Growing up in Pennsylvania in the 1980s, I was given the apple-pie routine. America is great. America is free. The land of opportunity. All is well or soon will be. But then I went to high school in inner-city Philadelphia and college on the south side of Chicago. Everything wasn’t alright. America is not free.
I’ve been a rebel my whole life. I became a troublemaker when Catholic grade school bored me. I published a broadsheet attack on administrative oppression at my Philadelphia public high school. I left a Chicago loop 67th floor bank job to drive a cab. I left the United States, too. When I came back, I was arrested, beaten and thrown into federal prison by US Marshals for exposing their abuse. Then I fomented an international uproar over airport grope-downs. I was even accused of being a terrorist on network TV.
From an unexpected twist on a classic Christmas tale and a soldier returning home from war to a pair of girls waiting for an unlikely Christmas wish to come true and a creepy evening in a museum, fill your briefest moments with this collection of 18 flash fiction stories.
Women rule. Uncommitted men rot in prison awaiting selection by overworked, love-starved spinsters. Cocksman Nick Chesterton just got dumped. With a return to Broseg No. 34 in the offing, he publicly ridicules his ex and finds himself a fugitive from the Femforcers on a sexist meme charge. But the lovelorn ladies of war-torn Eritrea liked his meme.
No jobs. Robots took them. Citizens subsist on a basic income guarantee. They consume their lives in drug-fueled virtual reality gaming binges. Ian Blake doesn't play games and he won't accept handouts. He needs to be productive and useful - but his creepy boss just fired the baby-saving hero and father of three.
From the Imperium-controlled aetherlanes to a tech noir restitution agency in the Free Zone and from a steampunk, 1894 China with clockwork automatons to a post-1984 Orwellian dystopia with mandatory goodpharm, here are ten science fiction stories of defiance and daring.
From the 1898 Martian Siege of Baltimore to a forlorn AI attack dog on the blue-star-scarred surface of MZ458-C and from the merc-manned Freestead Mayflower off the coast of post-apocalyptic Portland to the man-desperate shores of the Red Sea, here are seventeen science fiction stories of valiant endurance.
From a Hillary Clinton stripper to mythical beast-women in the harsh Scandinavian tundra and from an unusual band of steadfast teddy bears to the last man in zombie-occupied Chicago, fill your briefest moments with pulse-pounding frights and off-beat chuckles with this collection of 24 flash fiction stories. Each story tells a complete tale in but a few short minutes.
Looking for some short but high-quality entertainment over coffee or a snack? Grab Bite-Sized Stories and fill your stolen moments with 33 indie flash fiction tales. Just 5 minutes per engaging story.
A scrappy black market rebel in a near-future intellectual risks both his life and his principles to get his sister back from corrupt cops before they sell her into sex slavery.