David Lee Zweifler

• The Inevitablist

January 10, 2022. Little Blue Marble. My first pro-sale, this Cli-Fi story shows how multi-billionaires have the power to put themselves in charge of critical activities that they are not suited for, temperamentally or intellectually.

• Early Riser

February 6, 2022. Freeze Frame Fiction. This is a story about a memory – a love letter, of sorts, to a son I hadn’t had yet – from a time when I was considering my mortality and all the might-have-beens while facing a dicey situation as a cub reporter in Jakarta.

• Do You Know Why We Stopped You

April 22, 2022. The Dread Machine. This story presents a darker and more malevolent picture of AI. Bias hard-coded into the loss prevention AI of a human-less store prevents the egress of a customer who doesn’t fit into the usual customer demographic.

• Getting Better

October 5, 2022. The Dread Machine. A disease that only affects the elderly turns its victims into dangerous, hateful monsters. A reluctant caretaker for his afflicted father needs to decide whether it’s making his dad into a better, more accepting person, or if his father’s disease is turning him into a monster as well.

• I Like To Be Hit

December 10, 2021. Wyldblood Magazine. Neither a benevolent helpmate nor a merciless destroyer, the needs of sentient AI can run parallel, or counter, to humanity’s. Case in point: A sentient golf ball that likes to be hit and is willing to do what it must to ensure it is on the receiving end of long drives.

• The Inevitablist

January 10, 2022. Little Blue Marble. My first pro-sale, this cli-fi story shows how multi-billionaires have the power to put themselves in charge of critical activities that they are not suited for, temperamentally or intellectually. (Included in the Little Blue Marble 2022: Warmer Worlds anthology. (Available on Amazon or Kindle.)

• Early Riser

February 6, 2022. Freeze Frame Fiction. This is a story about a memory – a love letter, of sorts, to a son I hadn’t had yet – from a time when I was considering my mortality and all the might-have-beens while facing a dicey situation as a cub reporter in Jakarta.

• Do You Know Why We Stopped You

April 22, 2022. The Dread Machine. This story presents a darker and more malevolent picture of AI. Bias hard-coded into the loss prevention AI of a human-less store prevents the egress of a customer who doesn’t fit into the usual customer demographic.

• Getting Better

October 5, 2022. The Dread Machine. A disease that only affects the elderly turns its victims into dangerous, hateful monsters. A reluctant caretaker for his afflicted father needs to decide whether it’s making his dad into a better, more accepting person, or if his father’s disease is turning him into a monster as well.

• The Best Buggy Whip You Ever Saw

Obsolescence Anthology. Busby is an obsolete repair droid looking for purpose in all the wrong places. Busby taps into an old movie for inspiration and develops an elegant plan to stay relevant, although he suspects it will take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. Especially blood.

• Running In Circles

Paramnesia anthology. Viola Securus. An elegant name for a musical instrument, perhaps, or a Greek poet, or a wine. But not for what’s happening to everyone now. It was just yesterday that we saw the squirrels running in circles. Not, big, lazy, squirrels-playing-in-the-grass circles, but tight, crazy pinwheels on the ground, on the sidewalk... everywhere.

• The Laughing Wolverine

Calliope Interactive. They say your family is often your toughest audience, so as a comedian, I was proud of the fact that I could always get my kids to laugh. Now I’ve got to figure out a way to get my youngest son to cry.
That might be an impossible task because I’m dead.

• Wasted Potential

Analog Science Fiction and Fact. An unemployed marketer logs on to an all-knowing, quantum job-search platform using his girlfriend's credentials, and discovers he may need to break up with her so she can fulfill her destiny of saving humanity from the scourge of space piracy.