Frank Baird Hughes
Writer
Greetings from Philadelphia. Here from my perch between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, I write social science fiction and other speculative stories. Much of my work draws inspiration from ethnography and anthropological theory as well as nature. I'm also an educator and have worked in classrooms across the entire range of K to PhD. My writing incorporates the joys and stressors of that work.Get in touch!
Work
published in 2026
"The Agentic Necklace"
Mythaxis Magazine
Spring 2026
Listen: This is a story from long ago, but well after the long ago when machines first punched holes through the sky and folk breathed new air on this world Shih Shen. It concerns a necklace bearing tales across the dry lands of the Thirst.The prime bead of this sentient necklace began as trash...
Loucervier (Hyena). Jacques-Philippe Le Bas and Jean Eric Rehn after Jean-Baptiste Oudry; from National Gallery of Art, Washington
A warm welcome to Earth’s refugees!We are the Earth Refugees Authority (ERA), a government authority whose mandate is to provide food and water, temporary shelter, medical care, and security for refugees from Earth to this world of Avunculus.At the time you left Earth, Avunculus was a nascent colony, one of 15. As your intake counselor likely informed you, 512 years have passed between the time you entered the copula on Earth and disembarked on Avunculus.Effectively, your civilization is long dead to you. If you have not already been assigned a grief counselor, one will be appointed to you during your stay. We are experiencing a shortage of trained personnel in this area; the current wait time is 301 days.
"Artifacts of the Library on Shih Shen"
Manawaker Studio's Flash Fiction Podcast
February 2026
The Library, Sebastopol; Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
The young librarians queued on the mezzanine, waiting to have their heads shaved. Matthias, a shelver of the 12th rank, directed a cluster of newly shorn acolytes to a room where key texts from the Library would be inscribed thrice onto their cerebral cortices. Although the Library was sacrosanct, the machine spirit of the Library, its genius loci, wanted a particular collection traded north before fighting made the exchange impossible.
The pigeons must have been new and ranging far afield because they tried to rest atop one of Ben’s western towers. Scarcely had the flock touched claw to steel than Ben set off a fusillade of thunderclaps from a battery of acoustic riot-control cannons. Raising squawks and a cloud of bird dust, the pigeons fled in search of quieter roosts.Rust was an indignity of age, but bird shit was preventable.
published in 2025 and earlier
"The Space Between Bodies"
Neon Dystopia
September 4, 2025
"Mount Desert Island, Maine." Jervis McEntee. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
The way I imagined it, a thousand years would pass, and we’d all be dust, but the biots would learn to build uterine tanks, birth each other, live in our cities, maybe thrive in the world we’d broiled and bombed.I was relieved when they told me biots couldn’t reproduce without a lot of outside help.“They’re not so bad,” I’d said. “Not their fault we made them that way.”
"The Oneiromantic Sheep"
Radon Journal
June 2025
"Sheep." Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
The flock and their shepherds were halfway to the Christmas-feast when the coyotl trotted out of the late afternoon haze and onto the old motorway. Low and slinky, they fanned out around the lead rams and Samuel, who was standing point of balance to push the flock forward. He called back to warn Min, his apprentice and granddaughter.
"The Path to the Cornmill"
The Colored Lens
Spring 2025
Adlaid Dunlop was at chores when the soldiers came. That time of morning was the pigs, feeding them and cleaning the pens. With her arms and nose straining at a couple of overripe slop pails, she turned her head toward the road for a sniff of fresh air and espied the greycoats marching into her mountain village of Fifty Lashings, gunmetal swaying at their shoulders.
"The Library Across the Universe Who Loved a Man"
Manawaker Studio's Flash Fiction Podcast
November 2024
The Library, Sebastopol; Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
You created me. You selected the plot of land that would house my mind on undug, terraformed Shih Shen. You drew sketches of my citadel walls and of my halls. You handed these to teams of engineers, scientists, and architects, but you were my prime mover.
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