Short Stories

From the Greater London chapter of the Committee to Restrict the Accidental Population:

A comprehensive guide for Her Majesty's subjects on dealing with the social problems and legal issues created by the so-called "accidental population." If you are finding your world complicated by vampires, resurrectionists, or the undead, this pamphlet will give you the vital information you need to survive awkward situations with your life and social standing intact, and in the process restore the dignity of the Empire.

A world without secrets can still hold all kinds of surprises...

As the earth drowns beneath an apocalyptic deluge, recently widowed Irene vows to spend the end of the world with a little bit of heaven: Dancing away her last night on Earth to the sounds of the best band in the world in a club just up the road where all is not what it seems...

When police discovered a woman’s broken body at the bottom of a sea bluff in Southern Scotland in 1898, the residents of the small town she lived in began locking their doors at night. Only one man saw what happened, but he carried the secret of her death to his death bed. Wounded in the trenches on the Western Front, he gives his last confession...

Thirty-five years ago, the local bag lady found ten children abandoned in a pit of quicksand by mile-marker thirty-five. Sacrificed to protect the reputation of the all-powerful Chiswick family, their survival remains a well-guarded secret. Now, as The Society of Miserable Bastards, they have plans for the family that abandoned them...

In this neighborhood, it's not often that visitors come to the door. You want to be hospitable. You want to let them in. But sometimes, even over something as innocent as coffee in a haunted house, you get more than you bargained for.

When public suspicion of the enhanced hits crisis, one man discovers just how much his fellow citizens value their humanity--and how far they'll go to squelch anything that threatens it. In a world where implants make the blind see, the lame walk, and the deaf hear, what becomes of human mind?

Step into Rick’s parlor. Don’t mind the bell on the door or the old fashioned cash register. Buy a manufactured novel, fresh from the computer—a first edition. Sit in the easy chair or lay out on the sofa. Strap on a helmet and a skinsuit and take a swim on Europa. He can be trusted. Really. It says so on the door. In ten foot high letters, right above the shop front, he tells you exactly what they do:

“We Create Worlds.”

And they do it on the cheap.

Night hag? Dark goddess? Disgraceful wife? She's been maligned for centuries as the source of women's misery. That is the story they told in the Talmud.

But this is her story, in her own words. The story of Lilith.

Books. Power. Electricity. The wizard has everything forbidden the common people—and nobody even knows his name. For two girls barely in their teens, the mystery—and the temptations—prove irresistible. On a cold winter's night, they enter the wizard's garden to discover a treasure more precious than any they imagined—and a secret that tests their friendship beyond any civilized limits...

Theo, a virtual monk, denies his hospitality to no one. After decades of lavish expense, his chief researcher joins him to celebrate the breakthrough he's been waiting for: the world's perfect, environmentally-friendly, completely ethical food. And what better way to celebrate than a feast of biblical proportions...

He sits alone, with no name. A faceless creature with a single purpose, he lives in a small room. he knows only his consoles, his buttons, his screens--the surfaces of a control room for a great machine that he calls "the universe."