(7128 words, 36 minutes)
The nameless man who had killed and been caught, judged and sentenced and jailed to await his own death watched as the authorities prepared to execute his surrogate. The murderer occupied one place in a bank of seats filled by other invited witnesses to the State’s administration of mortal justice. He had not been introduced to any of the other witnesses when the guards had coldly and somewhat roughly conducted him to his seat, and no one had since offered a name or hand to the man.

(9241 words, 47 minutes)
Puillayne of Ghiusz was a man born to every advantage life offers, for his father was the master of great estates along the favored southern shore of the Claritant Peninsula, his mother was descended from a long line of wizards who held hereditary possession of many great magics, and he himself had been granted a fine strong-thewed body, robust health, and great intellectual power.

(1049 words, 6 minutes)
Kiet the Mousekiller had begun his infamous career as a simple Thai pirate, preying on international shipping. Radicalized by the anonymous contamination of Mecca with a GPS-circumscribed green goo, he had become a terrorist, earning his sobriquet by his cunning destruction of Hong Kong Disneyland. Kiet’s latest scheme, not yet known to the public, involved a retired Japanese deep-sea drilling ship, the Chikyu, which Kiet and his backers had purchased on the open market under a false front. Now docked in the Indonesian port of Balikpapan, the ship was believed to be due to sail imminently, according to best intelligence.

(8224 words, 42 minutes)
Carmichael flew in from New Mexico that morning, and the first thing they told him when he put his little plane down at Burbank was that fires were burning out of control all around the Los Angeles basin. He was needed bad, they told him. It was late October, the height of the brushfire season in Southern California, and a hot, hard, dry wind was blowing out of the desert, and the last time it had rained was the fifth of April. He phoned the district supervisor right away, and the district supervisor told him, “Get your ass out here on the line double fast, Mike.”

(3256 words, 17 minutes)
Something small and metal smacks against flesh. I swallow and turn. A woman with wings of iridescent blue stands on the road. Her wings stir the dust, sending a different wind skidding across the road.

(9226 words, 47 minutes)
Awards: Featured in Gardner Dozois’s ‘Year’s Best SF’, Twentieth Edition.

(7187 words, 36 minutes)
Awards: Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner; Locus Poll winner 1992.

(18038 words, 91 minutes)
Awards: Nominated for Nebula Best Novella...

(111 words, 1 minute)
Mind-bending science fiction, steampunk, humor, and so much more can be found in our July, 2023 SciFiwise Magazine! Check it out!

(111 words, 1 minute)
Mind-bending science fiction, steampunk, humor, and so much more can be found in our June, 2023 SciFiwise Magazine! Check it out!