Humanity has sought evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth since we first peered through a telescope. Space holds the answer to an enduring mystery of whether we are alone in the universe. We want to make first contact with extraterrestrial life.
What if making first contact takes a dangerous or deadly turn?
Ripples in Space, the first science fiction anthology from Samak Press, presents compelling first contact tales from fourteen talented science fiction authors. From sinister aliens to rogue artificial intelligence, these stories explore first contact scenarios that will take readers to unexpected destinations. Travel with these authors on captivating journeys from derelict spaceships to strange far-flung worlds at the edge of the galaxy. Meet truly strange creatures who fit the definition of alien perfectly.
Ripples in Space features new original stories from Jean Marie Bauhaus, Phillip Carter, David Castlewitz, Charles Chin, Sarah Connell, John Coon, Angelique Fawns, Katherine Kerestman, Winston Malone, Christopher W. McGuiness, K.L. Mill, Mike Morgan, Brian Reindel, Darren Todd.
If you’re a fan of intelligent and suspenseful science fiction, this anthology will keep you turning the pages.
Humanity has sought evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth since we first peered through a telescope. Space holds the answer to an enduring mystery of whether we are alone in the universe. We want to make first contact with extraterrestrial life.
What if making first contact takes a dangerous or deadly turn?
Ripples in Space, the first science fiction anthology from Samak Press, presents compelling first contact tales from fourteen talented science fiction authors. From sinister aliens to rogue artificial intelligence, these stories explore first contact scenarios that will take readers to unexpected destinations. Travel with these authors on captivating journeys from derelict spaceships to strange far-flung worlds at the edge of the galaxy. Meet truly strange creatures who fit the definition of alien perfectly.
Ripples in Space features new original stories from Jean Marie Bauhaus, Phillip Carter, David Castlewitz, Charles Chin, Sarah Connell, John Coon, Angelique Fawns, Katherine Kerestman, Winston Malone, Christopher W. McGuiness, K.L. Mill, Mike Morgan, Brian Reindel, Darren Todd.
If you’re a fan of intelligent and suspenseful science fiction, this anthology will keep you turning the pages.
Space walking had always been his favorite. Outside the confines of the freighter, nothing but stars as far as the eye could see. Nothing between him and the airless vacuum but a helmet and a suit. That vulnerability had always frightened Nora a little, but it invigorated him. Being alone in the vastness quieted his mind and filled him with peace.
No peace came for him now as he drifted further and further away from his freighter – his home. He wasted no oxygen on swearing, though he wasn’t sure why he bothered prolonging the inevitable.
“Lucas?”
Nora’s voice came over the comm, thickly accented and heavy with emotion. She sounded like herself, and he blew out a relieved sigh, filling his helmet with more carbon dioxide. He spent no breath responding. She couldn’t hear him, anyway.
“Lucas, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Don’t be, baby, he wanted to say. It had to be this way.
He closed his eyes, and drifted.
They made a hell of a find. A derelict transport vessel, disabled and apparently abandoned, just floating out there waiting to be stumbled upon. And they’d been the ones to stumble.
Nora had spotted the vessel about 600 meters off their port side, looking dead in space, and came to tell him about it. No signals came from the vessel, no signs of life, and sure enough, nobody responded to comms.
So they wasted no time heading over there. They both suited up for this one, though Lucas made Nora wait in the airlock while he did an initial walk through. One could never be too careful out there. He knew she hated being left behind with no way to hear if he ran into trouble. The relief on her face when he appeared in the passage and waved her on board said much more than the sweary signs she awkwardly made through the thick gloves of her suit.
Lucas found the control room while Nora searched the rest of the ship and took inventory. Soft blue light illuminated the room from the vessel’s computer screens, which still operated on auxiliary power. The main power supply had apparently been damaged, along with the engines, but enough juice remained to run life support. Still, he kept his helmet on. Who knew what had happened to the passengers and crew? One life pod was gone. Presumably, they abandoned ship after incurring damage. But, for all he knew, they’d fled from contamination or contagion.
Better safe than sorry.
The ship’s log told him nothing. Apparently, providing a current report of whatever had happened hadn’t been on top of the captain’s mind. The ship’s manifest listed four passengers and three crew members. No cargo, which was disappointing.
Still, passengers might have left behind some valuables. In any case, they could probably repair the vessel and sell it for a large enough sum to keep them going for another six months or so. Or if not, they could strip it and sell the parts.
Lucas left the control room to find his wife. Maybe she had better luck.
He passed through the mess hall and common area and entered a corridor leading to the passenger cabins and engine room. He met Nora in the corridor, heading in his direction, her face lit up with excitement.
“I was coming to get you,” she signed. “You have to see this.”
“Found something good? What is it?”
“Just come.”
She waved for him to follow and turned back the way she came. He followed her down the corridor and through a passageway that opened into the engine room. His gaze immediately landed on what must have gotten her so worked up.
“What the…?”
Lucas walked around the structure, not taking his eyes off it for a second. They’d been building something. What, he couldn’t begin to guess. The object stood about three meters tall and was two meters wide, a frame made from a jumble of parts. At the base, he recognized power cells and engine parts, though they’d all been tinkered with.
“They used parts from the ship,” he signed.
“I know,” Nora spoke. “Look.”
She pointed out open panels along the walls and on the engine that filled the back half of the room. Disconnected wires and circuits hung out of them like the guts of a disemboweled animal.
“That explains why the ship isn’t running. Why the hell would they do this?”
Lucas quickly realized he was at the wrong angle for her to read his lips. He turned and signed to her, repeating what he’d said.
“I don’t know.” She pointed. “But what is that?”
Lucas hadn’t missed it. He just didn’t quite know how to process what he saw. Suspended in the center of the structure was an orb, about the size of a bowling ball. At first glance, it resembled a giant pearl, but on closer look, it reminded him more of a fire opal — a living one, with swirling and pulsating colors. Lucas felt at once drawn to its ethereal beauty and repulsed by its otherness.
“Whatever it is, it doesn’t look like it belongs to these parts.”
“It looks valuable,” she said.
He nodded.
“That it does. Priceless, I’d say.” He faced her and waved at her to look at him. “But also dangerous,” he enunciated, the better for her to read his lips. “We don’t know what this thing is or where it came from.”
“So what do you want to do?”
Lucas looked back at the orb. It gave him a strange sensation, a tickle at the back of his mind. He suddenly felt an overpowering urge to reach out and touch it. He shook his head to snap himself out of it. Every instinct told him not to bring that thing onto his ship.
“Leave it. We’ll figure it out later. What else did you find?”
Nora had found a few personal valuables in the passenger cabins, some expensive clothes, gold jewelry, and personal devices they could pawn. And the kitchen was well stocked with food that hadn’t expired. She found some that had been prepared and left out, with mold growth suggesting it hadn’t been more than a couple of weeks since the crew had abandoned ship.
“That means someone might still come looking for it,” Lucas said. “The sooner we tow it out of here, the better.” He motioned back toward the corridor and started walking, signing as he went. “Let’s get back. We’ll disengage and then I’ll go out and attach the cables, and you can drive us out of here.”
“Wait,” she said when they reached the mess hall. Nora ran into the kitchen and rummaged in a cupboard, then came back, brandishing a package of chocolate bars with a twinkle in her eye.
“Priorities,” he signed.
“Chocolate is always a priority,” she said aloud.
He couldn’t argue with that.
They traveled for hours, towing the derelict behind their ship. Once they’d covered enough distance that he no longer feared interference from anyone searching for the lost vessel, Lucas unhitched the ship and re-docked his freighter. Boarding with a pair of hover carts stacked with empty crates, they split up to gather the bounty. Nora took the cabins, while Lucas plundered the kitchen.
He filled three crates with canned and freeze-dried food and dry goods, then headed off to the engine room. Lucas wanted to take another look at that weird structure and see if there was any way to salvage those power cells. If not, they’d have to head to the nearest outpost soon to recharge their own batteries.
He found Nora standing in front of the structure, too damn close for his liking, and staring at the orb. She had taken her helmet off. Carefully, doing his best not to sneak up and startle her, he edged into her line of vision and waved. But she didn’t notice, too transfixed by the swirling orb. He glanced at it long enough to see a pulsating kaleidoscope of colors moving in a steady rhythm that echoed his own pulse.
Lucas jerked his eyes away and waved a hand in front of her face. Nora snapped out of her trance and looked at him, her expression angry.
“What are you doing?” she signed.
He signed the same question right back, with an emphasis on you.
“Where is your helmet?” he added.
“My oxygen was running low. The air here is fine.”
“We don’t know that. You should have gone back to replace your oxygen. That’s the protocol.”
“I was going to.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
Her brow wrinkled with uncertainty, and she looked at the orb again. He touched her chin and directed her gaze back to him.
“I don’t know,” she said aloud. “I can’t remember.”
The uneasy feeling he’d gotten at first sight of the orb intensified.
“Let’s get you out of here.”
“Why can’t I remember?”
“I don’t know. You’re probably just tired, but we’ll run a diagnostic to be sure. I think it’s time to call it a day.”
She nodded and let him guide her back to the ship.
He stood on a cliff, overlooking a wide valley. A field of crystalline fauna spread out beneath him, reaching to distant pink and purple mountains, more massive than any he had ever seen or read about. Three white moons hovered above them, impossibly close and huge, suspended in a purple sky, all waxing gibbous. Beyond them, the stars arranged themselves in unfamiliar constellations.
A breathtaking view filled him with an ache of intense longing, seeding a homesickness like he’d never felt during his military service or his subsequent life of exile. He wanted to cry.
Lucas choked awake with a sob. Realizing his face was wet, he sat up and mopped his eyes and cheeks with the tail of his t-shirt. Looking down to gauge how deeply Nora was sleeping, he found her bunk empty. Lucas called out for the lights to turn on and looked around. The door to the head was open, and the light was off. He picked his wrist communicator up from the shelf next to his bunk and sent a vibration to hers. A buzz from below told him she hadn’t taken it with her. With a groggy sigh, Lucas pushed back the sheet and climbed out of bed.
He found Nora in the lounge, curled up on the couch, and bent over her sketch pad. Her hand guided the colored pencil in her hand with a swiftness that always amazed him. In another life, another time, she would have been a celebrated artist. Lucas choked down the bitterness he always felt whenever he was reminded of the times they actually lived in, how technological progress had resulted in a regression of how humans treat each other. Sure, the worthy and the elite enjoyed a pure utopia reserved for those who were both compliant and genetically up to snuff.
For the rest, the disabled and the diseased and the deplorable, a bitter life of exile awaited, scrabbling for survival in the outer reaches of the solar system.
Could be worse, he reminded himself, thinking of the camps and cleansing campaigns he’d seen played out in Earth history holos. The people in charge nowadays believed themselves to be compassionate and benevolent by sending the undesirables deeper into space, allowing them to start their own colonies and make their own way.
At least out here, we’re free.
He circled around to give Nora plenty of time to notice him coming and sat on the opposite end of the couch.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked when she glanced up at him.
She shook her head and laid her sketch pad down between them.
“Bad dream.”
“Yeah, me too.” He glanced down at what she’d been drawing, and his heart stopped. He turned it around for a better look. “Where did you see this?”
“In my dream.”
His eyes roved over the giant mountains and moons, and he shivered. Lucas locked eyes with Nora.
“I dreamed about this, too.”
The edges of her mouth pulled down as a small wrinkle formed between her eyebrows. She stared at the drawing.
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think it could have something to do with that…”
Her voice trailed off. He didn’t need her to finish.
“I don’t know,” he repeated. “But I wouldn’t be surprised.”
A tear slid down Nora’s cheek, and she swiped at it angrily.
“Hey,” he said, reaching for her hand. “It’s okay. We ran the diagnostics, and you were fine.”
She pulled her hand away to sign.
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
Her eyes squeezed shut, and she shook her head.
“Did you feel it?” she asked aloud, looking at him. “The sadness?”
“Yeah. I felt it. It felt like…”
“Homesickness.”
“Yeah. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”
“I have.” More tears welled up and escaped. “After my parents surrendered me.”
Now Lucas squeezed his eyes shut.
“Oh, baby,” he sighed, again taking her hand.
She’d been five years old when the mandate went out. Nora’s parents could either submit to an experimental nanite injection that promised to repair her genes and restore her hearing or surrender her to a program. The program promised to train her in speech and communication and also provide vocational training. Not trusting the injection and being against the idea of genetic manipulation, her parents chose the program. Lucas couldn’t say he wouldn’t have done the same thing in their place.
“C’mere.”
He moved the sketch to the coffee table and pulled her to him. She nestled against him and, for a few minutes, they just held each other. Then she pushed away and sat up to face him.
“Do you miss your old life?”
“No.” He didn’t hesitate. “Not one bit.”
Lucas read the skepticism in her eyes.
“You were a war hero,” she said. “You could be back there, with your friends and family—”
“You’re my family,” he insisted. “And my best friend.”
She smiled a little at that.
“But you could have had a good life.”
“Everything good in my life is right here,” he said, suppressing a sigh. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. Marrying her had meant leaving behind status and privilege and being consigned to a life of exile in the outer darkness. “I didn’t leave behind anything that matters.”
“But you could’ve –”
“Stop.”
Lucas both spoke and signed for emphasis. He knew where she was going. What the government hadn’t disclosed to her parents about the program was that it included sterilization. As soon as Nora had reached puberty, her womb had been taken from her, to prevent her from passing on her supposedly defective genes. Children were an impossibility, and he knew that ate at her much more than it did him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lucas reassured her. “Not to me.”
More tears. Lucas cupped her face in his hands and used his thumbs to wipe them away. Looking into her eyes, he enunciated clearly, “You’re my home.” He kissed her tenderly, then rested his forehead against hers, as if the contact could transmit how much he loved her directly into her brain.
“I love you,” she said.
He leaned back so she could see.
“I love you, too.” He stood up and held a hand out to her. “Now let’s go back to bed.”
“I’m not sleepy.”
“Who said anything about sleep?” Lucas asked, winking at her. A sly smile graced Nora’s lips, and she took his hand.
Lucas whistled to himself as he stepped over the airlock and onto the salvaged vessel. He’d left Nora curled up in his bunk, looking too peaceful to disturb. He’d showered and then made her breakfast and coffee, leaving it for her with a note telling her where he’d gone. He still wanted a good look at those power cells. And it was also time to confront the problem of the orb head on.
He’d made up his mind, though the decision hadn’t been easy. The orb was undoubtedly valuable. It could probably snag them a small fortune through legal channels, and a much larger one on the black market. But it also struck him as dangerous. Lucas felt certain it had been the cause of their shared dream, if only because nothing else could explain it. And thinking about the effect it had on Nora made him all too ready to throw the orb out an airlock.
He reached the engine room and stopped cold. Nora knelt before the orb and its structure, still wearing her night clothes. Bent forward, hunched over her sketch pad, she scribbled furiously, oblivious to his presence. Sheets of paper littered the floor around her and, as he approached, he saw they were covered with strange, alien-looking symbols.
Lucas was about to walk into her field of vision when suddenly she sat up, and he stopped. Her head snapped around to look at him, as though she’d heard him behind her.
“Nora?”
She opened her mouth to speak. What came out was no language he’d ever heard. His heart hammered in his chest even as his stomach sank.
“Nora!” he barked, signing simultaneously, hoping to snap her out of it.
She stopped, and frowned, her expression puzzled. Nora tilted her head at him in a way that made him think of his childhood dog. Her lips moved again.
“Nor-ah.”
The word rang out clearly in her own voice but spoken as if by someone who’d had perfect hearing and diction all their life. Lucas swallowed hard and held his hands up as he moved in front of her.
“Nora,” he said as he went. “That’s my wife.”
He crouched before her.
“Can you hear me?”
Nora’s face went blank, her eyes moving back and forth, as though processing the question.
“Can you understand me?”
Her eyes fixed on his. Nora’s eyes. But she did not appear behind their gaze.
“Yes.”
“Who are you?”
Again, her expression and eye movement reminded him of an ancient computer forced to buffer as it processed data. She opened her mouth again, and a string of unintelligible sounds and syllables came out. One of them sounded like Rex.
“Okay. Rex. I would like to speak with my wife. Can you make that happen?”
“Nora.”
“Yes. Let me talk to Nora. I need to know that she’s okay.”
“Nora… no… sound. Hear.” She touched her ears. “I repair.” She looked over at the structure and pointed. “Repair. Not finished.” She then looked down at the papers and waved a hand toward them. “You help.”
“No. Not until I talk to her.”
“You talk… you help?”
“It’s gotta be a joint decision. If she’s okay and she’s on board, then we’ll see.”
“Help… home.”
Lucas nodded, remembering his dream.
“Yeah. I kind of gathered.”
Her eyes rolled back in her head and fluttered. He’d had a kid brother who’d had petit mal seizures, before his parents went for the nanite injection. This looked exactly like one of those.
Suddenly, Nora looked normal again, and slightly bewildered.
“Lucas?”
She sounded like herself again.
“Nora?”
Her hands went to her ears.
“Say something else.”
“I love you.” Lucas signed so she would have no doubt what he said.
Amazement spread over her features.
“Say it again.”
He did. Nora broke into a grin.
“I hear you. Lucas, I can hear!”
She dove into his arms and wrapped her own around him. Lucas held her, his head swirling with thoughts and emotions too mixed up and complex to name.
“That’s great, baby,” he said, stroking her hair. “That’s really great.”
“What do you remember?”
They sat at the table in the mess room, back on their own ship. Nora drank coffee. Lucas drank something considerably stronger, contraband courtesy of one of his old Navy buddies. She stared into her mug as he spoke, and it felt strange, being able to talk to Nora without her looking at him.
“All of it,” she said. “I woke up with this voice in my head. It sounded…” She signed, “Beautiful.”
Nora told him it had filled her head with images and symbols, so she grabbed her sketch book and began recording them. But the more she wrote and drew, the more she felt compelled to return to the engine room.
“Do you know what they mean?”
She nodded.
“Instructions for completing the structure, and coordinates.” Nora looked up at him. “It wants to go home.”
“I know.”
“We have to help.”
Did they?
Lucas wasn’t so sure. Of course, she wanted to help. Nora was kind to a fault. Her grandparents owned a poultry farm when she was little, and when she’d found out what they did with the chickens, she’d cried for days before swearing off meat. She’d been a lifelong vegetarian as a result. Not that meat was available anymore. Not legally, at any rate.
Lucas, having never met a slab of bacon he wouldn’t cheerfully stuff into his own maw, still favored blasting that damned orb out the airlock. The only thing stopping him was not knowing what that might do to her.
“Lucas?”
He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table.
“Is it still in there?”
At her confused look, he reached over and tapped her head.
“Can you sense it?”
She nodded. “It’s waiting.”
“Can you communicate with it?”
“Yes. But I can’t read its thoughts, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“But can it read yours?”
She frowned, considering. Signing, she said, “I don’t know.”
“Ask what happened to the crew.” She slumped a little and shot him an exasperated look. “Don’t you think that’s an important question?”
She sighed and nodded. Leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes. In a moment, her face went slack, and he had to fight the urge to grab her and shake her awake. But then she began to speak – or rather, Rex spoke through her.
“They helped. But there was not enough power. So they left.”
“Why did they leave?”
“To get more power. But they did not return.”
Nora’s eyes opened, and she looked at Lucas. In her normal way of speaking she said, “They abandoned him.” The compassion and indignation in her voice made him feel a stab of guilt for not caring more about this thing. He might have, if it hadn’t hijacked his wife. And how did they know it was telling the truth?
“It’s a he now?”
She shrugged. “That’s the sense I get.”
He sighed. “I don’t know about this, babe.”
“Lucas—”
“I don’t trust this thing.”
“Lucas. I can hear.”
He blew out a long sigh and took a long drink. That thing was still in her. It had healed her deafness. As wonderful as that may be, he couldn’t shake his reservations. What else might that thing be doing to her? If it could repair her hearing, what was to stop it from shutting off her heart?
“Lucas?”
His glass now empty, he set it on the table.
“Okay,” he said.
It wasn’t like he had a choice.
A ripple is a distortion in the water. Ripples in Space is the distortion of reality where characters face alien forces, inner demons, and the fragility of memory. Curator and editor John Coon, put together and contributed to this anthology of 14 short speculative sci-fi and horror stories. Contributors include Jean Marie Bauhaus, Phillip Carter, David Castlewitz, Charles Chin, Sarah Connell, Angelique Fawns, Katherine Kerestman, Winston Malone, Christopher W. McGuiness, K.L. Mill, Mike Morgan, Brian Reindel, and Darren Todd.
This anthology starts with a haunting tale of an alien orb that manipulates the mind and people’s memories. Throughout these 14 tales, the reader is transported from the rugged terrain of New Mexico into space to explore exotic alien worlds and back to a near-future Earth ruled by A.I. Much of what binds all these tales is the vivid world-building and bending of time, space, reality, and memory. In other words, space as a mirror distorts, reveals, and challenges the essence of what it means to be human
As a reviewer, these are my top five, in chronological order. Out of Silence by Jean Marie Bauhaus is a gripping tale of love, sacrifice, and alien possession. Track 16 by Christopher W. McGuiness is a gritty western horror that combines a surreal New Mexican landscape with a mind-bending cosmic phenomenon. Fear the Human by Mike Morgan is a chilling alien invasion story with a twist. Adaptive Algorithm by Charles Chin is a cerebral narrative that explores the ethics and evolution of A.I. Game Day by Phillip Carter. It is a fast-paced, high-stakes story of survival during a catastrophic cosmic event.
This anthology will thrill and entertain a wide audience. Each story in Ripples in Space will send shockwaves through genre boundaries, blending horror, sci-fi, and introspection to reveal how space doesn’t just distort physics, it distorts the soul.