Fantasy Adventure Short Stories

Worlds collide when a time traveling New York mobster travels to ancient Egypt, before the Great Pyramids are constructed. He brings the Pharaoh many small, insignificant, unassuming, modern items like an iPod, a six-pack of beer, and the Encyclopedia entry "How the Great Pyramids were really built". Does he change the course of history, or does he set the present course while becoming an Egyptian God?

Three teens are marooned on a what they presume is a mysterious tropical island. Casey and Mike have made their way through the creature-filled jungle to a glass city where they hope to find help for Jack, their abducted friend. Once in the city, they learn shocking news that will change their lives forever, and getting Jack back will be anything but easy.

The brothers Jehovah and Hades have always been at the top of their game as a high-IQ computer hacker from M.I.T. and an unkillable assassin. When they're contacted by Rick to free a people oppressed by a dictator, both jump at the chance. Once they reach the Philippines, however, they realize that their limited resources and constant attacks sent from an unknown source severely limit their abilities. To make matters worse, the mayor has his own personal army that seems to anticipate their actions.

With the first real battle on Penthos raging around him, Azra can't get his mind off of Elise. He fears for her safety, but just as much, he fears that she will not be able to handle everything that is happening around them and that he will lose her. As the warriors fall around him, though, he knows that he has to focus on his mission there and not allow himself to let the Denynso, or any of the rest, down.

A great catastrophe desolates humanity. A strong blinding light flashes in the blue Mediterranean sky for an instant. Almost every inhabitant ends up blind, only a few manage to escape the event. The novel, divided into several stories, narrates how several characters live and react to this apocalyptic situation in different ways.

The battlecraft Aphrodite drags itself over an alien desert, the one ship to survive an attack by the vicious Arrivers. With half the crew dead, Tobias Carter is convinced no one is watching out for them. The ship's reverend can't convince him to have hope. And the Arrivers are catching up....

The Apollo program reached the Moon, but, its goal is Mars. It's 0830 hours, July 4th, 1976. The Quest blasts into orbit and rendezvous with NASA’s experimental Nuclear Thermal Rocket. Quest’s mission: To take its three-man-crew on a dangerous and unparalleled journey...to Mars.

The Event causes the failure of every electronic device in the town. Suddenly, the ageing Vietnam War veteran Jimmy Spears doesn’t seem as crazy as many people had assumed him to be as he built a life around concepts of self-sufficiency and minimal dependence on state support structures.

In this P. K. Dick short story read by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti almost everyone had a bomb shelter, but if they didn't have the latest model, chances where they wouldn't survive a nuclear attack. Mike Foster's dad wouldn't be bullied into buying a shelter until finally one Christmas he signed up for the easy payment plan and....

Antonio J. Hopson blends speculative fiction, historical fiction, and narrative force to imagine what it would be like if our nation's forefathers were attacked by the world’s most deadly war machine: The United States of America. Washington, Franklin, and Revere are insurgent foes pursued by Allied Forces. An embedded reporter pens a stark, first-person reflection of America’s war on terror/war on itself.

"The Eyes Have It" is a humorous, early short story by Philip K. Dick that first appeared in Science Fiction Stories in 1953. In it, a bus-riding reader of a discarded melodrama with an overactive imagination is persuaded by the hackneyed prose that the world has been taken over by aliens. Thus, when "eyes slowly roved around the room", the reader imagines disembodied eyeballs traveling of their own free will. A rare example of satire from the Dick canon.

The inhabitants of Yeitr Prime use what they call a Contact Window to reach new worlds and civilizations. Gatr and his young lieutenant are sent on a mission to make first contact, but face a narrow chance at success. When disaster strikes will they abort the mission, or continue on in the face of danger?

Mr. Cave, a shop owner, finds a strange crystal egg that serves as a window into a Martian landscape. The War of the Worlds was probably H.G. Wells' best-known work, but this brief tale indicates that he had more than a passing interest in Mars.

In this children's story, a young queen purchases an enchanted item that will allow her to see either the past or the future - but not both. She chooses a direction, and discovers that her obsession with the item leads to her kingdom's downfall when she fails to heed the salesman's warnings. A terrific story for the "tween" crowd.

Earth lies abandoned. When the Makers left for the stars, civilization descended into ruin. Asp, one of the last remaining sentient cities, fights against the ravages of time, but his resources are dwindling. When at last he swallows his pride and seeks the help of the primitive peoples that remain, he learns the true meaning of courage.

This short story prequel sets up the world of the Rift Jumpers, the pioneers of interstellar space. Follow the story of Commander Jane Henningsly in her research ship, Dauntless, as she develops the first Faster Than Light (FTL) drive. Her and her crew set the groundwork for mankind's expansion into the void, making us an interstellar species. The future of the Rift Contingent will never be the same with the development of the first Rift Jumper-class vessel in space.

Christine is an actress, a breakout star in truth. She never believed in wizards. She never knew of the darkest wizard ever to have existed: Mortem. But Mortem knows of her. Christine is the sole survivor of his assassination of two wizarding journalists that resulted in a destroyed cafe and many dead civilians. Fearful her rising celebrity will bring his great plan to take over the wizarding world into the consciousness of the public, he seeks her out, and Christine is forced on the run.

As curator of the Twentieth Century Exhibit, George Miller felt that to do a good job, he had to live his work. Then, one day, somebody got into his exhibit, and he went to investigate.

Caribbean born novelist Tobias Buckell established himself as a gifted new voice in science fiction with his stunning first novel, Crystal Rain. Now, in his first collection, Buckell demonstrates his strengths in the short form, offering readers a collection of stories that are compelling, smart, wonderfully imagined, and entertaining. Tides from the New Worlds contains 19 stories that range from multicultural science fiction to magical realism, some in print for the first time.

The Wild West of Mancha is where the law is never found and justice is never served. Bandits and intergalactic pirates run rampant causing chaos wherever they land. The main problem is La Campana, a gang of space pirates who with their invincible leader, Captain Karver, lay waste all across the planet. Bounty hunters and assassins try and failed to get a hold of his multi-million dollar bounty.