THE BALLAD OF THE SCAVENGER
By Roz Kaveney
The midwife shrieked and dropped her. Port wine stain
A stripe diagonal from temple past her cheek
Onto her neck. Her family then seek
Ways to remove it. Ways that cause her pain.
Caustics and knives. A priest who exorcises
Says it's the devil's mark, Satan's her Lord.
This costs leading her father to defraud
His clients. So he hangs at the assizes.
Her mothe...
2020-07-01 13:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostCHANGE FROM PREVIOUS ANNOUNCEMENT: After consulting with Patreon tech support, I've confirmed that Patreon doesn't allow charging specific tiers for content available only to that tier. So the original 100 stories will be reposted to the "This is Where I Came In" tier so everything you missed can be sent to email, but you won't be charged for them.
If you also want to send Cittadini Del Mondo extra financial support, 2020-06-28 18:13:48 +0000 UTC View Post
A hundred stories. I can hardly believe we really did it. When we started, we kept thinking we could stop at any time. We had no idea how long this was going to go on for. Two weeks. A month. Everything will be back to normal by the end of April, the end of May. Maya Chhabra had the idea right at the beginning, and we got everything set up the first weekend, so day 1 of the Decameron pretty much was day 1 of lockdown, of social isolation, of all this, whatever we are calling it. Most of us ar...
2020-06-24 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostNot an Extract From Or What You Will
By Jo Walton
Tish is painting a fresco in a back room of the Palazzo Vecchio, a room by the stables used for mending saddles and harness and storing out of season riding boots. It smells of leather and oil and horses, and, right now, of drying plaster and the grassy, earthy smell of tempera paints. It's a warm day in September, and the sun is shining through the window, illuminating the wall where Tish is working. The design is of O...
2020-06-23 13:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostTamara Vardomskaya is a short fiction writer who has been published at Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and GigaNotoSaurus. She is an alumna of the 2014 Clarion Writers' Workshop in San Diego. She has also written essays, poetry and miscellaneous fun tidbits for the fanzine Ecdysis, a finalist for the Prix Aurora Award for Best Fan Publication in 2015 and 2016. A Canadian, she received her Ph.D in linguistics at the University of Chicago, with a dissertation on subjective expressions, having...
2020-06-22 13:02:00 +0000 UTC View PostLetter To My Unborn Children
By Tamara Vardomskaya
When your Russian great-grandmother knew she would have your grandfather
in Moscow
in 1944
exhausted from sieges, bombings, massacres, death camps, from millions shot, starved, burning
She must have told her image of him, in order to keep going towards V-E Day months away, a day later than the rest of Europe because they wouldn’t believe in it,
“We’ll open a better world for you.
<... 2020-06-22 13:01:03 +0000 UTC View PostJohn Wiswell is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. His work has previously appeared in Nature Futures, Fireside Magazine, and Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction. He will always be grateful to comics for helping teach him to read.
Twitter: @Wiswell
Wet
by John Wiswell
You remember little girls in raincoats in the middle of Phoenix summers. This one was hyperventilating into the shiny yellow hood of her coat and flailing her arms as though trying to swim through the sweltering heat beneath the train platform. It was wretched and immediately recognizable as ghost behavior.
Ghosts have the knack for forgetting they don’t need to do things like hyperventilate, or file taxes, or piss themselves in fear, and if ...
2020-06-21 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostJudith Tarr's first novel, The Isle of Glass, appeared in 1985. Since then she’s written novels and shorter works of historical fiction and historical fantasy and epic fantasy and space opera and contemporary fantasy, many of which have been reborn as ebooks. She has even written a primer for writers: Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting It Right. Her genderbent Gilgamesh in space story just appeared in Athena Andreadis' new anthology, Retellings of t...
2020-06-20 13:01:03 +0000 UTC View PostTo Ride Beyond the Wide World's End
By Judith Tarr
Madog was a bard of Gwynedd, back in the days when the Romans were still a clear and all but present memory. He had a fine voice and a fine harp, and a fine eye for a horse, too, which ran in the family, it was said. There was blood of old gods there; and maybe Rhiannon herself had taken a fancy to one of his ancestors, riding past his steading on a bright spring morning, mounted on a white mare who might be Epona, and ...
2020-06-20 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostCaroline M. Yoachim is a prolific author of short stories, appearing in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncanny, Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and Lightspeed, among other places. She has been a finalist for the World Fantasy, Locus, and multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards. Yoachim's short story collection, Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories, and the chapbook for her award-nominated novelette "...
2020-06-19 13:01:59 +0000 UTC View PostDreams as Fragile as Glass
by Caroline M. Yoachim
Masumi walked barefoot on the beach with her daughter, Hikaru, scanning the sand for pretty shells or a glint of sunlight on glass. A flash of green caught Masumi's eye. She brushed the wet sand off a piece of sea glass. "Here, for your collection."
"I don't need any more green, Mom," Hikaru said.
Masumi slipped the smooth glass into her pocket. Her daughter was twelve and increasingly wanted to spend all her...
2020-06-19 13:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostKari Maaren is a writer, cartoonist, musician, and academic whose first novel, the YA fantasy Weave a Circle Round, was published by Tor Books in 2017. It tied for the 2018 Copper Cylinder Award (YA category), was a finalist for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, and was shortlisted for the S...
2020-06-18 13:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe Girl Who Had No Story
by Kari Maaren
“Not again,” said Sophie from the front passenger seat as the “Detour” sign came into view on the right.
Mary, back in the jump seat with Tom, could just see it by twisting around and craning to peer out the window past Darryl. She thought Sophie should have sounded less surprised. They’d been smelling smoke all day. Around noon, Darryl had spotted flames, barely visible in the distance but unmistakable. This was ...
2020-06-18 13:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostBurn Long Into the Night
Megan E. O'Keefe
The frame’s construction was plain, the empty outline of a simple door, and in truth it was not necessary. Yet still the talisman of it brought Detra comfort. Purpose. She pressed her palm against the slick surface, rested her forehead to it and closed her eyes. The chill did not sooth the thump of her heart in her head, the pin-prickles of eyes against her skin.
She'd thought she’d never see it again, let alone stand alongside i...
2020-06-17 13:01:03 +0000 UTC View PostMegan E. O'Keefe's fantasy debut, Steal the Sky, won the Gemmell Morningstar Award and her space opera debut, Velocity Weapon was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. Her next novel, Chaos Vector, is due to release July 28th
Website: http://meganokeefe.com/
2020-06-17 13:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostPamela Sargent has won the Nebula and Locus Awards, been a finalist for the Hugo Award, Theodore Sturgeon Award, and Sidewise Award, and was honored in 2012 with the SFRA Award for Lifetime Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy Scholarship (previously the Pilgrim Award) by the Science Fiction Research Association. She is the author of the science fiction novels Cloned Lives, The Sudden Star, Watchstar, The Golden Space, The Alien Upstairs, E...
2020-06-16 13:02:00 +0000 UTC View Post"The Drowned Father," first published in Polyphony 6, Copyright 2006, 2015
by Pamela Sargent
The airline had promised reimbursement for his ticket, but Lucas was still irritated as he boarded the bus. From here, it would take three hours to get to the airport in Norris, and he wouldn't be home until at least two in the morning, assuming that he could get a cab in any reasonable amount of time.
A quick glance around the bus's interior revealed worn s...
2020-06-16 13:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostOr What You Will, chapters 4 and 5
By Jo Walton
4. Three Anecdotes
Once upon a time -- have you ever thought about that formula? Why is it "upon"? We hear the phrase as one word once-upon-a-time and don't think about it. This happened once only, and it happened in time and... upon is a time word, and a strange one: upon a May morning, upon reading these words, upon turning this tap, upon reaching your destination. Usually it means as soon as something has happe...
2020-06-15 13:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostFOREIGN GODS
By Alter S. Reiss
Library Advice
by Ada Palmer
Dear Ms. Linacre,
I was delighted to hear that you have secured funding to travel to Fossa sul Tebere to chase down this supposed Petrarch fragment. I will do my best to advise you on the peculiarities of the library there, since I am, to my knowledge, the living scholar who has most recently accessed their collection.
About the Library:
Gibson’s description refers to the location only as Biblioteca Squarciacinghiala<...
2020-06-13 13:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostS.B. Divya is a lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma. She enjoys subverting expectations and breaking stereotypes whenever she can. Divya is the Hugo and Nebula nominated author of Runtime and co-editor of Escape Pod, with Mur Lafferty. Her short stories have been published at various magazines including Analog, Uncanny, and tor.com. Her collection, Contingency Plans For the Apocalypse and ...
2020-06-12 13:02:00 +0000 UTC View PostMACHINEHOOD
by S.B. Divya
30. All forms of intelligence have the right to exist without persecution or slavery.
31. No form of intelligence may own another.
32. If the local governance does not act in accordance with these rights, it is the right of an intelligence to act by any means necessary to secure them.
-- The Machinehood Manifesto, March 20, 2095
Welga stared at coffee the color of mud and contemplated ...
2020-06-12 13:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostLeah Cypess is the author of four young adult fantasy novels, starting with Mistwood (HarperCollins 2010), and of an upcoming middle grade fantasy novel, Thornwood, scheduled to be published by Random House in 2021. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with her family. You can find out more about her and her writing at www.leahcypess.com.
2020-06-11 13:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostDistant Like the Stars
by: Leah Cypess
Every important moment of my life has happened in front of a Door.
That’s not true, of course. But right now it feels that way.
The Door in front of me is more primitive than any I’ve seen for years, a gray-green rectangle with the dimension-detangler thrumming on its left side, a jumble of cords and chips and tiny flashes of light. But it will work. As soon as I open the Door, it will unwind the extra dimensions of...
2020-06-11 13:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostA.J. Hammer has a B.A. in Classics from Princeton University and has worked in the field of education policy. She used to be a short track speed skater, but now writes fantasy. Her work can be found in the Gothics edition of Lackington’s Magazine, Issue 5 of Anathema: Spec from the Margins, and the Scifi and Religion edition of Big Echo Magazine. She tweets @diffugerenives.
2020-06-10 13:01:03 +0000 UTC View PostAn Exaltation
by A.J. Hammer
Whenever a ship rose into the sky her heart rose with it.
It wasn't, exactly, that she wished she were on it, leaving the planet – she'd done that, and now was content to stay with her tools and her husband and her child on this new green planet. What she wanted was to speak with the ships. She built them. All the famous ships of the last ten years had come out of her yard: the <...
2020-06-10 13:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostTina Connolly's books include the Ironskin and Seriously Wicked series from Tor, and the collection On the Eyeball Floor from Fairwood Press. She has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. She co-hosts Escape Pod, runs the Toasted Cake flash fiction podcast (currently doing a "Run of Hope!"), and is at tinaconnolly.com.
Toasted Cake is at 2020-06-09 13:01:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Texts From My Mother About The Alien Invasion
by Tina Connolly
Mom: hi honey what do u put in your banana bread when you make it?
Mom: i think u said ur trick was yogurt but i'm out because of the alien invasion and so will cream do?
...
2020-06-09 13:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostPremee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and SFF writer based in Edmonton, Alberta. She is also an Associate Editor at Escape Pod and was recently a Capital City Press Featured Writer for 2019/2020. Her debut novel, 'Beneath the Rising,' is out now from Solaris Books, and her short fiction has appeared in a variety of venues, including Analog, Pseudopod, Apparition Lit, and Augur Magazine. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @premeesaurus.
Links:
My website: 2020-06-08 13:02:00 +0000 UTC View Post