AntipodeanSF

By Kevin J Phyland

I struggled up through the drowse of sleep to an unquiet silence.

There should have been the steady low drone of the fan engines but there was not, and a quick glance through the passenger window showed us still hundreds of metres up in the air.

The mandroid piloting the floater craft noticed my altered state of arousal and muttered simply, “Power

By KJ Hannah Greenberg

The tuxedo cat jumped down from one of the many trash bins near the back door of the hotel’s kitchen. The hours following dinner service constituted an especially auspicious time to scrounge. She had enjoyed a few bites of Mille-feuille potatoes and a mouthful of pasta. The latter had been coated with arugula pesto, but she had gobbled it anyway as her belly

By Raluca Balasa

Our space jets battle with the intimate brutality of brothers pressing thumbs into each other’s bruises — which is exactly what we are.

“Typical,” Aaron sneers as he shoots. I whirl into a tailspin, avoiding critical damage as nausea surges. “Retreating like when you’d run to Mum rather than hit me back. Man up.”

I right myself and finally say it,

By Harris Tobias

Zebulon Brown exited his barn pushing a wheelbarrow load of cow manure — having just mucked out the barn. He was intent on navigating the muddy barnyard when he noticed a strange object. At first glance it looked as though someone had dumped an old pizza oven in his yard, and his initial reaction was righteous annoyance. Zeb abandoned his barrow and went over for a

By Scare in a Box

Lush trees, packed in a dense, virgin forest covered as far as an eye could see. The forest was larger than could be perceived, in fact, a jumble with no end. Few paths ran through the impenetrable mass of trunks and underbrush, even light found it difficult to penetrate, leaving the clearing at the centre of the forest dimly lit. Predators prowled the wilds,

By Maree Collie

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man. A shimmer. When I turned to face him, he was gone. A nanosecond. Where did he go? Where did he come from? I tell you it unnerved me.  

It unsettled me no end. And to be honest, it was his cold calculating eyes that looked right through me that really frightened me. I felt a cold chill in my

By Melanie Ifield

With a piercing shriek, Rom’s fighter swooped in low overhead, its forward guns pounding the enemy hidden in the rocks in front of my scouting team. I stood and waved my blaster overhead in acknowledgement. Damn. We’d never live it down. Fighter jocks just loved the chance to show off. Rom would live off saving my arse like this for months. Sigh. The perils of

By Estelle Owen

If I was patient, if I waited until the precise moment of dawn, the ancients in their wisdom would give me the sign I am looking for.

Everything will be aligned. All the angles, I need, to receive the power.

The burgeoning rays will hit the jerry can, bounce off towards the handlebars and then finally reflect through the carefully positioned mirrors

By AE Reiff

Above and Below

If it is possible to have a novel without a character so called — the character here being a collective and a society of the world where certain mythological conflicts overwhelm until we see them as they seep into our consciousness over the years — there might be many forms taken by such colonies where this collective appears.