Short Stories

Jeffrey just wants to have a good time, drinking and partying in the
human zone near the city of the low-tech, insectoid aliens native to the
planet Valoduria.

His dad disapproves his lifestyle, but the old man is willing to pay
for it. As long as Jeffrey transmits amateur xenology videos home every
week.

Jeffrey gets along fine with the Valodurians. Sure, they all look
alike to him, but humans all look the same to them, right?

Now, if only Jeffrey could tell what one particular Valodurian, with
unreadable eyes and sharp mouthparts, wants when it asks him to
“return blessing.”

First published in Analog!

As a girl, Portia Oakeshott dreamed of caring for the reconstructed dinosaurs roaming the preserve near the south pole of her home planet, New New South Wales.

As a new hire at the dino company, Portia’s first call sends her to an isolated farmhouse and across the perimeter into the preserve itself, in pursuit of a rogue carnivore, a female Cryolophosaurus. A cryla.

As a young girl, Portia Oakeshott dreamed of caring for the reconstructed dinosaurs roaming the preserve near the south pole of her home planet, New New South Wales.

Today, caring for dinosaurs means tending to a female Minmi—a minnie—mindlessly tending a clutch of eggs smashed and devoured by an unknown predator.

Back at base, caring for dinosaurs means identifying the predator. Before it wreaks more havoc on the fragile ecosystem of the preserve.

The company’s mission to deploy a new breed of Kunbarrasaur runs into religious fanatics protesting the restoration of extinct species.

Fanatics capable of sabotage.

Or worse.

As a volcanic eruption devastates the dinosaur preserve, company headquarters orders Portia to rescue two politicians playing tourist in the path of a lava flow.

She must decide on her own what to do for a Diluvicursor—a loovy—caught on the track of destruction.

Enter an alternate history, where in 1916, the guns of
the Great War fell silent.

Now, in the 1920s, a veteran of the trenches struggles to
build a lasting peace…

…while against him scheme the merchants of
death.

Another day at the office for Ursula. Until bad boy Ranger, her first boyfriend, called. He hadn’t talked to her in years.

Because he was dead.

He told an unbelievable story. About making things right. And a buried fortune at a place they both knew well.

A hoax. Obviously. Though who else ever called her bodacious?

Was that why she checked satellite images of the place, and shopped for a shovel and a metal detector?

And if she dug up a buried fortune, what then?

Hans returned from the Great War, haunted. Not only by the horrors of the trenches, but haunted by visions of a more terrifying war to come. Would the parties and parades of Carnival 1919 offer him love and hope? Or doom him and his country to the devastation he foresaw?

No lakes, no forests, no pygmy triceratops and stegosaurs roaming the countryside. No, honest, niña, I wouldn’t lie to you. Back at the turn of the century, Big Bend was the dustiest corner of Texas. How did it change? Well...

Characters from American, Mexican, and Native folklore meet in this whimsical short story.

Captain Khavanov's orders: occupy an old fortress on the road to Sibiu, to secure the Red Army's supply line. In the fortress lived a frail old man. What about him drew the interest of a commissar from division headquarters? And why did Khavanov's men disappear one by one?

A Writers of the Future semi-finalist

A multi-millionaire heiress commits suicide after a biotech company implants an experimental treatment device in her brain. Her grieving, lawyer husband sued the company for millions more.

In comes a private investigator, ex-cop Albert Jimenez. Hired by the biotech company to dig up dirt on the "grieving" husband. He expected the usual: greed, a mistress, emotional manipulation, a marriage on the rocks.

Instead he found something far more sinister. Questions of brain chemicals and free will. Questions of what it means to be human.

Three young men. One telekinetic power. How far will they push their luck?

Amer earned a very lucrative living by protecting large corporations from terrorist attacks... and investing wisely, through short sales and put options, on companies that failed to heed his offered "protection."

But Amer's success brought challenges...

One bitterly cold Iowa night, an assailant slits the throats of twenty genetically modified pigs. Pressured by a giant biotechnology company and the county's power brokers, Deputy Matt Schaffer must untangle a web of clues to find the assailant--and bring justice to a desperate small town.

President Archer faced an imminent war in the Middle East.

The audio-visual recording crew following his every public move limited how he could resolve the crisis.

Or did they?

A captain, a commissar, and the ultimate crisis at 0.99c:

If your propulsion system goes off-line, how can you slow down?

A billion-year-old alien ship. A great treasure. A great danger.

With a last surge of the main drive, Barnet matched our bearing and speed with the alien derelict.

Twisted lines of tubing and conduit curled around the hull. After a billion years, micrometeor collisions had sandblasted the ship to a dull finish.

But behind that battered surface might lurk exotic materials beyond the manufacturing capability of any human world. Magnetic monopoles, dyons, condensed matter. Even a tiny amount delivered to Earth or a major world could set up a crew for life.

Powercrosse.

A zero-gee sport mixing the best of hockey and lacrosse.

Skill moves.

Big hits.

All while managing your team’s limited supply of jet pack air.

Her only chance to escape her home asteroid colony and choose a life for herself.

In its off-line data vault in Vienna, the biotech company Katalysis hid a gene therapy technology that could cure diseases and remake people into strange new forms. Could two young American hackers, and a jaded European agent, work together to penetrate the company's vault and release that new tech...

After the EU's army of war robots overran Mexico, Francisca and her daughter gathered refugees from the ruins and fled to a new home in the asteroid belt.

But the rogues and pirates roving the belt threatened her colony, poised to plunder the vein of nearly-pure blond—rubia—platinum in their asteroid's core.

Now help comes. Help Francisca loathes to ask. A renegade European and his war robot.

The war robot that might have killed her son.

Ashley clawed her way from her small, poor home town to the high-tech city, and vowed never to go back.

Big data from pervasive biosensors and the internet of things, stored in an unforgeable blockchain, enforced by algorithms instead of the whims of judges and juries, made Eric a multimillionaire.

Marry him, and Ashley's set for life. Even if he leaves her.

Unless his software detects she breaches the marital contract.

His position as a secret agent for the Ramuhlruus, Earth's alien overlords, gives him the perfect cover to conspire against them. But can he meet his contact before the Ramuhlruus uncover his secret agenda?

A billion people from the developing world wanted to work in the United States. As a lucky holder of a daypass, Chalo had the opportunity to teleport to his job, unless he overstayed his shift. Or lost his daypass.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it increases your chances… until his patron gives Zachary a harsh choice. Compromise his artistic vision, or lose funding.

Everyone remembers President Fletcher's assassination. Most remember his murderer, one of millions of underemployed young men in a world run by the unaging, took First Lady Miranda Fletcher's college course on violent regime change...

After Marcus joined the Coronado's crew, the ship set off on a mission promising huge profits: harvesting helium from the sun to deliver to the Venus terraforming project. But the promise of profit existed because Venus' enemies, forces from the moons of Jupiter, hunted and destroyed helium haulers ...

Americans under the thumb of interplanetary Russians. Can they strike a blow for solar system freedom?

Entering the last game of the season, Cooper could be the first player since Ted Williams a century ago to bat .400 -- thanks to secret biotechnology giving him superior vision.

When a young scientist turns her new invention, the chronoscope, to 1st century Palestine, she finds the result she least expected--Jesus of Nazareth's empty tomb.

In an artificial world whose inhabitants used advanced neurotechnology to implant skills and habits in playing status games, Pavel trumped all his friends by making himself believe in Christianity. But whether true or false, his newly implanted skills and habits wielded a power over Pavel...

With advanced biomedicine banned in the United States, rich and powerful Americans travel to India to extend their lifespans and augment their bodies and minds.So too do Americans who want wealth and power. Middle-class, middle-aged Americans like Liam Kleinschmidt and his wife...

At the start of the basketball season, Coach Huffman expected the usual from his St. Louis Spiders—bickering stars and missed playoffs. The team's new owner, a pharmaceutical tycoon, planned to turn things around by giving new meaning to "team chemistry."

The ultimate flying disc team from the human settlement journeyed to the alien planet’s lowlands with one mission: win a game against the aliens or go “home”—to an Earth the young team had never seen.

Fakes. Johan's newly purchased antique Barcelona chairs came fresh from an asteroid factory, not from the prior century on distant Earth. Facing his wife's anger, risking their friends' scorn, could he use an interplanetary crisis to turn the tables—and chairs?

A secret clinic, engaged in illicit cloning experiments for the benefit of a global elite. Yet even more disturbing was his encounter with the clinic's proprietress....

Chance encounters on the beach echo across decades of dictatorship and revolution in this alternate history short story.