After Dinner Conversation: Philosophy | Ethics Short Story Magazine

This magazine publishes fictional stories that explore ethical and philosophical questions in an informal manner. The purpose of these stories is to generate thoughtful discussion in an open and easily accessible manner. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The magazine is published monthly in print and electronic format. All rights reserved. After Dinner Conversation Magazine is published by After Dinner Conversation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States of America. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher. Abstracts and brief quotations may be used without permission for citations, critical…

Wow, there are a lot of stories in this issue about sex and relationships! As always, this is just luck of the draw, but it does get me thinking about the After Dinner Conversation–Themes series we released this year. In 2023 we decided to lean into the trend of professors and teachers emailing us asking for permission to use our stories in the classroom to spur discussions. As such, we did a call for guest editors willing to put together a book of ten previously published short stories from our magazine around a single theme. We published nine themed books in 2024. Our last one just came out in August and was about the ethics of remembering and examining our own life history. This magazine issue makes me realize we…

Content Disclosure: Explicit Sexual Content; Strong Language Caroline proposed we open our marriage—over a midday snack, as blasé as she possibly could have been. Truthfully, I didn’t think so much about it. At the time, I was writing a book that attempted to define and also change American culture as we know it, but writing with something like that in mind will most certainly ruin the end goal. I needed to make sure it would be a work of art that would instantly cause waves upon its publication, but unfortunately, that meant I was doing too much thinking instead of writing. Attempting to perfectly encapsulate what made this country everything it was in the modern age, I would clamber out on the streets of my city and pay people for…

Content Disclosure: Sexual Innuendo Martin and Mari married the year after graduation. Martin was a tall, thin White man with black glasses. Mari was a short, fat Black woman with white glasses. It was a mixed marriage—sort of—they both majored in mathematics, however, Martin minored in statistics, whereas Mari minored in accounting. They had a remarkable romance—they had never had a fight, not even a small one, never a disagreement, nor even raised their voices to one another. They were committed to absolute fairness and equality in all aspects of their relationship. It was a match made in Heaven, or at least the Euclidean domain equivalent of such. Martin trained as an actuary, Mari as a CPA. They loved the small suburban starter home they purchased together soon after their…

Content Disclosure: None Meg tipped back the remnants of her third cup of coffee as the notification bubble emerged at the bottom of the screen. It was from her editor Susan: Story on the asteroid is yours. Use Trifecta. Heavy fear settings. Post by 4. There was no intro, no hello or how are things, and definitely no thank you or let me know if you have any questions. Meg sat back in her chair, allowing her seat to tilt and swivel as she glared at the screen. She spun in a full circle in one direction and then did the same in the other. “Shit,” she said to herself. Not only was she hoping to avoid the asteroid story—the whole thing sent her into a bit of a spiral—but…

Content Disclosure: Mild Violence; Mild Language Often, as thirteen-year-old Nelson moseyed through the hallways of Oak Ridge Middle and Upper School, he wished he was living in the Old West. This was his first semester in regular school—his mother’s newfound fame as a bestselling author and sought-after speaker meant homeschooling was no longer a tenable option—and he frequently had the urge to tell his new teachers to call him Jasper. The halls were not halls to him but rather Main Street of yet another dusty town. Students were townsfolk; classrooms, places of business. To his left, the English room was the local store, full of odds and ends. Directly across the way, the history room was the hotel, where in a few hours he would rest his weary head after…