Sometimes, things go exactly to plan. Other times, you get surprised. For example, sometimes, you have plans to launch the first run of your first tiny publishing project. And sometimes, right before you’re about to press the Publish button, your wife tells you that your baby is on their way, and the time that you…

He started out growing matchbooks in his backyard when he was ten. Every year, and every subsequent science fair, his craft evolved until he was growing birdhouses, doghouses, toolsheds, and drive-through espresso stands. By the time he turned twenty, he could seed the earth with a shingle, a doorknob, an unbitted key, and grow a…

324 light years had come down to this moment. For the Centrax, it was only a small, but pivotal, part of their lives. Now, after decades of travel, they needed to uplift a species on the brink of faster-than-light travel. Scientist Mgrxlv used two of her eyes to observe the species before her. Disgusting creatures…

Fennel gently — and ineffectively — tried to urge the goat forward by offering it a fistful of carrots, but the goat had little interest in allowing Fennel to keep any scrap of his dignity. It balked at his attempt at bribery, stood its ground, and yelled. “Oh, come on,” Fennel complained, sweeping a clump…

In this universe, she kept the window closed. Her pothos plant pressed its leaves against the glass and stretched toward the sky as best it could. In a parallel universe, she perched her pothos plant on a wide-open windowsill. So, the pothos twined over a hundred feet up the fire escape and spread to cover…

My daughter traveled back from the future to save a dandelion. She dug it out gently and transplanted it in a jar of dirt. She tried to explain to me xeriscaping, biospheres. I was happy that she loved something so much, even if I didn’t understand it myself. “The virus makes the petals bioluminescent,” she…