watching it rise

One Friday, Without the Milk

After a long hard week full of days he would burst through the door, his fatigue hidden behind a smile. There was an icy jug of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz in his right hand. With his left hand he would grip my waist - I was always cooking dinner - and press the cold frostiness of the jug against my arm as he kissed my cheek. I would jump, mostly to gratify him after a time, and smile lovingly at him. He was a good man, a wonderful husband who always brought the milk on Friday, Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz.
– Catherine Swinford

So Beautiful, So Disturbing

She gets out of bed and stretches, perfect curves sliding under silky lingerie and momentarily making me forget about breakfast, meatloaf, and whoever it was I was married to before last night. She seems to know this, and smiles at me again, but apparently she’s serious about making breakfast. She turns and strides confidently from the room. As she does, I see for the first time the large Microsoft logo splayed across her back. My stomach lurches as I suddenly remember everything.
– chalain

Take the Third Star on the Left and on til Morning: on the Mundane Science Fiction movement

I don’t believe in starships. At least not the starships that turn up so regularly in Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, etc. The speed of the universe is c. Go faster than ‘c’ and something catastrophic happens: mass becomes infinite. We have no idea what that means. It’s a mathematician’s way of saying something can’t happen.

Yet mass-market SF still dreams of faster-than-light travel, through such tropes as warp drives. The Physics of Star Trek by Laurence M Krauss calculates that warp drives would consume energy equivalent to whole galaxies. This is his way of saying something can’t happen without alienating the Star Trek fans who bought the book.

If there are wormholes or portals I see no way that something can travel through them without being converted into energy or crushed by gravitational forces. This is Geoff’s way of saying the starship gets wrecked.
– Geoff Ryman

Teolinda Gersão’s The Woman Who Stole the Rain:

That was when I heard what they were saying. One of them did most of the talking, while the other merely asked a question now and then or made the occasional sound. Theirs were two different and unequal voices.

The rain, I heard one of them say. It was because of the rain.
– Teolinda Gersão

Farrago’s Wainscot reprints Beth Bernobich’s “Of Moon Dust and Starlight“:

Ifi first met Ain by a field of moon-flowers, their petals just unfolding. The Earth hung low and dark in the sky above; the moon, in counterpoint, waxed full and perfect, untouched by shadows. It was the season of rebirth. All around the moon-sprites danced, alive with delight at discovering their world. Older ones, those who had survived the last waning, lingered outside the fields. The oldest of all perched on the rust-red mountains high above, gazing at the Earth’s darkened circle.
– Beth Bernobich