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A humorous variation of one of the stories from A E van Vogt's Ezwal series: a human spaceship "had recently passed through a dense cloud of meteorite fragments", & seems to have somehow picked up a massive alien monster who's now terrorizing the crew. Only it's not really terrorizing, as the captain will discover to his amusement...
Inventing one of the most powerful viruses attacking humans needs very very low tech...
Unusual climax of a first physical date, of lovers who've known each other awhile via the net...
Not really a new idea, though; see, e.g., Alice Sheldon's very famous story "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death" (download).
Reason the twin NASA Mars rovers have lasted so long is ...
While I've often linked 365tomorrows fiction in the past, they've been mostly average reads; here is a rare first rate story from them.
Familiar idea from many movies, but very well done: emotional turmoil of an old man who's about to get shipped off to a ... sort of ... old age home ...
I've dropped very crappy stuff, but there is nothing excellent here either; all B-stories, & on the lower side of my B-pile. Better reads tend to come early in list below.
In this age of robotic mannequins in store windows, a new female model has arrived with rather lifelike facial movements. While preparing "her", Abel Porter made the mistake of actually kissing her - with results he could not have unforeseen...
It's not always easy to distinguish automata from sentients...
Not really an original idea, but very well done.
While doing untethered external repairs of something on or near an asteroid, Sam lost his grip & began drifting away - to sure slow death. But ingenuity will save him when he collects his wits...
Plus & minus points of a human boyfriend vs a robot boyfriend!
An unusual form of genocide ... Or won't you call it genocide?
Undesirable side-effects of the ultimate air conditioner - where the whole earth is running a kind of AC all the time...
It begins as a variation on the main scene in J Francis McComas' "Brave New World", but then moves in the opposite direction.
Yet another variation of Damon Knight's "To Serve Man". And mostly a good read.
While the story itself is ordinary, it's noticeable for nostalgia value - feels like some of the Asimov's robot debugging stories.
Very widely deployed software products can get a life all their own, affecting our lives in ways no original programmer could have suspected...
Fancy title is the name of a fictitious substance that when released in mesosphere helps breaking up much larger quantities of atmospheric carbon dioxide into component carbon & breathable oxygen.
Now, years since this program was initiated, a man has found a dangerous side effect of this reaction...
Human religious missionaries (apparently Christian) are on a crusade, "purifying" other sentient species in the galaxy. Now the turn has come, of their reward at the hand of an angel...
A lot of lives in a group are saved ... by 86 year old, but yet to be born!, son of the leader of the group!
When Laura Spratt accepted the gift of a bottle of beauty lotion from her former rival-in-love Giselle Vanderlin, little did she realize the implications of the exchange...
Ancient plot - claim of human rights for an AI, but with a very cool ending. Story is of a court case - "The People versus Serial 0815 aka. Daniel". Serial 0815 is the AI, also known as Daniel.
Court's decision is similar to other stories of the ilk - Eando Binder's Adam Link series, Asimov's "Bicentenniel Man", & Lester del Rey's "Helen O'Loy" - but the twist is in the implications...
Minor nitpick: How does an AI which is not a robot slump in a chair?
A man is tearing his hair answering the "silly" questions of a sentient robot he's recently created.
A variation on Fredric Brown's "Arena".
Newly elected President has the option of either fighting the alien ruler currently in orbit around earth in a hand to hand combat in their ship, or earth receives severe punishment...
I found the alien here somewhat similar to the one in John Campbell's "Who Goes There?". But alien visitor to earth in this story is benign - at least relatively.
I wonder if the title was inspired by the Baldies in a series of Henry Kuttner/C L Moore stories? (Those stories were a reaction to Hitler's brand of racism.)
A minor item of detail that most time travel story tellers forget about...
Story is longer than necessary; should have ended with first incident - later parts are actually illogical. But great concept.
PS: I'm not qualified to comment on the "reasonableness" of the physics underlying the story, assuming time travel itself is reasonable!
There is at least one key parameter you must set correctly when you go time traveling on that shiny new machine...
Third party narration of a man's life on earth vs progress of a spacecraft as it moves away from earth.
Story of how the first true cyborg came into being. End result is similar to C L Moore's "No Woman Born", but the process & rationale of arriving there is very different.
Narrated by cyborg himself.
A bit heartless, but very interesting story.
This is the first story from 365Tomorrows to register with me since I started reading their works a little over a week back.
Mundane story, except for the funny & surprising ending. Begins with description of a gruesome battle - with a lot of big scifi sounding words. Ends on a completely different note - the story is not really about war as we will learn near end. Not exactly an unfamiliar climax, but I liked the way the twist happened.
Hindi speaking Indian readers should be able to see an echo of Monisha from the crazy & classy TV serial Sarabhai vs Sarabhai. Not quite in the class of the serial, though.
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