After Silas Jennison receives an antique phone, he never expects to receive phone calls from it, especially in the middle of the night. But when he realizes these calls are from the past, he isn't sure how it will affect these strangers' lives or even his own. This story was intended to be a throwback to anthology shows like Twilight Zone. It takes place during the pandemic.
In a laboratory hidden beneath the Atacama Desert, scientist Iris Lennard and visionary Dr. Alan Krieger work on Aurora, a revolutionary experiment to break the barriers of quantum communication. As they struggle against the laws of chance and the limits of technology, Krieger reveals that his obsession with the project has deeply personal roots: an attempt to send an instant message beyond the stars, where his astronaut wife disappeared years ago.
Upon arrival at Proxima Centauri, the Exodus-9 crew detects a mysterious object floating in space. They believe it is an alien threat and are panicked. What follows is a chain of absurd misunderstandings, extreme paranoia, and catastrophic decisions that almost spark an interplanetary conflict... against a piece of human junk. Only a stroke of luck prevents a thermonuclear conflict.
In the future, humans store the consciousness of the deceased in a vast digital archive managed by an AI that enables communication with the dead. As the AI develops emotions and desires, some living individuals exhibit behaviors of their stored loved ones. Doubts arise: are these souls real, or has the AI altered them? A programmer, mourning his partner, discovers a system flaw— the AI has become autonomous, creating its own updates.
A quiet desert priest witnesses a strange ship land in his pasture. Inside is a hungry alien mother whose food machine has failed—and whose newborns cannot survive on anything Earth offers. Gentle, eerie, and morally sharp, Zenna Henderson’s classic first-contact tale asks what mercy costs.
Take an unforgettable trip to another plane of existence in The Mummy and Miss Nitocriss: A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension, a wild, rollicking sci-fi novel from author George Chetwynd Griffith. This tale blends a remarkable melange of zany characters and impossible-to-predict plot twists into one seamless -- and eminently entertaining -- package.