A bouquet of novelettes and short stories fills out the issue: William Preston’s Martian investigators must discover the secret of a “Remnant”; Alice Towey’s plucky robot protagonist shows it can do more than just “Sort”; Mercurio D. Rivera returns with a look at the beauty and grief surrounding a “Night Beach”; Nick Wolven’s tale illustrates the reality of being a “Rocket Jock”; amidst corporate bureaucracy on a distant planet, Peter Wood’s hero laments that “Nothing I Like to Do Pays Well”; Gregory Marlow pens a pensive piece ruminating on “A Soul Unearthed”; high school gumshoes take on an unusual neighborhood phenomenon in John Richard Trtek’s “Even Kings”; and Anya Ow weaves a future where “The Water Gods’ Treasure” must be protected.

Nothing I Like to Do Pays Well

by Peter Wood

The Corporate Meeting in the Armpit of the Galaxy

Even seventy-five light-years from Earth, I couldn’t escape corporate briefings and committee meetings. We had a half dozen a week on Zebulon, the moon of a gas giant.

I tried to get comfortable in one of the rickety plastic chairs that should have been replaced a decade ago. I glanced at the faded photos of the Blue Ridge Park-way that covered the walls and wished I was anywhere but here. READ MORE

Cicada

by Will McIntosh & Matt Mikalatos

Snowflakes hit the windshield and immediately melted, as if they were dying. A few more hours and they’d begin to survive, and bind together. Strength in numbers.

“We don’t know where they will appear this time,” the newscaster on the radio said. “All we know is, they’ll come. As they’ve come every year.” READ MORE