Showing results by narrator "Kelly James" in All Categories

A young girl makes a bizarre sacrifice. Buried alive in a pyramid, she waits for a mystical experience. You will not guess the ending of this story, which was selected as one of the best fantasies of 2002.

It's Christmas and one of the aliens wants to go shopping at the mall to get in the proper holiday spirit. The trouble is, he doesn't know an elf from an elephant. Here's a wacky Yule story about intelligence, diversity, and too many tins of fruitcake.

Crispin has been following Lisa around since she was a child, only no one can see him but her. She hopes she's isn't crazy but she can't be sure. And of course, the dead people who talk to her are no help at all.

In which your StoryPod author and narrator, James Patrick Kelly, has an unexpected encounter with an old friend and sees his mundane life pushed off the edge of reality. REMINDER: this is a work of fiction.

Jack is having an affair with Suzanne. He invites her to lunch to tell her that he's leaving his wife so that they can be together. But just before Suzanne arrives, a stranger approaches Jack and asks for help - a stranger whom no one can see but Jack.

A young man signs up for a writing class because he thinks it will be a good place to meet women. The woman he does hook up with tells him a fantastic story and gives him more than he bargained for. A horror story for English majors.

Here's a slapstick fable for modern times, which will tickle the child in all of us. And you thought you understood the way the government works.

What if God decided to try again in the Garden of Eden? Humanity 2.0 turns out to be more to the Deity's liking. But of course, the eternal Adversary must always have his say. A comic remake of the book of Genesis - with a sting.

In 1855, young Fitzpatrick Reed, in the employ of the publishers Harper and Brothers is obsessed by Emily Bronte. He longs to meet her, but there's just one problem - she died in 1848. Here's a ghost story for fans of the Bronte sisters.

You live on a lake and it's Christmas. You go skating and you happen upon a man frozen under the ice. Who is he? No, don't ask! You're in a horror story.

Chairman Jack Winter hoped to found a utopia on a planet he called Walden, a refuge where the last true humans could escape the rampant post-human technologies of the Thousand Worlds. But the native people never gave their permission for his social experiment - or to take over their world - and now they are setting forest fires in protest.

Once humans began to live permanently in outer space, the harsh realities of that hostile environment became all too apparent. Still, many sought to move to the high frontier and break away from Earth. Not all were fit for this difficult life, however, and this is the tragic story of one would-be astronaut who was forced to back down from her dream of space.

The aliens have made contact with us, and they're very alien indeed. What's worse, they bring news that will shake the world's religions to their core. Who will stand up to them? Saint Theresa believes God has called her to do so in this novelette, a Nebula Award finalist.

As humankind's first starship accelerates past the speed of light, an astronaut wakes up and finds that he is all alone. The crew is gone, the sensors give no readings, and he is trapped. Alone? Not quite. His imaginary wife keeps him company and helps him keep a tenuous hold on his sanity.

An alien has crash landed in a sleepy country town, and its ship stands guard over the fallen spaceman. When some unlikely townsfolk happen upon the site of the tragedy, what began as a game turns into a deadly first contact - with consequences for all humankind.

Imagine a race of marsupial-like aliens who have not two, but three sexes: father, birth-mother, and nurture-mother. The difficulties of married life are further complicated by adding another partner, but this culture has worked out its own unique solution. The arrival of a new race of space-faring aliens, however, will change everything.

A revolutionary young woman and her sentient spaceship have the technology to travel through time. In the aftermath of a space battle they are hurled 20 million years into their future and stranded there. When they find that civilization has all but vanished, they set out to learn why. This pyrotechnic space opera was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards.

The intelligent starship Godspeed has been exploring the galaxy for centuries, seeking out new homes for humankind. In that time, many crews have come and gone. Now, young Adel Santos comes aboard and discovers that all is not right, either with the Godspeed or his fellow crew members.

Where did all the men go? When aliens make all men disappear from Earth, the women left behind struggle to rebuild the shattered human culture. Years later, private investigator Fay Hardaway is hired by a grieving mother to investigate the mysterious suicide of her daughter. The aliens take an interest in the case as well, as does a religious cult bent on breaking the aliens' stranglehold on Earth.

Les hates the artificial baby that Birth Control has given her, but she tries to take care of it because she wants to have a real baby of her own. But now the baby is sick and needs a doctor, and Les is broke and on the run. She has a gun but no ammunition. Yet.