My best fiction

This, Scott Robinson’s fourth collection of short fiction, focuses on horror.

Written with a nod toward the great Harlan Ellison, these 13 tales include some science fiction, some fantasy, and some in-between. There’s a time-hopping wraith who selects lives to take; a cell phone app that lures travelers into the dark; a starship crew seduced by...

A team of time travelers find themselves stranded in the Paleolithic Era, and present themselves to the locals as deities... In a small northwestern college town, a rogue robot takes up petty theft... In an isolated rural diner in 1957 Georgia, a dark wanderer witnesses a confrontation between a brutal cop, two local hoodlums and a frightened...

In the 30th century, human life expectancy has been extended hundreds of years - but it only works for the body. The mind must be rebooted, to make room for another lifetime of memories. When the moment is right, it’s time to Jump - to let the old life go and start a new one in a new place, with a new identity. Talyn Jain’s body is more than 700...

Since I was a boy, I’ve loved twist endings – in stories, on television, at the movies, anywhere they can be found. Give me a surprise ending, I’m in. I love them!

The Twilight Zone was, of course, the pacesetter in this arena when I was a kid, with episodes like “Eye of the Beholder” and “The Masks” and “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”...

When it comes to moving around in time, a great deal of the fun and delight is that there are so many different variations on the theme. Sometimes a machine – be it a glorified sleigh or a souped-up DeLorean - delivers us to some point in the past or the future. Sometimes it’s a weird, hazy phenomenon that descends up on us and scoops us up;...

When I was young, around 12 or 13 years old, I went to a school that was very old and made of brick and oak, with high ceilings and thick bannisters on the stairs and hardwood floors, like something out of Hoosiers. I loved that old school – especially the third-floor library, which was also where we had study hall. Every day, I would zip...

Like every young nerd and fanboy, I fell in love with robots and AIs at an early age.

The first was, of course, the Robot from Lost in Space, with his “Danger, Will Robinson!” admonition – which my hilarious playground comrades would shout at me at recess when I approached. I later met Robby in Forbidden Planet, as well as Robbie in Asimov. Then...

This collection runs the sci-fi gamut, from space travel (“The Waves”, “When I Waked”) to time travel (“The Local Gods”, “Moonlight in Paris”) to robots (“Song of Aveyron”, “Peacekeeper”) to mind control (“Kenny Is the Boss of Me”) to post-apocalyptica (“The Magus”, “When She Woke at Dawn”). There are echoes of Asimov, Ellison, and Bradbury...

The Apocalypse. Sometimes we lay waste to the world and it’s about humanity’s remnant struggling to survive. Sometimes humanity doesn’t make it at all. Sometimes we prevail, but we become something horrible. And, always, it’s fascinating and sobering to contemplate.

Many are the ways the world might end, and it will always be worth our time and...