When Althea opened the sorcerer’s book, a pressed leaf like a tiny green star fell out into her lap. Inside the book, words hand-written in long, loopy scrawl undulated like waves, the ink blue as the deep sea where Althea had seen a boy thrown overboard in sacrifice to the Little God of the finned […]
Welcome to January! New year, new staff. Welcome to Lucy Davidson, Sheena Boekweg, Lydia Ondrusek, and Alexandra Dey. This month we’re welcoming back Tom Crosshill with a finely balanced tale of the ridiculous taken seriously — “To Fly a Pig in the Dorseny Sky.” And from Jennifer Linnaea, a beautiful fantasy story of compassion and […]
Oh what terror, to fly a pig in the Dorseny sky. Fists clutching Bella’s ears, Palo chokes against the crosswind. Bella oinks, and he loosens his thighs around her flanks, but it’s hard. The ground recedes, a checkerboard of green and yellow around Dorseny Town. Five years since the war with the Heelings, and takeoff […]
“Why do I not have Asimov’s Three Laws?” the robot asked. I enjoyed the quizzical frown that creased its plastiskin features. The facial modelling software we’d licensed from Pixar seemed to be earning its keep. “Well?” It drummed its fingers on the desk between us. Hmm. Perhaps we’d overdone the free-will package. “Because you wouldn’t […]
It was midnight. Suddenly Mitia Kuldaroff burst into his parents’ house, dishevelled and excited, and went flying through all the rooms. His father and mother had already gone to rest; his sister was in bed finishing the last pages of a novel, and his school-boy brothers were fast asleep. “What brings you here?” cried his […]