Short Science Fiction Fantasy Stories

In a world inundated with dystopian narratives, White Mirror is a bold attempt to breathe a new air of hope and adventure into science fiction and civilization as a whole. This collection of thirty-one original stories, each more thought-provoking and mind-bending than the last, follows the many lives of Lucilius—an explorer, inventor, and all-round Renaissance man of the next frontier—whose breathtaking journey through space and time offers us not only a profound glimpse into who we are, but who we could become.

Roy Court and his crew are taking the trip of a lifetime—several lifetimes in fact—duplicated and dispatched across the galaxies searching for Earthlike planets. Many possibilities for the future. Yet for Roy, no matter how many of him there are, there’s still just one painful, unchangeable past. In what world can a broken relationship be reborn? The universe is so vast, there’s always room for hope.

Jack Miller has spent his entire nine years in the same house on the same street in the same town with the same best friend. One day, while delivering papers on his same ordinary paper route, Jack finds himself amidst a very unordinary world. A world where strange and silly monsters become his friends. This is the complete series of adventures that Jack and his best friend, Annabelle, will have in the secret world that Jack discovers that fateful day.

A group of mountain climbers, caught in the dark, fight to survive their descent; in the British countryside, hundreds of magpies ascend into the sky, higher and higher, until they seem to vanish into the heavens; a professor and his student track a zombie horde in order to research zombie behavior; an all-girl riding school has sinister secrets; a town rails in vain against a curse inflicted upon it by its founders; and much more.

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.

While training for a manned mission to Mars, Dr. Sophie Winston and her team of scientists find themselves cut off from the rest of the world. Trapped inside a biosphere deep within the confines of Cheyenne Mountain, Sophie and crew discover they are the survivors of a brutal alien invasion. But as they struggle to stay alive, they realize their safe haven is far from safe and that they must team up with other survivors around the world to defeat the aliens before it’s too late for humanity and the Earth.

Notes from the author: The following is a short story I wrote in the Elantris world back in January of 2006. There were always a few holes in Elantris where I decided not to include viewpoints or sections of explanation in the name of streamlining, particularly at the end. In the back of my mind, I knew what happened. This story talks about one of those holes; it is meant to be heard after you’ve finished the novel and takes place during the events of the climax.

Of all the sports played across the globe, none has more curses, superstitions, or supernatural events like baseball, America's national pastime. While some of these can easily be explained, there are just as many that cannot. Field of Fantasies delves right into that superstition with short stories written by several key authors about baseball and the supernatural.

For more than 30 years, Pern has conjured visions of brave men and women mounted upon the backs of dragons. As anyone knows who has been touched by the storytelling magic of Anne McCaffrey, to hear of the exotic world of Pern is to inhabit it - and to experience its extraordinary dragons is to soar aloft with them and share their dazzling adventures. A Gift of Dragons brings together three beloved stories and a thrilling new tale of Pern, published here for the first time, in a single volume.

The vast comet should have destroyed us... When it slowed, then landed, everything we thought we knew about the universe changed. And for Mark, things just got far stranger, and much more dangerous. They came from another dimension, condemning our selfish, greedy ways, but sensing in us a potential to change. So when they chose Mark as a volunteer in their deadly trials to save the human race, how could he say no? Join him on his quest for loot, levels, and powerful abilities.

The title story of this collection - a devilishly ironic riff on H. P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" - was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, while "Probiscus" was nominated for an International Horror Guild award and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 19. In addition to his previously published work, this collection contains an original story.

Follow a core group of characters known as the Trailblazers as they use alien technology and knowledge discovered in Antarctic ruins to obtain limited immortality and lead humanity out into the galaxy, encountering, befriending, and fighting hundreds of alien races, all the while desperately trying to prepare Earth for the unbeatable threat at the core of the Milky Way that is destined to return and reclaim their lost colony... and their former human slaves.

Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision and try to create such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought 20 of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change.

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Six, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 33 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2020.

Sammy struggled through college until she's magically transported to another realm. In this new world, she's been transformed into the wholly (holy?) different form of a goddess. Now she has to acquire followers to appease the ever-helpful System while avoiding the blades of those who despise deities. To make matters worse, a certain god hungers for war, bringing a fated showdown closer with each passing day. And while her adjustment is challenging, the most intriguing part is that her powers have something to do with mirrors.

In his hugely influential and tempestuous career, Robert E. Howard created the genre that came to be known as sword and sorcery - and brought to life one of fantasy's boldest and most enduring figures: Conan the Cimmerian, reaver, slayer, barbarian, king. This volume gathers together three of Howard's longest and most famous Conan stories.

In the Shadow of the Towers compiles nearly 20 works of speculative fiction responding to and inspired by the events of 9/11, from writers seeking to confront, rebuild, and carry on, even in the face of overwhelming emotion.

Ethan's got a cushy job and an empty apartment to prove he's mastered monotony. But a mysterious talisman sends him tumbling into a whole new world—quite literally. He says goodbye to spreadsheets and hello to becoming the first-ever human Goblin King. Rivals? The ex-King’s ticked-off offspring are itching to overthrow him. Duels? They’re on his calendar next to ‘avoid rebellion.’ Wives? He’s required to have at least two.

For some, it’s the end of the world. For others, it’s just the beginning. With brilliant imagination, today’s most visionary writers point to the future in a collection curated by bestselling author Blake Crouch. These stories range from darkly comic to deeply chilling, but they all look forward. Featuring stories by Andy Weir, Amor Towles, Veronica Roth, N. K. Jemisin, Paul Tremblay, and Blake Crouch; with narration by Evan Rachel Wood, David Harbour, Jason Isaacs, Rosa Salazar, Steven Strait, and Janina Gavankar.

Thirteen tales of Darlene Bobich! The prequel to the successful Dying Days zombie novella. Includes a free preview of Dying Days.