LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy Story Podcast (Sci-Fi | Audiobook | Short Stories)
Adamant Press
Edited by bestselling anthologist John Joseph Adams, LIGHTSPEED is a Hugo Award-winning, critically-acclaimed digital magazine. In its pages, you'll find science fiction from near-future stories and sociological SF to far-future, star-spanning SF. Plus there's fantasy from epic sword-and-sorcery and contemporary urban tales to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folk tales. Each month, LIGHTSPEED brings you a mix of original short stories and flash fiction featuring a variety of authors, from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven't heard yet. When you read LIGHTSPEED, you'll see where science fiction and fantasy have come from, where they are now, and where they're going. The LIGHTSPEED podcast, produced by Grammy Award-winning narrator and producer Stefan Rudnicki of Skyboat Media, features original audio short stories 6-8 times a month.
Episodes
Mentioned books
May 26, 2022 • 47min
Lina Rather | The Cheesemaker and the Undying King
Tana was in a humid cave checking the rind on a round of Tomme when the messenger arrived to tell her that the war was lost and her wife was to be hanged. She took her time rewrapping the cheese before she responded. Still too soft. Another week, she estimated. The rind was a beautiful blue-black shade that would catch a maid’s eye in the market. Ruining a fine wheel wouldn’t save Renae. And she knew what the boy was going to say as soon as she heard his nervous footsteps. | Copyright 2022 by Lina Rather. Narrated by Alison Belle Bews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 5, 2022 • 30min
Grace Chan | Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu
I’d always known Calam would run. He had all the signs. A taut restlessness, body brittle as an overstretched lute string, when we stayed too long in one place. A gloom in his eyes, as we drifted through stretches of dead space. A sullen crease between the brows, whenever I tried to ask how he’d landed in that dead-end Martian workshop at seventeen. But after ten years, why now? | Copyright 2022 by Grace Chan. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 28, 2022 • 17min
Leah Cypess | The Fairy Godmother Advice Column
Dear Fairy Godmother: I work as the housekeeper for a collective of seven men. It’s a non-normative living situation, but it works for me. (I am estranged from my family, due to my stepmother being crazy.) Lately, however, I’ve been harassed by a woman trying to sell me apples. She is constantly offering me free samples and acting hurt when I don’t buy. My employers have forbidden me from letting anyone into their home, and I value their trust. But I also know there are a lot of prejudices about old women who wander around forests selling apples, and I don’t want to play into that. | Copyright 2022 by Leah Cypess. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 7, 2022 • 17min
Sandra McDonald | Advice from the Civil Temporal Defense League
Do: Be Aware of Strangers Who Ask You What Day It It. Be Aware of Strangers Who Ask You What Year It Is. Be Aware of Stunned Looking Strangers Who Murmur “Mom?” in The Squeeze-In Diner When You Stop By After School For a Chocolate Malt, Though Clearly You Have Never Given Birth to Them or to Anyone At All, Thank You Very Much. Be Aware of Strangers Wearing Clothing, Footwear, or Accessories That Seem Just A Few Years Out of Fashion or Incongruent With the Season, Climate, or Weather Forecast, or Perhaps Not Gender Appropriate Because No Woman Needs to Wear Trousers Anyway. | Copyright 2022 by Sandra McDonald. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 24, 2022 • 45min
Julianna Baggott | The Historiography of Loss
I didn’t expect the trailer to feel so small and that some of the blood would still be wet. But I must have expected some blood because I cuffed my jeans before going in. And I didn’t expect the cats would have come back---a window was open, its screen clawed loose. I didn’t expect how they pawed through the blood. Dotting the counters with their small footprints. I didn’t expect the trailer to feel so densely packed---a family had lived here, a mother, a father, a twelve-year-old son, and all of their stuff. | Copyright 2022 by Julianna Baggott. Narrated by Susan Hanfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 3, 2022 • 1h 8min
Shiv Ramdas | Bhatia, P.I.
It’s a few minutes before seven on a cold October evening and I’m just reaching into the bottom drawer of my desk for the Old Monk and my well-thumbed copy of The Big Sleep when I hear footsteps hurrying up the stairs. A new case, has to be. I sigh, give the drawer a regretful look and shut it again. I sit up, awaiting the knock. It never comes. Instead the door swings open, slamming into the wall, sending plaster chips flying everywhere. Then I see her standing in the doorway. | Copyright 2022 by Shiv Ramdas. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 24, 2022 • 33min
P H Lee | The Honest Fox, or, A Truth Shared is Not a Truth Lost
I have heard it on the rumors that when the tale-spinner’s guild gathers in its secret places, a full half of them are sworn to never tell the truth, and the other half to never tell a lie, even if it mean their life. Being one of that trade myself, I can tell you that that’s more or less the shape of it, and I tell you this so that you will know that the tale I tell you now is true, just as it happened and just as it was told to me, for I am one of the ones sworn to the truth. | Copyright 2022 by P H Lee. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 3, 2022 • 48min
Isabel J. Kim | Plausible Realities, Improbable Dreams
The multiverse broke last week. Broke is perhaps the wrong word. More accurate would be performed a state-change or found new equilibrium, but tell that to Catalina Chang, who has been popping aspirin like M&Ms ever since last Thursday, 5:54 PM, when the Unspecified Incident in the Lab superimposed all versions of reality together like a flaky scallion pancake. Aspirin still exists. So do coffee and antidepressant commercials, except on alternate Tuesdays, except when they don’t exist at all. | Copyright 2022 by Isabel J. Kim. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jan 20, 2022 • 33min
Vanessa Fogg | An Address to the Newest Disciples of the Lost Words
You are here because you ignored the words of your parents and elders, your more sensible peers. You have thrown away promising careers in sheepherding or law, trade or civil administration. You bribed your way here; you stole money for your passage; you broke promises and made new ones that you never meant to keep. You’ve sailed rivers and oceans, crossed mountains and plains, and now here you are at the edge of the desert. | Copyright 2022 by Vanessa Fogg. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jan 6, 2022 • 45min
Maria Dong | In the Beginning of Me, I Was a Bird
In the beginning of me, I was a bird. A magpie, although I’ve since been a jay and a red-tailed hawk and even a big, black crow, crying tok-tok-tok at every passerby. But the magpie was special: on my first day, I saw those flashing blue wingtips, and I was myself. And every day after, I woke up and flew to a shiny window, just to admire my plumage. Birds don’t last. Their hearts beat so fast, the seeds burn them out. | Copyright 2022 by Maria Dong. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
