It’s hot. It’s always hot. It is cooler up at the other end of the field under the shade of the big trees, but I still prefer it down this end, in the heat. The trees are so big, so dark and mossy and quiet—it’s scary. Dad says they grow like that because of the […]

Debris crunched beneath Pepper’s wheelchair as she rolled along the top floor of the Stonegrove Shopping Mall. Just small scraps, though, the kind she could roll over without her wheels catching. This area of the midsized mall was largely cleared out since most of the community lived up here, where they could access the vegetable […]

The first thing we learn when the windtech arrives is that wind turbines are female—or at least he calls them all “she” for some reason. “She looks to be in remarkably good shape,” he says as he peers through a pair of binoculars at the nearest turbine, which is standing idle in the distance. Its […]

Alabama hadn’t changed a whole lot since Grandpa’s time. Born in 1993, had he lived just a smidge longer, he’d’ve lived in three centuries. As it was, nineteen-year-old Sam was riding in the backseat of Papa’s car boat, watching the murky waves of the swamp lick the boat’s anonymous sides as they headed to clean […]

That woman has come into my house again. I hear her husky voice as she grills my caregiver for anything she can learn about me. Some of the words elude me. The curtains, woven from the translucent leaves of living plants, rustle in the air, distorting the murmurs from the next room. Often I cannot […]

Kevin isn’t like the other members of his notorious family:his storm-front brothers racing out of the northeast. Nor is he in the category of his boisterous hurricane cousins,foaming and churning off the coast. Kevin isn’t even like his howling tornado twin sisters,twisting and shouting all over the plains. He is just an insignificant, small storm,soon […]

“Funny, a vampire with SAD,” I quip. The tall Ukrainian peers through mirrored goggles. “Intolerance to sunlight does not qualify me as vampire.” Leonid is our grower. It doesn’t matter how clever the plant biologists are, myself newly included, if you don’t have someone with green fingers to nurture your gene-hack creations. And Leonid is, […]

Before becoming a plarent, I dedicated most of my energy to sculpting the contours of my crust and pumping up my magnetic fields. I was young and gorgeous—the envy of my siblings—living my best life in the fast lane. As the ages passed, however, a sense of emptiness overcame me. Then came the bad years. […]

I don’t  know how it happened, only one day he was my son and the next he wasn’t. It’s been a month, and now he’s a sea turtle. He never even liked sea turtles. I don’t remember them from his childhood, sea turtles or llamas or little grey owls, all those pastel animals that end […]

1. OVERWORLD We, the chorus, welcome you to today’s stage, a patch in the rocky landscape once known as Attica. Close your eyes and inhale the subtle sweetness of sun-warmed grass. Hear the soft rustle of dresses, giggling young women whose whispers counterpoint the chirping birds. Soon you realize there’s no variation in the birdsong, […]

Michael stares at the seagull sitting on the ship’s railing; the bird, in turn, watches the half-eaten protein bar in the teenager’s hand. These pests are everywhere, always on the lookout for an easy meal since most of the fish disappeared. Michael crumbles the plastic wrapper and tosses it at the bird. The seagull takes […]

I’m alone now, except for Mother’s whispered reassurances that this is what’s best for us all. The long night brings with it many memories: the sunlit park, the clouds bullied from the sky, leaving nothing but uncluttered blue and my true love. “I’m leaving you.” She sat next to me on a park bench in […]

Captain Matt Peasley paced the bridge of the bulk carrier Thorsten Haugen, his low-top hard-sole shoes wearing a path on the painted deck. The relative quiet of his ship, compared to times when its engines ran at full throttle, unnerved him. Speed mattered in the shipping business, and in the past, the thrumming of the […]

The sun was barely up over the plastic sea, but it was already stifling hot. The almost horizontal rays bounced off the bleached, matted remnants of last century’s excesses. The great raft housing the plastic reclamation factory chewed slowly but steadily through them. Phlox checked her diving gear. If she dove off the back, she […]

“Can you understand me?” I call through my underwater translator over the gentle slap of cold, oily blue-green water. The massive smoky-grey Bryde’s whale next to the boat doesn’t react. I look timidly up to the top of their open mouth, jutting from the water like a giant white arrowhead, trap collecting their assigned section […]

It was called Moon Base Daintree, but it was less a base than a tube. A long, subway-car-sized tube, with a hatch at either end. Inside was a conference table, life support, and a fridge filled with refreshments—in case the alien was humanoid. Preston Jorgenson paced his end of the tube as the alien ship […]