"Questing Beast" is a 2006 science fiction short story by Ilona Andrews. It is about a small robot who has a computer virus which causes him to think he is Sir Pellinore.
continue reading "Questing Beast by Ilona Andrews"

"The Valley of Spiders" is a 1903 speculative fiction short story by H.G. Wells. It is about three men who discover a barren valley full of creepy crawlies!
continue reading "The Valley of Spiders by H.G. Wells"

This is a guest post by Inez Ponce de Leon.

Time travel stories have almost run their course: whether you’re reading The Time Traveler’s Wife or a classic by Jules Verne, it seems that man’s obsession with time travel has gotten tiring, if not overused. However, once in a while, there comes a story that makes you actually think: what if time travel was truly possible? What would happen? Where would you go?
continue reading "Time, Again by Tim Maly"

Wow – it has been a long time since I’ve cast the spotlight on flash fiction stories, and it’s high time to give it another try! With that in mind, here are a couple of cool little stories from the excellent web site 365 Tomorrows.
continue reading "Flash Fiction Monday: Gene Reprogramming and Generation Ships"

This is a guest post by Inez Ponce de Leon.

If you swapped minds with your dog, what would you do? Go to the mall, sneak into locker rooms, or chase cats all day? Now, what if you swapped minds with a duck? A cat? Or worse, a toaster?

This is the quandary faced by a nameless professor in Matthew Grigg’s short story, Professor Panini. The story starts when a self-made man, now a professor and researcher, works on exchanging the minds of a cat and duck using a machine. There are no details about how the machine works or what it looks like; suffice it to say that the experiment doesn’t go as planned, and hilarity ensues.
continue reading "Professor Panini by Matthew Grigg"

This is a guest post by Konstantine Paradias.

The End of the Whole Mess is a post-apocalyptic short story by Stephen King, as told from the view point of Howard Fonroy, the older brother of one of the smartest (and few remaining) men on the planet.
continue reading "The End of the Whole Mess by Stephen King"

"The Night Train" is a 2010 science fiction short story by Lavie Tidhar. It is about a bio-medically altered bodyguard for a South East Asian crime lord.
continue reading "The Night Train by Lavie Tidhar"

“Grandpa” is a 1955 science fiction novelette by James H. Schmitz. It is about a mischievous boy who gets the chance to test his skills against unknown alien life forms.
continue reading "Grandpa by James H. Schmitz"

This is a guest post by Konstantine Paradias.

Still Life With Apocalypse by Richard Kadrey is a post-apocalyptic fiction short story (about 3,000 words long) that is essentially the memoirs of a man in the ruins of the world, after it has been torn to pieces due to inexplicable reasons.
continue reading "Still Life With Apocalypse by Richard Kadrey"

"Source Decay" is a 2011 science fiction short story by Charlie Jane Anders. It is about the story of a nasty love triangle that persists for thousands of years.
continue reading "Source Decay by Charlie Jane Anders"

This is a guest post by Inez Ponce de Leon.

There is a danger of telling a story in the second person (i.e., You are walking through a desert landscape… or You remember being here before), which is why very few authors use it. There is a danger of being overindulgent and telling people what to believe and think, instead of showing them images that will allow them to fill the gaps in the story with their own imagination.
continue reading "The Day They Came by Kali Wallace"

"The Warriors" is a 1966 science fiction short story by Larry Niven. It is about the first encounter between humans and the aggressive, cat-like Kzinti species.
continue reading "The Warriors by Larry Niven"

"The Sky that Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and into the Black" is a 2008 science fiction short story by Jay Lake. It is about a former astronaut who has traded his freedom to work on dangerous jewelry for a Chinese crime boss.
continue reading "The Sky that Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and into the Black by Jay Lake"

This is a guest post by Inez Ponce de Leon.

What happens if you teach a cat how to talk?

Saki (H.H. Munro) answers this question in his short story “Tobermory,” which tells a brief, meaty tale of the eponymous cat and his short adventure with British society. Being a lover of classic writers and fresh takes on science fiction, I decided to dive headlong into the many layers of the very short, but nevertheless engaging Tobermory. What I found was a surprising treatment of what would otherwise have been a cheesy Dr. Doolittle rip-off.
continue reading "Tobermory by Saki"

This is a guest post by Kate Croston

Since both of these stories are pretty short and written by the same author, I thought it would be safe to recommend them both.

First off, these stories are available for free and written under the pen name Spookysister7. I happened to run across them by a strange set of events.
continue reading "No Earthly Ship and the Quiet Ones"

"The Frightened Planet" is a 1948 science fiction short story by Sidney Austen. It is about a Cro-Magnon man who is taken by aliens to their home planet.
continue reading "The Frightened Planet by Sidney Austen"

This is a guest post by Martin Dugas.

“Monument”, a 1961 novelette by Lloyd Biggle, Jr., is about destructive tourism on an idyllic world.
continue reading "Monument by Lloyd Biggle Jr."

"Ass-Hat Magic Spider" is a 2008 science fiction short story by Scott Westerfeld. It is about a teenage boy who is desperately trying to lose weight for his space colonist flight.
continue reading "Ass-Hat Magic Spider by Scott Westerfeld"

The Boneless One, a 2011 short story by Alec Nevala-Lee, is about a group of scientists at sea that come across an unusual cluster of octopuses.
continue reading "The Boneless One"

"The Merchants of Venus" is a 1972 science fiction novella by Frederik Pohl. It is about a prospecting guide on Venus who leads a rich couple in search of ancient alien artefacts.
continue reading "The Merchants of Venus by Frederik Pohl"