You remember Sonic the Hedgehog: that old-school 8-bit scrolling game where the hedgehog rushes forward, looping and soaring into the sky, snagging golden rings by the handful, every captured treasure announced by the narcotic casino ding of a fight bell in a boxing ring. I’m a middle-aged man, and happily married, but on Christmas morning in 2022 when the kids downloaded Sonic on the Nintendo and I heard all those fuckin...

She came like a thunderstorm, cried out and spilled forward with a breathy sob, bouncing down onto the carpet and flipping over in a single elegant motion. He fell back onto the floor in the opposite direction, his chest pounding, gasping for air. He let his leg lop over hers. For long moments, they lay in the dark together, letting their breathing settle, their hearts slow. A gibbous moon shone through the windows, unhur...

Comet Quetzalcoatl—technically Comet C-2014/UN271, but called Comet Q because of some inane conspiracy theory connecting it to the gods of the Aztec calendar—curled across half the sky, visible even in the daytime, looking to Lena like the arched eyebrow of a disapproving parent. Surely the end of the world was at hand. It meant nothing of course, the comet was just another dead space rock from the Oort Cloud, unfortunate...