A name you know. A mood you’re in. Ten minutes to yourself. Start anywhere.
How quickly the story moves.
After inventing an immortality serum, a biologist is pursued by a secret organization determined to control the discovery.
Three shape-changing aliens land on Earth to open an invasion route, but the planet offers forms their rigid caste system forbids.
Treasure hunters on a remote Pacific island discover that a Martian parasite can unite animals and people into one obedient mind.
Two starving space travelers search an abandoned alien warehouse for anything a human can safely eat.
A lone prospector crosses Venus’s deadliest desert while strict cash-only services deny him the supplies he needs to survive.
A crew guarding Earth against telepathic invaders waits for a detector to reveal the first compromised mind.
An alien organism that converts every attack into food begins spreading across rural New York.
Two stranded space travelers need fuel from a society whose idea of honorable warfare makes a simple recovery mission dangerous.
A student in a celebrated writing course objects to his professor’s rules for describing aliens and other planets.
On a crowded war-bound ship in 1864, a plague of lice gives two samurai factions something more urgent to fight about.
From Paradise, the Buddha offers a single spider’s thread to a robber suffering at the bottom of Hell.
A condemned ritual thief on a dying Mars raids a forbidden vault, hoping that fragments of ancient science can save his people.
A submarine officer deserts rather than help begin total nuclear war, but enemy vessels force him to decide what he is still willing to fight for.
