The Skylight—the glowing green aurora set above the robots’ city—it was the sustenance of all technology, without which not a single technological thing would work. Below the Skylight, the volcanic caldera was encased in checkered panes of glass, and the robots worked within, never resting.

The robots gathered minerals there, surrounded by valves, pipes, and machinery. The human Colonists knew nothing of how it worked. On the slopes where lava did not flow, the robots built the Ecologiums, where the human Colonists lived in safety and abundance. With the lands beyond, the robots carved out ecosystems. Flora and fauna, brought from the Ark, found refuge.

A thousand years passed since the founding of Colony—eleven hundred since the Ark set out from Mother Earth.

Continue reading “Skylight” →

A cold, airless planet orbits a rogue star, deep in the intergalactic void, a place where the night sky is unbroken black. A billion light-years from any galaxy, they thought they were alone in the universe.

Alone in his burrow, the drone Davon dug minerals. He carved them with his pincers, and he melted them in his heart, a heart of silica fabric encased in chromium-alloyed steel. His blood was electricity, and it flowed through his copper veins. Only his brain, warmed within his titanium skull, was made of meaty stuff. The minerals mixed and cooled, and, with the nanites from his gullet, he formed quasicrystals.

Continue reading “The Quasicrystal Window” →

Thirty-two slabs of granite, buried on the moon, etched with a writing so fine that it could only be read with magnification—the shapes and symbols represented stars, constellations of galaxies, and mathematical concepts. Next to these were inscriptions in the alien language. Under all the others was the smallest, a tablet.

“I have translated it.”

“What does it say?”

“It’s a love story.”
Continue reading “Run East/With The Wind” →

Literary fiction is character driven, and commercial fiction is plot driven, but what is speculative fiction? Most people treat it as plot driven, too, but to me, speculative fiction is all about the Star Trek mantra: “To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” It’s all about the setting.

Open up any good fantasy book. The first thing you see is a map. It’s about new worlds, new religions, new sets of beliefs, new technology, new kinds of magic, new laws of physics, and first and foremost, new ways of thinking. The best sci-fi is not only a mirror of the world we live in, it is also a window into something different entirely.