Neptune's Second Sunrise
The shuttle doors opened and Triton Station hit me all at once.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy stories
Sci-Fi & Fantasy stories. Sci-Fi & Fantasy stories, from quick reads to long series. Reads run 22 to 27 minutes. Writers to know: Sundown Wanderer, Glass Ritual and Shift of Ivory. Readers usually start with “Lost Key Found” and “Colony 7 Estate”. Ranked by how many readers finish them. Some are free to read in full; the rest open with a free preview.
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Sci-Fi & Fantasy stories, ranked by readers
21 22 When the Mailbag Drops
*This one came from wanting to write something tender and slow, about two adults who meet online and actually click.
23 Tide and Time
The meeting hall of the Saltside Clock Tower filled up the way it always did before a vote, which was to say slowly and with a lot of…
24 Cut and Color
Seven months before I got on that shuttle, I was standing in my kitchen at eleven at night eating cold noodles straight out of the pot…
25 The Dormancy Bet
I turned fifty-five in March.
26 The Data Leash
Brock Araragi, forty-two years old and a data analyst by trade, stood on his rooftop garden with a glass of cheap pinot and a grudge.
27 The Resin Morning
*This one came from wanting to write something quiet, a story about wanting again after a long silence, set in a town where magic smells…
28 Last Caravan, Lost Love
The ration ledgers had their own smell, Kerry thought, and after eight years of working the registration tent she had stopped noticing it.
29 Tides of Terminus
The shuttle ramp hissed down and the gravity hit me wrong before my boots even touched the deck.
30 Air Debt
The beeping came at 0340 station time, which Irma Byrne had learned over eleven years on Meridian-7 was the hour the station liked to…
31 Echo Bloom
The escape pod was not built for two.
32 The Empathy Job
*This one came from thinking about how we perform emotions at work, and what it'd be like if someone could literally see through the act.
33 The Eclipse Shift
Ella was thirty-four years old and she had been divorced for two years, and she had learned that the best way to get through the weeks was…
34 Time Enough for Us
Three years ago I met a man at a coffee conference.
35 The Venus Return
I was wiping the same glass for the third time when the docking tube coughed open and let the new arrivals in.
36 The Puppeteer's Knife
The plan for the evening had been simple, the way all my plans were lately.
37 Data Interference
Elle Montgomery was fifty-four years old and had spent thirty of those years turning data into arguments she usually won.
38 The Lawyer and the Pilot
Samson Wilkinson boarded the Hauler on a Tuesday, if you could call any day a Tuesday out past Mars.
39 The Mortar & The Fall
They put us in a closet.
40 The Roaster and the Mechanic
The coil was being stubborn.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy, by tag
Space station sci-fi & fantasyPost-collapse sci-fi & fantasyFantasy town sci-fi & fantasyNear future city sci-fi & fantasyPlayful and teasing sci-fi & fantasyAlien world sci-fi & fantasyWarm and nostalgic sci-fi & fantasyTender and slow sci-fi & fantasyNeighbors sci-fi & fantasyA couple who have been dating a while, not married sci-fi & fantasyRivals sci-fi & fantasyCoworkers sci-fi & fantasyWriters known for it
Sundown Wanderer, Glass Ritual, Shift of Ivory, Iron Contour