Laz is a side-stepper: a teen with the incredible power to jump his consciousness to alternate versions of himself in parallel worlds. All his life, there was no mistake that a little side-stepping couldn’t fix. Until Laz wakes up one day in a cloning facility on a seemingly abandoned Earth. Laz finds himself surrounded by hundreds of other clones, all dead, and quickly realizes that he too must be a clone of his original self.

When 10-year-old Dinah Kirkham saw her father leave their Manchester home in the middle of the night, she asked when he would be back. “Soon,” he replied. But he never came back. On that night in 1829, John Kirkham laid the foundation of his daughter’s certainty that the only person Dinah could ever really trust was herself.

Ryan wakes up to find his contractor dad building walls to turn their big old house into a duplex. The family that moves into the other side includes Bizzy Horvat, the pretty girl he has a crush on at school. Bizzy claims her mother is a witch with the power to curse people with clumsiness or, in Bizzy’s case, astonishing beauty. When a bee gets caught in Bizzy’s hair, Ryan acts so quickly and radically to save her from getting stung that he attracts the attention of a group of micropotents - people with micropowers.

It began with a quarrel over which newborn should be the baby Jesus in the town's Christmas pageant. Decades later, two scientists arrive to study small-town genetic patterns, only to run up against the invisible walls that split the leading citizens into two congregations that can only be joined by love and forgiveness - and maybe a little deception, because there might be some things people just don't need to know.

alaxy. Humanity was slowly making their way out from Earth to the planets and asteroids of the Solar System, exploring and mining and founding colonies. The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Years after a war that destroyed America, Sam Monson, the governor of the state of Deseret, negotiates a peace treaty with a woman out of his past - on behalf of the son he left behind.

This story is included in Orson Scott Card's collection The Folk of the Fringe.

In a post-apocalyptic America, range rider Deaver Teague is trying to get to the town of Moab to replace his dead horse. Along the way, he's picked up by the Aal family’s pageant wagon. When Deaver decides to help them set up their next show, he becomes embroiled in a family crisis.

This story is included in Orson Scott Card's collection The Folk of the Fringe.

In a post-apocalyptic America, Deaver Teague makes a living salvaging things left behind from before the war. When he hears some truck drivers talking about a hidden cache of gold in a Mormon temple in flooded Salt Lake City, he enlists some friends to look for it.

This story is included in Orson Scott Card's collection The Folk of the Fringe.

In a post-apocalyptic America, Jamie Teague helps a group of travelers make their way past the murderous Bushwhackers. Jamie comes to find that the strangers are Mormons headed for Utah to avoid being massacred. Knowing that they will die without his help, he agrees to take them as far as his cabin.

This story is included in Orson Scott Card's collection The Folk of the Fringe.

alaxy. Humanity was slowly making their way out from Earth to the planets and asteroids of the Solar System, exploring and mining and founding colonies. The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Listen to the best new science-fiction and fantasy short stories from up-and-coming writers. Established in 1983 by L. Ron Hubbard expressly for the aspiring writer, Writers of the Future has become the most respected and significant forum for new talent in all aspects of speculative fiction.

Ryan wakes up to find his contractor dad building walls to turn their big old house into a duplex. The family that moves into the other side includes Bizzy Horvat, the pretty girl he has a crush on at school. Bizzy claims her mother is a witch with the power to curse people with clumsiness or, in Bizzy’s case, astonishing beauty. When a bee gets caught in Bizzy’s hair, Ryan acts so quickly and radically to save her from getting stung that he attracts the attention of a group of micropotents - people with micropowers.

Laz is a side-stepper: a teen with the incredible power to jump his consciousness to alternate versions of himself in parallel worlds. All his life, there was no mistake that a little side-stepping couldn’t fix. Until Laz wakes up one day in a cloning facility on a seemingly abandoned Earth. Laz finds himself surrounded by hundreds of other clones, all dead, and quickly realizes that he too must be a clone of his original self.

Born into an alternative frontier America where life is hard, and folk magic is real, Alvin is gifted with power, but he must learn to use his gift wisely. Dark forces are arrayed against Alvin, and only a young girl with second sight can protect him.

On the Ark, a colonyship bound outward across the stars, not everyone is a volunteer - or even human. Lovelock is a capuchin monkey engineered from conception to be the perfect servant: intelligent, agile, and devoted to his owner. He is a "witness", privileged to spend his days and nights recording the life of one of Earth’s most brilliant scientists via digital devices implanted behind his eyes. But Lovelock is something special among witnesses. He’s a little smarter than most humans: smart enough to break through some of his conditioning, smart enough to feel the bonds of slavery - and want freedom.