In the aftermath of a one-sided nuclear war, an entertainer travels to military bases in decline due to grief and madness to dissuade any attempt at world-ending revenge. A weird and melancholy…
Category: Story a Day 2022
“Pretty Boy Crossover” by Pat Cadigan
A club-hopping Pretty Boy is tempted by representatives of a tech corporation to enter the network and become self-aware data. A trippy cyberpunk story of temptation and resistance from the era of…
“The Golem” by Avram Davidson
A retired Jewish couple is visited by a golem-like android, and they unwittingly turn the tables on its plot to subjugate humankind to its will. This is a wonderfully charming story; Davidson…
“Forever Yours, Anna” by Kate Wilhelm
A graphologist is hired to find a woman who wrote love letters to a scientist killed in an accident at a top secret lab, and discovers a surprising secret. I like a…
“Computer Friendly” by Eileen Gunn
A girl befriends a pair of rambunctious kids at a test for their future placement in a cybernetic network, and goes on a quest to prevent them from being liquidated as unassimilable….
“Everywhere” by Geoff Ryman
A young man in the near future reflects on his grandfather’s passing and the way technology intersects with his daily life. This is an interesting look into the rather mundane effects that…
“Think Like a Dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelly
When the transfer of a person’s consciousness to another planet goes wrong, a human operator of an alien technology has to make a terrible decision. This is an evocative and disturbing story…
“We See Things Differently” by Bruce Sterling
An Arab journalist interviews an American rock star who has become a demagogic focal point in a declining post-imperial world. This has fascinating and troubling contemporary echoes – written in 1989, it…
“Air Raid” by John Varley
A team of time travelers intercepts an airplane moments before its crash in order to collect passengers to serve as colonists on a distant planet. A fast-paced adventure set against a truly…
“Closer” by Greg Egan
A man experiments with a variety of post-human enhancements to try to escape solipsism and experience his partner’s consciousness. More a thought experiment than a story, but inventive and strange.