Short Science Fiction Fantasy Stories

Stephen Leeds is perfectly sane. It's his hallucinations who are mad. A genius of unrivaled aptitude, Stephen can learn any new skill, vocation, or art in a matter of hours. However, to contain all of this, his mind creates hallucinatory people - Stephen calls them aspects - to hold and manifest the information. Wherever he goes, he is joined by a team of imaginary experts to give advice, interpretation, and explanation. He uses them to solve problems...for a price. Then a company hires him to recover stolen property - a camera that can allegedly take pictures of the past....

For Megan Wolford, life as she knew it came to an end after the world was decimated by an EMP. Now, she does her best to survive and protect her daughter, Caitlin. But when the young girl falls ill with a mysterious virus, Meghan must leave the safety of their home and embark on a dangerous journey to forage for medical supplies.

A classic tale featuring two of the most-memorable characters in sword and sorcery, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Over a span of 50 years, the late Fritz Leiber wrote dozens of adventures, set in the fictional city of Lankhmar, featuring the seven-foot-tall barbarian and the diminuitive thief. The stories were recognized with both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

From stories about time-traveling assassins, to Black Mirror-esque tales of cryptocurrency and internet trolling, to heartbreaking narratives of parent-child relationships, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories is a far-reaching work that explores topical themes from the present and a visionary look at humanity’s future. This collection includes a selection of Ken Liu’s speculative-fiction stories over the past five years - 17 of his best - plus a new novelette.

With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.

A classic tale featuring two of the most-memorable characters in sword and sorcery, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Over a span of 50 years, the late Fritz Leiber wrote dozens of adventures, set in the fictional city of Lankhmar, featuring the seven-foot-tall barbarian and the diminuitive thief. The stories were recognized with both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Mercy Thompson’s world just got a whole lot bigger... A collection of all-new and previously published short stories featuring Mercy Thompson, “one of the best heroines in the urban fantasy genre today” (Fiction Vixen Book Reviews), and the characters she calls friends...

The Legend of Drizzt: The Collected Stories expands upon the epic legend of the dark elf with 12 tales performed by the all-star cast of Felicia Day, Dan Harmon, Greg Grunberg, Tom Felton, Danny Pudi, Sean Astin, Melissa Rauch, Ice-T, Wil Wheaton, Al Yankovic, Michael Chiklis, and David Duchovny!

A garrison on asteroid Y-3, a beautiful place actually. First published in 1953 by Philip K. Dick, this science fiction short story proposes that if you're overworked, become a plant, and that is just what the personnel on asteroid Y-3 are doing. The problem becomes how does Dr. Henry Harris who has been sent to resolve the problem avoided becoming one of them and taking root?

"The First Kill" is a bit of backstory for the universe of The Shadow Campaigns. The Shadow Throne implies a connection between Andreas, Duke Orlanko's brutally efficient go-to killer, and Sothe, the Gray Rose, his best agent turned bitter enemy. In this story, we get to see these two at an earlier point in their careers, and take a look at how that relationship got started.

In the eight years since his first full-length novel, Gridlinked, was published by Pan Macmillan, Neal Asher has firmly established himself as one of the leading British writers of science fiction, and his novels are now translated in many languages. Most of his stories are set in a galactic future-scape called The Polity, and with this collection of marvellously inventive and action-packed short stories, he takes us further into the manifold diversities of that amazing universe.

Blowups Happen is a 1940 science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It is one of two stories in which Heinlein, using only public knowledge of nuclear fission, anticipated the actual development of nuclear technology a few years later.

An IT whiz at the Babylon Casino is enlisted to upgrade security for the game of keno and its random-number generator. The new quantum computer system is foolproof. But someone on the inside is no fool. For once the odds may not favor the house - unless human ingenuity isn’t entirely a thing of the past.

Be ready for some action, humor, and mystery in this anthology with short stories. You’ll listen about gangsters, witches, magic potions, interrogations, werewolves, and murder. Several stories have a murder victim, while others are all about theft or robberies. But in many cases, they spark the imagination and make up for a great way to sit back, relax, and read or listen to stories from a completely different world.

This boxed set contains the first three books in the Dragon Riders of Elantia series: Call of the Dragon, Flight of the Dragon, and Might of the Dragon. If you like sassy heroines, spunky dragons, crazy adventures, and wild treasure hunts, this is the series for you.

Imagine if you will, you have been underground during the day, and when you come up the world has changed. There is a man hanging from a telephone pole right on Main Street, and no one seems to notice or if they do, they don't indeed care. Life appears otherwise normal, but is it? Who do you tell? Who can you tell? Or is anything really wrong? Philip K. Dick takes us into that nightmare where we run and things seen so real, but perhaps you are the one that is confused.

"Before Eden" was first published in the June 1961 issue of Amazing. Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) is regarded as one of the most influential science fiction writers of all time. He was named a grand master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

After 25 years serving as the human Monitor of the Interstellar Ark, Hermes, Orion is scheduled to be placed back into hibernation with the other crewmembers. Knowing he'll die there and be replaced before the ship's voyage is over, he decides that he won’t — can’t — accept that fate. Whatever it takes, Orion will escape Hermes and see what's beyond, even if it means defying the regulations of his only friend — the ship-wide artificial intelligence known as Dan.

Here are delightful upendings of genre clichés and heartfelt revitalizations of classic tropes. Here is social commentary with teeth, and here are scenes of pants-wettingly funny comedy. Here are characters and situations that by their very outrageousness achieve a heightened realism unlike any other. And here is one of the strongest voices in modern science fiction, the writer called by Andrew Sean Greer “this generation’s Le Guin”.

Featuring A Prelude to War, an Iron Druid novella. After an old friend is murdered in retaliation for his mercenary strikes against the oldest vampires in the world, Atticus O'Sullivan must solicit the aid of another old friend in Ethiopia if he's going to have a chance of finishing a war he never wanted. Meanwhile Granuaile MacTiernan starts a private war of her own against Loki, the lord of lies, and if it brings Ragnarok early - so be it.