered animals - species of animals brought back from extinction to clothe, feed, and generally amuse the very wealthy. Esteban Bellacosa has lived in the border town of MacArthur long enough to know to keep quiet. But his simple life starts to get complicated when the swashbuckling investigative journalist Paco Herbert invites him to come to an illegal underground dinner serving filtered animals.

When Russell's dog, Rodney Rodent, jumps at a strange mural to get at a creepy-looking gnome and disappears into the painting, the Flint Future Detectives are on the case. This time they have a new president, Richelle. A secret password leads Steven, Russell, and Richelle to the mysterious Mr. Chickee, who's living in a whole different universe!

In a world where scientists have become the new superstars, Rick Hamilton, once a celebrated rock icon, has lost his passion for music amid the clamor of shallow fame. One night, in a haze of disillusionment, a portal from a parallel universe brings back his long-lost college roommate, Andy. The visitation offers Rick a chance to explore a reality where his life took a different turn.

Billy Boustany uncovers a mystery that transforms his sleepy midwestern city into a vibrant metropolis of iridescent skyscrapers, wild parties, and eccentric characters. This parallel world offers the adventure of a lifetime, but it comes with a perilous secret. When Billy shares his adventure with his college student daughter, their exploration leads them to a magnificent city of Native Americans at an ancient site. However, they soon encounter a formidable foe - the Knights, a secret society bent on keeping outsiders away.

The most brilliant mind in a thousand years has been tortured and twisted by human cruelty. His solution: Burn the world down and start from scratch. Almost no one can stop him. A single obstacle stands in his way. He must destroy the BrainTrust and its medical researcher extraordinaire, Dr. Dash. With millions dying, nuclear war in the offing, and the BrainTrust under siege, the fight for the very soul of humanity hinges on a last desperate question: Who remains to defy the darkness?

As a new president takes the White House, Just Cause returns to New York City for the first time in eight years, under the command of its newest leader: Mustang Sally. But not everyone is excited about the expansion of Just Cause. Senator Christine Goodwin, slighted by the team's leadership years before, has made it her mission to put all para-humans on a very short leash while, at the same time, creating her own super-powered militia.

Seventh-grade Superheroes! It's not easy being a 12-year-old superhero, but the five kids of the neighborhood watch are doing the best they can. La Capitána: super-strong flier. Wheels: brilliant inventor. Hothead: catches on fire. Breezy: controls wind. Rascal: super-skateboarding. From their headquarters built into a repurposed Winnebago, they patrol the streets and alleys of their small hometown and dream of being big time heroes like Mustang Sally and the rest of Just Cause.

In the void between universes, a secretive organization called the Tuners works to maintain peace in the multiverse. The stability is threatened when a group of religious radicals seek to burn all those who do not believe. Jon Xiong, a 17-year-old from Montana, gets caught up in much bigger problems when the cult members appear at his home. The order wants him because he can distinguish the subtle differences of the cosmic background noise between universes.