Showing results by author "Stephen Huff" in All Categories

Simian Wynwood opened “Simian’s Gate” by recording first contact with alien intelligence. This alien broadcast delivered the so-called SETI-Store, which remained in an incomprehensible state until a young savant used outmoded analog processing equipment to decode it all in a weekend. After he freely released his groundbreaking switch into the public domain on Sunday, “Bright Monday” quickly followed. Interest exploded. Within weeks, technophiles all over the world began producing countless “inventions” from automated “black-box” factories. Civilization rapidly changed. ...

The worst of the worst, he is notorious even within a notorious system. When the most violent prison riot in the history of human corrections threatens to bring down a prison’s walls, this consummate gangster will trade inside information for removal of his tattoos, one image at a time. Afterward, he will become a different man. Only a clean skin can provide the key to his cages.

On the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the eleventh holy epoch, he killed God. First, you're probably asking, “Why eleven?” Second you're probably asking, “God with a capital ‘G'?” Of the first question, the killer would only say “because”. It's what the Big Guy wanted. Of the second question, the killer would answer “yes”. God with a capital ‘G'. Some say God is sleeping. Some say God is dead. In this story, the protagonist kills God with his bare hands.

His nickname at work, where his colleagues avoid him like a plague, is "Mr. Accident". Alongside a lonely stretch of road on his way home one evening, he earns his reputation once again. While he sits with a dying youth trapped inside an overturned and crumpled automobile, Mr. Accident tells the boy how he earned his reputation. His is a sordid tale of endless cacophony and disaster, and death follows Mr. Accident like a shadow. Today, he earns his nickname with flare. If you should cross paths with Mr. Accident, beware.

Welcome to Darling Girl's first ever Trilogy of Holiday Horror. In this macabre collection you will enjoy her first three holiday adventures - and nary a serving of pancakes in the bunch! Darling Girl's Halloween Carol tells the tale of Halloween and her fifteenth birthday, when something terrible happens! Something wonderful and awful and terrifying and beautiful and TERRIBLE! Darling Girl's Memorial Day Fireworks sets her in the company of a hippy ghost and a homeless Vietnam veteran, and Darling will play a vital role in the city’s Memorial Day ceremony. The stage is set for sundown at...

Not everyone in war-torn Europe believed in bigotry and hatred. A few human beings remained, hidden and camouflaged within the guise of Nazism and fanaticism. This is the story of one such old man, a railyard, and tiny scraps of paper drifting on the wind, each bearing a desperate last message from the dead. This really happened. It didn't have to happen, but it really, really did.

How long can one sensitive youth tolerate the incessant shelling, the nerve-wracking eruptions, the slumber-slaying shockwaves of bombardment? How much terror can a soldier endure before he takes that last short walk beyond the trenches and coiled barbed wire into no-man's land to meet his violent fate? The bloodiest war of the bloodiest century in human history. For some, it never ends.

Incongruity, in all its fine, reeking regalia, found a place in my young, fertile heart, so all the while thereafter my struggle was one of difference, for the greater scheme of things is an endeavor to know that which is unknown. On having come to understand a thing previously incomprehensible, luster fades, its draw recedes, and that thing, like a coin in a collection, is put away, to be occasionally admired but mostly forgotten; so, it is named a possession, and is no longer counted among desires. Song is either the progenitor or most favored partner of poetry; either may be spoken or ...

On a brilliant fall afternoon, a powerful blast of energy erupted from the cosmos, burned across the solar system, and laid waste to every living thing on Earth. Notice was short and defense impossible. From the lowliest to the loftiest, none survived. This phenomenon, they called the Radiance. Curiously, however, none died, either. Instead, thereafter the hapless victims of that unavoidable catastrophe wandered the planet in a discorporate, ethereal state of existence. This, they called The Lingering. In time, as the effects of the apocalyptic radiation dissipated through the course of ...

He was an enigma and a genius. He was perhaps the greatest chess strategist of all time. Unable to relate to his fellow human beings, he relied upon his pieces in rank and file for all his companionship and comfort. Though their friendship is decidedly one-sided, his long-suffering assistant tells how his mad genius would lead the nation out of the most costly and deadly war ever waged between men. The bloodiest conflict in history was in an endless state of stalemate. Only a mad genius could save humankind from itself, but the price for victory might be too high to pay.

He's the proverbial grumpy old man and he ruthlessly keeps his hit-lists. You had better hope he never jots your name down in his notebook, because he'll make you the object of his obsessive ire and his dissatisfaction is notoriously relentless. Unfortunately, today is his last day on Earth... and god just made the list!

On a sunny afternoon, he meets the love of his life and the bane of his existence in the same event. She is beautiful, wealthy and sweet. Unfortunately, she is also the mother of an extremely intelligence and overly protective five-year-old boy who takes enormous delight in tormenting her mother's suitors. "You look like you're made out of doo-doo." Is theirs a match made in heaven or hell? Can he survive her preschool son's animosity to prove his love for them both?

Human beings are abundant. Yet for every person on Earth, countless insects thrive, chewing through the roots and underpinnings of nature. This year, it will be a very good year for bugs! An ocean of insecticide cannot suppress their demonic hordes. They could easily dominate the planet. Why not?

Mothers no longer name their sons ‘Adolph’. Almost everyone knows why. Though all innocent babes do not develop into monsters, all monsters develop from innocent babes. We prefer fiction to reality, because thoughts of the former easily yield to denials of reason, while the latter only reminds us of our common origins in the primitive. Steal a private moment now and listen to your inner voice. It whispers. Of rising mutant domination amid apocalyptic wastes; of grotesque human chimeras practicing ancient arts; of despicable capital criminals kept in unbreakable cages and of the flawed ...

Pyatak, in Russian, means "slash five". It is the last stop for the most violent and incorrigible prisoners in the modern Russian penal system. Famously, it is said to have two ways in and only one way out. Inmates enter its cages via a dilapidated, one-hundred-year-old foot bridge or an aging boat. The only way they leave is via their grave. Lately, however, many of its worst have gone missing from their cells, although they never escaped its walls. Something ancient and evil has alighted in Pyatak. A mysterious entity, it is both vicious and insatiable. No one is safe.

His pranks are sinister and macabre, but each one offers a critical life lesson to his hapless victims. His neighbors, coworkers, and acquaintances rarely associate their strange misfortunes with the odd young man in their midst. Yet he is always watching, always aware, and his cunning mind is inevitably filled with delightfully perverse plans for their future. Any outcome is possible given proper context, impeccable timing, and the right props.

The universe is a strange, all but impenetrable mystery. Every scientific advance sponsors countless new questions, and every new explanation spawns immeasurable unknowns. How can dinosaurs of all kinds and from all epochs of evolution suddenly and randomly appear all over the world? What would you do with a tyrannosaurus peering through your bedroom window? How would you deal with pterosaurs soaring above your roof? His is an unpredictable world surrounding an entirely too predictable suburban neighborhood. Then everything changes. One thing is certain, during a plague of prehistoric ...

This course provides a detailed executive-level review of contemporary topics in supervised machine learning theory with specific focus on predictive modeling and linear regression. The ideal student is a technology professional with a basic working knowledge of machine learning theory. Additionally, to better inform the interested student, the final lesson of this course presents samples in Python describing the essential implementation of described regression methods.

He is an escaped slave who traveled north to learn things men should not know. After accumulating a lifetime of esoteric knowledge and expertise in wicked magic, he has returned home to free his granddaughter from the exploitative grip of the south. There will be hell to pay, when paw-paw conjures! With the right words at the right time, magic is possible. Paw-paw knows.

Are we alone in the universe? To date, all indications tell us we are the only intelligent form of life currently inhabiting our Milky Way Galaxy. Aliens may survive in government laboratories, but they are naturally difficult to record with any convincing fidelity. Yet yesterday’s far-out conspiracies too often become today’s startling headlines given a bit of unwanted exposure. Pause one moment now to take note of a shadow-bound summons, but beware. Your paranoid shade whispers. Of bright lights on calm nights; of tasks at hand delivered with a foreign understanding and unspeakable ...