Out of This World

By Alma Alexander

Although the stars have always had a powerful hold on her imagination, Alma Alexander is not often found in the cold reaches of interstellar space so this collection of stories is something of a rarity.

One of these stories is new to this collection.
One of the two previously published stories was listed as a Notable Story in the Million Writers round-up in the year that it appeared in an online science fiction anthology inspired by the NASA-sponsored Launchpad astronomy workshop for writers, run out of Laramie by Professor Mike Brotherton.

These are tales of starflight and of vision - but, as all Alexander stories, they are primarily about the people who live in these wondrous new worlds and how they experience their own universe. We are all, as Oscar WIlde once said, in the gutter - but these are the stories of those who have lifted their faces to the sky and are looking up at the stars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alma Alexander
• Release date: May 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476298139

Alma Alexander

Alma Alexander was born in Yugoslavia and has lived in Zambia, Swaziland, Wales, South Africa and New Zealand. She now lives in Washington state, USA. She writes full-time and runs a monthly creative writing workshop with her husband.

Book preview

Out of This world

Alma Alexander

Copyright Alma Alexander 2012

ISBN: 9781476298139

Published by Kos Books at Smashwords

Kos Books

A & D Deckert

343 Sudden Valley Drive

Bellingham WA 98229

Table of Contents

Foreword

To Remember Riobarre

End of the World

Like Starlight

What Reviewers Say

Other books by Alma Alexander

Contact Alma

About the Author

Foreword

I am not truly a science fiction writer, as that genre is commonly understood – I rarely write the hard-science stories which would be acceptable to markets like Analog, for instance. I like to read stories set on other worlds, but I very infrequently set up a story spaceship of my own to take me to one.

But I have always loved the stars, anyway.

And yes, occasionally, my flights of fancy DO take me off the face of the Earth as we know it, and out there, into orbit, or further.

In other words, what you’re reading right now is… something of a rarity. This is a collection of my occasional forays into worlds and interstellar spaces, places you might be able to reach with a starship someday as opposed to simply travelling on the wings of your own imagination – stories populated by what might be seen as honest-to-goodness aliens, creatures who MIGHT walk a world different from ours or breathe a different kind of air. These are the places I visit when I am in a Star Trek universe rather than wandering along twisted paths laid down in a hand-drawn map of Middle Earth.

Welcome to the Alexander Triads, Book 6: Out of This World.

Alma Alexander

Summer 2012

It’s science fiction – it tells of a different world, now lost in memory, held in oblivion by chemical means – but eh, okay, I can’t help it I guess, the tale has creatures with wings. Still, it’s very much ‘science fiction’ as opposed to pure ‘fantasy’, and it was published in the Winter 2009 issue of Space & Time Magazine. But let me tell you one thing about this story that is passing strange – I dreamed it all. Yes, this entire story was one whole and coherent dream which I remembered vividly when I woke up in the morning. This… doesn’t happen very often. This story was a gift, and now I pass that gift on