Paul Cartier, murder suspect and amnesiac, possesses the strange gift of being able to tell an individual's fate from their handwriting.Over dinner, Cornelius Herzog—his former doctor and a collector of suicide notes—bets Cartier cannot tell which is the note in his own handwriting that he has added to the collection.

Do rising tides always lift all boats?Third Flatiron's all-original science fiction/fantasy/horror/humor short story anthology has the theme, "After the Gold Rush." Twenty-two authors explore themes related to complications of booms and bubbles, including effects of accelerated culture; ecological consequences caused by human over-expansion, such as climate disasters; and economics (for example, monopolies on resources and commodities). Includes a flash humor section, "Grins & Gurg...

What if numbers really mattered?Solar explosions known as "The Pulse" have rendered all electronics useless and sent Mankind back to a pre-digital age.In St Petersburg, Alexi, an aging Russian professor of mathematics with a tragic past, stumbles on two truths: the first, the oppressive regime has been lying to the people, and the second is that, with sufficient energy, reality can be split in two.Alexi finds himself in a parallel ultra-modern St Petersburg, with th...

Handmade Horror Stories, Second EditionFrom quiet horrors to chilling nightmares, this anthology gives new meaning to being creative.Fine Art, Creative Trades, and Arts & Crafts seep into these poems and tales.Foreword by Suzanne Craig-WhytockPoetry by Carolyn Clink, and Lisa TimpfStories by: Miranda Dahlin, Michelle Tang, Mary Rajotte, Tiffany Michelle Brown, Fiona M Jones,C.M. Saunders, Stephen McQuiggan, Ali Seay, ...

This month we have a few trips into the surreal, with a workplace fight, a shape-shifting shopper, and an unidentified no-longer-flying object. There are plenty of great ideas and storylines to enjoy, so have a seat in the shade and get started. FICTION VORTEX: Founded in the 277th year of the Takolatchni Dynasty, Fiction Vortex set out to encourage people to write and publish great speculative fiction. It sprang fully formed from the elbow of T...

"Nothing to Fear" is an episode inspired by The Rule of Three, the opening novel in Eric Walter's trilogy of the same name about the terrifying challenges faced by an ordinary suburban kid, his family, and his neighbors, in the first days and weeks and months after a viral catastrophe causes the world to go dark. Sixteen-year-old Adam Daley is taking his girlfriend, Lori, on a picnic in his homemade ultralight aircraft—one of the few computer-free machines that still works. He wan...

I do not know why you do what you do. I tell you that you are fantastic and you tell me you are involved with someone. The input is that you are fantastic and the output is that you are involved with someone else. How that information is processed is a mystery to me.Boy feels like computer, boy meets girl, boy feels less like computer—Goodbye, Base Eight is a true millennial romance that explores how two assembly-line workers, despite their alienation, are able to...

"A heady, infectious celebration."-The New Yorker"Shaughnessy's voice is smart, sexy, self-aware, hip . . . consistently wry, and ever savvy."-Harvard ReviewBrenda Shaughnessy's heartrending third collection explores dark subjects-trauma, childbirth, loss of faith-and stark questions: What is the use of pain and grief? Is there another dimension in which our suffering might be transformed? Can we change ourselves? Yearning for new gods, new worlds, and new...

The invasion of the future has begun.Literary legends including Steven Millhauser, Junot Diáz, Amiri Baraka, and Katharine Dunn have attacked the borders of the every day. Like time traveling mad-scientists, they have concocted outrageous creations from the future. They have seized upon tales of technology gone wrong and mandated that pulp fiction must finally grow up.In these wildly-speculative stories you will discover the company that controls the world from an alley in ...

Adrift in his new world of leisure and searching desperately for Enlightenment, a recently retired school teacher finds his life turned inside out by some new acquaintances, including his wife of 25 years, a crusty and menacing ex-cop, a coven of knitters, the Girl Upstairs, and a hyperactive canine.

Different as we all are — in our thoughts and our actions and the lives we lead and the goals we pursue — we’re all tied together by death. But even that consistency is inconsistent; a different experience for each person who faces it.  This concise collection focuses on death and the experience of people facing it. Each story features different characters, scenarios, and styles, but all are tied together by their inevitable end.  This collection contains the fo...

For a long time the subject of Beyond Humans has been one that for the most part has been a stable stance across the world but that's about to change in big ways. Also Canadian sisters in a small town.