The Transport of Bodies, by John Possidente

[Interzone]

★★☆☆☆

(SF Thriller; Humboldt Station) The narrator is a starving journalist on a space station who might just see two big stories in a place where good stories are hard to come by. (3,106 words; Time: 10m)

Although this is the second Humboldt Station story, there's no need to read them in either order.

Carriers, by James Sallis

[Interzone]

★★★☆☆

(Dystopia) In the war-torn remnants of the United States, a doctor and a revolutionary struggle to make things right again. (8,640 words; Time: 28m)

Organ of Corti, by Matt Thompson

[Interzone]

★★☆☆☆

(SF Horror) Elias works with research teams investigating the expanding deserts that are choking Madrid, but Ana’s expedition is very secretive, and their target looks like nothing he’s seen before. (9,890 words; Time: 32m)

Rocket Man, by Louis Evans

[Interzone]

★★☆☆☆

(Alternate History) In a world where atmospheric problems made guided ICBMs impossible, a young missile pilot talks about his life at base waiting for the call to fly a nuclear missile to his death. (4,025 words; Time: 13m)

Recommended By: 👍MHaskins+1 (Q&A)

Cofiwch Aberystwyth, by Val Nolan

[Interzone]

★★★☆☆

(SF Adventure) Mila and two of her friends explore the ruins of a Welsh town destroyed in a nuclear blast some years before. (8,288 words; Time: 27m)

The Dead Man's Coffee, by John Possidente

[Interzone]

★★★☆☆

(SF Thriller; Humboldt Station) A reporter on a space station describes how a religious trial involving photosynthesizing people seems to have managed to get someone killed. (3,234 words; Time: 10m)

Recommended By: 👍STomaino+1 (Q&A)

Salvage, by Andy Dudak

[Interzone]

★★★☆☆

(SF Drama) Aristy salvages souls from humans the aliens turned into statues a thousand years ago, but not everyone is thrilled with her project, and she has a dark secret. (10,528 words; Time: 35m)

Recommended By: 👍MHaskins+1 👍STomaino+1 (Q&A)

Frankie, by Daniel Bennett

[Interzone]

★★☆☆☆

(Dystopia) A soldier in a war in the mid-2030s mourns the death of his brother and muses about what his life meant. (3,315 words; Time: 11m)

Flyover Country, by Julie C. Day

[Interzone]

★★☆☆☆

(Epidemic) Immie works for a slightly suspicious company that’s fighting the custom-designed mind-modifying diseases are sweeping the world, and she finds romance with the pilot of a spray plane. (5,637 words; Time: 18m)

Recommended By: 👍ABrown+1 (Q&A)

Each Cell a Throne, by Gregor Hartmann

[Interzone]

★★★☆☆

(SF Drama; Zephyr) Phillipa Song tries to convince a dying aristocrat that the mind-transfer technology he wants to use is really a fraud. (5,932 words; Time: 19m)

Dream of the High Mountain, by Daniel Bennett

[Interzone]

★★★☆☆

(Dystopia) In a slowly dying world, Morgan attends a retreat to try to make his life seem more meaningful. (4,988 words; Time: 16m)

The Duchess of Drinke Street, by Tim Chawaga

[Interzone]

★★☆☆☆

(SF Drama) The narrator opens a restaurant on a floating city but needs a good review from a food critic to be successful. (5,351 words; Time: 17m)

Parasite Art, by David Tallerman

[Interzone]

★★★☆☆

(SF Drama) The narrator merged with an alien symbiont to create amazing art, and it’s been great, but lately he/she is feeling dissatisfied. But is there any way to remove the alien? (4,873 words; Time: 16m)

Dent-de-lion, by Natalia Theodoridou

[Interzone]

★★☆☆☆

(SF Adventure) An astronaut goes to an alien planet to find a plant that holds the cure for a deadly disease that’s ravaging the Earth. (5,301 words; Time: 17m)

She and I and We, by Timothy Mudie

[Interzone]

★★☆☆☆

(Time Travel) Nat gets a visit from a much older future self who says she’s in grave danger but won’t give any details. (4,322 words; Time: 14m)

The Kindest God is Light, by Joanna Berry

[Interzone]

★★★☆☆

(SF Drama) A depressed poet with writer’s block wonders why it’s taking so long to make a copy of her mental state. (6,835 words; Time: 22m)

Two Worlds Apart, by Dustin Blair Steinacker

[Interzone]

★★★☆☆

(SF Adventure) To earn a place in the Consortium of alien species, humanity needs to accomplish a successful first-contact mission. Ana leads it but doesn’t realize just how alien the Tarshach are. (5,781 words; Time: 19m)

This story won the James White Award, which is an annual short story competition open to non-professional writers.

Fix That House!, by John Kessel

[Interzone]

★★☆☆☆

(SFF) In which a man describes how he and his wife worked to fix up a beautiful old 1840s house. (1,423 words; Time: 04m)

The Palimpsest Trigger, by David Cleden

[Interzone]

★★★☆☆

(SF Horror) The alien Palimps can take memories away, and Marni works for one in the hopes one day it’ll erase his memory of how he let his little sister die. And he’ll do anything for that. (7,786 words; Time: 25m)

Jolene, by Fiona Moore

[Interzone]

★★★☆☆

(AI Automobile) A country singer has lost his wife, his dog, and his truck. The wife is a lost cause, and the dog is dead, but a counselor may be able to get the truck to take him back. (3,990 words; Time: 13m)