Genres: Steampunk
Imperial Majesty, Lord-for-Countless-Years, Son of Heaven, Ruler of Industry and Wisdom; this your servant Cai Jing of the Ministry of Works greets you. As per your Imperial Decree, I have compiled the following report on the matter of Master Su’s Clock and its abnormal behaviour. The facts of the case, as far as truth has presented itself, are as follows:
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Fantasy, Modern Fantasy
Kris Kringle moved silently through the workshop, making sure nothing had been forgotten by the elves. Normally, they’d be starting their post-toy-making-frenzy party, but this year the group was more subdued, the carols on low, with no one making merry or wearing lampshades.
Kris sighed and lifted his hand in a wave as he passed the break room, but he didn’t go in.
Inventory. Yes, inventory would take his mind in the direction it needed to go.
Toys? Check.
Lumps of coal? Check.
He peeked out the window. Elves hooking up the reindeer? Check.
Reindeer fat—but not too fat, they did have to fly—and happy? Check.
Rudolph’s nose at full power? Check.
As Kris moved from the workshop to the adjoining kitchen, he sniffed. Apple pie baking, ready to eat when he got home?
Genres: Post-Apocalypse, Science Fiction
So Jian thinks he needs a new skin.
He says it like it’s no big deal, just a little epidermal clean-up, Oh ha ha how’d that peeling happen? But what he means is that he has to replace his rusting face. It’s harder to accept than a pinkie finger would be, or even a whole arm. His face is him, and Jian acts like tearing it off means nothing.
He heard from someone who heard from someone that the old Smythson Cerebral place has a working rejuvpod, so that’s why we’re sneaking into an abandoned biodroid repository at two in the morning. He’s hoping he’ll get double-lucky and find a compatible stem-skin.
Jian scans the darkened landscape, probably seeking a sturdy-enough tree I could hide in, except there’s nothing but wizened trunks and naked branches.
He’s also checking for bandits. One little apocalypse and they breed like rabbits.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Science Fiction
1929
Alexander was running through the snow. The rifle, and the pack of squirrel-skins pounded against his back with every step. Realization seeped into him as he ran: he had shot a Metallic. Its shiny armor hadn’t protected it. After all these years of living in fear, it had been that easy to take one down: one shot, straight into its mid-section, and the hovering thing had cracked apart and fallen to the ground.
He’d peered inside the broken remains and seen nothing but metal and wires. Nothing living hid inside. Ajax dead beside it, a mess of black and grey fur and curled tail in the snow. So much blood. The torn ear, where the neighbor’s dog had ripped into him as a pup had been the only recognizable part of his head. Best damn squirrel-dog anyone had ever had. Best damn dog anyone had ever had. And that Metallic had fired like it meant nothing.
Alexander’s heart raced as he ran. Was this what rebellion and resistance tasted like: tears and bloodied iron on your tongue, the sting of gunpowder in your nostrils?
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Fantasy, Rural Fantasy, Weird Western, Western
No one could say for sure exactly when the dinosaurs started appearing outside the little mining town of Hell Creek, nor where they’d come from. Rumors of cattle found dead with long slashes across their hides went back to the 1850s, but the raptors had been showing up more often in the last few decades, even coming into town when food got scarce.
People said they came from under the ground, down from the depths of Hell itself, and that the miners’ dynamite woke ’em up. Rosita’s abuela said they were descended from some kind of feathered lizard god.
Rosita didn’t particularly care about any of that. She just wanted to ride one.
Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
When the car was just a distant cloud of dust above the corn fields I turned to Smoke and told him, “You ought to know I shot someone.”
“We all do things we regret,” he said, without looking up from the circle he was drawing in the dirt. His radio sat in the middle of the circle, tuned to nothing, just a hiss of static. It was made of something he called Bakelite, which I guess is a fancy kind of old plastic. It was brown like it was supposed to look like wood.
“I didn’t say I regret it,” I said.
Genres: Horror, Horror Fantasy
“Brom Bones too, who shortly after his rival’s disappearance conducted the blooming Katrina to the altar, was observed to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin, which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell.”
– The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,
by Washington Irving
With everything that happened, I don’t know that I would describe myself as blooming. Willing, I suppose, and certainly compliant. But a flower doesn’t need to bloom to be plucked.
After all, pretty is as pretty does, my father used to say. He didn’t say much else and I’m not sure if he meant it as a compliment or an insult. I’ve never really understood the phrase anyway. Are we predisposed to act in certain ways? If so, it would be a relief. My actions turned midnight-moon-macabre some time ago and I’d hate to think it’s all my own failing of character.
Genres: Modern Sci-Fi, Science Fiction
The day Michael came back to school, I was still wearing long sleeves.
Not because of the bruises. That’s what everyone thought, but the truth was, the bruises had faded weeks before. I didn’t know why I was wearing them myself, until Michael slunk through the front doors, and everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at him.
Genres: Urban Fantasy
GEORGE, JC—THE RUNAWAY PRINCE—J FIC GEO 1994
You’d think it would make us happy when a kid checks out the same book a zillion times in a row, but actually it just keeps us up at night.
The Runaway Prince is one of those low-budget young adult fantasies from the mid-nineties, before J.K. Rowling arrived to tell everyone that magic was cool, printed on brittle yellow paper. It’s about a lonely boy who runs away and discovers a Magical Portal into another world where he has Medieval Adventures, but honestly there are so many typos most people give up before he even finds the portal.
Not this kid, though. He pulled it off the shelf and sat cross-legged in the juvenile fiction section with his grimy red backpack clutched to his chest. He didn’t move for hours. Other patrons were forced to double-back in the aisle, shooting suspicious, you-don’t-belong-here looks behind them as if wondering what a skinny black teenager was really up to while pretending to read a fantasy book. He ignored them.
The books above him rustled and quivered; that kind of attention flatters them.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Modern Sci-Fi, Science Fiction
The school library doesn’t have the book you want. No surprise there. There are a few dozen volumes on its shelves; plenty of other books are out there in the cloud, but the part of the cloud with your book is partitioned off too. It’s in the Premium Access tier and a Title X school in Ass-Nowhere, Wisconsin is not exactly Premium Access quality. The librarian apologizes for that, but apologies don’t put the words in your hands.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Fantasy, Modern Fantasy
It was during the particularly frozen-solid Prince George winter of ’91, a few days after the new neighbours had arrived, that I first stumbled into the Penelope Qingdom.
“What are their names?” I asked my moms as they bustled about the kitchen getting ready. They’d invited themselves next door for a “Welcome to the Neighbourhood” dinner. We’d never had new neighbours before.
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Science Fiction
Buy the full-length novel from Amazon!
The Xenoid hadn’t tried to cover up evidence of its theft.
Her raft had been dragged out from behind the fungi bush and now lay on the white sand beach. Many of its locker doors hung open, their contents spilled on the floor. There was a gouged-out space on the control console where the computer had been.
It’d probably planned to use the raft after eliminating her, Cy guessed confidently. But, being a calculating creature, it had to secure the computer’s memory module when it had the opportunity. It represented a prize too invaluable to risk to the chance of failure.
(Continue Reading…)
