Anna wanders around at night. Her full name, Reanima, was given to her by a grandmother who perhaps liked Rianna or Rihanna. Reanna has always reminded her of something dead that was brought back to life. Not like Rianna, or Rihanna. It’s closer to… reanimate. No one knows if her grandmother got it from first Americans, African-Americans. something at the cabaret—or if she had read Octavia Butler’s Fledgling or Toni Morrison’s Beloved one too many times. But now, these days

Cammie sits at the kitchen table with my manuscript, preparing to do battle with the forces of literary evil. I raise her Hare Krishna mug – an Earthday gift – to my lips and sip some bitter shit she’s forced on me again. I read somewhere that green tea, being both an appetite suppressant and a laxative, is like nectar to women. But I’m not a woman. And I need a beer. As if reading my thoughts, she looks up abruptly. Genghis Khan shouts an ancestral Holla! from her almond-sha

The circle of life It’s getting dark, and the match is about to start. I need to go in the kitchen. I need a beer. Arsenal is playing Chelsea and there’s two league points between them. But I'm afraid to go into there. Even with the light on. I shouldn't be afraid, but I'm only human. When I'm in there, there's something I can feel. It’s invisible, present; breathing with me. And there is a smell that's, just as they say in all the best horror movies, sweet and rotting.

Sometimes it's just to hard to let go She sat sideways for comfort, one foot tucked beneath her, watching as he tended their garden. He’d made this bench for her when time was kinder. Now only memories and love held it together. Running her fingers ran lightly over the back, she felt rose whorls coming to life again between its oak grooves. The breeze whistled through the slats, and his hands tapped along to the rhythm. He had a musician’s fingers. No, a magician’s fingers, b

A beauty contestant delivers her version of world peace The beauty pageant presenter was lively, but glib. The contestants competed against their rivals with forced smiles. Those with laughing eyes won through their nerves, although hate spewed from the irises of each individual. They continued across the stage with graceful elegance, even as he prattled on. But spectacular costumes, ecological messages, ancestral pride were all cut down by the inanity of verses like: “A

A robot finds family togetherness ELSA’S METALLIC FEET TROD securely down Mount Evans towards the City of Fools, the place Father had rejected years ago. After the people scorned his ideas about Artificial Intelligence, he’d gone up to the Colorado range to create her. That’s where he’d also found the organic unit, Bear Cub. Father was gone now, but the city could still realise his dreams around the harmonisation of natural and positronic science. It was Elsa’s goal to ensure

A rogue A.I. programme muses upon humanity's value LIEUTENANT MILES NOAH WAS just inside central bunker when the NCO caught him. “Lieutenant, this way please.” She whisked him through an airless corridor of concrete and steel, past the milling curiosity of Hopkins from Logistics, and Rogers and Obi from Engineering. Each one nodded, clearly relieved this was his mission, and not theirs. After all, his combat experience was wider, and his understanding of self-sacrifice, great

Two friends in an Irish pub discuss black holes I WAS SITTING IN HAGERTY’S Hole with Siobhan O’Flannery, tucking into a hearty meal of Irish stew and colcannon, when she made a bizarre and disturbing confession. Things had begun quietly enough. We’d bumped into each other in Greystones, County Wicklow, where she was working on her next best-selling album and I was finalising research for the Viking series, Horns. Our last mutual sighting had been as undergraduates at Brandon

A trope-filled twist on the Pugno spider experiments “SO, YOU’RE SAYING I should undertake this rescue mission in my natural form?” The question skipped around the secret alcoves of Mars 381’s Strategic Chambers. Some eavesdroppers took notes, some scurried away, and some summoned more eavesdroppers. Inside, D’har, Commander of the Rimmed Sector, stood resolute. “I expect new DNA, Prime—just like any other agent. The deal for risking my life is simple: I sign up; you indulg

Two schoolboys plan a trip home SCHOOL’S OUT, SO ANDERSON Skeete and I visi-text our parents for the OK to go to Miami Beach in Oistins. They give it, and we celebrate by each buying a lead pipe coconut bread, a Plus drink, and a fish fritter from Pearlene’s Best Street Food before beginning a leisurely trek down Bay Street. Near The Boatyard, an H2O PSV cruises past before floating to a gentle stop. It’s the B93. It spews around 80 people from its 30-person capacity, which s

A man’s solitary existence on Earth is about to change WHEN ZEPHANIAH KOFI WOKE up, he was lying in a field with daisies and foxgloves wrapping him like a burrito. Thousands of other similarly wrapped shapes littered the ground. Looking up at blue sky, he wondered vaguely if this had been another one of his suicides. Were these all his other bodies? Had the Scientitians finally ceased their experiments and dumped him in his personal graveyard? He knew he hadn’t fallen and kno

Aliens have an unusual request BLANCHE DARE ABHORRED THE word black. She hated its composite letters, the colour itself, the monosyllabic tone. She despised b’s bravado, l’s levity, a’s arrogance, c’s cunning, and the absolute karma of k. She disliked the flavour it left on her tongue. These days, she would have its synonyms only blurring endlessly across her screen. From her desk, she could see people in every direction, seated. Some cursed; some slept; some murmured a perso

Before the deadline, his life had been measured by the aristocratic ticktock of duty. His conception, his birth, schooling, friends, work, lovers, even death. His parents had succumbed ten minutes apart, under a coroner’s report of joint suicide. Their corpses had chased him to the train station, reminding him of the deadline for marrying a woman whom they both knew to be genetically unsuitable. They accepted that any children he had with her would have been a strong candidat