50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know
Obituary WHEEP-3 (“Dr. Weep”), probably the most renowned AI AI-critic of the last two decades, was retired by the Shallow Laboratory at Stanford University last Wednesday. Created by Dr. Jody Reynolds...
View ArticleThe Sin of America
Content Note: Child Death and Violence Against Women There’s a woman outside of a town called Sheridan, where the sky comes so near to earth it has to use the crosswalk just like everybody else....
View ArticleColors of the Immortal Palette
LEAD WHITE I will always remember the view of Paris from his window. Snow, pure and untouched, softens the outline of the buildings and covers the grime of the streets. White, the color of beginnings....
View ArticleWhere Oaken Hearts Do Gather
About “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” (5 contributors, 5 notes, 7 comments) →“Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” (Roud 423, Child 313) is a traditional English folk ballad. Like many traditional songs, the...
View ArticleUnseelie Brothers, Ltd.
The Contract A week before the Season began, as Mrs. Vanessa Saunders held brunch court at the Empire Hotel, a photo appeared on her phone: a large oak door beneath a pale green sign with silver...
View ArticleProof by Induction
Paulie rushes out the elevator doors the moment they part, only to skid to a halt at the sight of his father’s wife. She shakes her head, but he doesn’t need the confirmation. If Tricia is out here and...
View ArticleThe Necessity of Slavery Stories
I think I first heard a Black person say “I’m tired of stories about slavery” in high school. Our school’s football coach, who doubled as our history teacher, had decided to show us Haile Gerima’s 1993...
View ArticleMulberry and Owl
Content Note: Death of Children Year of the Âm Dragon, fifth year of the Peaceful Harmony Empress, Great Mulberry Nebula Thuỷ stood in her cabin in The Goby in the Well, her bots arrayed on her...
View ArticleIf the Martians Have Magic
“The first Martian War was won not by man, but microbes. The second we fought with Martian weapons that nearly broke the world. The third invasion we stopped by our own hands, using magic.” —Wei-Yin...
View ArticleThe Giants of the Violet Sea
I don’t realize how far apart I have grown from my mother until, upon meeting her again, I have to force myself to hug her. When I heard the news, I packed a few things from my personnel apartment at...
View ArticleThat Story Isn’t the Story
Everything Anton owns goes in one black trash bag. His ratty yellow sketchpad, which he bought to draw the other familiars when he moved here, and only ever used three pages of. The few shirts and...
View ArticleWhat You Might Have Missed
You have spent years studying stories. Even if you never took an English lit class, never went to a writing group. You’ve watched countless movies and bonded with friends over favorite scenes, argued...
View Articlea sinkhole invites a street to consider its future
cracks always long to grow. asphalt craves other than the horizontal. you could become a poem. straight line caesuraed into a mouth. a ruin. a fucking statement. you were meant for so much more than...
View ArticleThe Goldfish Man
I live in my car. It’s both worse and better than you’d expect. It’s an old Subaru hatchback so I can put the back seat down and sleep. I have all my stuff in the back but I have a space where I can...
View ArticleIn Stock Images of the Future, Everything is White
I don’t want flying cars. I want my language back. I want to glass-bottom boat my way to a dirt road with no street signs, squeeze myself on the grave of my restlessness, my atomic self-esteem....
View ArticleTwo Hands, Wrapped in Gold
My parents taught me to lie as soon as I could speak. Before I knew the meaning of the words, before I understood heat or fire, and long before I felt the pain of singed flesh, I learned to tell...
View ArticleThe Coward Who Stole God’s Name
Who is the most beloved person alive? Is it one of those actors who plays superheroes? Is it a political leader? Maybe you’re a galaxy brain and say Beyoncé? No matter who you pick, you know you’re...
View ArticleAt the Lighthouse Out by the Othersea
Outside the big window, the Othersea danced. Its swirling clouds piled about one another, forming and reforming, the bubbles that boiled out around them outlined in the glittering energy released in...
View ArticleIf You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You
Content Note: Racial Slurs and Racist Violence That first video of the flying man goes viral on social media and gets featured on the news. No jet pack. No hang glider. Just him, unaided, soaring...
View ArticleThe Prince of Salt and the Ocean’s Bargain
There’s a story that sounds completely fantastic and yet is true. It happened here and in the neighboring lands. It goes like this: Once upon a time, there was an ocean, deep and cold. And in the ocean...
View ArticleHow to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub
“Ambition!” Trevor emphasized, rapping knuckles hard on the wood table. “That is what makes the great men!” He took a satisfied swallow from his mug. Across from him, Barnaby put down the daily he’d...
View ArticleOne Man’s Treasure
Aden had never once forgotten his gear for bulk trash day, but he found it touching that Nura still taped a monthly reminder note on the door from the kitchen to the garage. Sweet of her to remember,...
View ArticleBad Doors
The country was at just over ten thousand deaths the morning that the door appeared. On Kosmo’s phone NPR was interviewing a doctor with a nasal voice about the need for social distancing, while Kosmo...
View ArticleThe Mausoleum’s Children
Thuận Lộc stared at the cup. It was dark, and mottled with the characteristic patterning of silver-eye fungus. The tea inside was trembling—the faint vibrations from the Mausoleum, the dead ships’...
View ArticleSix Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge
Content note: Child death It was half past midnight when Olga heard the Devil cry. They were supposed to be wild tonight, the three of them. Cassandra had led the way and Maria and Olga didn’t put...
View ArticleThe Year Without Sunshine
During one of the much smaller disasters that preceded the really big disaster, I met a lot of my neighbors online. I can’t remember if we set up the WhatsApp group because of the pandemic or the civil...
View ArticleA Siren’s Call, A Banshee’s Wail, A Grandmother’s Dream
to bear life from within you to let it rip you apart from the inside out, tear through your flesh to escape into a world more chaotic than your mind. to hear it cry desire for not seconds, minutes, not...
View ArticleA Soul in the World
There’s nothing quieter than the sound of dreams not coming true. The moment when reality sinks in and Gwen realizes she’s never going to have the one thing she’s been yearning for since high...
View ArticleTantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200
So, hear nah. This is how it happen. Was years after Malcolm pass through and wash away a lot ah we little islands coasts, and mash up so much ah Florida and Texas and them places, and people say they...
View ArticleWaystation City
I was finishing the last of my nightly coffee when the nineteen-seventies twins approached my table and asked me to bear witness to their disappearance. This was not an unusual request at Cafe...
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