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Standalone Stories

Curious Science Fiction

Whether it is exploring different worlds, adventuring with robots, fighting monsters, or saving the innocent, these stories spark curiosity and delight the senses.

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Not in the mood for a series? Then you're in the right place. Go with K-404 as he searches for home. Follow along with Radial as he collects the inconvenient. Or just sit back and watch as space jellyfish dance across the ceiling. 

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Looking for thoughtful fun? You'll find it here.

(For a website special on Mask, click below!)

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The last thing K-404 remembers is a happy home with the human child Ele, whose care is his primary purpose. So, when he wakes up in a landfill of tossed-away technology, his only thought is to reunite with his family. This world is not his own, though. It’s a wasteland of desolate buildings, flying metal disks, and monstrosities that keep themselves active by stealing another bot’s power. How did the world get this way? And why was he discarded? Hampered by imperfect memory, an obsolete body, and limited battery life, 404 sets out to find his home. Joined by other castaways, he faces off against scavengers and monsters, only to encounter greater threats. Pursued, outsmarted, and manipulated on every side, 404 teeters on the brink of annihilation. His only chance of survival? Those bits of himself—the connections—he hasn’t lost.

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I am the mask. The mask is me. America has fallen. Remnants of states cling together. The Pacific Northwest is now PacNorth. Democracy has gone off the rails. Citizens still vote, but only to vote away anything--or anyone--they don't like. Long-term wisdom loses to short-term pleasure. And the Collectors come in the night. Radial is a Collector. The instrument of the will of the people. You get voted away...Radial makes you disappear. The system works, and he is its servant. The rule of the people is the highest form of human government. He is a believer. Until he is asked to collect someone who should never, ever be voted away.

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Software developer turned story-teller, Kerry Nietz brings artificial wonders to life. Digital Dreams and Other Distractions is essential Nietz—nine tantalizing tales of synthetic futures, unfolding across a background of stars. In this surreal landscape, dying legends haunt sheltered keeps, young boys reconstruct ancient giants, astronauts push the boundaries of the solar system, and metal nightmares reign over faraway rocks. Alluring and compelling, Digital Dreams is a multifaceted blend of mystery, imagination, and devotion—as thrilling as interstellar exploration and as dangerous as another day at the office.

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Jesus’ parables used familiar elements to teach timeless truths. In these pages, you are invited to revisit his messages through the imaginative tropes of sci-fi. In this follow-up anthology to A TIME FOR EVERYTHING you will find: * A mining colony on a planet with dangerous secrets in Kerry Nietz’s “Pest Control” * A prisoner serving a life sentence on a doomed world in Denise Bruggers’ epistolary “The Debt” * An immortal facing death for the first time in Kathleen Bird’s “Walk in the Light” * An unproven military squad in a high-stakes battle for the survival of their city in J. L. Burrows’ “Wasted Talent” * The final hours of a centuries-long reality show in Earth’s orbit in Amy Walsh’s “The Great Selection” * A colony representative who must take unusual measures to get the attention of an uncaring bureaucracy in Elizabeth Staab Van Deusen’s “The Stars from Home” * And more! These are the stories he told . . . retold across space and time!

Audiobooks available!

© 2018 by Kerry Nietz

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