Flashes in Time

by Mikko Rauhala

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What happens when an AI assistant is always whispering in your ear? Does hacking into the structure of reality help you get a prom date? When your world is dying, how far are you willing to go to save its people? What is the nature of identity, and who are you, anyway?

Flashes in Time explores these questions and more in sixteen imaginative short stories set atop a fourfold table of science fiction and fantasy, contemporary and far off.

A diverse cast of characters explores the limits of what it means to be human, and what our choices make of us.

From darkness to light and lingering in between, the scenarios and thought experiments take the reader on a journey with surprising yet inevitable twists.

Published: January 28, 2025
Publisher: Water Dragon Publishing
Cover Artists:

Sleepy Fox Covers

Genres:

Fantasy, Sci Fi

Tags:

Languages Available: English
Languages Available: English

About the Author

Mikko Rauhala is a Finnish SF author making their foray into the English speaking world. They often write their stories in both languages, which can get frustrating when there’s no one else to blame for the occasional double entendres.

Informed by their master’s degree in intelligent systems, they’re most at home in hard science fiction settings, though they’re not exclusive and like to cross genres. Whether the subject is steam powered gnomes or universal quantum suicide, Rauhala enjoys taking an eccentric premise and bringing it to its logical conclusion. As befits a Finn, their plot-driven narrative is often seasoned with a touch of dark, dry humor.

Rauhala is an Associate member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America.

Check This Out

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Summary: The Parada had been lost for almost two hundred years before they recovered the ship, drifting in stygian interstellar darkness, and brought her home again. But that was not the miracle. The miracle was that the crew was still alive. That was also the problem. Six crew members went out on the Parada, Earth’s first starship. All contact was lost, and the ship vanished for almost two centuries. When the Parada’s successor found the drifting ship and somehow managed to bring it home, the six crew members were not only still alive but barely older, due to the time dilation effects of near-FTL travel. Their return was a miracle – but it could not be revealed to the waiting world. The problem was, six individuals went out to the stars. More than seventy fractured personalities came back. Psychologist Stella Froud and Jesuit Father Philip Carter were recruited as part of the team assembled to investigate the mystery, and to try and help the Parada’s crew understand their condition and possibly reverse it. What they discovered was a deepening mystery, and very soon they found themselves forced to take sides in a conflict that nobody could have possibly predicted. Their world would never be the same again.