“Answers Beyond Garden and Sky” • by Jenna Hanchey

How shall we answer the princess’s question? A thousand butterflies launch in our chest as we hear it, taking flight at her curiosity, gently lifting. But soon, the fluttering spreads too far, pushing against the confines of our flesh. The pressure of a thousand wings, slightly off-kilter from one another, frantically beating, verging on hysterical. It is difficult to breathe. We...

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“Patient Diplomacy” • by Rick Danforth

 Ben came to interspecies diplomacy by virtue of his skillsets. He had the complex emotional needs of a houseplant and moved less than the average gargoyle. Which meant he was the perfect candidate to sit quietly and meet the new species on the block for inter-species biological compatibility. Their official term was Species-X42, but already they had been nicknamed Krakens....

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“Floating Toward the Sun” • by Jason P. Burnham

 I feel the pressure drop of multiverse connection, but I don’t turn to greet the traveler; I already know who it is—me. “Where are we, Paul?” asks my doppelgänger. “Isn’t the sun beautiful?” I say, tearing my gaze away from the picture of Paz, the wife I had to leave behind without telling her I was never coming back, lest she try and stop me. I stare at the ship’s sun-shaded...

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“War in Reverse” • by Rhys Hughes

  The planet known as Epsilon Eridani Five is an extreme example of an economy that fails to adequately service the infatuations of its inhabitants, and among the spacefarers of that sector of the galaxy it is famous for this reason alone. But at the same time, it provides us with an interesting lesson in how a simple solution can sometimes solve a complex problem. I...

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“Of Myths, Legends, and Parenthood” • by Carol Scheina

  The Bunyan children all talked about breaking out of the realm of myth and fables, but then Joel Bunyan went and did it. “M-o-o-o-m!” Mabel called. Of the five, she was always the first child to tattle. “Joel’s gone through the barrier!” “Oh, for the love of pancakes!” Lucette Bunyan’s shout shook the walls as she walked out the kitchen door. “Just because your father...

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“Salt is Life, Sand is Eternal” • by Kai Delmas

I never wanted this day to come but as you said, “nothing lasts forever, except for sand.” I remember your wrinkled fingers trailing my rough jaw. You explained how sand is the oldest and strongest material in the world. It has weathered millennia and will weather whatever is thrown in its path. Sand is eternal. I smiled and wished you had thought about that before you...

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The Pete Wood Challenge • “Desert”

The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month (or so) Pete Wood spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted, usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries, determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the...

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“Invasion of the Family Snatchers” • by Jonathan Worlde

Jason was beginning to suspect his family had been replaced by aliens. He was working on a project in Baltimore when a giant starburst lit up the eastern night sky, rattling homes like an earthquake, breaking windows and cracking sidewalks, baffling eyewitnesses and scientists alike. When Jason returned home a week later he immediately began noticing something was out of...

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Six Questions for… Fred Coppersmith

 Fred Coppersmith’s fiction has appeared occasionally in places like Bourbon Penn, Etherea Magazine, and previously in Stupefying Stories, among others. He lives and writes in New York, where he also edits and publishes the quarterly online SFF magazine Kaleidotrope. You can find him online, if you're so inclined, at unreality.net.Watch for Fred’s next story, “If We Shadows,”...

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“To Be Sung to the Tune of Silence” • by Mark Vandersluis

We got lucky. We heard the aliens’ signals pretty much as soon as they had started their first broadcasts. They came from a world around 100 light years away, a world which circled a star very similar to our own. It was clear this was not a deliberate attempt to communicate directly with us, but simply their local transmissions leaking out into space. As we listened over...

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Six Questions for… Karin Terebessy

[Editor’s note: “Six Questions for…” is a new feature we’re going to be giving a test run for the next few weeks. The idea is to go beyond the usual tiny author’s bio and give readers a better sense of who our authors are. If you think of a question you’d like us to ask, feel free to put it in the comments. We can’t guarantee the author will answer, but we’ll put it on the...

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“Robin’s Egg” • by Karin Terebessy

The headline at the top of the newsfeed quoted Emily Dickinson: “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.” Seven eyewitnesses claimed to have seen two mourning doves swoop down over the playscape in Recreation Park in upstate New York, land on the wood chips with a plaintive coo, then take to the sky. Just the day before, a farmer in the Midwest found a squiggle of bird poo on the...

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