From across the darkened rooftop of the long-abandoned engine plant, Geli heard the unmistakable whirring of drone blades. Shit, she thought. Not here, too. She looked up from her work weeding the…

I used to like birdwatching, especially hummingbirds, until the feeder on my apartment balcony started getting one-star reviews on CHURP. “Those birds are so wrong!” I declared one Friday night…

I am a hundred and seventy-nine years old when I commit my first betrayal. It is a small one, relevant only to the blue-flecked lizards on Alda Safiya’s southernmost desert landmass.

We found the pigeon and its robot companion on Planet 44. Picture-perfect, this planet, large enough for our directors to build schools of nepotistic grandeur, their tiny…

Escape Pod is open to submissions of science fiction short stories from September 1 - May 31.

LAcon V, the 84th World Science Fiction Convention

When Cassie Levine was nine years old, her family lived in the center of Boston, Lyndon B. Johnson was President, and Cassie learned that her mother was a criminal. The two of them sat in a parked car...

When our ship made landing after three centuries in space, we were ready for the inhospitable lands, the harsh nights, and the hard labor of terraforming a new planet. Aboard a generation ship…

Continued from Part 1) I glance back at Risa to find her backing away from the damaged support, wiping her fingers on her worksuit. She looks at me, blinking. “What do you mean, ‘water’?

It’s no secret that the surfies think we’re crazy. It’s no surprise either, when you think how thin the air is up there. With all the light and noise and space, I doubt a person could think two…

At five a.m., Joy got a call from the truck stop off the freeway east of the city. Wasn’t the first time. “Did it get dumped? Did it get loose from a truck?” Joy asked. “I don’t know…

The Kingdom Coffee Missionary Handbook tells Paulo that he should always put his guns away during a door approach. He’s heard this hundreds of times before, but the Handbook speaks with a voice of…

If you walk far enough along the old Keio line rail tracks to the west of the crumbling city, you eventually reach a steep hillside covered in blue and purple flowers, host to a beautiful wreck of a…

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It was Emmett’s first tournament, so his dad had to pay for an American Gata Association membership in addition to the entry fee. At the registration table, Emmett was given a lanyard printed with his...

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It starts with an accident. A dreary day, the road slick with rain. Emily’s letting the car’s auto-drive do the work because she’s brain-fried and exhausted, eyes glazed over from the weekday grind.

The pirate bot was easy to miss. Squatting against a wall on the periphery of the Saint-Denis Heritage Market, it looked like an ordinary if outmoded HomeBot—a Gen One, the skinny bipedal kind that…

Democracy isn’t a new concept, but its parts and parameters have shifted across the centuries. Cultural changes and technological advancements have impacted how it is perceived and how it functions.