Tag: Fiction

Fiction from The Future: “Old Faithful” by Nathan Dragon

He’d say if maybe he got a new one, he’d be able to get some work done. The desk chair was a pain in his ass. Couldn’t sit right and couldn’t work right. Always something, Rosie would say, whenever he complained. He just couldn’t get comfortable in the damn chair, no matter how he’d adjusted…
The Future: “Women with Runes,” a short story by Michelle Dove

Independence It is here—the celebration of our country’s birth—and the heat is a trillion or two trillion degrees. To stay cool, we wear our chamber suits and sit far enough from each other so the sweat doesn’t spread, only localizes within our individual suits and runs between our thighs where nobody sees. The musicians take…
Fiction from The Future: “Dog Days” by Michael Chin

From back before all the dogs were gone, I remember Waffles. The first time Waffles stole a waffle from Dad’s plate (the reason we renamed him from Rover). Waffles barking from the far side of the front door when I keyed into the house. The way Waffles smelled when he was wet—moist and mildew-y in…
“Sixty-Four Opportunities in the Snap of a Finger”: Davis Schneiderman & Ruth Ozeki Discuss Her Novel A Tale for the Time Being

“A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”—Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being Lake Forest Reads: Ragdale is a community reads program in partnership with the Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest College, and the Friends…
“Midwest Antique Mall, Financial Troubles, Kidnapping, Etc.”: Alex Higley Talks to Luke Geddes, Author of Heart of Junk

Luke Geddes and I first bonded on Twitter over our shared admiration for the little-loved novelist Wright Morris. Like much of Morris’s work, Geddes’s novel Heart of Junk, published by Simon & Schuster in January, follows an idiosyncratic assortment of distinctly Midwestern characters whose chief—or perhaps only—commonality is the place they live: Wichita, Kansas, or to…
Bad Survivalist: “Hobby,” microfiction by Tyler Dempsey

I’m not even sure you’ll get this. They’ll convince you it’s from Earth, ancient. They (those in power). History’s changing. Eventually, no philosophy (maybe there already isn’t) suggesting we were a species of action. It was politics. Started in politics. Create emotion. Reactionary. Like a soccer game. Left, Right, hobbies. The home team. Candidate most-viral…
Bad Survivalist Microfiction: “Chess Problems” by Steve Chang

—after Diane Williams and James Robison Brian returned from the world and found Charlene was deceiving him again. He liked visiting her in her studio, a short distance from his mind. “That’s enough,” he said. “Charlene.” He was raspy and eager, but with a prickly thumb. It now prickled. She was beside the window, scribbling…
Spiritualist Erotica by Erin Lyndal Martin: “The Flower Medium” for Haunted Passages

I wrote down my findings about what happened that night, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell everything. Not even to you, Lieutenant. I hear you’re old and sick and you may die soon. I sure hate to lose you. You saw the force through some hard times, and no hard time ever met a…
Bad Survivalist: “A Neutralized Threat,” comic fiction by Analeah Loschiavo Rosen

It does not seem overly harsh to say the men and women who work on atomic weapons distance themselves from the moral implications of what they do. But me? I make sure they pass through clearance and are able to find parking spots. Not so much separates us when you think of the worst-case scenario.…