Author: Dru Pagliassotti

Length: short story

First Publication: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2009

What the Story is About: A horrific tale of a Victorian “resurrection man”.

Listen to the Audio version at Beyond Ceaseless Skies

Author: Robert Guffey

Length: short story

First Publication: Flurb, 2010

What the Story is About: What could have happened after they shot down Kong.

Author: Dominic Green

Length: short story

First Publication: BBC Cult Sherlock Holmes Magazine, 2004

What the Story is About: Sherlock Holmes investigates some very strange animal attacks.

Alternate story link

Author: Eugene Fischer

Length: short story

First Publication: Strange Horizons, 2009

What the Story is About: “Next is a family with a nine-year-old boy and a dead parakeet. They aren’t just dropping off the carcass for deactivation and disposal, they’ve come to have Gerry, a professional, explain death to their son. Gerry talks to their son about what happens to the bodies of animals when they die, and points out to him the things that make it clear that his bird is dead: the uncoordinated motion, the abandonment of normal behaviors, the lack of interest in water. ”

Author: Helen Keeble

Length: short fiction

First Publication: Strange Horizons, 2009

What the Story is About: By Divine providence, we captured the mermaid with neither loss of life nor injury to any seaman, nor any harm done to the specimen.

(Be sure not to miss Part 2)

Author: H. Beam Piper

Length: short fiction

First Publication: Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories, 1951

What the Story is About: One of Piper’s Paratime stories. Disaster strikes a ship carrying human colonists from Mars 75,000 years ago.

Was this ill-fated expedition the end of a proud, old race—or the beginning of a new one?

There are strange gaps in our records of the past. We find traces of man-like things—but, suddenly, man appears, far too much developed to be the “next step” in a well-linked chain of evolutionary evidence. Perhaps something like the events of this story furnishes the answer to the riddle.

Author: Kevin J Anderson

Length: short story

First Publication: The UFO Files, 1998

What the Story is About: HG Wells, a student in TH Huxley’s biology laboratory, catches a fever and has science fictional visions.

Author: Tobias S. Buckell

Length: short story

First Publication: Analog Science Fiction & Fact, 2002

What the Story is About: A tale set in alternate world where automobiles and other consumer goods are grown like trees, rather than manufactured. Their final shape is created by genetic engineering.

The story is in audio format only.

Author: Mary Robinette Kowal

Length: short story

First Publication: Talebones, 2007

What the Story is About: A scientist develops an elixer for reanimation of the dead. (Kowal calls it “Epistlary 18th Century SF”)

Author: Elizabeth Malartre

Length: short story

First Publication: Jim Baen’s Universe, 2007

What the Story is About: Charles Darwin meets a time traveler who attempts to change history …

Author: Ted Kosmatka

Length: short story

First Publication: Asimov’s Science Fiction, 2007

What the Story is About: In an alternate world where young Earth creationism – rather than evolution – is the reigning scientific theory, discovery of Homo floriensis (“Hobbit”) bones causes a genetic anthropologist to question his beliefs.

Note: only an audio version of this story is currently available

Author: Robert J. Sawyer

Length: short story

First Publication: Dark Destiny anthology, 1996

Awards: Prix Aurora Award, 1997

What the Story is About: A secret history is revealed through the bones of a missing fossil.