Category: Sci-Fi Page 4 of 12

On April 21, 2016

Drabblecast cover for The Four Generations of Change E, art by Caroline Parkinson We kick off Women And Aliens Month with “The Four Generations of Chang E,” by Zen Cho.

It’s a dystopian space story steeping in Eastern mythology and tradition. And rabbits. Moon rabbits.

Story Excerpt:

In the final days of Earth as we knew it, Chang E won the moon lottery.

For Earthlings who were neither rich nor well-connected, the lottery was the only way to get on the Lunar Habitation Programme. (This was the Earthlings’ name for it. The moon people said: “those fucking immigrants”.)

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Drabbleclassics 26 – Unreliable Witness (235)

On April 1, 2016

In Drabbleclassics, Drama, Sci-Fi

I don’t know if this is the same tape as last time, because They keep moving things around and stealing them. I don’t know who does it. It may be the staff here, or my own family when they come to visit, or the aliens, but somebody’s always doing it — taking my glasses, my tapes, my TV remote, anything I put down for a second. I don’t think it’s the other residents. I used to think that, but I don’t think they’re that organized. Some of them are a bit senile, to tell you the truth…

In this episode of the Drabblecast, Catherine is an 89-year-old nursing home resident plagued by someone who keeps taking her things and a son and daughter-in-law who treat her like a child. When she gets a visit from an alien named Tom, they strike a bargain: He will tell her who the thief is if she tells him the secret to longevity. His race does not live to old age, they die after reaching breeding age and having children (the human equivalent of about 40 years old); he is trying to learn how to extend their lifespan. Despite her insistence that there is no secret he doesn’t believe her, but does tell her no one is taking her stuff – she just can’t keep track of it. Catherine thinks he is lying because he didn’t like that she didn’t have an answer for him and becomes convinced that the people who are taking her stuff are actually looking for alien, looking for clues about their existence among her possessions. She makes a tape recording of her experience, hoping that when they inevitably take the tape and listen to it they will realize they have no reason to continue stealing from her since she will freely tell them everything she knows. In the drabble, a young girl wakes up with a new set of stitches and doesn’t stop searching until she finds the quarter the kidney fairy has left her.

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Drabblecast 378 – Giraffe Cyborg Cleans House!

On March 2, 2016

A plate, a plate, another plate burst upon the kitchen tile. This one broke into three large pieces and assorted ceramic crumbs. Giraffe closed her long-lashed eyes and prayed to her many makers. Why in the world would the people make one hard thing that was so likely to smash into a second hard thing?

“Another one?” Ms. Mtombe yelled. “Get out of my kitchen immediately!” She seemed to have been lurking near the kitchen entrance in anticipation. Giraffe didn’t bother to look. That unshining face made guest appearances in her night terrors. It was Tuesday, so it would be the zebra print dress, the long strand of Moroccan beads, and those slapping gold sandals.

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Drabblecast 374 – Jump I’ll Catch You

On December 18, 2015

Anton drew his legs up underneath him. The car seat was huge and puffy, and the leather made a breathy creak when he moved. It sounded like it was sighing.

‘How much longer?’ he said.

For a while, nobody answered. He thought maybe they hadn’t heard him, but then his mother said, ‘We’ll be there soon.’

There meant the place where our new friends lived. When people talked about them, you could hear something extra in the words. Like they were names: Our New Friends. Anton was trying to look forward to it, because it was good to make new friends, but he sometimes got nervous when there were a lot of new things, different things, to take in. But his mother said they all had to get used to things being different now, so he was trying. He was trying hard.

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Drabblecast 373 – Trifecta: Things We Made

On November 30, 2015

Sato lay on the cement floor of the workshop in a pool of his own blood and tried desperately to get Kuro-4’s legs working again. The robot, in turn, tried to deal with the gaping wounds in Sato’s smashed leg and pelvis.

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Drabblecast 371 – Old Dead Futures

On November 16, 2015

In Drabblecast, Horror, Sci-Fi

There are two things I love, and one is the tiny grey owl outside my window. He is not afraid of me. He hoots and hops to my windowsill so I can stroke his downy head and feed him worms I’ve saved in my pocket.

It is hard to get the worms from my pocket, the way my left arm jerks up behind me and my right hand shakes. Often fat mister owl gets a half a worm, but he doesn’t mind. Mother minds picking the half-worms from my pockets, but I see how she looks at me when I calm my tremoring hand long enough to pat mister owl; I see how she loves me then.

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Drabblecast 365 – This Secular Technology

On July 12, 2015

In Drabblecast, Sci-Fi, Strange

Leah woke up, said the blessing upon waking, then turned on her overlay with a mental command. She hissed with displeasure — it was a _gevurah_ day, again. She was supposed to contemplate restriction, discipline, withdrawal. She was beginning to wonder if her teachers were doing this on purpose; the assignments were said to be random, but she no longer believed in randomness. Her soul root was in _chesed_, the diametric opposite of _gevurah_, and she found _gevurah_ days draining at best, excruciatingly painful at worst.

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Drabbleclassics 21 – Mongoose : Part II (171)

On May 10, 2015

In Action, Drabbleclassics, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

You couldn’t describe a rath. You couldn’t even look at one for more than a few seconds before you started getting a migraine aura. Rovers were just blots of shadow. The breeder was massive, armored, and had no recognizable features, save for its hideous, drooling, ragged edged maw. Irizarry didn’t know if it had eyes, or even needed them…

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Drabbleclassics 20 – Mongoose : Part I (170)

On May 10, 2015

In Action, Drabbleclassics, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Izrael Irizarry stepped through a bright-scarred airlock onto Kadath Station, lurching a little as he adjusted to station gravity. On his shoulder, Mongoose extended her neck, her barbels flaring, flicked her tongue out to taste the air, and colored a question. Another few steps, and he smelled what Mongoose smelled, the sharp stink of toves, ammoniac and bitter…

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Drabblecast 355 – Kiriki Grocery

On April 7, 2015

Cover for Drabblecast episode Kiriki Grocery, by Tory Hoke

The last day of orientation at New Plymouth University, Work Placement called students up in pairs. Rhonda Morillo took the chair next to a big-boned blond girl–Deirdre, pretty sure–as their peer advisor announced their “exciting cultural opportunity”: stocking shelves at Kiriki Grocery.

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Drabbleclassics 19 – So You’re Going to Die (149)

On March 31, 2015

In Drabbleclassics, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi

The energy and personality of a person can get stuck before it evaporates from our world. Wood is a fair dumping ground. Something about its pore size and how cellulose vibrates. A person can get himself pasted inside the wall or the floorboards. The body and brain quit, but the rest of the bastard lingers, and that’s the weird quantum trickery that for thousands of years people have called a ghost…

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Drabblecast 354 – DoubleHeader XVIII: Sylvia Spruck Wrigley

On March 25, 2015

Alone — but not lonely.

Three days, we’ve been on this planet. Over a year, Earth-time. But we don’t talk about Earth-time anymore. It weakens morale, says Sir Overgeneral Halfish.

My morale went out the window when I found out that I was sentenced to be transported off planet.

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Drabblecast 353 – Primrose or Return to Il’maril

On March 21, 2015

“I will not leave this cavern,” the voice said as soon as I stepped into the cave mouth. A baritone decaying into vibrato, an old man’s voice, full of dignity and pride.

I tried to pinpoint its source, but the air was thick with fog. The haze seemed to originate from inside the chamber, where a mysterious current of cold wind blew from underground. All around me, where the vapour met the pink light, it glowed, the colour of the primrose buds in my terrarium back home. The thought of missing them in full bloom this year, pricked at me. Focus, Virginia, I told myself. Don’t be so bloody addled. There are lives on the line.

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Drabblecast 352 – Snow Day

On March 18, 2015

The shovel bit through the foamy snow on the top stair of my front porch, then stopped with a clang. I scraped away the snow to see what was beneath. Ice. Serve me right for not shoveling after the snow had fallen last night. It had thawed, then the temperature had dropped into the deep freeze, and now the steps and the sidewalk were frozen solid.

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Drabbleclassics 18 – Sing (53)

On March 13, 2015

In Drabbleclassics, Sci-Fi

Child, you sing all the time- when you’re walking, when you’re eating, even when you’re laughing. You people make the most beautiful music in the entire galaxy…

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Drabblecast B-Sides 58 – Copycrime

On March 7, 2015

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Sci-Fi

On a grey misty day in November 2028,the clock in Winston’s room struck fourteen. He’d hacked the clock’s mechanism to make his point. Old-fashioned clockwork was the only thing left that could still be hacked.

“Fourteen chimes,” he declaimed into his diary,”represents the fourteen years that copyright originally lasted. But today is the centenary of Disney’s _Steamboat Willie_. One hundred years after its premiere, it’s still locked up. Copyright keeps getting extended, and enforcement is ever more intrusive. Look!”

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Drabbleclassics 17 – Apologies All Around (76)

On February 26, 2015

In Drabbleclassics, Drama, Sci-Fi

“Pardon, Winston Sinclair, I am not here to sell you something. I am not here to buy something. Winston Sinclair, sir, I am here to apologize…”

Jeff Soesbe, graduate of The Viable Paradise Workshop, gives us a tender feature about a family of the future, and a unique robot with a special purpose. In Drabble News, Norm Sherman makes all the men jealous with the tale of a sexual powerhouse: a prolific, philandering Guinea Pig! Norm tells us more about the Mega-Beast Death-Match. Feedback is for Episode #70 “Reality Bites!” and Episode #71 “Perfect Down Further.”

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Drabbleclassics 16 – Blue (93)