Rich Larson (Ymir, Tomorrow Factory) was born in Galmi, Niger, has lived in Spain and Czech Republic, and is currently based in Grande Prairie, Canada. His fiction has been translated into over a dozen languages, among them Polish, French, Romanian and Japanese, and his Clarkesworld story “Ice” was adapted into an Emmy-winning episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS.
Red’s body is asleep in the protoplasmic muck, dreamless, when Mother’s cable wriggles down under the surface to find her. It pushes through the membrane of her neural stoma and pipes a cold tingling slurry inside. A sliver of Mother becomes Red, and Red wakes up! Synapses crackle; electric fireworks of thought and intention pinwheel […]
FICTION by Rich Larson in Issue 183 – December 2021
When Elisabeth takes the baby to the beach on Thursday afternoon, another shambler has got through the fence. “Stay ten meters back,” the guard says, his translucent face mask fogged with the heat. “Yes, yes,” Elisabeth says. “And the child. Ten meters.” “We’re fully inoculated,” Elisabeth says, annoyed. “Of course, ma’am.” He seems to be […]
FICTION by Eric Fomley and Rich Larson in Issue 181 – October 2021
Pilo’s long quiet is interrupted by a bell, the two-tone electronic chime that signals an inspection. He feels his cube start to move in the dark. He grips both sides of his bed, the square slab that is the cell’s only furnishing. He observes his emaciated reflection in the dark glass wall across from him, […]
It sun-showers while we’re scrubbing the carrots. The sky overhead is robin’s egg blue—all the gray stormy shit is off to the east—but the rain comes down anyways. We’re sitting on the edge of the old wooden porch, facing the garden, and the drops lick our bare feet. That is the setting. “Again,” says Mom, […]
FICTION by Rich Larson in Issue 157 – October 2019
The club called Fleur House is a shabby red brick front slouched between a barbershop and a dépanneur, no holo signage or even neon to lead people in. I wouldn’t have found it on my own. But that’s why I found Dion. “Bin, here we are,” my new friend says, his wide grin winching even […]
Towering cliffs topped with bright lush greenery. Cold clean waves crashing against the stone below, sleek gray clouds swirling through the unbound sky above. A woman dances along the edge, her long hair and scarf whipped wild by the wind. Her bare face is enraptured, eyelids fluttering, nostrils flared, as she draws in breath after […]
FICTION by Rich Larson in Issue 146 – November 2018
As soon as Etta turned up the overgrown sidewalk to the house-turned-apartment, a redflag notification popped up over the crooked eaves troughs, rotating in the gray sky: two stabbings, one drug arrest, twenty-six noise complaints in the past month. Hey Etta! We found some sketchy stats. Are you sure you want to be here? “Nope,” […]
REPRINT FICTION by Rich Larson in Issue 143 – August 2018
The sky was a thick nuclear gray over the parkade where Bo and Violet were scanning the streets for Bo’s othermother. Violet sat on the hood of a battered white Nissan, while Bo watched from the edge with his elbows hooked over the railing. The othermothers were easy enough to spot, stalking the streets on […]
Ostap is putting the finishing touches on a cartoon tardigrade when Alyce calls him. The render is blown up to the size of a sumo, its butcher-paper skin creased and wrinkled around chubby tendril-tipped legs, its eyeless head dominated by a lamprey mouth. He’ll need to make it less terrifying before he sends it to […]
REPRINT FICTION by Rich Larson in Issue 138 – March 2018
There was new biomod ivy on the buildings, a ruddy green designed for long winters, but other than that the campus quad looked the same as it did a decade back. Ostap walked the honeycomb paving with his hands in his pockets, head and shoulders above the scurrying students. They were starting to ping him […]
The torpor pod is open, amber lights blinking in the gloom, intravenous and recycling systems still pumping like a slow heartbeat. Bubbly blue insulatory fluid pools on the floor, stamped with the malformed crescent of a bare footprint. A splattered blue trail leads from the pod to a status screen, where a woman is swaying, […]
FICTION by Rich Larson in Issue 124 – January 2017
The bioship hung in orbit, tendrils extended like a desiccated squid. Silas watched it grow larger each day from the viewport in the cryohold, where he went to be alone with Haley’s body and get high. He would inject himself with a mild euphoria virus and wait until the sight of her unmoving face no […]
FICTION by Lorenzo Crescentini and Emanuela Valentini, translated by Rich Larson in Issue 124 – January 2017
She revealed her name on the second day, under the light of a sunset. Marek had mistaken the fairy-like voice in his head for a neurosis at first, a hallucination brought on by his long journey spent in cryo. But when she started mourning her planet’s vanished civilization, he’d reconsidered. He had encountered stranger things […]
FICTION by Rich Larson in Issue 120 – September 2016
Eris was kicked back doing some work on her glitchy left arm, tweaking the artinerves she didn’t have the cash to replace, when a fist pounded against her cab window. She startled; the hairpin she’d been using slipped into the wrong socket and her spidery metal hand flailed wild. Staticky pain flared through her arm […]
For Grandma A flyer thunders overhead through the pale purple sky, rippling the crops and blowing Jonas’s hair back off his face. Fox has no hair to blow back: his scalp is shaven and still swathed in cling bandages from the operation. He knows the jagged black hunter drones, the ones people in the village […]
