Welcome to another new issue of Future Science Fiction Digest, where we continue to feature original and thought-provoking stories from across the globe! We have a nice mix this time around, with three whimsical yarns of various types, one sweet post-apocalyptic tale, and one story that’s a mix of sci-fi and horror. ...

Setti knew the woman for a ghost the moment she appeared. It was the pink hair that gave her away, short and spiky. Real people didn’t have hair like that. Also, you couldn’t see the scratch-marks on Setti’s kitchen table through real people’s torsos....

One  So a guy goes into a bar and orders a drink.  He nods toward the bartender and raises a finger. The bartender returns a knowing smile and slides a tequila on the rocks down the counter. The bartender doesn’t know the guy; this is the first time this guy has been in this bar....

Anuett wiped dust out of her eyes and grabbed the trowel from her kit. Despite her aching knees and sore back, she scraped away yet another time-compressed layer of dirt from off the fresco, like she’d done for the last few standard-hours....

Ladies and Gentlemen: the invention for which you are giving me this award is a fraud. It has an unforgivable bug. Ladies and Gentlemen, I accept this honor. Ladies and Gentlemen. This isn’t what I had in mind. I have been told it is customary to speak about the roots of one’s inspiration....

Our 11th issue features stories from China, Russia, Belgium, the USA, and Germany. There’s something for everyone in this issue. We’ve got post-apocalyptic cats, predatory social networks, Zen robots, teenage time travelers, and lovers pursuing one another across the universe. This issue features cover art by Luca Oleastri (Italy) as well as an interior illustration of her own story by K.A....

What if the world that cats see is not entirely real? In earlier days, before the phantoms came, the cat could not even speak, let alone set out on the path of a legendary life. In those days, the cat was nothing more than just an ordinary cat....

“The Jellyfish” art by K.A. Teryna A jellyfish swam slowly right through the dataveneer and hung at the center of the room, chaotically wiggling its tentacles. It was so dazzlingly multi-colored that it made Kalinka shut her eyes. She had already forgotten how bright colors could be....

Cyber koan #1 If all things are 1 or 0, what is the point in numbers? There is a story about a monk who came to the robot priest in search of enlightenment. But that is not the real story. There was no monk, and the robot was far from a priest....

03/01/1546 – Mission #VN-7316 It’s hard to write an ongoing report when I know you’re going to be the first person to read it. You wouldn’t believe how much time I wasted just trying to decide what tone to strive for....

Welcome to the latest installment of Future Science Fiction Digest, featuring fiction from Mexico, China, the United States, and Croatia. Although I did not originally set out to pursue this theme, the issue sort-of naturally evolved around the idea of artificial intelligence—be it created by humans from scratch or uploaded into the cloud from a living being—and its impact and influence on the larger world which, according to our esteemed authors, isn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows....

1 On the day of my death, we arrived at the hospital at eight in the morning. Sandra had scheduled our appointment for as early as possible. “Hi Celeste, hi Mariano,” she greeted us. Sandra was wearing a white laboratory coat and her hair was drawn back in a ponytail; she had come out to the parking lot to receive us....

April 12, 1961, Baikonur Cosmodrome Sergei Korolev stood beside the scorched and blackened launch pad. Nearly an hour had gone by since the rocket had risen to the heavens, and still waves of heat gushed up over the rim of the spaceport’s flame trench....

They call themselves office drones, but they are humans, and they are people. They call me the Office Drone: I am an unmanned aerial vehicle, but I am also a person. I say that I am a person too, even if Brad, who is from a place he calls accounting, thinks that the matter is up for debate during team lunches....

Liz stepped off the bus in her new black dress and lime-green slingbacks, feeling self-conscious. Was her outfit too elegant? Too sexy?  Did it show too much effort? She recognized him immediately from the agency photo. He was waiting for her at the waterfront, leaning on the balustrade, the late afternoon sunlight turning his hair to gold....

Welcome to the East Asia Special issue of the Future Science Fiction digest. In this oversized issue we’ve collected stories from the established masters as well as some exciting up-and-comers in China, Japan, and South Korea. From machine societies to ocean depths, from interstellar migrations to genetically engineered mermaids, these tales envision very different, often dark, but always fascinating futures....

I. Origins Fashion moves in a spiral, as demonstrated by the resurgence of the Restoratronist School of art. The school’s principles are a response to the Barbaric Era: art is about destroying it, mourning it, recreating it, interpreting it. And thus the art of the Restoratrons mostly concerns humans....

Anatoly had delivered the mermaid the previous night, but Celtigar only discovered its existence after he got out of bed and went into the living room, where it had been dropped off. Anatoly must have used the one-time passcode he’d given him—the alarm hadn’t gone off....

Thrust kicked, and Otryadyn Batu stole a glance at his companion. Even fearsome, confident Temujin had to be feeling the stress. But he couldn’t read the other man’s expression through the visor. Batu turned back to the viewport but all he saw was a circle of light-blue Mongolian sky....

1. Clairvoyant Mark was a very special person—when he told me that he was going to take me to see a clairvoyant, I wasn’t too surprised. “But you are a scientist!” I couldn’t help pointing out. “That doesn’t mean I worship science.”...

A whale must have died, I thought, as the snowfall thickened. When a whale dies it snows heavier down here. In this dark, cold, silent village of ours, the death of a whale descends as an ode to life. With my gills stretched wide and a rich, green glow shining from the lure sticking out of my forehead, I drifted through the blizzard quivering with delight....

1 Wednesday. 00:02. Xia Mang’s biological clock woke him from a deep sleep. His daughter Weiwei was one month old today, and today would be her dormancy test. Starting tomorrow, she would be a Wednesday citizen of Shenli City, like Xia Mang and his wife Xiao An. ...

There is no Science Fiction without Medical Science Fiction. It is not a subgenre; it is the very foundation. Intrinsic. Endemic. Our beloved genre was born like Athena from the head of Mary Shelley. Victor Frankenstein’s Promethean act of creation, and then neglect, of an intelligent and sensitive person is a narrative examination of ethics in science, still relevant two hundred years later....

“Is our baby going to be okay?” The tiny human being was almost lost under the monitors and cannulas fastened to her reddened skin with hypoallergenic adhesive tape. One tube went into the mouth, another into the nose. Was she going to be okay?...

Joanne felt hope drain out of her eight hours into the traffic jam. Granted she was asleep the whole time, but the sight of the exact same tree with the lightning-burnt bark, which Joanne had stared at an equivalent of an entire workday ago, was panic-inducing....

They told us we would be heroes. Sounds like a lie, doesn’t it? Sounds like hitting a dented, cracked shell to see if deep inside a pinpoint of light might flicker on. We worked just as well in the dark, but the Plowshares Decommission Initiative kept searching for high-profile jobs to win over the public, and when I signed up for their pilot program for nurses, I had hoped to do my part....

A Review of Twice Upon A Time (Netflix, December 2019) Twice Upon A Time is, of course, a time-travel story. It has been the title of at least three movies: one an animated film by George Lucas from 1983, another a non-time travel movie–and a 2017 Dr....

Like every person who ever contemplated existence, I’ve wondered if the world was made for me—whole and new—this very morning, along with counterfeit memories of what came before. Recollection is unreliable, as are the records we inherit each day. Even those we made the night before—our jotted notes or formal reports, our memorials carved deep in stone—even they might have been concocted, along with memories of breakfast, by some deity or demon....

Our Summer 2020 issue features three original short stories, which hail from Canada, Pakistan, and Sweden. Michèle Laframboise’s “Cousin Entropy” was originally written in French and appeared in Galaxies magazine. Our own associate editor N. R. M. Roshak was won over by the siren’s call of literary translation and helped us to share this far-flung space opera reminiscent of Liu Cixin’s books with you, dear reader....

Sometimes I think that all God did to create our universe was to burp it out, then let it inflate like a balloon. In that first fraction of a second, the compressed matter of His Burp sprayed out its offspring in waves....

I tried to lie still in my little sniper’s nest on the ruined tower. As I waited sportingly for Abdul to finish his prayers, the Blurring’s stock numbed my aching shoulder. With no mosques on Sunstrewn, Abdul was making do as he fell to his knees for the fourth and last rakat in prayer on the tumbling shell of an apartment block....

The Lethal Sun A Review of Into the Night (Netflix, May 2020) In the old days, they used to have something called B-movies.   They were intended to accompany the A-movie, the main attraction, in the double features that played in neighborhood movie houses, before television came along and ate their lunch and closed them down. ...