Science Fiction
Simulacrum
[A] photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask. —Susan Sontag
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Fiction
Science Fiction
The Passenger
At last, one gave him a purpose to match the unknown one sending the aliens sliding past his prison day in, day out. It was a child’s box of markers.
Science Fiction
Long Enough and Just So Long
He talked about rain, about slow gray clouds and tearing nor’easters. Rain drumming on a tin roof versus its sound on slate. Fine spring mist and the hot rain that fell during drought, coin-sized and evaporating too quickly.
Science Fiction
The Elephants of Poznan
Into this square came the elephants, a group of males, making their way in what seemed a relentless silence, except that a trembling of the windows told us that they were speaking to each other in infrasound.
Science Fiction
Black Fire
So while I watch, all this fire-thing just storms into and through the trees and down and it hits the ground, and I think something’s crazy then, because there should be a God-awful great bang, yeah?
Science Fiction
Cucumber Gravy
Being legal would be nothing but a pain in the ass, even if I didn’t have to worry about keeping people from finding out about the space cucumbers.
Science Fiction
Postings from an Amorous Tomorrow
As of this second there are 3,236,728,909 people over the age of four living in the world, all of whom I am intimately familiar with. Of these, there are 876,852,003 that I love, and one that I am currently in love with.
Science Fiction
The Silence of the Asonu
The silence of the Asonu is proverbial. We know now that the Asonu are not dumb, but that once past early childhood they speak only very rarely, to anyone, under any circumstances.
Science Fiction
Jenny’s Sick
She’s sitting bolt upright, propped by pillows, and there’s so much sweat everywhere that it’s like condensation in a steam room. I’ve seen her look bad before but never quite this bad.
Science Fiction
The Observer
I kept ripping and gouging and pulling and yanking until my fingertips were bone. By then, I hit the circuits inside the door and fried myself. And woke up here, strapped down against a cold metal bed with no bedclothes.
