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With his beefy hands, Race pulls closed the Dragonfly’s narrow belly hatch. “Let’s get outta here!” he booms. I run up the gantry way to the cockpit and, once there, jump into the left seat. I start the Engine On cycle sequence as Race joins me. I holster my pistol, the barrel still hot to… — read more

Winter Solstice north of forty-five degrees, and I’m cold under the canopy of a solitary tree on the, it seems, plain of misery. The rain is cold and falls mercilessly, all but halting my march into the foothills of the Untrodden. It’s been three weeks since I left the warmth of her bed. The warmth… — read more

The Tesseract Engine finally cuts off, bringing my Starcraft to a bobbly two percent of light speed drift and within zero point two five seven marks of XTE J1650-500, which was within two percent of my estimate way back at Waypoint Ticonderoga. I digress. I’m a freelancer collecting dark matter filaments I.V.O. “Friendly” Black Holes… — read more

Hard rain coming in like back when we domiciled below the Front Range in the shadow of the Steppe, and learned the art of fishing in those cold mountain streams into which we’d plunge a bottle of wine and then after an interval, drink that cold liquid in the warmth of the early-fall sun and… — read more

As the old men sit under the banner of the Universe amid the raw smoke from burning rosemary branches cooking meats over an open fire, their conversation turns to the setting sun and the Land of Shadows beyond the Borderlands. And, most importantly, the strange creatures that inhabit those faraway abodes. — read more

Skirting the low hills around me, concrete-colored clouds move fast overhead, pushed by a hard cold wind on this lonely desolation of Ross 128 b. During the Outjump to the Ross 128 system, I was Genmoded to seamlessly adapt physically to this place. I’m still cold. With my back to the wind, I stand in… — read more

It is with this regard that I, with a certain rank shyness, recall my First Experience so-long-ago “under the mistletoe” with a tankard of Holiday Cheer in one hand, and my other ‘round the narrow waist of a young woman who wore a cashmere sweater and it was better than anything Lowry could have cobbled… — read more

And, in a wink of illusionary space-time, I materialize on a wide smart metal platform a few klicks north of Fardide, a self-building city of silicon-based intelligence where the structures were once alive. That was before the Madness. Why am I here? That’s a good question. One I’ve asked myself a myriad of times. My… — read more

The Story of Stone Stuffing On each (U.S.) Thanksgiving Eve, I review the cautionary tale of Turkey McCormick, and contemplate why this is such a lively and bittersweet story, to wit: Since the time he was young, Turkey McCormick was charged each Thanksgiving Eve with gathering the key ingredient that would constitute the Stone Stuffing… — read more

At the Zulu dark hour, I arrive at the Mutsu Takeoff Facility in the shadow of Mount Kuwahatayama in the Aomori Prefecture. As the lifter touches down on the L.Z., the morass of the Complex looms in front of the kilometer-high Barrier Tower, its red and green navigation lights blinking slow and steady. The moonlight… — read more