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Fiction

Vanish on the Instant

by Terence Hannum

I. No one will know that I’m leaving, just that I’m gone. I carry the final box from my office to my packed up car. I open the tarnished gold trunk, the small lamp inside the trunk had long burnt out and the bulb is a pain to find. I push aside the empty quarts of oil and place the last box of books and research files over the bare spare tire. Something rustles in the woods and I turn to see what it is. Nothing is there, probably a rabbit or a deer. I take one last glance at the university, empty at night but illuminated against the dark. ... [continue]

By the Light of Day

by Hope Anne Elias

The host returned to consciousness in a flutter of dark eyelashes and dilation of pupils. Were it not for the familiar sound of his own wheezing, Gabriel would have mistaken the too-bright room for his post-death destination, wherever that lay. The realization that he was still alive gave Gabriel no comfort; it simply surprised him. Despite his doubts, however, he knew the watch–the one that remained forever on his left wrist–was always accurate. It was as if the watch was bound by the same laws as he himself: neither were allowed to shirk their duties or, in a sense, disobey. They both worked for something greater–the watch for its human ... [continue]

Worlds Enough

by Adrian Le Grand

I know exactly what Socrates meant and he fucking meant it literally. It’s just that most people aren’t smart enough, or not smart in the right way, or not weird enough, basically not enough like Socrates, to realize what he was saying. But I am. OK, so the bit I mean – the thing about his daemon talking to him? It wasn’t a metaphor. He wasn’t only talking about intuition, or good ideas or any of that shit. I mean, he might not have meant an actual daemon, but he did mean it spoke to him, and that he heard it. I have the same thing, from time to time. ... [continue]

The Unbelievers

by G. Scott Huggins

Commander Zuniga’s mouth hung open. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” “We do not believe in humans. It is an old superstition, easily disproven.” The android’s deep blue face was placid as any sea, though his body was, under his simple clothing, immensely fat. “But we’re standing right here, talking to you,” Zuniga said. “Three of us.” The android sighed. “You would hardly be the first androids to attempt to call themselves ‘humans’ to attempt to fool the gullible. Do you have any idea how often in history it’s been tried?” “Well, no,” said Engineer’s Mate Schwei. “Because we can’t download your memories. Or send commands, either. And I have ... [continue]

In Memoriam

by Marc Joan

Unfriending and clicking on ‘block sender’ doesn’t work on journalists; Yolanda should have known that. I soon found out she’d run from Edinburgh and joined the Carford Unit for Advanced Cognitive Sciences, in England. And then the CUACS media day gave me a legitimate reason to go and see her. Lucky me, I’d thought. Always lucky. Maybe my luck will hold, now. Maybe our only memory of Yolanda, now, is one that says just this: ‘Kill me’. The train into Carford was late, that day, and I only just made it to CUACS in time. I followed the ‘MEDIA DAY’ signs, and found myself in an overheated lecture theatre full ... [continue]

Fact & Opinion

The Heinlein Hypocrisy Part II: The Superior God

by G. Scott Huggins

Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.Robert Heinlein I’ve always found it funny that Heinlein wrote this twelve years after his most famous work, Stranger In A Strange Land, in which Heinlein attempted to dream up a God (or at least an Archangel) superior to human religions. I will, of course, admit to seeing some truth in Heinlein’s statement. Most pagan gods are ... [continue]

  • Revisiting Orson Scott Card’s Children of the Mind

    by Alex Drozd

    Orson Scott Card’s Ender Saga may be one of the most varied book series written to date. The first in the series, Ender’s Game, is a young-adult novel, while its sequel, Speaker of the Dead, explores a mixture of more adult-driven hard sci-fi and philosophical fiction. These two books are ... [continue]

  • The Heinlein Hypocrisy Part I: What Words Mean

    by G. Scott Huggins

    “God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent — it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.” (Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For ... [continue]

  • Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks

    by Joseph Heath

    Many years ago, a friend of mine who knows about these sorts of things handed me a book and said “Here, you have to read this.” It was a copy of Iain M. Banks’s Use of Weapons. I glanced over the jacket copy. “What’s the Culture?” I asked. “Well,” she ... [continue]

  • The Realist Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

    by Alex Drozd

    Before the quantum revolution, the scientific depiction of the natural world was a deterministic one, i.e., once all the initial parameters of a physical system were known, the evolution of a system could be predicted with exact precision. It was this ability to make exact predictions derived from empirical knowledge ... [continue]

Editorials

Ray Blank shares news and thoughts about publishing Sci Phi Journal.

Mote in God’s “I” by G. Scott Huggins

Reflections on genre writing from a Christian perspective.

The Time Frontier by SP Hofricther

An examination of the mechanics of time and time travel as depicted in science fiction.

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