SS#21 has been getting a lot of reads on Kindle Unlimited lately, which is great, but it’s another victim of my three-years-and-done contract. That contract seemed like a good idea at the time. Seems stupid now. I actually discovered that this one had hit end-of-contract-life by accident, as I was checking our backlist to see which books could be taken off KU and put into wider distribution. I had always intended to go back and re-release this one in both paperback and on Nook, Kobo, et al. Too late now.
So here’s the deal. For the last five days of this month, from Wednesday, October 27, to Sunday, October 31, SS#21 will be free to download onto your Kindle. But as of Monday, November 1, it goes out of print forever.
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STUPEFYING STORIES #21 includes:
“The Crippled Sucker,” by L. Joseph Shosty
It was a proper train, not a thingamajig, but an Old Earth kind of missile, done up in the best styles imported from the allied planets, and it rocketed down the rails at a time well past midnight, heading north toward the pole. In the dining car the tables had been pushed to the edges of the narrow room, save one, which was set up near the bar for easy access. The booze here was potent, not at all like what one would expect to find in the casinos and clubs back East. Here was the kind of stuff that could only be served in the company towns at the top of the world, where the men would work all day and expect the creature to bed them down at night so they might forget the ill luck of their profession.
Five gamblers and a robo-dealer sat at the table. Their credit sticks were fed into the dealer’s ports, and they could track their winnings at hourly intervals. The cards flew around the table, and shrewd eyes scowled over them…
“My Disrupted Pony,” by Jeff Racho
“J.J., you bought an Auto? Mom and Dad are going to be pissed!”
I turned around. My eyes adjusted to the sunlight pouring into the garage. I could see the I am sooo going to tell on you look in my sister’s eyes.
“They knew I was picking it up today,” I said. “And Dad authenticated the sale for me.”
Theresa walked into the garage. She eyed the vehicle parts on the concrete floor. “You’re making a mess!”
I wiped my hands on my jeans. Grease monkeys. When my granddad was alive he said that’s what they called guys who worked on cars. Back when guys used to work on cars with their oil, grease, and gasoline. Back when people drove cars instead of being carried by Autos.
“Dad said I could have the garage for the car. Why do you care? All your stuff is in the house.”
“What kind of Auto is it? It . . . it looks like one from those old movies you watch.”
I sighed. I told my sister what I was getting during dinner a week ago. I thought about describing the car to Theresa again: a 1967 Ford Mustang with a VIN that showed the car once had a three hundred and ninety cubic inch V-8 under its hood. I decided against it.
I also didn’t repeat the story about Jim Morrison’s blue ‘67 Shelby GT 500 Mustang and how his car had disappeared decades ago. Or tell her again about the ‘67 “Eleanor” Mustang with the black and silver paint job in Gone in 60 Seconds—a remake of an even older film. Or bring up the dark highland green Mustang from the Steve McQueen movie. That one was a ‘68, but one year didn’t matter. Not when these cars were almost all gone.
She never listened and obviously didn’t understand. Or care…
“Cog and Bone,” by M. Lynette Pedersen
There once was a great clockwork kingdom ruled by a fair and kind clockwork king. On this day, which began as an ordinary day, the king found himself in his throne room confronted with a most unusual scene. Slumped between two of the king’s royal guards was a machine unlike any the clockfolk had ever seen.
The machine was made of a soft, glowing material. It had no hard edges and there were fine, flowing fibers coming from its head. It was beautiful.
“What kind of machine are you?” the king asked, approaching it to inspect it carefully.
“Machine? Forgive me, Your Majesty, but I am no machine,” it peered into the king’s apertures, studying the sleek clockman as closely as he studied it.
“Not a machine? Then what kind of exquisite creature are you?”
“I am human, and I am clearly a very long way from home…”
“DEW Line,” by K. H. Vaughan
Campbell sat bathed in the flickering green light of FOX-4’s radar console, double-checked the transmission from Strategic Air Command against the gray vinyl codebook, and keyed the radio.
“Fullback, Fullback, this is Bobcat, this is Bobcat. Do not answer. Do not answer. Break. Break. Hammer Light Bravo. Time is 111102 Zulu. Authentication: Oscar Tango.” Campbell repeated the message, signed off, and alerted the next station. When FOX-5 re-broadcast the message moments later he breathed a sigh of relief. Somewhere in the thin frozen air above circled the Dirty Dozen: twelve B-52s loaded with hydrogen bombs, waiting for the Go code that would mean the Soviets had launched a nuclear first strike and they were to retaliate. If the planes went in and survived their run across the polar icecap to deliver their payloads, the crews had orders to fly on to Australia; their home airfields would already be radioactive ash.
Once every twenty-four hours, SAC radioed a message for the DEW Line sites to broadcast to any B-52s within range, telling them the war hadn’t started yet. The DEW line would give an extra hour’s warning: enough time to scramble more bombers. Maybe enough time to shoot down some of the incoming planes. It didn’t matter how many times Campbell received the message to broadcast the No-Go code; it always made him nervous when the order came in…
“Tendrils Beneath the Skin,” by Derrick Boden
“Will it hurt?”
The fleshy gray mass throbbed inside the tank. Tendrils branched off from both ventricles, their tiny pads clinging to the glass. A thin film of mucus glistened in the hospital’s overhead lighting.
Milas looked down at Ceder and smiled. Poor child. It had been the same for him on his Integration Day, all those years ago. Excitement. Fear. If only he could convey to his son the beauty of the symbiosis.
“You won’t feel a thing. The sedatives will take care of that.”
Ceder’s lip quivered. “Jino at school said he could feel them putting it into his body. He said it was cold and slimy.”
Milas raised an eyebrow. “That’s unlikely. He was unconscious, just like you’ll be. And your vine is a perfect fit. It nestles right in there where your appendix is now. Its tendrils twine up around your lungs and the base of your brain stem. There’s nothing cold about it.”
Ceder’s eyes glassed over in that way Milas’s students’ did, during his biology lectures. Ceder turned back to the displaced vine and pressed his nose against the glass. He looked like a little monk, draped in the white ceremonial robes of Integration Day, thick curls creeping out from beneath his hood. His mother would have been proud.
The pulsing creature drifted closer to Ceder’s face. Perhaps it was as anxious as Cedar. Milas smiled, and the back of his neck tingled. His hand found its way there. Thick waves rippled beneath the surface of his skin. Seena’s warmth coursed through his body, her pleasure a perfect reflection of his own.
“It’s time.” Doctor Ulia stood with a tablet tucked under his arm…
“The Phoenix of Christ Church,” by Rebecca Birch
Mary Sinclair’s pumps echoed on the flagstones of Christ Church Greyfriars, the swish-swish of her broom a steady rhythm. Dried bits of Advent greenery decorated her dust pile and the sanctuary smelled of cedar mixed with the stronger scent of fresh lemon wax. The candles burning at the altar and pulpit were hardly enough to see by, but although heavy blackout curtains veiled the arched windows, Mary didn’t dare risk the brighter light of the electrics. The Blitz air raids shook London with disturbing regularity. Darkness was safety.
Weariness bowed her shoulders and she longed for her narrow cot, but she knew Jesus was watching from his stained glass window over the altar, and this work was her penance.
It had been two years since Reverend Hale had found her huddled on the front steps, cold and shivering in the bleakly gray December of London, 1938. He hadn’t asked questions, which was just as well. Mary had no answers to give. Her last memories were of collapsing into a fitful slumber in 2012, beside the smoldering remains of the blood-stained rug where she’d found her brother, the contents of his skull painting her bedroom in a Pollock-painting spray…
“Lenses,” by Eric Dontigney
Andrew Billings was a normal man. He lived a normal life composed of appointments, grocery shopping, mowing his lawn, and the thousand sundry tasks that normal people occupy themselves with every day. He worked a normal job as a tax preparer, and on nights and weekends he amused himself with a normal hobby: he took pictures. They were not exceptional pictures, nor were they abysmal pictures. They were normal pictures in which the focus was never quite right and the frame filled with mundane objects that were unlikely to draw comment from anyone who happened to see them. Andrew was aware of all of these things and unperturbed by them.
He never expected to live an extraordinary life and took great comfort in the knowledge that his modest talents supported his modest aspirations. He lived alone and, although he sometimes thought about marriage, he found women perplexing. When his friends set him up on blind dates, he went and did his best to be charming. He was occasionally rewarded with a second date, but never a third. Once, he imagined himself walking up to a woman to ask for a date, but even in his own imagination, he stumbled over the question. So he lived alone, took pictures, and was, if not content, willing to accept his life as sufficient.
And so it was that on the day before his fortieth birthday, Andrew went to a park to take pictures…
“The Search for Josephine,” by James Mapes
The photo is of my beloved Jo, standing in her wedding dress in the garden outside our house. It is a black-and-white photo, and I am inside of it.
Josephine is posed like a statue, three-dimensional and solid. The trees and flowers around her are just so slightly out of focus. The entire scene hangs in a featureless void of gray fog; only that which was captured by the original photo can be turned into still-life by my wondrous reverse camera.
I sit before her, studying the gentle lines and youth of her face. My own feels so wrinkled, next to hers...
My head begins to hurt. I’m not supposed to be here long.
But seeing her again, so much like reality, lulls me into a trance. Just another minute.
The veins in my head pound as my eyes trace her otherworldly beauty. I know I should go, I know I should.
Still, my questions remain:
Who was Josephine, really?
And could she still be alive somewhere, out in the wide, strange world?
“Wayfaring Stranger,” by Peter Wood
Orson wiped perspiration off his brow. Even after five years on this alien world he had not yet acclimated to North Carolina’s weather. Earth had many more hospitable climes, better suited to his people, but the planet’s governments had not seen fit to settle any of them there.
He rested beneath an oak tree, temporary refuge from the harsh alien sun. He took a long drink of water and sprinkled the remains of the bottle on the struggling stalk of the Shara plant. He had hopes the plant from his home world might yet bloom.
Orson held his breath, depriving himself of oxygen and nitrogen, separating himself from the Giver of All Things. The ritual had helped him survive a year on the cramped star ship. His wife had not thanked the Giver since the aliens relocated the five hundred refugees to North Carolina.
At least she agreed they should teach the boys their traditions.
When his lungs ached he breathed in deep primal gulps.
He turned his gaze from the sky and spotted Bill, the Department of Agriculture Agent. Orson’s ridged hairless head reflected in the Agent’s mirrored sunglasses.
“Morning,” Bill said.
“Good morning.”
“How’s Flora?” Bill asked. “Your wife doesn’t come outside much, does she?”
Orson still had trouble thinking of Flora as his mate. He was forced to abandon his first wife on the home world when the Masters abruptly crammed five hundred on a ship meant for one hundred and jettisoned its protesting occupants into deep space. Flora seldom helped him work the fields. This was the root of many arguments…
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All in all, a nice mix of stories. One really superb future crime story, one story of a car-obsessed teen trying to restore an ancient relic, one clanking hunk of steampunk, the cover story—of which I can safely say, if you liked “Who Goes There?” or any of its movie adaptations, you will love this one—a really superb and disturbing story of alien symbiosis, a profoundly moving story of time travel and redemption, the story that convinced me that Eric Dontigney was going to be a writer to watch, an otherworldly tale of loss and love beyond life, and to cap off the collection, a very serious story by Pete Wood that deserves to be more widely read and probably anthologized.
Get it this week, or wave goodbye.
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