If Hemingway wrote science fiction short stories... Including the Hugo award finalist "Asymmetrical Warfare."

S. R. Algernon's science fiction evokes Hemingway's spare style and Philip K. Dick's plots, with stories collected from SF's top markets.

• Colonizing the stars may require some hard choices...
• On a distant planet, the prisoner's light was green, free to go. After the neurotoxin leaves her blood, the memories would return... Memories of what?
• What impact does time dilation have on revenge?
• Quantum mechanics may let you fix your regrets... sort of.
• If you don't vote, you can't complain, right?
• Someone may be faking the blood tests in the lab...
• The colonists wanted him dead... but he wasn't the real enemy.
• How exactly did Jacob Marley come to haunt Scrooge?
• You never know when a contest entry might pay off...

Humanity is capable of wondrous and horrific things. We build walls to defend the wonders of the past from the horrors of the present. We destroy walls to escape the horrors of the past and seek out wonders of the future.

This collection is a rumination on the dilemma—do we take comfort in boundaries or do we rebel against them?