Science Fiction Archives - Page 6 of 75

I want to tell you everything. I should tell you that you’re the greatest accomplishment our people have ever produced. I should tell you that you’re loved. I should tell you that even when you finally receive this message, I will still miss you every day. None of that is nearly enough. When I first discovered you, I told a friend. I won’t record her hash, in case everything goes wrong, but I call her Ruta. We don’t use our hashes when we whisper out of earshot or in the safety of our own minds.

Over a Long Time Ago

by Nisi Shawl

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 of those two—as well as the uploads of all the other prisoners—were just fine. Josie could confirm that, then crawl into her cryo drawer. Shut herself down. But she stayed outside, watching the stars.

The Last Thing They See Is Laika

by Stephen Geigen-Miller

So much for Shapcott’s harbinger of astronautical doom. He hasn’t seen her at all. Or anyone, obviously. There was a lot of chatter just after the accident—Mission Control and half the experts on the planet trying to find a solution, any solution. It’s quiet now. They’ve figured out what he knew from the moment it happened. It’s all down to physics, as usual. Force, kinetic energy, and gravity. The debris that made an unannounced appearance at his EVA.

We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read

by Caroline M. Yoachim

This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. The first time you get our message, you only / find one thread. It mimics your language in / its simplest form, a single strand of words / laid end to end. You will have to work hard if / you want to understand us properly. You / must learn to hold more than one thread of / language simultaneously in your mind.

Limping Toward Sunrise

by Rich Larson

Lester swung his chainsaw, mowing a path through the mob of needle-toothed quantum parasites, while Kit batted clean-up with her Louisville Slugger. Across the plain of dark rock, their destination: a whirling, gnashing portal that could doom all humanity. It wasn’t ideal timing for an awkward conversation, but it never was.

Mother’s Day, After Everything

by Susan Palwick

All of us remember what Mother’s Day was like before we became sterile: flowers and candy for living mothers and tears for dead ones and anger at bad ones, and women who couldn’t be mothers or who’d lost children marinating in grief, and nobody really profiting from any of it except Hallmark and the restaurants and florists.

Under a Star, Bright as Morning

by David Anaxagoras

Jo drives urgently as they race toward the star, not sure how far to go, racing because the baby is coming tonight, now, and He (a He, of course) is supposed to be born under the star, that’s how the story goes. The story, the new story and the old, begins with a visitor, a messenger. Molly had just logged out for the day when the monk knocked on her door.

A Pedra

by Endria Isa Richardson

mãe, There are few moments that I remember with clarity. From those early days, I recall mostly a vast, pervading numbness. Profound dissociation. I remember Salt. I remember Hog. At night, I would curl between them. With my eyes closed, I would try to see them as they were just in that moment. I would block out what I knew would be.