FICTION by Chen Qian, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan in Issue 189 – June 2022
It was never a good sign when Song Mike came looking for me at the end of the workday. “You, come out here for a sec.” He leaned against the doorway, nodding in my direction. I stuck my head out from behind my computer monitor and looked him up and down. The guy was red […]
FICTION by Liang Qingsan, translated by Andy Dudak in Issue 188 – May 2022
My discovery of Guang Hansheng was probably down to random chance, in the end. It was a rainy afternoon, and I was headed for the library, striding across wet asphalt and feeling dizzy. Inside they were hosting a quiet, desolate little exhibition—just a few exhibits and a drowsy admin under bright stage lighting. Of course, […]
FICTION by Oskar Källner, translated by Gordon James Jones in Issue 188 – May 2022
Gamma stretched out through the quantum foam. Virtual photons and electrons tickled her subtime body. If she were to reduce her mass to pure quanta then, hypothetically speaking, she would be able to touch the entire universe at once. Practically speaking, she possessed barely enough energy for her subtime body to reach a diameter of […]
FICTION by Pan Haitian, translated by Emily Jin in Issue 187 – April 2022
The breaking news of the day came before dawn: a starship from Planet Monkey plunged into the port of Orange Town. When it came crashing down, it knocked over the chicken pen and laundry line of Lady Charla’s tavern, as well as the enormous sign of the local bar “Twister” and the town’s communication antenna […]
FICTION by Arthur Liu, translated by Stella Jiayue Zhu in Issue 186 – March 2022
. . . The first step to decoding memory is the insertion of liquid nanoprobes, which travel through blood vessels and membranes via interstitial fluid until they are evenly distributed along the body’s central nervous system and form a sensor network. Their dense surveillance enables the brain to transform into an intricate server that decodes requests and […]
FICTION by Gu Shi, translated by S. Qiouyi Lu in Issue 184 – January 2022
“Humanity will die.” The first time he heard the instructors say that, he was a baby who’d just started school, with nothing more than a huge head devoid of any knowledge. That day, the instructors had been muttering among themselves when they suddenly asked him, “Who are you?” He stared blankly as he rummaged around […]
FICTION by Wang Yuan, translated by Andy Dudak in Issue 183 – December 2021
This story is sincerely dedicated to my Mother. 1 Tom called Adriana Honey-Bunny, and she called him Pumpkin. A moment by a window. An orange California morning. Tom snapped his fingers, the waiter understood and came and refilled his cup with fragrant coffee. The sun shone on their table and the street outside was crowded. […]
FICTION by Pan Haitian, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan in Issue 182 – November 2021
Strange boulders littered the Mountain of the Empty. They were ovoid in appearance and similar in size, their corners and edges smoothed away by the wind, so that even the moonlight shining upon them found no purchase. Like ghastly white skeletons, they lay half-buried in the earth, large and small. They all seemed to be […]
FICTION by Fei Dao, translated by Ken Liu in Issue 181 – October 2021
1. “Chi-a! Chi-a!” Just as dawn is about to chase away the night, the silence is broken by a distant, earth-rumbling chant. A roiling, dark column of smoke snakes toward the rosy clouds. The giant, towing a rusty furnace behind him, each stride infused with pride, marches into sight from over the horizon. Lit by […]
FICTION by Regina Kanyu Wang, translated by Emily Jin in Issue 180 – September 2021
The transition was much easier than I had imagined. Standing by the console, I set the parameters following my usual observation procedure. I had memorized the numbers when Jin first mentioned them, and I double-checked his experiment records, just to make sure. I rotated the security knob counterclockwise, punched in the password number by number, […]
FICTION by Congyun 'Mu Ming' Gu, translated by Tian Huang in Issue 179 – August 2021
“My little girl once had a serpentine band that had scenes of red cliffs and white water carved onto it. Whenever she held it as she slept, she would dream of entering that world.” —Excerpt from “Notes about Yushan,” written in the early seventeenth century Prelude The water is not all that cold. It has […]
FICTION by Mlok 5, translated by Julie Nováková in Issue 179 – August 2021
Query: erotic chat @lelek7, m, 31, hip-hop Good evening, I am an instance gtrg.5i6.uihg.vbnrt, and I will be taking care of your satisfactory browsing experience. Gladly. What else can I do? Redirect: adult_content Query: porn @merk.ur, m, 24, student, snowboard Night shift again, I see. Being woken up like this doesn’t do me good. How […]
FICTION by Leonid Kaganov, translated by Alex Shvartsman in Issue 178 – July 2021
My sandwiches will soon appear on the kitchen shelf. Grandpa An doesn’t eat sandwiches because he has cancer. He has only a couple of months left to live. That’s what the doctor said in the corridor, and when I overheard it, I cried all evening long. This had been two winters ago, when I was […]
FICTION by Jiang Bo, translated by Andy Dudak in Issue 177 – June 2021
Xu Haifeng sat down at the desk and tapped a button. Large screens slowly rose to surround him, like a three hundred and sixty-degree theater. All kinds of data scrolled on the screens in a never-ending torrent. Xu waved his hand and the screens responded, scrolls coming and going. When the capital flowchart revolved before […]
FICTION by Cristina Jurado, translated by Sue Burke in Issue 177 – June 2021
We are not so different, sister sojourner. Correct us if we are mistaken, but we are both creatures trying to survive under the most adverse circumstances, evading hazards, defying misfortune, and eluding death. We share more in common than you think. Yet we have never seen anything like you, a strange being from an equally […]
FICTION by Tang Fei, translated by Andy Dudak in Issue 176 – May 2021
This is a small story, so don’t expect too much from it. The tale proceeds directly from beginning to end and wastes no time about it. Truth be told, I never thought the day would come I’d write it down. The first time I saw her, I didn’t think anything would happen. Nothing worthwhile ever […]