We've published nearly 10 million words of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction. Help us write the next chapter.

Jempo took a deep bow on the iron platform. His body flopped forward, limbs like thick braided wire. No obvious weapons in his large and rubbery hands. Little digital eyes and a bright smile that lit ...

Asha is eight pages into the book before the words disappear. There are still hundreds of pages before the end of the book, so they must have had a record of the length of the volume, but lost the tex...

We've published nearly 10 million words of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction. Help us write the next chapter.

Ánar’s bootheels echoed on the iron floor. What a groundbreaking honor this ceremony was for a landless tenant like him—joining old house Veivilkas, of the wolf. Such an honor that it made him leaden ...

Asha is eight pages into the book before the words disappear. There are still hundreds of pages before the end of the book, so they must have had a record of the length of the volume, but lost the tex...

Sui grunted as she straightened her back, digging her shoulder up into Taxue’s belly. The Zheng’s hind legs dragged awkwardly on the sand, trembling as the paws knuckled, the sudden weight on Sui push...

They didn’t want either of us to live this long. Sucks for them—we’re good at living in spite. We’re good at surviving, at fighting, at never stopping. Today is the last day we exist in spite of Comma...

If every effort to bring down your child’s fever is unsuccessful and the doctors cannot diagnose anything wrong with her, then you should seek other means to alleviate her health. Before you help her ...

In The Before Days, Tim was a fellow procurer of dreams. He made a good living frequenting rooftop parties amid aging tech bros in fur-clad vests where mangosteen juices were mixed and silent discos r...

You’re eighteen. Your fairy godmother just fired you, because after three balls, the prince has grown bored with you. Tonight you stepped on his foot during a gavotte. “If you’d been cleverer,” the fa...

I wasn’t even two blocks into the Tumbledown when the walker’s nav crystal started fuzzing out. She veered left like a scavver drunk on coolant, and I knew I was in trouble. I tried sweet-talking her ...

We live in politically combustible times, when social media posts ignite wars and half of the Western world’s populace seems determined to usher in an apocalypse if only to spite their perceived enemi...

There is a place that doesn’t exist. Or rather, the hotel exists only in the moments where existence itself hesitates: between one time zone and the next, between the breath then the decision, between...

“God” is not the word I’d use. But it is the only one that suffices. There are all kinds of gods: the old and the new; the useful, the useless; the capricious and the dependable; the wrathful and the ...

“What do you mean the nanobots formed a union??” I asked the lawyer, biting my thumbnail. It’s an old habit, kept up well after I got the “Pro Nano Blitz Package,” as the ad called it. A muscular man...

Lise’s personas have no warning when the XexlCo Construct appears at the gate of her memory garden, smiling cheerfully at each of her personas in turn like a neighborhood milkman making his daily roun...

We've published nearly 10 million words of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction. Help us write the next chapter.

Rachel sat at the edge of the sparkling pond in the secluded glen that had taken her five years to find. The air smelled of roses and lavender and pine. Tiny white sparks, like fireflies, floated upwa...

He called her Legs. “Legs for days,” he’d say, his voice thick with wonder. When he spoke to her, she was filled with a warm, heady feeling that made her purr and rub against him. She had to be carefu...

Gardens are pumping out the juiciest tomatoes, corn on the cob is at its peak, and every melon is bulging with sugar water. The days might be the hottest, but with fall on the horizon, the nights are ...

The magician raises his wand. Initially, this commission seemed simple. One large country invading a much smaller one, a clear case of aggressor and victim—but nothing is ever so straightforward.

Green Plumed Orbital Line A; viridis metamorphos A Common sighting; Flies along the forty-fifth latitude every 12 minutes Traveler’s addendum: Last functional line along a northern latitude; southern ...

Son He hates the birds. There are two, a breeding pair. Their eyes are red as devils’. On land they’re stupid, little feet pushed so far back on their bodies that they can’t escape by running. Yet the...

LOGIN CREATE ACCOUNT username: squirglover46 password: **************** for security reasons your password must contain minimum 1 number, 1 diacritic, 1 universal babelkey and at least 8 distinct phon...

Maria Haddid looked like she was screaming. I’ve heard singers say that’s all singing is deep down, but if you’ve seen enough screams you won’t often get them mixed up. The faithful gathered around ...

There’s a wolf where my brother used to be, a beast absolutely hellbent on ruining my life. He plunges his broad snoot into the Wednesday night spaghetti, and neither Mom nor Dad cares when half the b...

Bona Books share a hard-learned lesson: we accidentally bought AI-generated fiction. This deep dive into our experience with submission fraud covers the "red flags" we missed, the toll it took on our ...

You know you are fucked when you see fragments of the broken radio on the floor. Your damaged ship lay nose caked into the sand, and coupled with your sprained ankle that hums an excruciating pain, an...

Abuelita has been feeding me her memories. Yesterday, it was the time she trudged up the mountain carrying a basketful of offerings for Pachamama (flowers, incense, a llama sculpted out of animal fat ...

There once lived a boy who paid for a fortune. Nassim wore carob hair and eyes severe like cardamom. He spent his days scouring the souk for unique trinkets he liked to collect or counting the uneven ...

The creatures who shared your art with us had to explain many things to make it minimally comprehensible. This by itself made sense. You are who and what you are, and we are who and what we are, and t...

Look, it’s bad enough that my wife gets cat-called in the street and flashed on the train. There’s a lot of sickos out there who get their jollies by harassing women, and usually I try to shut them do...

We’ll skip ahead. Say eight minutes in, so I’m not wasting your time. You’re in your chair, strapped tight, taking around eight Gs. Like this, they wouldn’t even feel that bad, all the force coming fr...