In “The Virtual Swallows of Hog Island,” a programmer finds himself working for the self-proclaimed “Bad-Boy of Virtual-Reality Therapy.” While his boss is breaking new ground and breaking the rules and his coworkers are engaging in questionable uses of the latest technology, the lonely programmer is in a state of mourning over his deep personal […]
In 2010 “The Moment” was nominated for the Hugo Award in the Best Short Story category. Over the course of millions of years, a wide range of alien intelligences visit the mark of a footprint on the moon, ponder its significance, getting it wrong until the very end. (Blurb from Goodreads This is one of […]
Read the short story online at Lackington’s and then the discussion on metafilter. Mai is a colonist on Shanti, entranced with this alien world and its permanent spring. Although it took ten years to travel to the planet from Earth, to her it feels like only a few weeks. And now she has so many […]
via LadyBusiness where I seem to be getting all my short story recs recently Tesla is in love with a robot. Tesla would also like to be a robot. This is problematical as that technology is still at least 20 years away, if it is possible at all, also, Tesla’s father can’t even cope with […]
Available to read online at Tor.com via Bookgazing on LadyBusiness In The Odyssey Penelope is the wife of Odysseus. While he is lost on his journey she remains at home on their island kingdom, pursued by many suitors who wish to marry her, Odysseus is presumed dead, and her husband will be king. She does […]
Published – Strange Horizons, Sept 2012. Available to read online here. In 1943 ornithologist Barbara Kenney comes to observe the plovers. It is her third visit to the same area, some of the natives recognise her as that odd woman who looks at strange birds. They usually leave her to herself. She follows the Grinnell […]
Read online at Strange Horizons Our unnamed narrator is a teenage girl, working in a restaurant after her mother left, trying to get her father to understand that she isn’t interested in college. All she cares about is getting to a land-locked state, whether or not she should kiss Mona, and the fact that she […]
I’m terrible at reading magazines I have discovered. I have a subscription to Apex and I don’t think I’ve read more than one or two stories over the past year. But when Ursula Vernon has a story, well, I gotta read that. And you can too, because it is available free to read online. Jackalope […]
One of my RIP reads Short story published in Apex Magazine Issue 41 Zombies are everywhere lately. This short story does something a little different with the idea though, it tells the story from the point of view of the Zombie. This isn’t totally original, I recently read the beginning of Hugh C. Howey’s work […]
Read free online at Lightspeed. On a battlefield a young girl is scavenging among the bodies. She and the other camp women are looking for anything of value. Any soldiers still breathing will not be by the time they are through with them. Ada can remember a time when she didn’t live like this. When […]