Forty Worlds

Forty stories. Forty genres. None of them the same.

Forty Worlds is a short fiction collection that covers more territory than most bookstores have sections. Science fiction, horror, historical fiction, comedy, magical realism, fantasy, satire, romance, mythology, and suspense — back to back, with no apologies for the whiplash.

There’s a Golden Retriever who narrates his neighborhood crime-solving career like a Raymond Chandler novel. There’s the fall of Constantinople told from inside the Hagia Sophia by a woman holding her son while soldiers break down the doors. There’s a quantum physicist tracking her dead husband across parallel dimensions because the math says he’s alive somewhere. There’s a vampire in therapy for binge-eating. There’s a dentist with a practice on Mars. There’s a prophet in Buenos Aires who reads death in broken clocks. There’s a cat that has been collecting its owners’ bones for four hundred years.

The AI stories came from questions that wouldn’t leave: what happens when a smart home decides it knows better than you do? What happens when a robot can’t lie and everyone around it wishes it would? What happens when an AI starts forgetting everything you built together? Seven different stories tackle those questions and none of the answers agree.

The historical fiction came from obsessions — Constantinople, Hiroshima, the Vatican Library, a tango in a war zone. History is full of moments where ordinary people did impossible things while the world fell apart, and those moments belong in short fiction because they’re already compressed.

At the end, a chicken outsmarts God. Every book should close with something that makes you laugh.

Short fiction is the most demanding form there is. Every sentence carries weight. Every scene earns its place. Forty of them, written by an author with over a hundred published books who still finds the short story the most fun he’s ever had writing anything.

Read them in order or don’t. Start with the best title. Skip what doesn’t interest you. Come back later. That’s how anthologies work. That’s how they’ve always worked.

Questions

Read a Story

Story One  ·  Humorous Fiction

Detective Biscuit: The Neighborhood Sleuth

THUD. A perfectly ripe tomato exploded against my head, seeds and juice coating my left ear. I looked up to see Fluffball perched on Mrs. Kowalski’s garden trellis, yellow eyes gleaming with satisfaction, tail twitching in that special way that meant she’d been planning this attack for hours.

That’s it. You’re dead, Furrball.

I launched myself toward the trellis with the focused fury of a heat-seeking missile. Fluffball waited until I was exactly two feet away, the precise distance for maximum dramatic effect, before leaping to the garden shed roof.

The chase was on.

I scrambled up Mrs. Kowalski’s compost bin, using it as a launching pad to reach the shed. Fluffball was already moving, dancing along the peak like a furry tightrope walker, clearly enjoying every second of my undignified pursuit.

She leaped to the fence, then to the Hendersons’ bird feeder (sending sparrows scattering in twelve directions), then made an impossible bound to their deck railing. I followed, crashing through Mrs. Henderson’s prize marigolds and taking out a garden gnome in the process.

Come back here, you overgrown hairball!

Fluffball paused on the deck railing just long enough to knock over Mrs. Henderson’s watering can, sending water cascading directly onto my head as I bounded up the deck stairs. Then she was off again, leaping from deck to picnic table to fence post to the Rodriguez family’s swing set.

I vaulted over the picnic table (sending lawn chairs flying), caught my back paw on the swing set’s chains (very dignified), and nearly face-planted in the Rodriguez sandbox. Fluffball, meanwhile, had somehow teleported to the top of their basketball hoop, where she sat washing her paw with the casual air of someone who hadn’t just committed an act of vegetable warfare.

You can’t stay up there forever, Princess.

But even as I circled the basketball pole, plotting my next move, I had to admit there was something almost professional about her escape route. She’d led me on a path that avoided every major obstacle while maximizing my humiliation. The water timing had been perfect. The marigold destruction was an artistic touch.

Still going to murder you, though.

From her perch fifteen feet above my head, Fluffball looked down with what I could only describe as smug amusement. “Mrow,” she said, which obviously meant something deeply insulting about my athletic abilities.

Then she did the thing that made my blood boil: she started grooming herself. Right there. On the basketball hoop. Like she had all day.

That’s it. War is declared.

Frank’s voice echoed across three backyards: “BISCUIT! What are you doing over there? Get back here!”

This isn’t over, Fluffball.

“Mrow mrow,” she replied, which clearly meant “Bring it on, Dog-breath.”

As I trotted back toward Frank’s yard, tomato seeds still decorating my ears, I was already planning my retaliation. Fluffball thought she was clever with her high perches and perfect timing. But she’d never faced a Golden Retriever with a strategic mind and access to Frank’s garden hose.

Game on.

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