Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
The tunnel is about 20 feet long. Or 7 meters. Man, being an American scientist sucks sometimes. You think in random, unpredictable units based on what situation you’re in.
…I don’t want to be in some other part of the ship if something interesting happens.
Just as I’m thinking that, something interesting happens.
Knock-knock-knock.
No, that’s not creepy at all. Being in a spaceship twelve light-years from home and having someone knock on the door is totally normal.
It’s a simple idea, but also stupid. Thing is, when stupid ideas work, they become genius ideas. We’ll see which way this one falls.
I cross my arms and slump into my pilot’s seat. There’s no gravity to properly slump with, so I have to make a conscious effort to push myself into the seat. I’m pouting, darn it, and I intend to do it right.
Chasing Embers by James Bennett
“I have seen your world, little beast. I have drunk of its terror and hope. Humans fear the darkness that gave them birth and harness the light to outshine the stars. They build machines that cough with smoke and poison the very air. They suck up the blood of the earth and pour filth into the seas. They speak boldly of freedom and peace and think they can buy them with war. Money is their temple and greed their god. They stand in defiance of all that is real, turning magic into myth, myth into Remnants, choosing to live in a cold dead dream.”
The Debt Collector by Steven Max Russo
“You’re a good egg too, Gabby,” he said, smiling awkwardly. They each picked up their beers and clinked glasses. Just a little scrambled, he thought.
Nugget’s Tenth Life by Adam Holcombe
Brother yowled and turned to race down the buidling, but Nugget was made of sterner stuff (that stuff being the brilliant stupidity of youthfulness).
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
They say hunting monsters will turn you into one. That isn’t what’s happening now. Sometimes to kill a dragon, you have to remember that you breathe fire too. This isn’t a becoming: it’s a revealing. Ive been a monster all along.
“May your life be long and easy.”
It’s a common blessing out here, but I’ve never dissected it before, Why are we, who are so unhappy, fixated on long lives? What is the point? An easy life isn’t a blessing. Easy doesn’t mean happy. Ale doesn’t mean anything at all. Sometimes the path to an easy life makes you miserable. The only person I’ve ever heard value happiness is the former empress. She named her second son happy, hoping it would be true. She knew the cost of an easy life, and the uselessness of a long one. She had both. She wished neither for her child, only that he a some point be happy. Was he? Was anyone?
She smiles, less like she thinks I’m funny and more like she wanted prove she knows how.
…that’s what a sister is: a piece of yourself you can finally love, because it’s in someone else.
I’d love to stay. Forcing Dell into small talk is fun because she so bad at it with me. It’s like she’s being asked to communicate with a child or snake—something that is either boring or dangerous, with no in-between.
It burns, but that’s too simple a term. It burns like opening your eyes in the light burns, like being born probably burns. It doesn’t feel like my body is responding to a foreign substance, but like the substance is awakening cells usually dormant.
Death can be senseless, but life never is.
I told Esther before that nothing was inevitable, but that was before I felt so helpless to change absolutely anything at all.
An Inheritance of Magic by Benedict Jacka
I’ve always liked London at night. The noise and bustle of the day fades away, and in the quiet you can feel the presence of the city. It has its own nature, kind of like its own essentia—old, layered, and complex, man-made construction on top of millennia- old earth. Generation after generation of people, with the plants and animals of old Britain living with them side by side. It’s neat and chaotic and ancient and sprawling, and it’s my home.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’d broken the rules, but I’ve always had an instinctive feeling that there’s a difference between breaking the rules and doing something wrong.
How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley
Daphne raised her hand. Nobody noticed. Daphne stood up, her hand still raised. They still ignored her. Daphne did not like being ignored, in the early days of her career, she’d been overlooked on account of her sex, talked over and patronized by a series of self-important, untalented little misogynists. So much had improved in the intervening years, and she was glad to see that a couple of the Councilors at the meeting were female. But now, she was being ignored because of her age, she appeared to have jumped out of the frying pan of sexism and into the fire of ageism–the final frontier of -isms.
(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)
