Rajeev Prasad
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer
I have Short Stories in...
Featured Stories
In Issue 215 of Clarkesworld. Short Story.
Had I remained on Earth, my raging alcoholism would have killed me real young. So, I ran. As the migration arc cleared the atmosphere, the finality hit hard. I felt the memories of my young life being erased—sneaking through the agave hedges of my Santa Fe neighborhood, the binges under the Chicago skyscrapers, an ex-girlfriend and son I’d never known...
THE BLINDING LIGHT OF RESURRECTION
In Issue 212 of Clarkesworld. Novelette.
Hands trembling, Shiv Mehta snatched the print copy of his wife’s ribcage off the conveyor belt and lowered the print into an organ tank. Those hands had healed thousands of patients, but these days his hands had gotten good at stealing...
THE FLOWERS THAT WE INTEND TO SHARE
In Issue 209 of Clarkesworld. Short Story.
Bodhi, who’d just turned seventeen, wanted nothing more than to ruin Devi Amma’s annual orchid showing, so, it was a pleasant shock to watch the pod of mechs locomote through the front gate. As the four mechs explored the estate lawn and groves of fruit trees, the noise of the crowd—gathered for Devi Amma’s orchid showing—reduced to diaphanous, disembodied murmurs...
MIRROR VIEW
In Issue 201 of Clarkesworld. Short Story.
It was wasting, as its kind sometimes did.
It had traveled to Earth, this planet of abundant life, to help with this dilemma, to learn.
Its huge body, a metal-mineral lattice of sentient alloy and nodal cognition points, sailed through Earth’s hazy atmosphere. It readily surveyed the planet’s surface, city colonies, sonographic waves, and transmissions, learning that humans were territorial, curious, and incredibly successful at propagation...
More Stories
(Originally Published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 2022)
Starved and emaciated, kneeling in the shallow inlet of the Lake, I prayed for a son.
The water rippled from the Lake’s center, and the sound of a tiny cry emerged from the dark watery depths. Had the Goddess finally heard me?...
Lightning flashes in the grainy dusk and your silhouette freezes, oddly contorted, on Nora's motel door. You glance back at the serpentine formation of tiny drones creating a ladder of low-pressure pockets, drawing moisture from faraway mountain ranges. Pretty soon the tempest will release the rain, every last drop...
Based on the movement of stars and planets in the galactic realm, the Hindu priest had set their mother’s death anniversary for tomorrow at the Livermore temple just east of San Francisco. The three sisters were all spending the weekend at Tej’s house. The last time the siblings had been together, they’d watched their mother dissolving under white sheets and morphine infusions...
A few weeks after my thirty-first birthday, I’d gone broke, thirty-four dollars and twelve cents to my name. My sister, Sonia, bought me a one-way ticket to live with them at their dusty summer ranch in the Central Coast. Pine Needle they call it. For a month we’ve been together here, two Punjabi-Mexican mutts and her husband, Jeremy, living together in what most would consider a cell...
Enveloped in the vibrant orange glow of dusk, we sat around the firepit in an uncomfortable silence. My daughter’s maple-colored face flickered between light and shadow as she watched her eighth marshmallow burn to a blackened smudge...
Read more of Rajeev Prasad's print exclusive short stories in Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine.
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