Short Story Selections

These newly adapted stories bring Literature's classics from the 19th and 20th century to you in a readable, clear, and faithful translation. Experience Sci-Fi's greatest like never before, and understand legends like Fitzgerland and Twain deeply. Translations by Asa Montreaux

Pearl. Interlude 1. 2. And Section 4. Interlude: The Calculus of Stability (Part 1)   The return from 1939 Warsaw was always a brutal recalibration. One moment, Pearl Wou was breathing the coal-tinged, fear-laced air of a city under siege; the next, he was enveloped by the sterile, climate-controlled silence of his 2025 Hong Kong apartment. The temporal whiplash was more than just physical. It was a psychic schism, a violent tearing between two incompatible realities. He would stand for long minutes in his workshop, the faint ozone smell of the quantum displacement field dissipating around him, simply breathing. He was a man composed of reconstituted atoms, and sometimes he felt as if the process had left his soul just as unsettled, a collection of particles struggling to find their equilibrium.  He ran the diagnostic on the temporal displacement belt, his eyes scanning the cascading lines of code on the holographic display. The energy expenditure was within expected p...

 The low, guttural growl of the electric sports car echoed off the gleaming glass and steel canyons of 2025 Hong Kong. Pearl Wou, a man of precise movements and even more precise thoughts, navigated the automated traffic streams with a practiced ease, his hands resting lightly on the wheel. At five-eleven, his frame was a study in lean, athletic lines, the result of a disciplined running regimen that was as much a part of his daily routine as differential equations. He was twenty-nine, a professor of mathematics at the University of Hong Kong, and a man who found a certain elegant satisfaction in the controlled chaos of the city. He glanced at the passenger seat, where Hua Xing—Leyue, as he called her—was engrossed in a holographic interface, her brow furrowed in concentration. She was, in his admittedly biased opinion, a perfect confluence of beauty and intellect, a woman who could discuss the nuances of ancient Cantonese poetry with the same passion she applied to her own groundb...

By: Asa Montreaux  When the Vegas Golden Knights acquired Mitch Marner through free agency on July 1st, they acquired one of the best playmakers in the league. The hallmark of a great "playmaker" is the scoring of assists and contributing to the team overall, and not just pursuing their own individual statistical achievement. Great passers like Adam Oates make a huge difference on a team, and often we can point to playmakers as the great contributors to a goal scorers career, like Backstrom to Ovechkin or Gretzky to Kurri. When you look at the data, it tells you some things that you perhaps wouldn't have expected. Mitch Marner turns out to be a player that generates a lot of goals. Although, he is more productive on the Power play in terms of percentages, than at evening strength, he scores significantly more assists at even strength than other situations. The NHL predominantly plays at even strength, but what is worth noting is that he gets far more primary assists at ev...