The Future on Earth isn't a fun place to be after the Great Destruction of 2041. The sky glows sickly with toxins, and everyone wears thick boots against the radioactive ooze always coming out of the ground. The government still functions, but with vastly fewer citizens. Past Examination Technology (PET) is a small but important project looking for answers to heal both the Past, and their current Future. Timber is the newest Mr. M (for Muscle), as team security. He joins an educated young woman, Ms. E, and an argumentative man in his 40s who is a gifted psychic, Mr. P, to Time Travel back to...

What happens when a woman from California moves to Texas and ends up with a born-and-bred in Texas husband? Get ready for a "Culture Crash " that is as surprising as it is hilarious. Read about her one summer at a kid's dude ranch in West Texas, when putting coke in your canteen instead of water for a horseback ride means a long ride home with sticky stuff dripping down your leg. And how the youngest riders seem to have the most ancient horses, which can and do expire mid-session. Where barbequing is a sacred smoky bond between man and meat that requires rubs, spices, music and beer to do it...

In a medieval world where human life means little, and Honor and Nobility are strictly subjective terms, the Queen Mother to a dead King is brought before her kingdom's Conqueror. Blood-spattered and in shock, the Queen Mother bears a cruel wound for a royal woman, once wife and then mother to successive Kings. She practices no Magic, yet sprites of spirits shimmer amid her skirt, giving her the appearance of a Sorceress of Souls. But the Conqueror King is no fool, sending the Queen Mother back to Everrast to help heal her kingdom - and encourage their fine craftsmen to resume making their...

Most people don't associate Science Fiction with humor. But with Social Science Fiction set in the Near Future on Earth, the focus is on characters everyone can all relate to. And when dropped into challenging and dangerous future situations, their reactions can make one smile, chuckle - or laugh out loud. Come read nearly a dozen short SciFi stories, divided by age group. Got a Science Project in elementary school to save the AntPeople on a fictitious planet? How about beta testing a simple new FPS video game, where ghosts of the killed show up in your dreams? And can a family arrive at...

So you are a genius-level computer programmer in your 20s, working long days with plenty of overtime and bonuses. But little time to spend it, so you just keep reinvesting it in your company stock. As you run on that energy-drink fueled treadmill between home and work. Most weekday evenings you arrive home at 10PM, fast food for dinner as you collapse utterly exhausted on the couch, and fall asleep in your clothes. And that's where they find you. An urgent knock on the door in the middle of the night. The Suits. Badges. The Feds. You blink blearily as you hear "National Security emergency ......