SFF Short Stories

A great new novel by H. Beam Piper

This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact—Science Fiction November 1962, December 1962, January 1963, and February 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.

Read the whole novel at Project Gutenberg.

Space Viking

Vengeance is a strange human motivation—
it can drive a man to do things
which he neither would nor could achieve without it …
and because of that it lies behind some of the
greatest sagas of human literature!

by H. Beam Piper

Illustrated by Schoenherr

They stood together at the parapet, their arms about each other’s waists, her head against his cheek. Behind, the broad leaved shrubbery gossiped softly with the wind, and from the lower main terrace came music and laughing voices. The city of Wardshaven spread in front of them, white buildings rising from the wide spaces of green treetops, under a shimmer of sun-reflecting aircars above. Far away, the mountains were violet in the afternoon haze, and the huge red sun hung in a sky as yellow as a ripe peach.

His eye caught a twinkle ten miles to the southwest, and for an instant he was puzzled. Then he frowned. The sunlight on the two thousand-foot globe of Duke Angus’ new ship, the Enterprise, back at the Gorram shipyards after her final trial cruise. He didn’t want to think about that, now.

Instead, he pressed the girl closer and whispered her name, “Elaine,” and then, caressing every syllable, “Lady Elaine Trask of Traskon.”

“Oh, no, Lucas!” Her protest was half joking and half apprehensive. “It’s bad luck to be called by your married name before the wedding.”

“I’ve been calling you that in my mind since the night of the Duke’s ball, when you were just home from school on Excalibur.”

She looked up from the corner of her eye.

“That was when I started calling me that, too,” she confessed.

“There’s a terrace to the west at Traskon New House,” he told her. “Tomorrow, we’ll have our dinner there, and watch the sunset together.”

“I know. I thought that was to be our sunset-watching place.”

“You have been peeking,” he accused. “Traskon New House was to be your surprise.”

“I always was a present-peeker, New Year’s and my birthdays. But I only saw it from the air. I’ll be very surprised at everything inside,” she promised. “And very delighted.”

And when she’d seen everything and Traskon New House wasn’t a surprise any more, they’d take a long space trip. He hadn’t mentioned that to her, yet. To some of the other Sword-Worlds—Excalibur, of course, and Morglay and Flamberge and Durendal. No, not Durendal; the war had started there again. But they’d have so much fun. And she would see clear blue skies again, and stars at night. The cloud-veil hid the stars from Gram, and Elaine had missed them, since coming home from Excalibur.

The shadow of an aircar fell briefly upon them and they looked up and turned their heads, in time to see it sink with graceful dignity toward the landing-stage of Karval House, and he glimpsed its blazonry—sword and atom-symbol, the badge of the ducal house of Ward. He wondered if it were Duke Angus himself, or just some of his people come ahead of him. They should get back to their guests, he supposed. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her, and she responded ardently. It must have been all of five minutes since they’d done that before.

—

Read the whole novel at Project Gutenberg.

Teryl’s Tales of Whim~ @Teryl_Pacieco

“This is a travesty,” the dwarf muttered into his wine goblet, standing beside the buffet table.

An old human nearby jerked her head and hissed, “How can you say that? Haven’t you ever seen two men more in love?”

The dwarf’s face reddened as he grumbled dourly, “It’s… not THAT at all… it’s…”

“Because one’s an elf and one’s an orc?” accused the human.

“What, no! …Though what DOES K’ord have that I don’t?” sniffled the dwarf.

#tootfic #microfiction #writing #terylstales #fantasy #lgbt

—

Teryl’s Tales of Whim~ @Teryl_Pacieco

“Are demons always bad?”

I looked over to my youngest, eyes filled with the youthful belief that I knew everything.

“The common definition of a demon would suggest that’d be the case.”

“What if a demon promises to be good, with pinky-swears?”

“Anyone can be good,” I said, bemused, “As long as they mean it and put effort in.”

“Okay!”

“Any other questions, hon?”

“Where’s the best place to find a few drops of ’sagrafizzle’ blood?”

#tootfic #microfiction #writing #terylstales #urbanfantasy

—

More here - mastodon.social/@Teryl_Pacieco

Posted with permission from the author.

Elite Dangerous image by Stefans02 - CC-BY

Madge chewed furiously as the escaping air whistled past her ears. Then she slapped the wad of chewing gum over the hole and the cold of space immediately froze it into place. She grabbed a roll of duct tape from her utility belt and duct taped a nice X over the patch. Speaking into her log she added “Standard emergency patch, chewing gum and duct tape.”

“That was close.” she thought. “If that hole had been a half inch bigger the air would have sucked her gum right out into space and there would have been a Madge patch duct taped to the wall.”

“Navigation report!” said the Captain.

“We’ve got problems.” said the navigator. “You know that little asteroid that just punctured Madge’s cabin? Well, it’s mama is following right behind.”

Madge looked out her porthole and sure enough. There was one mother of an asteroid heading straight at her. She didn’t know what to do so she crawled under the bed. Her whole cabin shook when the asteroid hit.
—
hairylarry posted on 2018-06-02 at 23:22 Central Time.
—
A start of a story on Collab. Join Collab and add your cliff hanger to “All Cliff Hangers”. All of the stories on Collab are CC-BY.

This Science Fiction scene is used with permission of the artist, Răzvan Rădulescu.

I made the image smaller so it would fit on most screens. Here’s a link to the full size artwork.

Here’s a couple links to some more of his work.

razcore on mastodon.art

razcore on artstation.com

Enjoy!

I found the spider art for “Little Miss Tuffet” with a google search and then I clicked from there to a gallery where I found the wizard from the same book and these two color fantasy art prints from “Rabbi Ben Ezra and other poems” (1915).

Link to Gallery. All Public Domain

Image from of “Fairy roads to Science-Town” (1919) - Public Domain

—

Little Miss Tuffet sat on her Muffet because it was eating her cottage cheese.

Along came an eight legged creature who began to sneeze.

Miss Tuffit cried, “Would you stop that please.”

“I would if I could but I’m allergic to Muffets, especially when they eat cottage cheese.” he replied.

The Muffet said “I’m not scared of spiders and continued eating his cottage cheese.”

Miss Tuffit said, “I am”, and ran off.

The Muffet said “That’s a load off my back. Thank you spider. Do you want some cottage cheese?”

—

These writers contributed to “Little Miss Tuffit “ on Collab - hairylarry, vivian

All stories on Collab are CC-BY.

The Owl Princess by Deevad on deviantart. CC BY-SA

Deevad aka David Revoy also does Pepper and Carrot previously featured on SFF Short Stories. Most of his work is available with Creative Commons licenses some free culture and some non-commercial no-derivatives.

The Chaotic Diaspora
by Larry Heyl CC-BY

Rocket ship artwork by metalandrew on Pixabay Public Domain

In 2061 three of the nations top astronomers took the news to the president. The next day the ambassador spoke at the United Nations. There was no doubt. The orbit had been calculated and checked. In 960 days a comet was going to hit the earth.

Astronomers all over the world confirmed the observations. The internet burned up with possible solutions that quickly became two. “Save The World” and “Get The Hell Out”. Generally speaking the East wanted to STW while the West wanted to GTHO. PTP or “Populate The Planets” was quickly seen as a death trap but a few small nations still chose PTP.

To STW nuclear rockets would be launched to land on the comet nose first and to move the comet sunward just enough to miss the earth. To GTHO nuclear powered generation ships would be launched carrying the seed of humanity out to the stars. This is considered to be the most important event in the history of man. It has been called The Chaotic Diaspora.

In The Chaotic Diaspora many tales were told.

—

This is the start to this story on Collab. Collab is a social network for collaborative writing. If you want to contribute to this or other stories on Collab you can create an account here.

Collab, a collaborative writing game.

O. Westin writes micro stories. Short tweets. Great stuff.

Click here to go to his Mastodon page.

Artwork by Dieterich01 available on Pixabay. Public domain.

I Dreamed That I Woke Up
by Larry Heyl CC-BY

I dreamed that I woke up and walked into the living room and sat down at my computer. Then, when I woke up I was afraid to walk into the living room because I thought I might find myself sitting there. “This is silly.”, I said to myself, and I went ahead and walked right in and sat at my computer. But then I thought maybe I already left while I was still sleeping. So I got up and locked the door to keep myself from coming in.

When I heard a knock on the door I was worried that I had returned home. But I unlocked it anyway and it was only my friend Fred. I told him what was going on in my head and we both had a big laugh.

Then I heard a knock at the door. I was worried it might be me but it wasn’t. When I went to open the door it was Fred.

I guess he dreamed that he woke up too.

Fantasy art by kellepics on Pixabay. Public domain.

AI Autocomplete
by Larry Heyl CC-BY

In the future everyone will have AI Autocomplete, first for writing, then for talking. The AI will be so good that it soon starts guessing right 100% of the time. People select the Just Say It For Me option since their AI Autocomplete always guesses right.

This is the future of humanity, packhorses for AI Autocompletes talking to each other.

Or is it already happening now?

Bingo Balls phot from Pixabay. Public domain. CC0

I was planning a separate apocalypse for each prompt, but so in amongst the one-offs there are two series:

a. The United Empire of Earth
1. Inception
2. Let’s Talk

b. 1. Mixed Luck
2. Change Can Begin Slowly
3. Manouevers in the Dark

- rix_scaedu
Apocalypse Bingo