Short Fiction

Future Artifacts

Brutal. Devastating. Dangerous. Join an investigation into a cruel and heartless leader … crawl through filth and mud to escape biological warfare … team up with time-traveling soldiers faced with potentially life-altering instructions. Kameron Hurley, award-winning author and expert in the future of war and resistance movements, has created eighteen exhilarating tales giving glimpses into […]

Corpse Soldier

Everything started here: A broad plain of yellow grass, the stalks crushed and smeared with blood, and the sounds of dying men—yes, all men—sobbing and praying to the rusty pink sky. The high grass hid their forms and faces. They were bodiless voices, as if ghosts already, rising above the field like ashes to heaven. Read on […]

The Plague Givers

She had retired to the swamp because she liked the color. When the Contagion College came back for her thirty years after she had fled into the swamp’s warm, black embrace, the color was the same, but she was not. Which brings us here.

Plague Givers

Lately, Inspector Abijah Olivia has found most of her answers at the bottom of a bottle. But when she takes a private contract to figure out why the bodies of dead young men keep washing up on the beaches of her colony world, a single golden button will tell her everything she needs to know—perhaps […]

Fisherman and the Pig

Nev sat on the end of the charred pier, casting his line again and again into the murky water in the hopes of catching a corpse.

When We Fall

I don’t remember the first time I was abandoned and forgotten, but I have told the story of the second time so often that when the memory boils up it feels hot and gummy, like the air that day.

Tumbledown

It was too early in the season for a plague…

The Red Secretary

The ride out past Sorintov Station to the monument the soldiers held hostage was bumpy and hot. Every time the sun sank below the horizon during one of its ten daily sunsets, Arkadi welcomed the cooler air, and the quiet.

“Warped Passages”

A prequel story to The Stars are Legion, edited by John Joseph Adams. Appearing in Cosmic Powers, released 4/18/17 by Simon and Schuster’s Saga Press.

“Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light!”

“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

“The War of Heroes”

Heroes have come to destroy the world. What would you do to stop them?

“The Judgement of Gods and Monsters”

The war is over, and those who collaborated with the enemy to do violence must be hunted down and destroyed. But what happens to those who must do violence to bring the collaborators to justice?

“Wonder Maul Doll”

First published in From the Trenches: An Anthology of Speculative War Stories back in November 2006, this angry anti-war screed about a traumatized group of female war heroes hunting down weapons of mass destruction has since appeared on Escape Pod and, most recently, been reprinted in Warrior Women, an anthology of strong female protagonists edited by Paula Guran and […]

“Body Politic”

A story of high tech espionage that has been described as “The Matrix and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy mashed up together,” “Body Politic” made its appearance in Meeting Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan and published in December 2015.

“The Light Brigade”

“The Light Brigade” began with an unlikely inspiration: World of Warcraft. From there, it became a story about a futuristic war in which soldiers are turned into conscious light in order to get them to the front faster. It was published (ironically enough) in Lightspeed in November 2015.

“The Improbable War”

This very short story was one of ten “short stories from the future” that ran in Popular Science in July 2015. “The Improbable War” tells the story of a war fought with one of the most unlikely of weapons: love.  

“It’s About Ethics in Revolution”

Written for Terraform, the online home for future fiction on Motherboard, a branch of Vice.com, “It’s About Ethics in Revolution” uses a speculative lens “to shed light on the problems of the present,” in this case the controversy surrounding the 2015 Hugo Awards.

“Elephants and Corpses”

“Elephants and Corpses” was published at Tor.com in May 2015. The corpse-jumping body mercenary Nev is used to filling other people’s shoes. When his assistant Tera recognizes the most recent waterlogged cadaver they bought off the street, though, he finds that his new body is carrying more trouble than he bargained for.

“Enyo-Enyo”

Originally written for The Lowest Heaven, an anthology of stories inspired by celestial bodies within our solar system, “Enyo-Enyo” takes as its inspiration the dwarf planet Eris. Since its publication in The Lowest Heaven in 2013, “Enyo-Enyo” has been reprinted at Lightspeed Magazine and, most recently, in The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, edited by Alex Dally […]

“The Body Project”

In an original novelette set in the same world as the God’s War Trilogy, Nyx and her ragtag team of mercenaries investigate the death of a man she used to serve with at the front, a man who’s supposed to have died years before – and a thousand miles away – from where she finds his […]

“The Women of Our Occupation”

This fan-favorite story about a mysterious group of women who invade a steamy patriarchy first appeared on Strange Horizons in July 2006, where it earned itself a place in Year’s Best SF 12, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. It has also been collected into Brutal Women: The Short Stuff.  

“Holding Onto Ghosts”

Published in the 26th issue of Talebones in the summer of 2003, “Holding Onto Ghosts” explores the collision of the old and the new, of prejudice and reality in South Africa through the window of a household that is slowly destroyed by ghosts that no one admits to being able to see, even as South Africa is […]

“Genderbending at the Madhattered”

A story of gender fluidity in which most humans are born with the ability to alter their genders at will, “Genderbending at the Madhattered” explores what role–if any–gender plays in a society without static genders. It was first published at Strange Horizons in 2004, and has since been collected in Brutal Women: The Short Stuff.

“Once, There Were Wolves”

“Once, There Were Wolves” was published in the 45th issue of The Leading Edge, Brigham Young University’s premier science fiction and fantasy magazine. It features all the usual cliches, including evil magicians, telepathic wolves, scourged villages, and angry heroines. It has since been collected in Brutal Women: The Short Stuff.

“If Women Do Fall They Lie”

This odd little story about screwed up gender politics and birthing compounds and organic weapons was first published in Deep Outside SFFH, an online magazine of speculative and dark fiction, back in 2001. It has since been collected in Brutal Women: The Short Stuff.  

“My Oracles at the End of the World”

A post-apocalyptic take on Macbeth, “My Oracles at the End of the World” originally appeared in the now-defunct online magazine The Boundless Realm back in 1998. It was later collected in Brutal Women: The Short Stuff, and is the original Brutal Women story.