Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Remain Alert: Science Fiction Stories
    Remain Alert: Science Fiction Stories
    Remain Alert: Science Fiction Stories
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    Remain Alert: Science Fiction Stories

    By Kate Sheeran Swed

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Lesson #1 in intergalactic mixology: VIPs take it floated, not stirred. 

     

    Explore the farthest reaches of the galaxy in Kate Sheeran Swed's newest collection of science fiction stories. 

     

    • In "Chosen," an intergenerational spaceship returns to Earth after disaster strikes;
    • in "Ugly Earthling," an ambitious chef attempts to fry her way across the universe; 
    • and in "It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Usurps the Galaxy," a Supreme Galactic Emperor takes on an ambitious building project under dubious circumstances.

     

    Absurdity and tragedy commingle in tales where space travel is run-of-the-mill, time can be recovered, and second chances hold the key to survival. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSpells & Spaceships Press
    Release dateFeb 14, 2022
    ISBN9798201672515
    Remain Alert: Science Fiction Stories
    Author

    Kate Sheeran Swed

    Kate Sheeran Swed loves hot chocolate, plastic dinosaurs, and airplane tickets. She has trekked along the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu, hiked on the Mýrdalsjökull glacier in Iceland, and climbed the ruins of Masada to watch the sunrise over the Dead Sea. After growing up in New Hampshire, she completed degrees in music at the University of Maine and Ithaca College, then moved to New York City. She currently lives in New York’s capital region with her husband and son, and two cats who were named after movie dogs (Benji and Beethoven). Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide Volume 5, Electric Spec, Daily Science Fiction, and Andromeda Spaceways. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University. You can find her on Instagram @katesheeranswed.

    Read more from Kate Sheeran Swed

    Related to Remain Alert

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Ready, Set, Let go!

      May 15, 2019

      Ready, Set, Let go!
      11 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      Without the adventof Stockholm Syndrome,how could I havelearned to love myself so much? I’m asking Godand New York, can anyonehelp me? (An all-but-audible “or else.”) The captain’s chair:it’s beginning to smella little too much like me. Again.But the

      4 min read

    • Article

      Leap Of Faith

      May 12, 2024

      Leap Of Faith
      5 min read

    • Article

      Sweet Fantasy

      Nov 20, 2021

      Sweet Fantasy
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Silence of Witches

      Dec 10, 2019

      The Silence of Witches
      6 min read

    • Article

      Back In Blackwell

      Sep 8, 2020

      Back In Blackwell
      2 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      Pallets of bottled water on the back porchwere one evidence of apocalypseor the demise of the way of thingsor lazily written computer code backin the 80s, when I was a boyand the nightly news was just about all the doomwe had stomachs for, whenwere t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Going Gothic How To Tell The Goth-iest Story Ever

      Oct 1, 2021

      WHAT DO DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, AND YOUR SISTER’S LACE-UP COMBAT BOOTS ALL HAVE IN COMMON? If your answer was “they’re super cool,” you’d be right! But if your answer was “they’re all part of the gothic’tradition,” you’d be even righter. Being gothic

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Primeval Comic Book

      Aug 1, 2017

      The Primeval Comic Book
      8 min read

    • Article

      Must Play

      Dec 31, 2019

      If you close your eyes super tight and wish really, really hard, all these games will magically appear in your Steam library! A Christmas miracle! mightanddelight.com → Might and Delight’s little gem Tiny Echo lets you play as a forest sprite deliver

      2 min read

    • Article

      Spellcheck

      Jan 1, 2019

      Whose history I do not know. I do know I’ve been e-upbraided for my fast and loose spelling of Woden, the god whose last worshipper must have slipped under the sod during the medieval period, somewhere in the 10th century—imagine those bog-soaked des

      5 min read

    • Article

      Stagger

      Nov 13, 2022

      Stagger
      5 min read

    • Article

      Retriever of Souls

      Nov 25, 2021

      What they don’t say is that, sometimes God will call you to the wilderness, gesture toward the trees, and then, hang back and wave you on alone. —“Prayer for the Wretched Among Us” from The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded At nig

      18 min read

    • Article

      The Day I Didn't Go To The Pool

      Jul 1, 2024

      The Day I Didn't Go To The Pool
      7 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      People let themselves down so hard they took to clappingwhen the plane lands. Sometimes even at the creditsof a movie. Their funerals turned out to be for the livingall along. You wouldn’t know how much they hatedcrowded trains by the way they kept b

      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2022

      This is the time of year when stormsspin up from distant dustand sand and make their way to us,and we worry and adjust the scales we carry in our headsto account for luck and prayer.We buy batteries and candles, cordsand water to prepare. There are t

      5 min read

    • Article

      How My Sister And I Made Dirt Funny

      Aug 7, 2019

      What is the charm of the average mud puddle to youngsters? It’s only dirt and water. Is it the sound of the splash?

      2 min read

    • Article

      Octopus’s Garden

      Jun 24, 2024

      Octopus’s Garden
      8 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2019

      It’s soothing when the newly dead are way older than I am. This guy was 95. His picture—middle-aged, archaic glasses—freezes him somewhere around 1970. But even when they are my age and live in my town and share so many of my habits and interests tha

      6 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2019

      I was like you once, a sealed plastic bag of water filters floating on the sea. I thought my numbers proved my time and space on earth. I thought having children was a way of creating more love. I thought thoughts I was ashamed to speak in case they

      15 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2023

      Unlike the churning shit-show-roar of whateverthat was we just left behind, this year, onlinechatter tells me, will be one of contemplationand hope. Maybe. Right now, I’m holding stillthe best I can, having followed once again thissame path to this s

      4 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      Dear C, At first Virgil’s poem is quite dull; equivocalnames of products at The Container Store: Elfa White Medium Drawer, Mesh NarrowRolling Cart (Medium Solution), Narrow Classic Mesh Box and the number of pirouetting starseach product attained. An

      5 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Mar 1, 2019

      Not humble, a quilt takes credit for inventing cinema. Jump cuts? Sure—look: two shepherdesses evading rockets. And here’s rosefilled toile-land again. Other quilts at the bottom of the fulllinen chest running away from bad shepherds in toile-l and f

      2 min read

    • Article

      Zeno’s Paradox

      May 30, 2024

      Zeno’s Paradox
      4 min read

    • Article

      Oh, Corona

      Jan 1, 2024

      Books The Lights by Ben Lerner Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023 128 pp., $26.00 (hardcover) According to the latest Times article on the qualitative merits of bot art, Ben Lerner has lent excerpts from his new poetry collection to a group of venture c

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Pathless

      Dec 15, 2020

      The Pathless
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Remain Alert

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Remain Alert - Kate Sheeran Swed

      Remain Alert

      REMAIN ALERT

      SCIENCE FICTION STORIES

      KATE SHEERAN SWED

      Spells & Spaceships press logo of a spaceship

      Copyright © 2022 by Kate Sheeran Swed

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

      Remain Alert and Have a Safe Day originally appeared in Word Riot

      Chosen originally appeared in Fireside Fiction

      Ugly Earthling originally appeared in Electric Spec

      It’s All Fun and Games Until Someone Usurps the Galaxy originally appeared in Tricked : An Anthology of Short Fiction

      Cover by GoOnWrite

      CONTENTS

      Free Stuff!

      Introduction

      Remain Alert and Have a Safe Day

      Chosen

      Ugly Earthling

      Monument

      Recovery

      It’s All Fun and Games Until Someone Usurps the Galaxy

      Also By Kate Sheeran Swed

      About the Author

      FREE STUFF!

      Visit katesheeranswed.com/free-books to get a free story collection!

      INTRODUCTION

      NO SPOILERS, PROMISE, BUT I WON’T FEEL BAD IF YOU SKIP IT

      I enjoy writing short fiction. Not so much because writing short helps me hone my craft — though it definitely does have that effect. And not because the finishing energy of a short piece hypes me up after a few weeks spent on a novel, though it can do that, too.

      No, I like short fiction because it lets me be very, very weird.

      If you’ve read my novels, you know I like to put my weird hat on. Assassins buying cacti, interworld immigrants with a taste for smoothies, mad scientists in bunny slippers. All that. But Douglas Adams and Catherynne M. Valente aside, it’s difficult to maintain that kind of wackiness throughout a full novel.

      And honestly, I don’t think I’d enjoy sustaining it through a full novel. It’s not for me.

      A short story, though. A short story can be as weird as it wants to be.

      For the weirdest stories in this collection, I recommend Ugly Earthling and It’s All Fun and Games Until Someone Usurps the Galaxy (which is long enough that I feel comfortable calling it a novelette).

      Short fiction also lets me dip my toes into the darker part of my fears, as you’ll see with Chosen. That’s a special story to me — it’s a take on the very first short story I ever wrote, back in high school, after playing hide and seek on a playground in the middle of the night with some friends. (It was probably more like 10pm, but it felt like the middle of the night for straight-laced teenaged me.)

      It’s a brand new version, of course, but it reminds me of that night so viscerally. Even though my friends and I were not (thankfully) on a failed interstellar mission.

      Short fiction allows me to be weird and wacky, sad and fearful, and occasionally experimental, to include lists and second-person narratives, and to try things I might otherwise hesitate to write.

      I hope you enjoy the stories I’ve put together in Remain Alert.

      -Kate

      REMAIN ALERT AND HAVE A SAFE DAY

      Descend. Choose a spot on the baking sheet to await the hot breath of charging dragons. They will probably be your salvation, but have not ruled out the possibility of broiling you alive.

      Breathe. Through your mouth.

      Breathe. If sparks invade your vision, step back from the yellow line. Dip your head between your knees. A stranger may offer you a sip of her drink. Take one.

      Do not, under any circumstances, question the nature of the liquid running down the walls. It is coffee.

      When the dragon arrives late, as dragons are wont to do, follow the crowd of pit stains into the welcoming icebox of its belly.

      If the dragon is suffering from gastrointestinal distress, you may find yourself riding in a sauna. Exchange agonized glances with fellow sufferers. It is too late to repent, or choose another car. Close your eyes. Clench your fists.

      Do not, under any circumstances, question why your hand sticks to the pole. It is jam.

      When you reach the station, become a raindrop. Allow the sea to wash you up the stairs and onto the street, where castles glint in the sun.

      The ground may roar beneath your feet.

      Keep walking, until you find a green patch to nestle your toes.

      CHOSEN

      AFTER

      My friend Andy’s perched on the back of his friend Gabe’s couch, and I can tell from the way he’s pulling on his ear that he’s formulating a speech. The others don’t notice because they’re watching the blippy vid feed Andy’s other friend, Lora, patched in from Earth, where a guy in a plaid coat is saying words like refugees and quarantine before some other guy in another plaid coat takes the screen to suggest we shouldn’t be allowed to land at all.

      Leave them in orbit and they’ll be dead in a year, the interviewer pushes, pretending to defend us. His hair shines like one of the beetles that took down our crops in Year 20.

      Plaid Jacket’s response is full of words like choices and consequences.

      All I know is, we made no choice. We’ve been heading back to Earth almost as long as we’ve been alive. We don’t remember the stars in our parents’ eyes—we’ve only ever seen the reflection of a planet they thought we’d never touch.

      Mom was one of the few people on board who never seemed to mind the change in plan. Beatrice, she used to say, drawing out the syllables of my name like I was some kind of Greek goddess, wait until you smell rain.

      Before the interviewer can respond to the Earthen dudes who basically want to murder us, Andy flips off the vid.

      And now, he says, and I can practically see the speech gelling in his brain, hardening into something delectable and strange, on the eve of our deliverance or doom, four prodigal wanderers shall engage in a battle of hide and seek.

      Andy does not half-ass his speeches.

      Gabe hops up beside Andy so fast that his flop of brown curls goes airborne for a second. He’s tall in that muscular, wiry way, his

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1