Black Denim Lit, v1 #3 April, 2014 edited by Christopher T. Garry features seven new short stories. All the authors expand significantly on their print work, creating narratives that are variously dark, cynical, inspiring, disturbing, longing or irreverent. Stories include: •Our Immortal Souls by Phil Richardson (A couple work out the details of how to comply with the negative population growth policies.) •Tailing the Blond Satan by Oscar Windsor-Smith (Officer Winston Morgan, a strapping ...

Edited by Christopher T. Garry, the first issue of Black Denim Lit brings you a Science Fiction story, "Can and Should," by George Burdick. This asks, is it arrogant to do something that we are clearly capable of--that we were designed to do by means of evolution? Why "Black Denim"...? In work clothes, black denim is a less pretentious than khaki and more understated than blue jeans. This typifies the tone of writing style that appeals to our magazine: grounded, approachable and unassuming...

LIGHTSPEED is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF—and fantasy: from epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and contemporary urban tales, to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folktales.This month, we present our special anniversary issue, Women Destroy Science Fiction!, an all-science fiction extravaganza entirely written—and edited!—by women.Gu...

From the internationally #1 bestselling novelist comes a tale of small time criminals on a new grift that might cost them everything.Peppard and Jarman have a new grift that seems simple enough: Go to the airport. Imitate a hired driver by copying a name that they see in the crowd. Collect the passenger before the real drive does, take him to a secluded area and rob them. It seems like a simple plan to make some quick cash for these two amateurs--that is, until the...

On February 4th 2013 Neil Gaiman embarked on a fantastic art project in partnership with BlackBerry and millions of his fans. He tweeted twelve questions to the world, one for each month of the year. From the tens of thousands of responses he received, Neil picked his favourite answers and wrote twelve short stories inspired by them. Releasing these back to the world, Neil asked people to contribute art to illustrate the stories. To Find out more about A Calendar of Tales visit www.blackbe...

Cyberpunk is dead. The revolution has been co-opted by half-assed heroes, overclocked CGI, and tricked-out shades. Once radical, cyberpunk is now nothing more than a brand.Time to stop flipping the channel.These sixteen extreme stories reveal a government ninja routed by a bicycle repairman, the inventor of digitized paper hijacked by his college crush, a dead boy trapped in a warped storybook paradise, and the queen of England attacked with the deadliest of forbidden techn...

In New American Stories, the beautiful, the strange, the melancholy, and the sublime all comingle to show the vast range of the American short story . In this remarkable anthology, Ben Marcus has corralled a vital and artistically singular crowd of contemporary fiction writers. Collected here are practitioners of deep realism, mind-blowing experimentalism, and every hybrid in between. Luminaries and cult authors stand side by side with the most compelling new literary voices. Noth...

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 ...

The credits have rolled, but the lights are still off. Something is lurking on the other side of the screen. There are dark secrets, starving monsters, and haunted survivors who refuse to be left on the cutting room floor. But that's okay, right? After all, everybody loves the movies....Here are twenty-three terrifying tales, dark reflections of the silver screen from both sides of the camera. James Dean gets a second chance at life—and death. The Wicked Witch is out of Oz...

BURIED SECRETS will keep you wondering to the very last page. At approximately 2,800 words, this spine-tingling horror tale is guaranteed to make you laugh and squirm, as the young couple realize... they're not alone. About Buried Secrets Max and his wife, Megan, just moved into their new home. It's a charming Victorian, that did not come with the typical Victorian price tag. Sure, it needed some paint thrown on here and there, but soon-...

It's not so easy to be the star in your own action movie!All Bailey wants is to be a good negotiator, and to impress his boss and teacher, the legendary Drew Fletcher. He admires Fletcher for his skills in the field, but that doesn't stop him admiring the man for other, more romantic reasons as well. In a tense hostage situation, it's pretty unlikely Bailey's usual, rash behaviour will cover him in glory, but in his dreams, it's all going to happen just like in the movies.W...

"The Art of Miscommunication - Comebacks and Answers" is a feast of feisty comebacks, public utterances and answers – many of them true - mixed up with the occasional random one that worked for me and which I just felt like including. I especially enjoy the exchanges involving lecturers and students, young and old. They are absolutely fabulous!One of the entries in this volume is quite simply the most brilliant email I have ever received, so it was a real treat compiling this colle...