This week’s story is Bad Memory by Patrick Fahy. There’s nothing wrong with making big changes in your life to achieve your dreams, but if you’re going to do that, sometimes writing those goals down is a good idea for more than one reason.

Light pollution is increasingly a problem in 2024. If you live in a big city, it’s a pretty good bet you can only see a handful of stars when you look up at the night sky. You would think the pioneering souls who move to the first colony on Mars wouldn’t have to deal with that issue quite as much. However in this week’s story “$1000 a Plate” by Jack McKenty our characters learn that you can’t avoid some problems even if you’re on the frozen tundra of Mars.

Back in the 1950’s when Stephen Arr wrote Chain of Command, it was pretty common to imagine the worst possible unintended consequences from the atomic age. This story does revolve around animals who are forever changed by atomic radiation, but at the end of the day the message of this story is that the chain of command is the same for everyone, even radioactive mutant mice.

Have you ever taken the time to read the Terms of Service before you click “Accept?” Of course not. No one does. It’s basically become a meme at this point. In this week’s story, An Elephant For the Prinkip by L. J. Stecher, we learn it’s probably a good idea to at least skim the fine print of any contract before you actually sign on the dotted line.

Pop culture over the past twenty years or so is riddled with stories about pioneering scientists visiting new worlds. In the 1990’s there was Sliders, there was also Stargate SG-1 with a different planet every week. In this week’s story “Dimension of the Lost,” three scientists visit three different dimensions. Two of them have life-changing experiences, while the third ends up solving a mystery that has haunted humanity for generations.

People have been fascinated by the paranormal forever. Whether it’s Bigfoot, ghosts or alien visitors. These days there are entire TV networks devoted to amateurs investigating the paranormal. In this week’s story, two mountain climbers try to find the source of mysterious lights. They find out what causes them, but no one would ever believe them.

In the next few years, NASA will be sending astronauts back to the Moon for the first time since the 1970’s. While those brave astronauts might not be the first humans to visit the Moon, they’d still be very surprised if they found out they had unexpected company. That’s exactly what happens in this week’s story, Project Hush by Philip Klass.