Aphelion Issue 292, Volume 28
March 2024
 
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Issue 186 Volume 18 July 2014

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Archives Editorial Serials and Long Fiction Poetry and Filk Music Short Stories Flash Fiction Features Series

Editorial

Dan L. Hollifield

The Senior Editor's usual rants about whatever…


Serials and Long Fiction

Alas, there was no new Long Fiction in this issue.

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Short Stories

Captain Pops
J. Eckert Lytle
Being the best at what you do can cost you everything.

GPS
Anthony R. Pezzula
Do those fancy gadgets really get you there better?

Playing God
Stephen Faulkner
She thought it was just one of Jared's silly notions. She was wrong.

Robot Soliloquy
J. Eckert Lytle
The crash deprived it of its programming and left it to consider something it never had: what it wanted for itself.

Seepage
Roderick D. Turner
Reality leaks into this frightened lawyer's life.

Test Run
Dan Hollifield
In the great age of steam, many explorers and inventors used fantastic machines to further mankind's knowledge of the unexplored areas of planet Earth. As a test of one such mighty machine, a group of British explorers decide to cross the US in their experimental device. The year is 1895, the mission is to test the machine in a somewhat civilized area before taking it to Africa and South America to explore the darkest of Dark Continents. The wilds of the United States seem to be the best proving ground for Maxwell Jones' invention—The mighty vehicle AXEE, the Ambulatory eXoskeletal Exploratory Engine…

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Flash Fiction

Chylomicron
Ed Sullivan
A drug designed to create super-soldiers turns people into god-like gladiators, but there's one drawback…

Dressed To Kill
David Ulnar-Slew
You know those old adages: dress for the job you want and dress for success? Well, those apply too, especially when you're dressed to kill.

Infinity
Botond Teklesz
The computer was asleep. It slept twenty hours a day. But when it was awake…

Obsession
Rachel Gardner
The same diner, the same menu, the same waitress, every detail exactly the same, just like the twenty-seven previous times I tried…

Unbearable
Ed Sullivan
It was a simple mission. They were supposed to land on the planet and retrieve some samples. Yah, that always goes well…

The Aphelion Flash Fiction Contest

We run a monthly flash fiction contest in the "Fun and Games" folder in Aphelion's forum. In the contest we post a challenge with a specific theme and genre and participants write a flash story based on the challenge guidelines. The contest is a great place to hone your writing skills, meet some fellow writers, receive some feedback, and possibly win a prize. New participants are always welcome. Submissions for the contest are done through the forum. Flash stories from all of our previous contest challenges are archived in the forum as well.

Over 500 stories are included in our archive. To start reading some of these great flash stories, check out either Index 1 or Index 2.

July's challenge is The Two Heads Laugh Better Than One/ The contest started in the forum on July 5th. Click HERE to check it out. There is a $60 prize for the winner of this month's contest provided jointly by our anonymous patron and I. Verse, the winner of the last two flash contests.

Results of the Aphelion Flash Fiction Contest for June 2014

Congratulations to I. Verse, winner of the Scheherazade 7 Challenge. Click HERE to read his winning story, "The Three Onion-Pears of Alpha-Centauri," and five other flash stories about the robotic storyteller Scheherazade 7.

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Poetry and Filk Music

At the Wheel
Richard H. Fay

Dancer of the Shoe Poem
Michael Lee Johnson

Dispatch
Ayaz Daryl Nielsen

Heading Home
Dietmar Tauchner

If One, Why Not Another?
Richard Tornello

On The Front Porch
Denny E Marshall

Parasite Egg
Robin B. Lipinski

SciFaiku
Rafał Zabratyński

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Articles and features

Sha'Daa Pawns
A review by Dan Hollifield
A look at a collection of short stories by Michael H. Hanson.

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