Short Stories Science

Tanis is looking forward to a long journey in stasis before arriving at the newly terraformed world of New Eden. New Life. New Start. Getting a berth on the Intrepid is her ticket out of the Sol System. But nothing proves easy for Major Tanis Richards. Nothing is at it seems. What should be a simple trip is fraught with danger and filled with adventure. An array of forces seek to stop the Intrepid - no matter the cost, or lives lost. From competing corporations, to stellar eco-terrorists, no one wants the Intrepid to arrive at New Eden.

The time-travel series that everyone's talking about.... Jodi Taylor's The Chronicles of St. Mary's is back with a short story. It's Christmas Day 1066, and a team from St Mary's is going to witness the coronation of William the Conqueror. Or so they think.... However, history seems to have different plans for them, and when Max finds herself delivering a child in a peasant's hut, she can't help wondering what history is up to.

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

No one could ask for a better present than a collection of Connie Willis Christmas tales. These are amazing stories, representing all the best of the Connie Willis experience: true Christmas gifts to her many fans. They are full of humor, absurdity, human foibles, tragedy, joy, and hope. They both send up and embrace many of the best Christmas traditions, such as the Christmas newsletter, Secret Santas, office parties, holiday pageants, and Christmas dinners (both elaborate and spare).

With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.

A robopsychologist must outwit a machine determined to stay hidden in "Little Lost Robot"; a woman’s talent for "Light Verse" overshadows her true accomplishments with her robot servants; "The Last Question" presented to computer after computer over a hundred billion years may remain forever unanswered … and seventeen more future visions from the grand master of science fiction.

Not one to let being banged up in Sick Bay stop her, Max has had a brilliant idea. But she needs Markham to execute it on her behalf. The subject of this cunning plan is Peterson, struggling with another bereavement and not doing very well. What’s needed to get him through it is sympathy, sensitivity, tact and understanding. Step forward Mr Markham, for whom sympathy, sensitivity, etc., are things that happen to other people.

Everyone deserves to get away for a bit. Even the miscreants at St Mary's. Astonishingly, Dr. Bairstow has declared a holiday. Even more astonishingly - he's paying for it. Needless to say, there are strings attached. They have to record the 1601 performance of Hamlet, with Shakespeare himself in the role of the Ghost. It doesn't go well, of course.

Benjy, Penny, Rory and Sheila are spending the holidays with their aunt and uncle at Cherry Tree Farm. They play with the animals and learn to feed them, roam the countryside and hunt for the mysterious Tammylan, who lives deep in the woods. Everywhere is teeming with adventure and the children are bound to get into mischief!

The Collected Works of Philip K. Dick is a collection of 11 science fiction stories by Philip K. Dick.

Christmas is coming to Beechwood Harbor, but will the manor residents be ready for his magical visit? With mischief and mystery at every turn, Holly and friends have to rally to save Christmas before it's too late! A Very Beechwood Christmas includes four mini mysteries set around a wild and magical Christmas when the real Santa Claus comes to town!

It’s Christmas again at St Mary's and time for Max’s obligatory illegal jump. On this occasion, however, they’re right up against it. A loaded gun has been left behind in Ancient Egypt, and it’s up to them to retrieve it before anyone accidentally blows their own head off, thus affecting the timeline for centuries to come. And as if that’s not enough, someone (Max) has inadvertently poisoned Mr Markham. It’s hot, they’re running out of supplies, they can’t find the gun and it’s all going horribly wrong. Again.

In this anthology, you'll find 17 tales of conflict and heroism, exploration and discovery, endurance and triumph. Flee the apocalypse of modern-day Earth, fly a fighter in the cold emptiness of deep space, and find new life on the distant shores of an alien world. You might even discover something about yourself as each author opens a window on the soul of mankind.

Magic and myth inhabit these chapters in figures both familiar and strange. Giant trolls and talking animals are everywhere. The winds take human form. A one-eyed old woman might seem reminiscent of the Norse god Odin. We meet sly aunts, resourceful princesses, and devious robbers. These stories, set in Norway's majestic landscape of towering mountains and dense forests, are filled with humor, mischief, and sometimes surprisingly cruel twists of fate. All are rendered in the deceptively simple narrative style perfected by Asbjørnsen and Moe.

This series presents Clark Ashton Smith's fiction chronologically, based on composition rather than publication. Editors Scott Connors and Ron Hilger have compared original manuscripts, various typescripts, published editions, and Smith's notes and letters in order to prepare a definitive set of texts. The Maze of the Enchanter includes, in chronological order, all of his stories from The Mandrakes (February, 1933) to The Flower-Women (May, 1935). This volume also features an introduction and extensive notes on each story.

In Seduced by the Sea Lord, Warlord Torun cannot wait to claim Lucy, who mistook him for a shipwreck survivor and pulled his injured body from the ocean. Mer-king Kadir has endured ridicule, banishment, and undersea prison for his belief that modern human women will save their race in Sacrificed by the Sea Lord. Mer-warrior Soren is no catch in Enslaved by the Sea Lord. He prefers to protect the other warriors' brides rather than seek his own to repopulate. And in Stolen by the Sea Lord, Zara almost died the night she was forced to the surface.

Notes from the author: The following is a short story I wrote in the Elantris world back in January of 2006. There were always a few holes in Elantris where I decided not to include viewpoints or sections of explanation in the name of streamlining, particularly at the end. In the back of my mind, I knew what happened. This story talks about one of those holes; it is meant to be heard after you’ve finished the novel and takes place during the events of the climax.

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

The second set of interconnected stand-alone fairy tale retellings from the Four Kingdoms series includes The Princess Pact: A Twist on Rumpelstiltskin, A Midwinter's Wedding: A Retelling of The Frog Prince, and The Princess Game: A Reimagining of Sleeping Beauty....

A classic tale featuring two of the most-memorable characters in sword and sorcery, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Over a span of 50 years, the late Fritz Leiber wrote dozens of adventures, set in the fictional city of Lankhmar, featuring the seven-foot-tall barbarian and the diminuitive thief. The stories were recognized with both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.