This collection of ten original science fiction stories from multiple award-winning author Preston Dennett has much to offer fans of speculative fiction. There is adventure, romance, comedy, and mystery. There are aliens, alternative universes, probable realities, time-bubbles, spaceships, other planets, alien artifacts and much more. Prepare yourself for a journey into realms beyond imagination.
TEARS NOT OF A CHILD. In a world where age is treated as a disease, Melissa and David Perkins have decided to grow old first, and then seek treatment. But when they finally elect to “Close the Gate,” weird things begin to happen.
GREETINGS FROM EARTH. A strange and beautiful alien artifact has appeared on Earth, and nobody knows what it is. A crashed ship, a monitoring device, alien art…the theories are endless. Then Pete takes his wife (a psychic) to visit it, and soon regrets his decision.
ENTER A HUMAN. When Sarah Webster sits down to paint a field of flowers, an alien spaceship lands next to her. Out steps an alien who has a special task for her that could change the course of all humanity. But will Sarah accept?
STARS ARE WILD. Gracie Megan Sparks’ song has just hit #1 on several of the fifty colonized planets. Then, on the far side of the universe, the little-known Music Trees have inexplicably stopped singing. And when Megan learns that her song is the reason why, she knows her life will never be the same.
CAN YOU SPARE A DOLLAR? Sticky has lived on Pete’s small country farm all his life. But when Sticky suddenly dies, a mystery is uncovered which will shake the entire town, and threaten the survival of all humanity.
STORM OF CHANCE: As a series of weird probability storms strike the planet, the entire world is plunged into near chaos. Everyone struggles to adapt to the constant changes, but Linda, finds herself strangely immune from the storms. The question is, why?
ELEPHANT CITY. Skeera is worried. The population of people on Earth has dwindled to almost nothing. She must do something to save them. The only option is unthinkable: make a venture to Elephant City and attempt to make friends with the new dominant species of Earth: the elephants.
DON’T ASK! Someone is hoarding supplies on ship, and Stebbins is furious. Everyone knows that hoarding is not allowed, and he goes on a mission to find the culprit. However, when he discovers the culprit, and what he is hoarding, he wonders if some secrets are better left unknown.
SALVAGE YARD. Haskel Danvers is the proud owner of a salvage yard of old, wrecked spaceships on the rim of the Milky Way. A mysterious mother and her child arrive to take a tour, and Haskel reluctantly agrees. But he soon learns to regret his decision.
A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT. Without warning, mysterious time-bubbles have appeared all over Earth, freezing small groups of people in time. Walter Scobee’s wife, Clare, is one of the victims. But can Walter’s love for his wife transcend time and space itself?
These ten fascinating stories from the imagination of Preston Dennett take you on a wondrous and unforgettable journey to the farthest edges of the universe. All but one have been vetted by professional editors and appeared in various magazines, and each includes a Behind the Story section revealing how the stories came to be written and their pathway to publication. So put on your spacesuits and grab your laser-guns and prepare to be amazed!
Quanta Publishing’s Call for Submissions
Granted, Quanta is not a paying market, and it also only publishes science fiction and fantasy that is non-woke and clean, so it necessarily limits the market, but if you think you can write a 5 - 10k short story on this year’s theme of ‘Robotics’ and would like to include it in the anthology, do submit your story!
Having a published story, even in a collection with other writers is both a fun challenge and great way to build your portfolio.
You can send the completed MS to quantapublishing at proton dot me. Quanta retains no rights.
I’ve ben busy working on my own submission for it as well as a few other stories for other SFF anthologies. Here’s a short excerpt from my submission for
Space Cowboys anthology.Quinton slumped in his seat in the dark corner of the grungy, well-worn bar. He wasn’t in the mood for company, but some how, the pestering annoyance by the name of Daro Peabody had somehow managed to find him on his first day back on the only spaceport in a million kilometers.
He ignored Daro’s rambling report of everything and nothing that had been going since he’d left for the UCF academy three years ago. It was hard to listen, hard to care. Not with thoughts of how he was going to miss the UCF piloting test because he had to return home. Not that he begrudged going home. He didn’t. Mostly.
Mom couldn’t help her horribly bad timing, dying of cancer at such an inopportune time. If he told her about the test, if he didn’t act like he had all the time in the world, he knew she wouldn’t take no for an answer. She’d shove him out the door and die alone. Or, more or less alone, considering Uncle Hektor wasn’t much in the way of family.
Not that he could blame Uncle Hektor for that either. By his mother’s accounts, the man was barely holding onto his water lentils farm, now that the terraforming machine had gone down, leaving the planetoid barely survivable.
Quinton glanced away from the viewing screen showing the transport race through the rugged, dangerous exterior collection of moons in the Jovian system. He looked out through the dome wall. A viewing port had been placed in the wall of the dome and the bar had been built around it by some savvy entrepreneur. Not that there was much to see.
Dust. Whorls and clouds of it. Orange and red and yellow and brown. Clogging up vents. Cutting skin into ribbons. Desiccating. Killing his uncle’s farm, sapping his strength before his time. Turning him into a dried up, crusty, bitter old man that would sit beside his dying cousin’s bedside, but keep his attention fixed outside on those long flat, near waterless beds, the source of his constant worry since the terraforming machine broke down. As if staring harder at them would make the struggling lentils continue to produce.
Quinton hated to be the one to tell him that that business had hit the skids, but if mom’s report was anything to go by, it was a conversation he was going to have to have.
Yells from closer to the bar drew Quinton’s attention and silenced the unceasing ramble of Daro Peabody. Someone in the race had hit an asteroid and their ship was in an undirected tumble. Other ships attempted to dodge, but the transports were moving so quickly, dodging out of the way wasn’t easily accomplished and a jumble of ships soon clustered the area, while some squeaked by unscathed.
“That’s Carmona. You remember him, don’t you?” Peabody said. His voice was thin and low and he had a habit of sniffing and rubbing his one eye that leaked clear fluid from it’s red, chronically inflamed edges. The kid was smart as a whip, but as thin as ever and Quinton wondered if he was getting enough to eat. Not his problem, he reminded himself, turning away and drawing on his beer with a long pull. Yep. Still a disgusting brew that barely deserved the name.
“Yeah, I remember him,” Quinton said.
“He hasn’t changed. Not a bit. If that wetter doesn’t stop running his mouth about how much better the UCF is than these locals, Carmona’s going to give him what for.”
Quinton watched the wetter in question from across the bar. Despite the fact that he was old enough to be in the bar, he was just a kid, no more than a few years younger than Peabody. His hair hadn’t even been trimmed yet, despite his academy uniform, which told Quinton the boy was still waiting for the training ship to come through the station. It wasn’t unusual for the massive ships to be delayed and miss their rendezvous for a month or more.
And wow, was the boy a wetter. He couldn’t be more wet behind the ears if he tried. He was loudly boasting to all and sundry that any UCF pilot was better than any local and could beat the best racer around easily. No question.
If the look of growing resentment on Carmona’s face was anything to go by, the kid would do better to keep his mouth shut. Worse, Carmona was quiet. It was never good when Carmona got quiet.
The man’s normal manner was loud and boisterous to the point of being obnoxious. If he was staring into his beer, mute, something was terribly wrong… and heads were likely going to roll.
Quinton shook his head at the boy’s blustering and then looked over at Peabody. “If you care so much, why don’t you go over and tell him to shut his yap?”
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