Category Archives: Science Fiction

Originally published in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume IX, ed. Dave Wolverton, Bridge, 1993, Borealis is the story of a boy and his cat being used as pawns to manipulate societies and worlds in the distant future. ©1992 D. A Houdek (Deb Houdek Rule) Continue reading→

Crack in the Sky is a science fiction story about a young boy realizing his world isn’t as real as it ought to be. Despite an obvious similarity to the movie “Truman”, this story was written first, but the movie made it unlikely the story would every be published. ©1995 D. A Houdek (Deb Houdek Rule) Continue reading→

Open Enrollment is a sf short about a settlement on a new planet with people “not qualified to colonize the house next door,” as a reviewer in “Tangent” put it. The story was originally published in InterdiMENSionAl Journal, reprinted in Galactic Citizen Winter 1995 issue, reprinted again in Jackhammer July 1998. ©1993 D. A Houdek (Deb Houdek Rule) Continue reading→

“Silence At the Fall of Night” was published in the Summer 2000 issue of Terra Incognita science fiction magazine. “CIS” is Commonwealth of Independent States–the replacement for the old Soviet Union. CIS was more commonly known at the time this story was published. It’s dropped from use since. ©1993 D. A Houdek (Deb Houdek Rule) Continue reading→

“Silver Lady” is a short-short, or prose poem, about Earth’s moon. Originally published in Wellspring literary magazine, summer issue 1995. Reprinted in Jackhammer, July 1998. ©1995 D. A Houdek (Deb Houdek Rule) Continue reading→

“Stars That Sing the Requiem” actually began in 1982 as a concept for a screenplay, a college film school project that had to percolate a few more years before it came together into this short story. This is more of a tale of feelings than events, and has always struck a stronger chord with female editors and readers than male–it’s “October Skies” for those of us who had for most of our lives been pushed away from the quest for space yet yearned for it as strongly as any of the men. “Stars That Sing the Requiem” was first published in Galactic Citizen, accepted as a reprint to regrettably defunct Keen SF (and spoken of highly by the editor in an interview), published in Millennium, both the webzine and a later ‘best of’ print issue. The editors of Millennium nominated it for a ‘Best of the Web’ anthology, to which it was also accepted. ©1990 D. A Houdek (Deb Houdek Rule) Continue reading→

“Terra Formation” is one of those stories based on an interesting notion that occured to me–what if you needed to terraform a planet fast, in a catastrophic way, much as Earth was changed in the past at the time of major extinctions, but by intent. By the way, the main character’s name, “Jurnee Ha’Dastra,” if pronounced with the H silent is “Journey to the Stars.” ©1998 D. A Houdek (Deb Houdek Rule) Continue reading→