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1
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Capture Radius [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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 They called Serena March the Junkman's Daughter. Her trial run of sweeping Earth's orbit for dangerous debris in her experimental ship the Balding Urchin is working out quite close to her and her father's original mission plan until she is forced to rendezvous with a damaged orbiting industrial platform that is in serious trouble. That turns into the catch of her life, her own skin and the survival of the workers on board who are being held as hostage depending on her and the Urchin. 2003
Words: 11466 - Reading Time: 32-45 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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13 Reader Ratings:
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$1.29 |
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$1.10 |
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50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$0.64 |
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$0.55 |
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50.39% |
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57.36% |
 
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2
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Look Away [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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Jeff Davis is an artist. He works for the struggling company Boditexx, a producer of organoform robots called bods. His job--and art--is transforming putty gray production bods so that they look, sound, act like, and can pass for people. His skills have earned him a certain amount of fame, a fame he does his best to ignore. When a company-making order for a hundred bods comes in, but the order is dependant on his going onsite to prepare these bods for their final purpose, he has no choice but to... more info>> 2002
Words: 14721 - Reading Time: 42-58 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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9 Reader Ratings:
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$1.65 |
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$1.40 |
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50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$0.82 |
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$0.70 |
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50.3% |
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57.58% |
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3
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The Nearly Infinite Possibilities of Junk [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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The good people of the asteroid Fred's Ball work hard and play hard. Their economy is based on mining the Ball, sweeping the Belt, and income from Hartman's Junkyard. But when lawyer Elmo Luckless arrives carrying papers from AllMine Corporation evicting the residents of the Ball, only Vance Hartman's inspiration as to how to build a new kind of space habitat from junk and leftover tailings can save them from being forced to work for AllMine if they want to stay. Things get complicated when Hart... more info>> 1989
Words: 16386 - Reading Time: 46-65 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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18 Reader Ratings:
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$1.79 |
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$1.52 |
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50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$0.89 |
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$0.76 |
| You Save: |
50.28% |
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57.54% |
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4
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Night Voices [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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It's just another night's work for Solomon Knight, late-night call-in talk show host and Philosopher at Large on KLPY, a Public Radio station out in a sparsely populated part of Arizona. At least until he gets a caller who identifies himself as Rualf, and claims to be an alien stranded on Earth. Rualf is calling Solomon to confirm the rightness of his decision to commit suicide. All too quickly Solomon finds himself taking the caller seriously, and grudgingly he finds himself forced closer to ag... more info>> 2000
Words: 6264 - Reading Time: 17-25 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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34 Reader Ratings:
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| You Pay: |
$0.79 |
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$0.67 |
| Micropay Rebate: |
50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$0.39 |
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$0.33 |
| You Save: |
50.63% |
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58.23% |
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5
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Short Line Loco [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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Linking the Lunar settlement under construction and the ice mine up nearer the pole is a peculiar sort of railroad, used to carry construction materials to the mine, and precious water back to the settlement. The top engineer who drives the train for this nearly twenty four hour long one-way run is Kendra Zenna 'Kaze' Joad, a woman short on stature and long on attitude. When an act of sabotage grounds all other faster modes of transport, she is the only one who can transport UN security officer ... more info>> 2004
Words: 12000 - Reading Time: 34-48 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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12 Reader Ratings:
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$1.35 |
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$1.15 |
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50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$0.67 |
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$0.57 |
| You Save: |
50.37% |
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57.78% |
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6
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Leap [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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Father Tim Shannon, driven by personal tragedy and a crisis of faith, has agreed to be the priest who makes a circuit of the atmosphere--dipping platforms near Venus, performing marriages, baptisms, and hearing confession. While on the way to Anteros Station, and suffering from zero-gee malaise, he has to visit the head of the sixteen passenger tug taking him there. While inside there is a lurch and an explosion, and when he finally is able to emerge, he finds that he is the only one left alive ... more info>> 1993
Words: 13679 - Reading Time: 39-54 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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21 Reader Ratings:
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$1.49 |
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$1.27 |
| Micropay Rebate: |
50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$0.74 |
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$0.63 |
| You Save: |
50.34% |
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57.72% |
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7
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Down Under Crater Billy [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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There's a settlement down under Crater Billy, and it's home to some five hundred souls who all have one thing in common: they are abnotechs, people who by their very nature cause all devices in their immediate vicinity to break down, malfunction, spin out of control, or just plain die. These people have not been banished there, instead they spend their difficult and sometimes dangerous lives as product safety testers. Dave is Chief Safety Officer in this chaotic enclave, and his life is already ... more info>> 1995 AnLab Award Runner-up
Words: 13431 - Reading Time: 38-53 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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69 Reader Ratings:
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| You Pay: |
$1.49 |
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$1.27 |
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50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$0.74 |
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$0.63 |
| You Save: |
50.34% |
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57.72% |
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8
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Green Fuse [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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When you're Bertha D. Nation, Ace agent of UPIGS (which has nothing to do with meat inspection, at least not officially), you answer when your country calls. In this case she is sent to Gnatswarm, Oregon to investigate what is being termed an act of 'vegetative terrorism'. What she finds are instant jungles, a plant geneticist on the lam with Native help, sacred redwoods, both Levi Stump Junior and Senior, various thugs, and small-town intrigue with world-shaking implications. A woman who believ... more info>> 1992
Words: 14980 - Reading Time: 42-59 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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24 Reader Ratings:
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$1.65 |
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$1.40 |
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50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$0.82 |
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$0.70 |
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50.3% |
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57.58% |
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9
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Song from a Broken Instrument [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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When singer/songwriter Topaz Baldwin is attacked by a demented fan, only intervention by her manager, Cass Morgenstern, saves her from being killed. But Cass was not able to save her from the beginning of the attack, when Topaz is hit in the throat with a baseball bat. Surgeon Dr. Sid Braddock is able to keep Topaz from breathing through a hole in her throat for the rest of her life by rebuilding her crushed larynx--which can only be done by removing her vocal cords. Voiceless, Topaz sees her ca... more info>> 1994
Words: 24422 - Reading Time: 69-97 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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27 Reader Ratings:
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$2.59 |
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$2.20 |
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50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$1.29 |
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$1.10 |
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50.19% |
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57.53% |
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10
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Vultures [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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Ex-cop Hugh Longworth is dying, looks it and knows it. AIDS has been largely beaten, but there are a very few who have a variant Hugh suffers from.... It's called TRAIDS, or Treatment Resistant AIDS. Those few thousand, and others dying of other incurable diseases, are prey to quacks and con artists offering 'miracle' cures, the predator much more easily able to find his or her prey in the Information Age. Hugh is spending the last months of his life working undercover for a Federal task force w... more info>> 1999 AnLab Award Runner-up, Locus Poll Award Nominee
Words: 11789 - Reading Time: 33-47 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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34 Reader Ratings:
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| You Pay: |
$1.35 |
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$1.15 |
| Micropay Rebate: |
50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$0.67 |
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$0.57 |
| You Save: |
50.37% |
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57.78% |
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11
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Roll Over Vivaldi [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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All the universe is a stage when you are a member of the classical string trio Triaxion. As part of the Extra Terrestrial Diplomatic Service, former wunderkind and teenage burnout Mo Kessel has played on a hundred planets, serving out his time. He and fellow members Maire MacAuff Matsumi and Rupert Czaro find themselves forced to give a concert on Sk'rrl, for an audience of who look like a cross between a giant lobster and a grizzly bear, and whose taste might just run to something other than Th... more info>> 1998
Words: 10567 - Reading Time: 30-42 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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16 Reader Ratings:
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$1.20 |
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$1.02 |
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50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$0.60 |
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$0.51 |
| You Save: |
50% |
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57.5% |
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12
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Tranquillity Rose [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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It has taken years of hard work and deprivation for Ben and Laura Kuhn to finally get assigned permanent housing on the Moon. Ben goes on to their new home while Laura stays behind to fulfill a work contract, and at first everything is better than he ever could have imagined. But then he finds the dark side to his new home, that it became his only after the man who built it was dispossessed by a system which becomes more draconian the more he learns about it. Soon Ben's life is at risk as he is ... more info>> 1992 AnLab Award Runner-up
Words: 35298 - Reading Time: 100-141 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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23 Reader Ratings:
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| You Pay: |
$3.65 |
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$3.10 |
| Micropay Rebate: |
50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$1.82 |
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$1.55 |
| You Save: |
50.14% |
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57.53% |
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13
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White Room [MultiFormat]
by Stephen L. Burns
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Billy thinks he's a pretty big deal now. After years of petty crime, he about to do his first stretch in Federal prison. But the cell he is put into is nothing like what he expects, it's a white and characterless space where he will have no contact with other prisoners, or even his jailors. Life becomes a routine, built around watching a television that gets only one station. Until his show is interrupted, changing his routine, and changing his life forever. 1993
Words: 7854 - Reading Time: 22-31 min.
Category: Science Fiction
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61 Reader Ratings:
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Regular |
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| You Pay: |
$0.95 |
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$0.81 |
| Micropay Rebate: |
50% |
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50% |
| Cost After Rebate: |
$0.47 |
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$0.40 |
| You Save: |
50.53% |
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57.89% |
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![Short [11466 words]](/images/short.gif "Short [11466 words]")
