Two short, bittersweet scifi stories about people changing their journeys. “Personal Trainer” by Meg Elison has a new way to exercise and a new kind of hammock to relax in. “Wait Calculation” by Derrick Boden has political intrigue aboard a generation …
“I am here on business and my accountant’s a real wizard.”
Alexandra Erin (previously) posts short speculative fiction stories on her Patreon, including a one-sided conversation about dead people posting status updates on Facebook, a fairy tale about a healer’s price, a political horror story about scars that …
“they were persuaded by the immediacy of suffering”
“Byzantine Empathy” is a novelette by Ken Liu about virtual reality, moral reasoning, atrocities, institutional philanthropy, geopolitics, and two very determined women at odds with each other. Content note: violence, including harm to children.
“People like him love standard procedure”
Two short scifi/fantasy stories in which customer service folks get to reward customers who treat them well, or punish those who treat them badly. Dyce writes about an isolated refueling station: “Out-of-hours fuelling requires a prior appointment.” Ai…
Black Sci-Fi: Stories from the End of the World
A documentary on BBC Radio 4 presented by writer and abolitionist Walidah Imarisha on the power – and the rich history – of speculative, visionary fiction by black authors in the UK, USA and Africa, and how activism is a creative act of bringing new re…
retail, disability, zombies, etc.
A few short scifi/fantasy stories about dark situations that turn out surprisingly well. The day nearly everyone at Evil-Mart called in sick, and the sequel. One person who gets bitten by a zombie…. yet never turns. And some survivors of the robot ap…
The Last Flight of Dr. Ain
The Last Flight of Dr. Ain As the enclosed biographical note reads:James Tiptree, Jr., was the pseudonym of Alice B. Sheldon (1915-1987), who before turning to writing had been an artist, a newspaper art critic, a World War II photo-intelligence office…
“Something Disturbing To Raise Your Spirits”
Leftovers by JD Hancock (cc by)GenjiandProust’s Increasingly Strange Stories for an Increasingly Strange Year is another faboo roundup of weird audio dramas, again with tons of info and links to each one … And for yet more weird and wonderful, PussKi…
NPR’s 50 best SF and Fantasy books of the decade
Let’s find something new to read! NPR assembled a list of the best Science Fiction and Fantasy books of the last decade. See anything you like?
“We are all Martians”
Natalija Majsova (06/09/2020, Strelka Mag; also in a video lecture for the Canadian Centre for Architecture), “Soviet Sci-Fi Film and Different Modalities of Future Ecosystems”: “Irina Povolotskaia’s 1967 debut The Mysterious Wall [75 mins.] pioneered …