Reading Time: 11 minutes Outside my work here at OnlySky, I’m a writer of speculative and science fiction, and a translator. My science fiction usually focuses on alternative justices and social contract theory, so the overlap with my humanist essays is obvious. But my work as a translator? Well, that’s a labor of love, and an act of thanks. […]
Fiction
Imaginative stories by secular writers.
Posted inFiction
Faith with a smile
Reading Time: 2 minutes Guest post by Bert Bigelow, a long-time contributor to A Tippling Philosopher. Sometimes dreams can be quite entertaining. Here is one I had recently. I was shopping for veggies at a local farmer’s market, and I noticed a guy who was watching me closely. In fact, he was staring at me. Now, I am not […]
Posted inEnvironment
Solarpunk humanism: How we dream bigger than despair
Reading Time: 5 minutes One unspoken tenet of anti-theist discourse is that we are limited by the religious stories at the core of our culture. For that slice of the nonreligious spectrum, it’s not enough not to believe, personally, in a god. The nature of religion poses a narrative problem that anti-theists feel must be confronted at every turn. […]
Posted inFiction
A conversation with God
Reading Time: 4 minutes My jogging companion didn’t show up yesterday. He was suffering from muscle spasms in his back, and decided to take the day off. So, I was on my own for the daily five-mile walk. It was a gorgeous day…sunny, light breeze, a few wispy clouds, about 70 degrees. Just right to wear a sweatshirt and […]
Posted inFiction
The truth about black cats and monsters
Reading Time: 2 minutes There’s a black stray that lives in my neighborhood. He came with the house. The previous owners abandoned him. But he had a cat door so he spent most of his time outside before they’d left anyway. It was kind of heartbreaking that I couldn’t let him in. I tried at first and he scratched […]
Posted inFiction
Our future
Reading Time: 3 minutes It happened just like they teach it in schools. It wasn’t even the plane crashes that did it. We were up to one a month, sometimes more. Not terrorism, just things breaking. Everyone kept voting for deregulation, and everyone else kept voting to keep those people in office. You’ve learned about voting in school already, […]
Posted inFiction
The Pope’s second confession
Reading Time: 9 minutes And the Pope said to the Confessor: It is done, you know. Popes do slip away into the night and dine at friends’ homes. I had a most exquisite dinner with Salvatore Marino and guests earlier tonight. Oh, the wine! The wine! The rain nearly conspired against us, but we got there. Sal is a […]
Posted inFiction
A letter from Jackrabbit Springs
Reading Time: 4 minutes Hello again! Well the big move is finally over and I know it’s been a while since you heard from me but now that we’re settled in I wanted to catch you up with all the goings-on out here in Jackrabbit Springs. And is there ever a lot of Spring in Jackrabbit Springs these days! […]
Posted inFiction
The Pope’s first confession
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Pope hovered forty thousand feet above the coast of Africa, amid the wispy cirro-stratus clouds. Suddenly, all human languages spoke at once, not in cacophony, but in delicate, percussive synchronization. All of humanity, dead and alive, spread out above the Sea, on the Earth, and in the Sky of Africa, was calling upon the […]
Posted inFiction
5 minutes into the future
Reading Time: 3 minutes It was the tests that ran out. They knew they’d never be able to stop the trade of abortifacients. The tests were a different matter. They owned the companies that made the tests. No test, no scrip. No scrip, no pill. We need to talk about the rabbits So here’s what’s going to happen. We […]