Mike Resnick is one of those people who probably doesn’t need an introduction. He’s a prolific writer of both short stories and novels and has edited numerous anthologies as well as Jim Baen’s Universe. He won his first Hugo for Kirinyaga, and is nominated once again for this short story about the oddities of family.

I don’t know which bothers me more, my lumbago or my arthritis. One day it’s one, one day it’s the other. They can cure cancer and transplant every damned organ in your body; you’d think they could find some way to get rid of aches and pains. Let me tell you, growing old isn’t for sissies.

I remember that I was having a typical dream. Well, typical for me, anyway. I was climbing the four steps to my front porch, only when I got to the third step there were six more, so I climbed them and then there were ten more, and it went on and on. I’d probably still be climbing them if the creature hadn’t woke me up.

It stood next to my bed, staring down at me. I blinked a couple of times, trying to focus my eyes, and stared back, sure this was just an extension of my dream.

It was maybe six feet tall, its skin a glistening, almost metallic silver, with multi-faceted bright red eyes like an insect. Its ears were pointed and batlike, and moved independently of its head and each other. Its mouth jutted out a couple of inches like some kind of tube, and looked like it was only good for sucking fluids. Its arms were slender, with no hint of the muscles required to move them, and its fingers were thin and incredibly elongated. It was as weird a nightmare figure as I’d dreamed up in years.

Finally it spoke, in a voice that sounded more like a set of chimes than anything else.

“Hello, Dad,” it said. That’s when I knew I was awake.

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E. Lily Yu is 22 years old. She’s getting ready to graduate from college. She also just had one of her handful of published short stories nominated for a Hugo Award and was nominated for the Campbell Award for best new writer. It’s apparently been quite the year.

It took two weeks to complete the nurseries with their paper mobiles, and then another month to reconstruct the Great Library and fill the pigeonholes with what the oldest cartographers could remember of their lost maps. Their comings and goings did not go unnoticed. An ambassador from the beehive arrived with an ultimatum and was promptly executed; her wings were made into stained-glass windows for the council chamber, and her stinger was returned to the hive in a paper envelope. The second ambassador came with altered attitude and a proposal to divide the bees’ kingdom evenly between the two governments, retaining pollen and water rights for the bees—”as an acknowledgment of the preexisting claims of a free people to the natural resources of a common territory,” she hummed.

The wasps of the council were gracious and only divested the envoy of her sting. She survived just long enough to deliver her account to the hive.

The third ambassador arrived with a ball of wax on the tip of her stinger and was better received.

“You understand, we are not refugees applying for recognition of a token territorial sovereignty,” the foundress said, as attendants served them nectars in paper horns, “nor are we negotiating with you as equal states. Those were the assumptions of your late predecessors. They were mistaken.”

“I trust I will do better,” the diplomat said stiffly. She was older than the others, and the hairs of her thorax were sparse and faded.

“I do hope so.”

“Unlike them, I have complete authority to speak for the hive. You have propositions for us; that is clear enough. We are prepared to listen.”

“Oh, good.” The foundress drained her horn and took another. “Yours is an old and highly cultured society, despite the indolence of your ruler, which we understand to be a racial rather than personal proclivity. You have laws, and traditional dances, and mathematicians, and principles, which of course we do respect.”

“Your terms, please.”

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Writer Thoraiya Dyer has the least organized (though entertaining) author website I’ve ever seen. This story, on the other hand, is not like that.

A warty-nosed old woman stops her car at the side of the road to offer me a lift to Beirut. There is a basket of ripe pomegranates on the passenger seat.

“Ride with me.”

“Aphrodite rides with you already,” I say. “I am no human lover.”

“No,” the warty-nosed woman replies. She takes a pomegranate from the basket and splits it with a small, sharp knife. “You see? It is the church. The juice is the blood of Christ and the flesh is his body. He would not turn you away. Come, into the car.”

I smile. The woman answered the riddle correctly. She moves the basket to make room for me.

Careful not to expose the true form hidden beneath my black robes, I climb into the seat, but I cannot fasten the safety belt without nimble human fingers. The old woman patiently reaches across to fasten it.

“A lifetime since these restraints were introduced,” she chuckles, “and still we do not use them. The Lebanese think they are invincible.”

If her hands find my shape beneath the robes disturbing, she gives no sign.

“These strange deaths,” she continues as she swings the Mercedes back onto the highway. “I wonder if they will continue to spread?”

But she has answered only the first riddle, the riddle that permits her to breathe the air within the temple. She has not answered the third riddle that permits her to ask a question of the sphinx. I say nothing. The old woman might fail if I test her again, and I wish to find the priest quickly.

It will go easier if I am not required to stop her heart.

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Jim Hines is one of the good guys of modern fantasy and science fiction. I mean that literally. He doesn’t just write his books and talk to other authors and fans (a generally artificial distinction). He works hard and risks alienating potential readers to work toward making his industry one that anyone would want to work in.

He’s also funny as hell, as demonstrated by his first series of novels and their odd little goblin hero, and unwilling to be bound by tradition, as he showed when he took a number of fairy tale princesses and made them the heroes of their own, new, adventure tales. This story stands on its own.

The door slammed. Jesse counted to twenty, first in English, then Japanese. When Sam didn’t return, he went to the trash and pulled out the remains of his kite. One look told him it was unsalvageable.

“Kentaro was my father,” he muttered as he retrieved his Exacto knife and tried to cut the few bits of undamaged paper from the frame. It had been four months since his last letter to Kentaro. Sam had almost caught him sneaking back from the public mailbox down the street. Jesse didn’t dare use their own mailbox. He even had to buy his own stamps from the machine at the grocery store. Sam noticed missing stamps as quickly as he spotted long-distance calls on the phone bill.

Jesse glanced down and found he had cut the paper into a rough hexagon, like a Rokkaku kite. He trimmed tiny sticks of bamboo, fitting them to the lines of the Rokkaku. A strange warmth flowed through his fingers. The glue dried impossibly fast. He grabbed a spool of black thread and tied a small four-point bridle.

As he finished the last knot, the kite leapt from the desk. The spool of thread bounced to the carpet.

Jesse held out his hand in amazement, and the tiny kite returned. The thread tickled his fingers. Abstract shapes of red and blue covered the back, like an exotic butterfly.

“Hold still,” Jesse said. The kite obeyed, hovering on an unfelt wind. Smiling, Jesse cut the thread, leaving a yard or so dangling from the bridle. “Fly around-”

Before he could finish the thought, the kite flew a fast circle around the room.

Fingers shaking, Jesse scrawled a quick note on another scrap of paper. He tied it to the thread.

“Can you find him?”

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Richard Bowes is no stranger to writing about meddling gods and complicated universes. He did so in his 2005 novel From the Files of the Time Rangers, and he does it again here.

The Defiler didn’t so much walk as roll as if he were on treads to the passenger door. He opened it, bowed slightly, and offered his hand to a lovely dark-haired lady who looked to be in her early thirties. She wore a picture hat, stiletto heels, a little black dress and a string of pearls.

“And here’s the Fiend!” said Bob. The two straightened up and stood, each with his hands clasped at the small of his back.

The couple came toward them with the Defiler on the woman’s left and about three paces behind, his face blank, a fighting machine on medium alert. The Fiend looked right at them.

“Door demons, at ease,” she murmured when she was a short distance away, “Anything?” she asked Bill.

“Civilians: eighty-four so far,” he said softly, “Theirs and ours. About even. The heavenly host—the bride and half a dozen bridesmaids—are inside.”

“We got a roof demon on top of the church. And woods demons covering…” Bob started to tell her.

Without breaking stride, the Fiend looked around and, for an instant, flames brighter than the sun leaped up wherever she looked. They appeared on the grass, the walk, the front of the church, on the two door demons who now wore hairless green skin and glowing red eyes.

It lasted only a moment and then all was as before, except for just a hint of sulfur in the air. As the Fiend passed the two, she reached out and, faster than a human eye could follow, slipped her hand halfway into Bob’s chest and then drew it back.

Guests approaching blinked at the flash of pyrotechnics. Their noses crinkled slightly at the smell. Most thought it was all their imaginations.

When the Fiend, the Defiler and the wedding guests had gone up the steps Bill said quietly, “If the Fiend wants to know, She asks.”

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Sometimes we make strange bargains, desperate bargains, but our bargains don’t only involve us. Claire Humphrey shares this story of one such bargain.

If you read this, you’ll tell me what grew over the arbor was ivy, not wisteria. If you are in a forgiving mood, you’ll open the envelope, and you’ll remind me how your father’s van broke down and we were late back. How we sat drinking iced tea while the radiator steamed.

You might dig out that picture, the one with the two of us sitting on the willow stump, and point out how small we were, how pudgy, how like any other pair of schoolgirls. How our ill-cut hair straggled over the shoulders of our flannel shirts.

You’ll remind me of the stories we used to tell each other. We spent hours embroidering them, improving on each other’s inventions. We built palaces and peopled them with dynasties, you’ll say, and we made ourselves emperors in every one, and every one was false.

If you read this, you’ll call your mother, or mine. They’ll confirm what you recall.

By then, though, you will begin to disbelieve it yourself.

If you think on it long enough, you’ll recall the kiss. I left it there untouched, the single thread you could pull to unravel this whole tapestry.

You’ll start to understand none of these things happened the way you remember. If you read this, you’ll learn how I betrayed you.

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Margaret Ronald is the author of the Evie Scelan urban fantasy novels. This short story is nothing like those. It’s also not your average superhero story.

He’s entirely serious, and of all the members of the shadow orgs, he embodies those values the most. And yet I can’t help myself. “‘To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from the indignities, wrongs and outrages of the lawless, the violent and the brutal,'” I quote. Glendower shoots me a sharp look.

Maxentius, though, hasn’t noticed. “Yes! Exactly.” He shakes my hand a second time, beaming, and nods to Glendower. “I must be off. Good luck — I hope we’ll see you here again.”

I watch him go. He rescues kittens; that much is a matter of record. It’s part of why there’s now a cleanup detail assigned solely to him. The shadow orgs may prize their secrecy, but Maxentius does make a useful distraction. And, after all, they are all on the same side.

I shouldn’t have made fun of him. It’s not his fault he’s an innocent.

Glendower’s watching me, but unless he’s a nethead — and I know he’s not — he can’t see everything I’m doing. “I’ve set up a contact terminal for you,” he says. “We’d been meaning to change out our security, but good netheads with clearance are few and far between, and I’m afraid we were caught with our trousers down. The virus doesn’t seem to be actively hostile, but my projections show it stopping work outright if it overloads any more of our systems. At the moment it’s benign, just irritating.”

“I can imagine.” Twenty years ago, we’d have been fine with a microsecond lag; forty years, and a five-second lag was nothing. But technology spoils us — I should know, I’ve got a few dozen terabytes’ worth of it in my head. I switch from wireless to node work, and put my hands on either side of the contact terminal, relying on the points wired into my fingertips to carry me in. “I can upgrade some of your security while I’m here, but it’ll just be a patch-up job till I can come back, and I don’t yet have clearance for a second visit. You sure you couldn’t fix it yourself?”

Glendower shakes his head. “It’s rapidshift. I just don’t have the speed to keep it from mutating as I’m working on it. That’s nethead work.”

Of course it is; I created the damn virus.

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The 2011 Tiptree Award winner was announced yesterday. The Tiptrees honor speculative fiction that expands our understanding of gender roles. The award usually goes to a novel, which has more scope, but the judges also produce a longer reading list. It is always worth paying attention to.

This year, I was pleased to discover a story by an acquaintance that I hadn’t read yet. Sigrid Ellis is a local comic book writer and the co-editor of Chicks Dig Comics, which comes out next month.

All these postcards from Europe. All these postcards of beautiful places, with only your initials on the back. When you come home, you can read all the letters I’ve written back to you. Even the first one. I was mad, and hurt, and scared, and I said mean things to you. I thought about taking that one out, but—I love you more than anything. And that’s why I said what I did. And I think when you read all my letters, you’ll understand.

I was angry when we had that fight, too. Our last fight, though I didn’t know that at the time. What did you expect me to say? You come in late and you’re bloody and filthy, and you tell me some story about “the fey,” and “faeries.” About the fey and our family and a war. You said, “I have to go, Mom. The Unseelie Court has taken the Southern Provinces, and only our family’s bloodline can save the High Ones.” It makes no sense. Those are things out of stories, out of books. I just want to know, Amanda—in what universe did you think I would not ask you what drugs you were on?

I mean, really, honey. I was in Seattle in 1990. I know what drugs do. I spent ten months doing a lot of things I shouldn’t have, and I saw some things that I can’t explain except that I was high at the time. I might have seen faeries, too.

---

Well. Not like this matters to you, but your grandma set the kitchen on fire today. I was in the shower. She wanted toast. She couldn’t wait ten minutes for me to make her a piece of toast.

If you were here, like you’re supposed to be, not off in fucking Austria, I could get a shower without needing the fucking fire department.

---

You’re in Switzerland. Is it cold, up in the mountains? It’s disgustingly hot here. Humid, too. I run the a/c all the time, for your grandma, but everything is still damp.

She saw this latest postcard and asked about it. She said, and I just don’t know what to make of this, she said she’s been where you’re at, the Schloss Tarasp. Mom picked up the postcard and said that “a Highwayman lives there, a Tom o’ the Roads.” She said that she and Aunt Paulie stayed a night there, when she was in Europe in 1968, and that a dangerous man bothered them. She wants me to tell you to stay away from the Schloss, which she said means castle. She wants you to leave Switzerland. She wants you to stay away from the Highwayman.

I’ve never heard this version of The Story before.

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Alyx Dellamonica‘s first novel, Indigo Springs

There was a crack as the buck’s horn snapped off in the crazed man’s hand. The animal wailed, collapsing forward onto its knees. Bellowing, the pulver swung the horn about, fighting whatever delusion had gripped him.

Parrish was down there.

“You can’t go down there, Kir,” Een cawed, drawing the guards’ attention as he seized Gale by the arm. She had moved instinctively.

Parrish stepped up to the outside range of that pointed, swinging, horn. “It’s Bendi, isn’t it?”

The pulver bared his teeth. “Ruined all, Bendi has ruined…oh dear ones, I have failed!”

“Maddenflur,” Sapira whispered. “Has he taken…”

“Maybe someone slipped it to him,” Gale said.

Parrish’s voice carried across the plains. “On the island where I grew up, Bendi, we take in those slain by magic. Such murders are doubly tragic, because nothing lasts forever. It is a given that the scrip will be destroyed in time; that the spell will revert and the murdered person will live again. So the victims must be kept safe.”

The pulver was staring at Parrish’s lips.

“There was a young monk once, whose job was to bear corpses from the sea to the monastery of the sleeping dead. But he loved a woman whose farm lay on the route from the port. He’d stopped at her cottage, once, and a grass fire caught near his wagon. The coffin and the woman lying within were burned.”

The pulver extended his hand, splaying his inhumanly strong fingers mere inches from the boy’s throat. Nobody moved. Even the deer seemed to hold their breath.

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