To whoever sent a box of "Sven's ashes" -- creepy, uncool, and not nice. Maybe that seemed well-intended to you? Sven and I are fictional, independent and cool with each other.

BlastedHeath noticed: "Wow! It seems it has been years since I have been strapped down on a stone slab in some tower or other, but what the absolute hell is going on out there?

Emmet Jericho admired and worried about his son, Alten, who reminded him so much of himself and his late wife. "Better get inside. When it's so still and you can't sense anything,

"Strange." thought Hrengor the Beholder. "Born into a savage culture. Found my own way into smoothie-crafting at DM transit node 937a, only to learn of grander savage hungers."

When word went around that private equity firm COSMAX had acquired the whole dark-matter transit network, presumably including the food courts, Hrengor's Martian friend Krikli said

To young writers: 1) The way I write is too condensed to be sustainable beyond a couple of lines at a time. Many top writers have tended toward simplicity and universality.

Some of the peacekeepers (or at least those with nothing left to lose) gathered at Homeland Depot with their pea-shooters and paper airplanes. Strange that ICE avoided Lowe's, but

One night at the desert diner, Guffy Harkins ventured a joke: "Before we even finish the border wall, humans will have mutated into space aliens!" "Tell me about it," said Verma,

Cathy Crates tried to wake up every morning thinking "optimism" despite some horrific events and self-embarrassments, but her keen sense of atmospheres and color grading gave her

After I got droided, I thought Doral would be a reliable distro-hopping sitter. He (78%) seemed level-headed, and though organic by choice, never partisan or bigoted. But shrooming

Hrengor the Beholder crashed to his meditation mat, his soul imploding. He had the wrong number of tentacles and his lineage despised him for being a pacifist. But the worst thing

GMAX asked small-business owner Hrengor the Beholder about this new revelation. "It's quite a surprise. If dark matter never existed then why do we have transit corridors and nodes

herever, whenever! We were meant to be together!" A booming voice rattled the walls. Aunt Myrtle closed her eyes, a single tear escaping. "You've summoned her," she whispered.

Mrs. Humphries nearly broke her cue stick against the blackboard. "Are you summer students even ready to join this game?" (Secretly she wondered if she had misjudged

a fluffy menace to social order in Hong Kong. Labubu is wise and flirtatious in public, but in private speaks ancient Cantonese. Labubu likes to have tea with the police, just to

Tony and Jill tried to prank Miss Williams by replacing her chalk with the Devil's Chalk they had found in their grandmother's attic. However, Miss Williams had anticipated such a

The answer "Yes" was on my lips automatically but I was still trying to know what the answer really was. Did I know how to love myself? How do I answer that? Warts and all.

"A Summer Place" was the soundtrack for me and my buddies' road trip as we bumped along over the still smoldering and twitching corpses of the Constitutionalists. We guzzled our

OK, so I had forgotten my cultural-appreciation lessons and ingested the extended hand of the human ambassador from Earth without thinking. I did extend my second-best appendage,

Spammers got you down? Our galactic network of psychic adjusters can help -- but they need your help, too! They volunteer to remain half-incarnate for your benefit, but they need