Science Fiction Stories - Jim Baen's Universe RSS (2.0) Feed

Calculating Minds

Edward M. Lerner — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:39:00 -0000

Food for Thought

Carl Frederick — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:30:00 -0000

Moon Race

Ben Bova — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:22:00 -0000

Last Plane to Heaven: A Love Story

Jay Lake — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:12:00 -0000

Nichols tried to light a cigarette, one of those fucking Paki horseturds.

Discards

Nina Kiriki Hoffman — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:05:00 -0000

The Rings of Ragnaran

J. Simon — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:10:00 -0000

Pumpkin

Bud Sparhawk — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:08:00 -0000

Loki's Net

Marissa Lingen — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:06:00 -0000

Primrose and Thorn

Bud Sparhawk — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:05:00 -0000

Primrose Rescue

Bud Sparhawk — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:04:00 -0000

Maker of Worlds

Norman Spinrad — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:56:00 -0000

An inviting green and blue planet, fleeced with slowly swirling whirlwinds of cloud, rolls majestically through the starry firmament, palpably a thing alive.

Shopping Spree

Beth Bernobich — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:47:00 -0000

The Super

Bud Sparhawk — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:21:00 -0000

A Date With Patti Pleezmi

Chuck Rothman — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:19:00 -0000

First Rites

Nancy Kress — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:17:00 -0000

Making Alex Frey

Marissa Lingen — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:12:00 -0000

I almost didn't tell my friends I was working for Alex Frey.

Ted

Tom Van Natta — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:09:00 -0000

I know my son will ask me someday, so I had to write this down.

Indomitable

Jack McDevitt — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:06:00 -0000

"And this is an antigrav generator. Do you know what that is, Harry?"

Why There Are No Type-C Civilizations

Marvin Minsky and David Gerrold — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:46:00 -0000

An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away

John Barnes — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:19:00 -0000

Thorby had kept up his resistance training, but he'd been on Boreas for most of a year so he'd worried about agravitic muscular dystrophy.

Misfits

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:22:00 -0000

It was a pellucid, temperate morning. The humidity levels were just a point lower than the theoretical "perfect comfort" zone; the sky was an arcing blue-green bowl marred by neither cloud nor threat of rain. It was, in fact, a fine day for gardening.

Honorable Enemies: A Jake Masters Mystery

Mike Resnick — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 10:07:00 -0000

When I got to the office, I found the message waiting for me. I clicked it on, and the image of an animated beachball popped into existence right in front of me.

One Small Step

Kristine Kathryn Rusch — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:21:00 -0000

“It’s just a footprint,” Liz Borra said, crossing her arms over her ample bosom.

Manumission

Tobias S. Buckell — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:15:00 -0000

This morning, when you wake up and look at your rippled reflection in the basin of water near the concrete wall of your cell, you only have one true personal memory left.

Spiderweb

David Gerold — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:14:00 -0000

All right, let’s talk about the Oort Cloud.

Tweak

Jack McDevitt — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 23:57:00 -0000

Civilizations, if they survive their nuclear age, seem always to follow the same path. “It is inevitable,” said the ship.

Laws of Survival

Nancy Kress — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:27:00 -0000

My name is Jill. I am somewhere you can't imagine, going somewhere even more unimaginable. If you think I like what I did to get here, you're crazy.

Free Space

Carrie Vaughn — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 01:47:00 -0000

"Control, what does this look like to you?"

Premature Emergence

Eric James Stone — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 01:36:00 -0000

During a hyperspace slide, cargo haulers like the KMC-85 did not need a human pilot on board.

Waking Ophelia

E. Catherine Tobler — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 01:32:00 -0000

I came out of stasis-sleep to the tap-tap-tap of Bel's thin, metallic fingers on my cheek.

The Smartest Mob . . . (a parable about times soon to come)

David Brin — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 03:11:00 -0000

Washington was like a geezer—overweight and sagging, but with attitude. Most of its gutty heft lay below the beltway, in waistlands that had been downwind on Awfulday.

Quasi

M. Alan Ford — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 07:23:00 -0000

We didn't want to waste any charges, so we set fire to the stand of trees to get the simians out.

Darwin's Suitcase

Elizabeth Malartre — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 07:20:00 -0000

"Our English sphinx moths have proboscides as long as their bodies, but in Madagascar, there must be moths with proboscides capable of extension to a length of between 10 and 11 inches."

Charles Darwin, 1862,

Virtually, A Cat

Jody Lynn Nye — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:32:00 -0000

The burly male technician loomed over the smaller man in engineer's orange coveralls as if by sheer size he would drive home his message.

Double-Secret Weapon

Tony Frazier — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 19:31:00 -0000

So I'm sitting in the food court, stomach growling as the smells of corn dogs and gyros swirl around me.

Kether Station

C. L. Polk — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:10:00 -0000

The Faithful spend their last credit to stare at the Kether Nebula.

Dreamtime

Rob Shelsky — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:04:00 -0000

The silvered airship shimmered, mirage-like, on the horizon. It seemed an insubstantial yet ominous portent of the sultry air.

The Necromancer in Love

Wil McCarthy — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:01:00 -0000

The young necromancer is a blight on the social landscape, because when his sweetheart meets with an untimely interruption of service (don't they all? don't they always?), he's bound to do something the rest of us regret.

Concentration of Dogs

Carl Frederick — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 23:17:00 -0000

"In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog." - Edward Hoagland

Murphy's War

James P. Hogan — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 23:14:00 -0000

The hillbilly with the bathtub was what finally did it.

From the Badlands

Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 23:10:00 -0000

"Whoa, Porky."

Crawlspace

Dave Freer and Eric Flint — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 17:59:00 -0000

In the narrow tunnels deep inside a nineteen by five mile asteroid, long pipes snaked endlessly into the blackness.

Swing Time

Carrie Vaughn — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 18:05:00 -0000

He emerged suddenly from behind a potted shrub.

Running Water for L.A.

Eric Witchey — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 16:09:00 -0000

Most days, Ron liked everything about the run towing cargo bags full of glacial pure water from Juneau to Los Angeles.

Incident on a Small Colony

Kristine Smith — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 21:16:00 -0000

The receiving dock stank of berries.

Marklord Pete

Wil McCarthy — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 22:20:00 -0000

Take away their freedom? Gawd, man, when have people ever been free? We're not even taking their money, because ultimately that comes from the trademark holders anyway. But people go to work every day, right? And somebody's got to own the result. Administrative law is just a fancy word for not letting it all go to waste.

—Chief Justice Billy Grab Cashford III®, LLP

The Big Guy

Mike Resnick — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 22:12:00 -0000

Everyone called him the Big Guy.

At the Watering Hole

Edward M. Lerner — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 22:10:00 -0000

Resplendent in a spatter-pattern robe, K'reediscranth turned two eyes and four ears heavenward.

War Stories

Elizabeth Bear — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 03:12:00 -0000

No shit, there I am.

Every Hole is Outlined

John Barnes — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 03:15:00 -0000

The ship was at least fourteen thousand years old in slowtime and more than two thousand in eintime, but there were holes in its records and the oldest ones were in no-longer-accessible formats, so the ship estimated that it was more like eighteen thousand slowtime, three and a half thousand eintime. It had borne many names. Currently it was 9743, a name that translated easily for Approach Control no matter where the ship went in human space.

The Power of Illusion

Christopher Anvil — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 03:48:00 -0000

Colonel Valentine Sanders of the Interstellar Patrol passed a hand over his close-cropped iron-grey hair, leaned forward at his desk, and did his best to speak politely and persuasively:

Tesseract

Tom Brennan — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 03:36:00 -0000

Anna came in too fast, too low.

There was a screech of tearing metal as Stheno's carbon trees gouged the hull and the flyer tilted fifty degrees. Anna's body slammed forward in her rigid suit.

All the Things You Are

Mike Resnick — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 03:27:00 -0000

You wouldn't think they'd be so dumb. Here they were, in the biggest spaceport in the country, with hundreds of holo cameras covering every inch of the place, and these three jerks actually think they're going to get away with robbing the currency exchange.

Olaf and the Merchandisers

Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 03:22:00 -0000

Olaf imagines better times while he watches sports action rumble, commercials and promos tumble.

Dinosaur Egg $6

Chet Gottfried — Tue, 23 May 2006 05:47:00 -0000

Seeing the handwritten sign "Dinosaur Egg $6," Ted Albright made a hard left and cut across the southbound traffic of Route 89. He parked his Mustang on the broad shoulder of the overlook. Navajos sat behind tables and sold jewelry and pots. Behind them the Colorado River meandered in the distance, a thin, dark streak on an endless plain.

The Old Woman In the Young Woman

Gene Wolfe — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 04:22:00 -0000

He had been walking all day. Twice the wandering trails he followed had led him into ruined towns; in each case he had halted and spent an hour or so poking through such rubbish as nature had not yet buried.

The Ten Thousand Things

Mark L. Van Name — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 20:34:00 -0000

Yukio stared at the image of Matsushima Bay in the window that was one wall of his father's office. Whitecaps freckled the nearer water. Pine-covered islands filled the distance, the trees gray in the dying light. The sounds of whistling wind carried off the occasional beep of the heart monitor as it tracked the death passage of his father.

Chance of Storms

Edward M. Lerner — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 05:01:00 -0000

My cabin, its lapped wood siding faded to a pale gray, was the only human structure in sight.

Weredragons of Mars

Carl Frederick — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 04:37:00 -0000

In a small, out of the way cabin of the generational ship Trans Global Hope, three students sat around a table planning mayhem.

Pimpf

Charlie Stross — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 03:43:00 -0000

It’s a rainy Monday morning and I’m late in to work at the Laundry because of a technical fault on the Tube. When I get to my desk, the first thing I find is a note from Human Resources that says one of their management team wants to talk to me, soonest, about playing computer games at work.

The Big Ice

Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 19:31:00 -0000

"Governor‑General's dead."

I glanced up from the disassembled comm‑comp I'd been trying to Frankenstein together. The G‑G was Core. Unkillable. But Mox didn't look like he was kidding.

"How?"

Murphy's Law

Douglas Smith — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 04:16:00 -0000

Dex hadn't planned to save the entire human race. Mostly, he'd been trying not to die, while still keeping his job in the process—two goals that, Dex had learned, were often mutually exclusive.

Great Minds

Edward M. Lerner — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 04:13:00 -0000

"It's very much as I expected," the intruder said without preamble.

Demonstration Day

Ian Creasey — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 04:11:00 -0000

"Roll up, roll up! Get your antimatter here! Gravitons, superstrings, Higgs bosons—all going cheap. Every proton has a lifetime guarantee! Buy caloric, aether, and nebulium while theories last. Special offer on orgone and vril! Dried ghosts, astrographs, universal meters. Superconductors and Bose-Einstein condensates. Athanors and alembics. Test tubes and Bunsen burners, if anyone still uses them."

I Could've Done Better

Gregory Benford and David Brin — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 04:08:00 -0000

They didn't have to do this to me. Dump me in this place, with no chance of going home.

Newts

Kevin J. Anderson — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 06:38:00 -0000

During what should have been the ring colony's Independence Day celebration, the mood in the family habitat was somber. Rex Hollings stared through the viewing window toward the pastel clouds of Saturn.

A Stranger in Paradise

Edward M. Lerner — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 06:37:00 -0000

Row upon row of blue-and-green-and-white globes mock me.

The world below reflects from tumblers and goblets and snifters and flutes, from more types of antique glassware than I can name.

Little Sips

Barbara J. Ferrenz — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 06:33:00 -0000

The little boy sat on the examination table, swinging his bare feet. His mother played with his downy hair as she spoke to the doctor. "I can't think of anything we've done differently."

Thin Ice

Dave Freer — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 06:32:00 -0000

"ARI, it's not going away. I'm stuck on a ledge on this crater-wall, like a fly in a closed pantry window. In about two hours the sunlight is going to come over that edge, and I'm going to fry. If my air holds out that long."

The Man Who Wasn't There

Gregory Benford — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 06:29:00 -0000

The security 'bots zoomed around the looming mosque like supersonic butterflies in the cold air. Jean watched them with his infrared eyes as their tiny plumes darted over the bare zone, blazing high tech fireflies.

The Ruby Dice

Catherine Asaro — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 04:27:00 -0000

The night mourned with silence, as if it were a concert with no musicians left to play the notes. Kelric sat on the bed, in the dim light, and watched the woman sleep. White hair curled around her face. Her skin was smooth, with only a few wrinkles, but it had a translucent quality. Her torso barely rose and fell with her shallow breaths. The crook of her nose, broken decades ago, shadowed her cheek. She had never wanted it fixed, though Kelric could have given her anything, anything at all, any riches or wealth or lands or gifts.

Anything except her life.

Treasure in the Sand

Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 04:26:00 -0000

"When the last worm dies and the last melange is harvested upon our sands, these deep treasures will spring up throughout our universe. As the power of the spice monopoly fades and the hidden stockpiles make their mark, new powers will appear throughout our realm."

—Leto Atreides II, the God Emperor of Dune

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 04:18:00 -0000

When Felix's special phone rang at two in the morning, Kelly rolled over and punched him in the shoulder and hissed, "Why didn't you turn that fucking thing off before bed?"

Alone

Joe R. Lansdale and Melissa Mia Hall — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 04:05:00 -0000

The smooth silver rockets stood against the sky, silent sentinels piercing the night. Waiting for something or someone, those spaceships reminded him of those big, old stone faces down on the ridge outside of Mud Creek.

Bob's Yeti Problem

Lawrence Person — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 01:36:00 -0000

One morning Bob Krusden stepped outside his cabin to discover three yeti carcasses embedded in his front yard.

He was pretty sure they were yeti rather than bigfeet, as their pelts were a handsome silver-white rather than brown.

What Would Sam Spade Do?

Jo Walton — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 17:03:00 -0000

It was shaping up to be a quiet day when Officer Murtagh and Officer Garcia came knocking on my door. The PI business isn't all it's cracked up to be, especially not in Philly and especially not this week.

The Darkness

David Drake — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 16:58:00 -0000

"Hi, Lieutenant," someone said as he walked into Ruthven's room. "Good to see you up and around. I gotta do a few tests with you back in the bed, though."

Slanted Jack

Mark L. Van Name — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 04:15:00 -0000

Nothing should have been able to ruin my lunch.

Joaquin Choy, the best chef on any planet within three jumps, had erected his restaurant, Falls, just outside Eddy, the only city on the still-developing planet Mund. He'd chosen the site because of the intense flavors of the native vegetables, the high quality of the locally raised livestock, and a setting that whipped your head around and widened your eyes.

Dog Soldier

Garth Nix — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 04:12:00 -0000

"The seven rings of Syrene shine

Like glowing disks in a nazdra mine

Burning brighter than fusion fire . . ."

"How long is this bullshit going to last?" Assault Sergeant Gillies whispered to his neighbour, Base Sergeant Major Traut.

"Long as it wants to," Traut muttered back. "It"s the CG's poem. Lukas is just reading it."

Brieanna's Constant

Eric Witchey — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 04:08:00 -0000

He redlined his black Camry into the parking lot of the Leeman building, a four-story redbrick full of software engineers and psychologists. Dr. Alan Dickson considered parking directly in front of the main entrance in Brieanna's space—the target space. Of course, that would skew his experiment results. He swung wide.

A Time to Kill

S. Andrew Swann — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 03:54:00 -0000

Marine Lieutenant David Abrams was a sniper with the 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company. He had the highest operational success rate of any U.S. soldier in the Iranian theatre, and coalition-wide there was only a single Scotsman with the SAS who had a better record.

Candy-Blossom

Dave Freer — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 03:51:00 -0000

I was going to run. As soon as he . . . it . . . the THING stopped looking at me. Staring a hole through my stupid head with its four eyes. I was going to run like the wind. I shouldn't have come here. Never. I swore to God . . . if I ever got out of here . . .

Chilling

Alan Dean Foster — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 03:42:00 -0000

“You stupid idiot, you’ve killed us!”
Arik looked over at his new wife. “I love you too.”

Bow Shock

Gregory Benford — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 21:35:00 -0000

Not all shocks are physical.