Hello to everyone down in the front row, and all the folks sitting by the aisle in case there's a fire. Hello to you people at the back who thought you were here for something else. The robot porn is over the road, down the steps, through the unmarked gate . . . or so I've heard. Hello to my alte...
"Guess!" "Got the electricity turned back on?" "The elves would not speak to me," said Mother. It had once been funny, this game that electricity came from elves. But it wasn't funny now, in the sweltering Adriatic summer, with no refrigeration for the food, no air-conditioning, and no vids to di...
Even though I wasn't impressed with the ship's acrobatics, my younger brother Sol, who'd been wrapping the hay bundles with twine, stared at the English with excitement. Knowing I wouldn't get any more work out of him, I stopped the horses. The socket beneath my straw hat itched in resonance with...
He leaned forward on his chaise and lit a brown Turkish cigarette, an old addiction that refused to kill him. He was too old to care. He'd stopped counting birthdays after fifty-nine and was convinced that death kept him at arm's length just for spite. If God possessed an ounce of mercy, he would...
It was just Bill: ever-hopeful Bill, and she hated to encourage him because there was just no chemistry, but she was still bubbling over, wanting to show everyone her new pet. Her alien pet. "I have all the manuals," she said, "and I have a translation module for when its language ability kicks i...
It is currently out of print, although it is available as an audiobook. Part 1 Just talk, Mick. Tell us everything. We'll listen. Well to start with I know I was doing terrible things. If you're a halfway decent person, you don't go looking to kill people. Even if you can do it without touching t...
She'd been very young at the time of the exodus, Aunt Albane said: a mere smolt, able to swim on her own but not yet ready to mate or bear offspring. Father had dragged her from the depths as the Dark King raged, and they fled together, ahead of twisted, shadowy shapes with harpoons and tridents ...
He had his rituals to make her feel safe, and Jake dutifully went through the motions of kissing her on each cheek and turning the screen in the annex to a view of Lightspace. The interstellar medium that the gigantic Bruma ship had entered after leaving Earth gave off a blissful glow, and it was...
I doubted that the bo'sun was speaking to me. As a carpenter's apprentice, I wasn't the lowest crewman on the Fox, but I certainly wasn't the sort of person the captain would call to his cabin to share his rum ration. We'd been tied up at Kulhran Harbor for a good three days taking on cargo and ...
The ones with the fruity smell of alcoholism or the missing teeth and cracked gums of meth addiction are easy. Sometimes you can tell by the way they look at you when you talk; some ignore you and some hold on to your words only to spit them back at you. But John Truro was different. He didn't sc...
The rose is a bright splash of red against the stark white of August snow. A recollection comes to me as I look at that flower, a quotation which seems appropriate now. "There was a writer named J. M. Barrie," I say by way of introduction. She looks up at me, pale blue eyes like her mother's. Eye...
Roberts Artwork by Tomislav Tikulin Tara found the first scrap of paper on the running trail. It spiraled out of the trees and landed on the path just in time for her to run over it with Zandy's stroller. "Trash!" Zandy cooed. "Trash, Mama! Trash!" "Trash, right," Tara said. And because she...
It still seems kind of messed up to say it like that, even after everything that happened, and even though it was nearly half my life ago. Six thirteenths of my life ago, to be precise, at three forty-one on a Tuesday afternoon. Or maybe it was Wednesday. But I was definit...