Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
by Jeff Hecht

My fiction

I write short science fiction, fantasy, and horror when the inspiration strikes. The inspirations may come from daily life, my writing about science, or elsewhere. Once in a while they're prophetic. The inspiration for "On 202" came from realizing I was hearing the voices of the dead over the radio -- this in the 1970s, when rock stations simply played rock, not classic rock, oldies or whatever other sub-genres their marketing wizards have invented. The inspiration for "The Number of the Beast" came from my real-life adventures with conspiracy crackpots and tabloids. "Rehearsals for Retirement" came from watching asteroids and the misadventures of NASA.

I am not prolific, but I do write in a variety of fields, from horror to humorous science fiction. Of late, I've been writing short-shorts, tightly told and often-twisted tales which are challenging fun. Ever wonder what the people of Nikola Tesla's time would have thought of the wireless communications systems Tesla tried to invent? Read "Operation Tesla." Looking for a solution to global warming caused by carbon dioxide? Read "The Greenhouse Papers." Lately I've written a few stores in the "Futures" series of speculations in the scholarly journal Nature. They're fun to write, and I hope they're fun to read.

Online at Fictionwise

Most of my stories published since 1985 except those originally in Nature are available online at Fictionwise.com . Yield to a moment of silliness and chase "Squirrels."Travel back into the past with "Draft Dodger's Rag." Or take a walk on "The Crystal Highway."

My published stories are

• "The Princess and the P6," Datamation, April 1976

• "Lifeboat" New Dimensions 8, Robert Silverberg ed. (Harper and Row, New York, 1978)

• "Crossing the Wastelands" New Dimensions 9, Robert Silverberg ed. (Harper and Row, New York, 1979)

• "On 202" Twilight Zone, Dec. 1981, reprinted in Year's Best Horror Stories X, Karl Edward Wagner ed., in New England Ghosts,, Frank D. McSherry Jr., Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg eds., and in Great American Ghost Stories, Frank D. McSherry Jr., Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg eds

• "Saratoga Winter" Twilight Zone, Oct 1982

• "Extinction Theory" Analog, March 1989

• "Boxes" After Hours, Autumn 1990

• "Rehearsals for Retirement" Analog, mid-Dec 1990

• "Aunt Horrible's Last Visit" in Vampires, Jane Yolen and Martin H. Greenberg, eds.

• "The Greenhouse Papers" Analog, November 1991

• "The Number of the Beast" in Alien Pregnant By Elvis, Esther Freisner and Martin Greenberg Eds., DAW, 1994

• "Engineering Reality" appeared on the electronic Galaxy.

• "A Life of Its Own" Analog, January 1997

• "The Awful Truth," appeared on Middle Georgia Web Magazine and Jackhammer

• "The Saucer Man," Interzone, August 1997

• "The Crystal Highway," Odyssey December 1997

• "The Rumor of the Ruined City," Asimov's SF April 1999

• "Squirrels," HMS Beagle issue 80 (late June 2000) (site is no longer on-line)

• "By the Lake," Analog November 2002

• "Draft Dodger's Rag," Analog, March 2004

• "Directed Energy," Nature, April 13, 2006 (on line at Nature)

• "Operation Tesla," Nature, October 5, 2006 (on line at Nature)

• "Quantum Entanglements," Nature Physics, April 2007 (on line at Nature Physics)

  "The Neanderthal Correlation," Nature, May 22, 2008 (on line at Nature)

See more science fiction links at sff.net

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