Category: Classic

As his bathysphere dropped through the psychedelic technicolor layer cake that is Jupiter's crushing atmosphere, buffeted by alternating laminar flows, subjected to temperatures that would melt most normal metals, and Colonel Jamison was forced to rely solely on his lonely radar pings for any idea what was going on around him, he paused to reflect that if one went deep enough it was indeed a dark and stormy planet.

Category: Animal Husbandry

Flametta sighed as she gently stroked the nose of the contented unicorn whose head lay in her lap, reflecting that no matter what price the hides brought, she really wished next time Daddy would let her keep one, if only for a week or two.

Category: Contemporary

Long before the birth of the world we know, the land was inhabited by heroes great and bold, monsters foul, creatures most magical, who had centuries of exciting adventures, but this book isn't about them.

Cateory: Intergovernmental Cooperation

The door burst open and the Thought Police stormed in, knocking Mitch to the floor, brutally twisting his hands behind his back, but all he could think of was the books he'd taken out of the library that very day, and his stomach twisted in fear as he realized that the Thought Police would find the books and confiscate them, and that the library would dun him for new books and twenty years of fines after he finally got out of the re-education camp.

Category: The Naked City

The night settled on the lower reaches of the city like a cloak; not a fine silk cloak, or a practical wool cloak, or even one of homespun cotton, but like a cloak that had been cast off by a drunken derelict for being too shabby.

Category: The Meaning of Life

It was a bad place to die -- but there are really no good places to die, he mused, remembering his near-death experience with the tentacled Meerks of Rishmanon, his near escape from the fog marshes of the flatulent Borts (whose planet's main export was, of course, methane), and his incredibly lucky near miss of an entanglement by a particular lady on Etronomius IX (which, while not technically "near-death", would have resulted in the cessation of his life of travel and adventure, which to our hero was the same thing).

Category: Sudden Changes

Yesterday morning, I rolled out of bed, fell into the basement, and wondered where the floor had gone.