sci fi – near future

Word Count: Click here to reveal55000 (Click here to hide)

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Summary: It’s an arduous task to start over on a new, unexplored planet, but that’s what Chance Bradford signed up for. As a Mindset Two, his empathy and training helps his fellow colonists, allaying their fears and bolstering their confidence. At least, until the dragons were seen flying high above the colony dome. Discovering that only he can communicate with the telepathic ‘dragons’ comes at a price, their first meeting full of terror and pain. Trying to understand a completely alien race strains Chance’s abilities and puts him in the sights of the humans that want the planet for themselves alone. Will Chance be able to forge a peace between the colony and the dragon’s Flight? Is friendship even possible between the two species? Will humans become the dragon’s prey, or perhaps something else altogether?

Word Count: Click here to reveal25000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Malcolm Barclay Bain is an Archivist with the Department of Possible Futures. He spends his day conducting research, managing the Department's physical collections…and retrieving dangerous objects carelessly misplaced along the waves of time. When he is instructed to retrieve an item that his handlers refer to simply as the tech, he travels back in time to Kansas City, 1927. He hunts through the vibrant city to find his treasure–but he's not the only one, and soon Mal finds himself clashing with--and drawn toward--a handsome adversary. The Archivist is the first novella in the Department of Possible Futures series, a collection of queer cyberpunk stories following Malcolm and Archie with an eventual HEA.

Word Count: Click here to reveal38000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealAce, Aromantic, Bisexual, Demigender, Demisexual (Click here to hide)

Summary: RISE (noun / verb) Eight definitions to inspire writers around the world, and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) An upward slope or movement 2) A beginning or origin 3) An increase in amount or number 4) An angry reaction 5) To take up arms 6) To return from death 7) To become heartened or elated 8) To exert oneself to meet a challenge Rise features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

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Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Non Binary, Transgender (Click here to hide)

Summary: "Today I swam through MOMA. Leon says it was a waste, encasing the art, then flooding the museum—frivolous and elitist. I say it was a gesture of optimism, a triumph of technology and political will." Want to thrill to the possibilities of a hopeful future? We asked a bunch of sci-fi writers to spin tales of a better future, imagining ways in which the world might become a better place. From a swim through an underwater museum to a joyous dance at a futuristic concert, from the eco-friendly aftermath of an alien invasion and retreat to the refurbishing of an old climate-ravaged home in New Vancouver, these fourteen short sci-fi stories will to restore your faith in the future. A world transformed is a world we can all hope for. Book three in the Writers Save the World short story anthologies. If you enjoy this book, check out Fix the World and Save the World.

Word Count: Click here to reveal14500 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: After Doomsday, there wasn’t much left—a world that had fallen apart. It hadn’t been enough to boil the oceans and raze the surface with fire. With that scorched earth had come a final solution, the contagion. In a world where every breath was ash and disease, few survived. The Imperium hunted them, extracting healthy flesh to extend the life of the powerful. All the while, soaring unseen, the tools of an old order search. Hidden far from the sight of the ruthless Imperium, deep beneath the earth, the DIRE stations offer renewal—an exit from the destruction of the world. Those ships, like a phoenix, rise with the last refugees to bring them to DIRE, hoping that a keeper yet lives to hold open the only chance of escape.

Word Count: Click here to reveal51700 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Non Binary, Transgender (Click here to hide)

Summary: It’s been four years since the Killing Game turned Reis and Edgar’s lives upside-down. Believing the past to be behind them, they’ve tried to move on with their lives. Edgar has returned to freelance computer programming, while Reis is training to become a Bureau agent. Emily is about to marry, and Reis’s biggest concern is what to wear to the wedding as they navigate the rocky seas of their gender identity. The peace they won is soon cast into doubt as Tony Anvas is released from prison. Shortly after, Edgar and Reis are thrust into a conspiracy more deadly and dangerous than the Killing Game when Anvas stages a coup d’etat, forcibly severing the Twin City-States in a bloody and brutal attack. It’s once again up to Reis and Edgar to save the day, but Edgar is still suffering the after-effects of trauma and Reis is trying to determine whether to go ahead with medical transition. Can they outwit Anvas’s machinations once again and emerge whole—and if so, what will it cost them?

Word Count: Click here to reveal55880 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Gay (Click here to hide)

Summary: An M/M Science Fiction Romance Disaster novel with a happy ending! As children, Mick and Adrian forged a promise as they looked up at the stars. Time and money pulled them apart with harsh words and bitter regrets, and their wish was cast aside. Now, space is a haven for the wealthy, who flaunt their riches aboard the opulent Empyrean Station, dining on crab with a spectacular view of Earth and enjoying a permanent vacation in one of Empyrean's many temperate biospheres. The stars are a long-forgotten dream to starship mechanic Mick, who lives in the Old New York shanty town swallowing his remorse as he struggles to meet his basic needs. Until Adrian returns to him with heart-rending news—he's terminally ill with Miasma, a pollutant-driven, degenerative illness. With Adrian only having months to live, Mick realizes nothing matters except loving him and reaching for their dream together. Stealing a spaceship, they launch into space to see the stars with their own eyes. Mick and Adrian end up embroiled in miracles and tragedies as they fathom Empyrean's true nature and face down those who would do anything to survive the coming apocalypse—except solve the problem.

Word Count: Click here to reveal67000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Non Binary (Click here to hide)

Summary: Androids & Aliens is Scott's third short story collection - eight sci fi and sci-fantasy shorts that run the gamut from cyborgs to (comedic) alien invasions: Rise: The rise in sea levels caused by climate change swallowed Venice beneath the lagoon half a century ago. But what if we could bring it back? Ping: I was a real estate agent by day, and a museum curator in the evening at a sci-fi museum. What I saw one night changed everything. What the Rain Brings: Miriam struggles to make a living in post-climate-change Vancouver. But her friend Catalina has it even worse in the Arizona desert. So Miri hatches a plan. High Seven: Zan dreams of making full reals - immersive live virtual reality skins - but his low score may doom him to a life of cheap coding. Full Real: Dek's given up his life of spying for the city. But one more case awaits him. Will he regret it more if he takes it, or turns it down? Shit City: The Bay Area is being walloped by a hurricane, and seventeen-year-old Jason Vasquez has been relocated to a refugee city in the Nevada Desert. Will it be temporary shelter, or change his life? Firedrake: Kerry has always wondered about his deadly powers. But a mysterious bunch of violet roses starts him on the path to discovery - even if he's not sure he's going to like what he finds. The Last Human Heart: I'm one of the Remainers, the few cyborg humans still living on this busted planet. But if my still-human heart finally gives out, I may not live to find out the truth about who I am. This is the first time all of these stories have all been collected in one place, and the first publication of the Pacific Climate Tryptich - What the Rain Brings, High Seven, and Full Real - in any form.

Word Count: Click here to reveal33000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealAce, Aromantic, Bisexual, Demigender, Demisexual, Gay, Genderfluid, Genderqueer, Intersex, Lesbian, Non Binary, Questioning, Pansexual, Polyamorous, Straight, Transgender (Click here to hide)

Summary: Clarity (noun) Four definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) Coherent and intelligible 2) Transparent or pure 3) Attaining certainty about something 4) Easy to see or hear Clarity features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

Word Count: Click here to reveal64548 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Non Binary, Transgender (Click here to hide)

Summary: What if cyborgs suffered body dysphoria? In his mid-forties, former cop turned career bureaucrat Nolan Rogers is diagnosed with terminal cancer. His best friend Elly Takahara convinces him to undergo the process of body conversion, where his brain is transplanted into a robotic body. The operation is successful, but Nolan quickly finds himself adrift in a body that doesn't eat or physically react to emotion. For the first time in years, he's suffering from a new kind of body dysphoria, a sensation he hoped to have left behind when he transitioned to male decades ago. During this crisis, he meets Tallis, a proud nonbinary body convert who sued his parents for the right to give up his flesh and blood body. Tallis is fire to Nolan's water, and whereas Nolan just wants to fit in, Tallis is determined to stand out in a world where being a cyborg marks one for discrimination and worse. Despite hitting it off poorly, an undeniable attraction blossoms between the pair, and they become entwined in a complicated relationship. Nolan can't understand Tallis, but he wants to. Trapped in his own narrow confines of what he believes the world to be, Tallis challenges everything he thought he knew. Can Nolan learn to love who he is now, or will he find himself drawn into the ranks of the Regretters, an organization of cyborgs campaigning to outlaw body conversion altogether?

Word Count: Click here to reveal45000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Gay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Tangents & Tachyons is Scott's second anthology - six sci fi and sci-fantasy shorts that run the gamut from time travel to hopepunk and retro spec fic: Eventide: Tanner Black awakes to find himself in his own study, staring out the window at the end of the Universe. But who brought him there, and why? Chinatown: Deryn lives in an old San Francisco department store with his girlfriend Gracie, and scrapes by with his talent as a dreamcaster for the Chinese overlords. But what if a dream could change the world? Across the Transom: What if someone or something took over your body on an urgent mission to save your world? Pareidolia: Simon's not like other college kids. His mind can rearrange random patterns to reveal the images lurking inside. But where did his strange gift come from? And what if there are others like him out there too? Lamplighter: Fen has a crush on his friend Lewin, who's in a competing guild. But when the world goes dark, only a little illumination can save it. And only Fen, Lewin and their friend Alissa can light the spark. A Liminal Sky short. Prolepsis: Sean is the closeted twenty-five-year-old editor of an 80's sci-fi 'zine called Prolepsis. When an unabashedly queer story arrives from a mysterious writer, it blows open Sean's closet door, and offers him the chance to change the world - and the future. Plus two flash fiction stories – The System and The Frog Prince, never before published. This is the first time all of these stories have all been collected in one place.

Word Count: Click here to reveal36000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealAce, Aromantic, Bisexual, Demigender, Demisexual, Gay, Genderfluid, Genderqueer, Intersex, Lesbian, Non Binary, Questioning, Pansexual, Polyamorous, Straight, Transgender (Click here to hide)

Summary: INK (NOUN) Five definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) A colored fluid used for writing 2) The action of signing a deal 3) A black liquid ejected by squid 4) Publicity in the written media 5) A slang word for tattoos Ink features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

Word Count: Click here to reveal130000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealAce, Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Straight, Transgender (Click here to hide)

Summary: Life after the Crash. Over a century after the end of the Earth, life goes on in Redemption, the sole remaining Lunar colony, and possibly the last outpost of humankind in the Solar System. But with an existential threat burrowing its way into the Moon's core, humanity must recolonize the homeworld. Twenty brave dropnauts set off on a mission to explore the empty planet. Four of them—Rai, Hera, Ghost and Tien—have trained for two-and-a-half years for the Return. They're bound for Martinez Base, just outside the Old Earth city of San Francisco. But what awaits them there will turn their assumptions upside down—and in the process, either save or destroy what's left of humanity.

Word Count: Click here to reveal23800 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay, Transgender (Click here to hide)

Summary: Colton is a trans man living in a climate-changed world. He plies the canals that used to be city streets, earning a living taking tourists on illicit journeys through San Francisco's flooded edges beneath the imposing bulk of the Wall. Tris is an elf who comes through the veil to the City by the Bay - the Caille - on a coming of age pilgrimage called the Cailleadhama. He is searching for his brother Laris, who went missing after crossing through the Caille years before. The two men find they have common cause, and together they set off to find Laris in a world transformed by the twin forces of greed and climate change. And in the end, they find out more than they ever expected, both about the warming world and their own selves.

Word Count: Click here to reveal56057 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Gay, Non Binary (Click here to hide)

Summary: Edgar Tobias works as a freelance computer programmer in the city of Anver. Desperate to escape his deceased fathers’ fame as a hit singer-songwriter duo, he left the city of Kasyova and the arts behind. He doesn’t know he’s about to be targeted in a vicious murder game where the prize is a million dollars in cryptocurrency to the first person who can capture his murder on video. Reis Asher lost everything in the Anverite civil war ten years ago, including their mother. Their father created the agreement known as Unification, which joined Anver and Kasyova to create the Twin City-States of Anver-Kasyova, ending the civil war and ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity. When they discover the Killing Game, they know that it represents a threat to everything they hold dear and set out to stop it. But powerful forces are at work that refuse to be undermined by one stubborn soul and their sense of justice. Someone wants Edgar dead, and they’ll stop at nothing to see him six feet under… even if that means Reis and other innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire.

Word Count: Click here to reveal20000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Zeke is a hermit in his late forties who lives a quiet life in a small cabin in the Western Montana mountains, a few miles outside of Thompson Falls. He’s gotten used to being alone since the end of the world, and has everything he needs. Everything but someone to talk to. Nathan is a younger man on a cross-country trek, searching the country for someone... anyone still alive. Saddled with a ghost from his old life and a case of OCD, he stumbles upon Thompson Falls and a pack of rabid dogs. Rescued by Zeke, he has to figure out how to be human again. And with Christmas just a week away, both men have to figure out if there’s something left to be hopeful for, and if they might have a future together.

Word Count: Click here to reveal35000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Lesbian (Click here to hide)

Summary: Jane always thought she'd live a fairly ordinary life. Then the world broke and changed everything. Jane never expected to be the one running the local unofficial orphanage. But while it wasn't what she had planned, she wouldn't trade it for anything. She loves her kids and the life they've all built. She's happy just trying to stay under the radar while keeping them all fed and out of the clutches of the local militia. Things are going well until her kids surprise her with an unconscious woman on the kitchen table, not even an hour after the militia was in the front yard looking for the same woman. Jane has no issue hiding someone from the militia as long as they aren't an actual criminal, so together the household nurses Livy back to health. It doesn't take long for Livy's bright smile to start chipping away at Jane's short but sturdy walls. Can Jane let down her guard enough for Livy to slip through? And what will Livy do if she does? She wasn't ready for her world to change again…but love has a mind of its own.

Word Count: Click here to reveal101000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Brey would rate himself least likely to survive a zombie apocalypse. Yet here he is. True, it was a viral apocalypse not zombies, but still… Gone from spoiled rich kid to convict in sixty seconds flat. Stuck in prison with his family three thousand miles away. But not for long. Soon everyone is on the run from the virus. When guards set the convicts loose, Brey vows to reunite with his family no matter what it takes. So what if he sucks at keeping promises? He’s damned if he’s breaking this one. Getting home is his only goal. Too bad there’s somebody who won’t make that easy for him… Hank is a cop. He enforces the law. Even the toxic ones. Waterfall, a small city that made it through the apocalypse, survives on the sale of human beings. Nobody’s getting in the way of Hank’s plans to stop them. Nobody but the rich kid he once arrested for murder. Now the guy’s up for sale, and Hank’s plans go south in a hurry. On the spot to make a quick decision, he buys him. What else can he do?… Dark with snark and crazy romantic. Want to tag along with Brey and Hank while they figure out how to reconcile the irreconcilable? For heart-stopping drama, heart-breaking scenes, swoon-worthy love, and a happy-ever-after to last a lifetime, read now or buy On the Eve of Forever and enjoy! NOTE: On the Eve of Forever was previously published as Backbone by Pride Publishing. It has been rewritten and expanded by approximately 25,000 words.

Word Count: Click here to reveal26000 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealGay (Click here to hide)

Summary: Being an OIL (Onsite Inter-species Liaison) for the Interplanetary Multispecies Pact has never been an easy job. In fact it's a crap job when stuck on a backwater nowhere planet like Earth. But cobra Yervath Sissal Naganos manages. The demotion was swift and heavy-handed, but he'll climb back out of this hell eventually. Humans don't meet his social needs, so, yes, it's been lonely and he tells himself he likes the solitude. That is, until IMP sends him an irritating  new assistant he never asked for. Now his peace is well and truly disturbed and his paranoid diplomatic reflexes have reawakened. The worst part is the kid didn't have to be so cute.

Word Count: Click here to reveal87200 (Click here to hide)

Character Identities: Click here to revealBisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender (Click here to hide)

Summary: Some stories are epic. The Earth is in a state of collapse, with wars breaking out over resources and an environment pushed to the edge by human greed. Three living generation ships have been built with a combination of genetic mastery, artificial intelligence, technology, and raw materials harvested from the asteroid belt. This is the story of one of them—43 Ariadne, or Forever, as her inhabitants call her—a living world that carries the remaining hopes of humanity, and the three generations of scientists, engineers, and explorers working to colonize her. From her humble beginnings as a seedling saved from disaster to the start of her journey across the void of space toward a new home for the human race, The Stark Divide tells the tales of the world, the people who made her, and the few who will become something altogether beyond human. This book is not a romance per se, but does have queer relationships.