History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Drabbles in Dead-Starred Futures

| October 29, 2024

My collection of dystopian science fiction, Dead-Starred Futures, included a handful of drabbles, stories told in exactly 100 words. All five of these stories were also reprints, which saw their initial publications in a variety of venues. “Litany” was a piece inspired by an abandoned building covered in graffiti that was presented to us in a […]

My Latest Post-Apocalyptic Stories

| October 17, 2024

I’ve had just a few post-apocalyptic stories out since my last post on the topic! My drabble “Dead Planet” appeared in Drabbledark III from Shacklebound Books in March 2024. This is a bit of a sci-fi post-apocalyptic story, looking at the remnants of Earth after alien contact. My collection A Tarot of Sorcery and Sages, which […]

“Hearts in Motion” in Dead-Starred Futures

| September 26, 2024

My story “Hearts in Motion” was based on a contest prompt. On the surface, it doesn’t seem entirely speculative, though it does envision a post-climate change world in which two factions are at odds with each other. And while that might seem all too plausible, I truly hope that the world will not go in […]

“The Price” in Dead-Starred Futures

| August 27, 2024

“The Price” is a short flash fiction piece that deals with a weighty subject–in a world impacted by climate change and rising sea levels, what price might someone be willing to pay to save other peoples’ lives. The prompt for this story came from the Furious Fiction Flash Challenge (write a flash fiction story of […]

“On the Surface” in Dead-Starred Futures

| July 25, 2024

“On the Surface” is a microfiction piece set in a post-apocalyptic world in which humans have been forced belowground due to environmental conditions that make living aboveground impractical. However, the unnamed narrator dreams (literally) of people living on the surface and searches for a way to investigate this possibility. “On the Surface” is only available […]

“Seeds of Knowledge” in Dead-Starred Futures

| June 25, 2024

My microfiction piece “Seeds of Knowledge” was inspired by watching some videos about the Svalbard seed vault in Norway and imagining how a similar facility on an alien planet, where explorers don’t read the language, might look. Compared to other stories in Dead-Starred Futures, it seems a bit more positive on the surface, but the lack […]

“One Book, Never Published” in Dead-Starred Futures

| May 30, 2024

My microfiction story, “One Book, Never Published,” is a brief look at how time-travel to prevent the publication of a book filled with falsehoods might turn out. If you’ve been following my posts about the stories in Dead-Starred Futures, you may already know that the answer to that is “not entirely well.” But despite that […]

“Bigger than the Big Bang” in Dead-Starred Futures

| April 30, 2024

“Bigger than the Big Bang” is a flash fiction story in Dead-Starred Futures involving a flash of premonition and the lengths one woman goes to in order to keep that premonition from coming to pass. Though that might not sound much like a sci-fi story, it also involves hacking and a bit of espionage. Oddly enough, […]

“Light for Life” in Dead-Starred Futures

| March 26, 2024

“Light for Life” is a microfiction story that looks at a world in which growing plants has become a difficult proposition and the sorts of trades a person needs to make to be able to grow food. It’s certainly a dystopic world, but it also reflects places in our world in which climate change has […]

“When Science and the Gods Fail” in Dead-Starred Futures

| February 29, 2024

“When Science and the Gods Fail” is a microfiction story about a robot who takes matters into their own hands when calamity strikes. However, since this is one of my darker sci-fi stories … well, I’ll let you guess at the ending, but I won’t say anything more than that. “When Science and the Gods […]