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
Jul 19, 2018 • 23min
Adam-Troy Castro | Greetings, Humanity! Welcome To Your Choice Of Species!
Hello, there! If you have received this telepathic mailing, you are a member of the species currently self-designated Homo sapiens, as evolved on the planet locally known as Earth, orbiting the sun locally known, for some reason that escapes us, as Sol. Most of your kind is already aware of the legal proceedings just completed in Session 3,975,216.7b of the Exalted High Tribunal of the Interstellar Commission on the Minimum Standards for Worthiness of Indigenous Cultures. | Copyright 2018 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 12, 2018 • 54min
G.V. Anderson | Waterbirds
Constable Kershaw has not uttered any overrides, nor issued a warrant to access her memory logs, but Celia understands nonetheless that she is expected to stay, to sit and answer his questions like a suspect. It surprises her, this treatment. Like she’s human. “Are you chilly, Constable? Shall I light the fire?” “Yeah, all right,” he says, removing his hat and settling into the armchair her employer always favours. Favoured. | Copyright 2018 by G.V. Anderson. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 5, 2018 • 46min
James Beamon | A Song of Home, the Organ Grinds
The monkeys are white-faced capuchins. Small things, their lean, black-furred bodies stand in stark contrast to the white tufts of their faces and shoulders. The Russians have cannons that can blast an airship apart in ten minutes and armored steam knights called kolotar, but of the many dangers I face on a warship a mile above the Black Sea, I fear the monkeys I tend most.
“Do not tarry,” a man whispers behind me. “They eat meat as well, boy.” | Copyright 2018 by James Beamon. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 28, 2018 • 56min
Emma Törzs | From the Root
When I was sixteen, I sold my teeth each Thursday, and that is how I first met the doctor. This was before his celebrated school, his fame, his dogged pursuit of bodies for his collection, back when he was very young and took his income as a dentist. While the ladies of society ate cakes until their smiles were the same gappy gray cobblestone as our London streets, my own hungry mouth was full of pearls, and I let the doctor harvest them. | Copyright 2018 by Emma Törzs. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 21, 2018 • 18min
Lina Rather | A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Lighthouse of Quvenle the Seer
Your guidebook says: Do not ask which ships the lighthouse guides. It’s the same old joke everyone makes when they come, and the sisters who care for their prophetess Quvenle will not laugh. The other pilgrims will not laugh. You will not feel any less uncomfortable, and you’ll feel silly for selling your house and all the memories left inside to buy your passage. To reach the edge of known space, you have shed it all. | Copyright 2018 by Lina Rather. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 14, 2018 • 40min
Ashok K. Banker | The Quiltbag
Octavia was at the last gate when the alarm sounded. A small army of bristling weapons encircled her. The bag shuddered in her grip, panic rippling through its weave. She gripped it tighter, reassuring it. It’s your hair, it sent tremulously. Told you to straighten it and bind it tight; they don’t like big black hair. She squeezed it tight against her side: Hush, hush. “Step aside, ma’am,” said a man in a grey uniform. | Copyright 2018 by Ashok K. Banker. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 7, 2018 • 1h 15min
Merc Fenn Wolfmoor | I Sing Against the Silent Sun
In the Principality there rule the Seven Suns. Armored gods, they marched through the universe eons ago, wreathed in subjected angels, and left footprints of conquest on galaxies. They dragged beneath them the corpse-heat from a billion burning worlds. The sixth Sun, the Gray Sun, is a god of silence. There is no voice, no mercy, no music within the Gray Sun. Beneath the Gray Sun there is only emptiness. | Copyright 2018 by A. Merc Rustad & Ada Hoffmann. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 24, 2018 • 44min
Jane Lindskold | A Green Moon Problem
No one had ever seen Tatter D’MaLeon’s face. Even those who thought she was just a legend agreed that she was always masked. That was about all anyone agreed upon. Although the female pronoun was usually applied to “her,” even Tatter’s sex was in doubt, as was her humanity, her age, and whether or not she existed. But believe or not, there was scarce a one who didn’t love the stories. Anthropologists had tried to pin down exactly when the first Tatter D’MaLeon stories had been told. | Copyright 2018 by Obsidian Tiger Inc. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 17, 2018 • 25min
Kodiak Julian | Our Side of the Door
It isn’t until I realize I can’t find my son---really can’t find him---that I think of all the other things I can’t see in the starlit orchard. “Cruz!” I yell. “Buddy! You win!” There is no moon. The trees are thick with blossoms. I hear Cruz in the tall grasses, rustling, giggling. He is six years old. This wouldn’t bother my wife. Alyssa believes that Cruz should learn to use a knife, to light a match, to walk beside a river without stumbling and drowning. | Copyright 2018 by Kodiak Julian. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 10, 2018 • 13min
Carolyn Ives Gilman | We Will Be All Right
Tomorrow is Easter, and I will have to welcome into my home the woman who is going to murder my son. I need to prepare side dishes in advance. Take a heaping bowl of injustice, mash it to a pulp, season with tears of rage, bake, and serve in a dish speckled with four-leaf clovers. The question is, should I put the rat poison in hers alone, or would it be better for all of us to go together? | Copyright 2018 by Carolyn Ives Gilman. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
