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
Nov 15, 2018 • 1h 16min
Matthew Hughes | Hapthorn’s Last Case
My assistant said, “You have received an invitation from Holk Xanthoulian. He is embarking on a new menu and invites, and I quote, ‘a select coterie of the cognoscenti to sample its superlative assemblage of tastes, textures, and titillations.’” “He has a flair for the alliterative,” I said. “Sadly, that is true,” my assistant said. “Shall I decline?” | Copyright 2018 by Matthew Hughes. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 8, 2018 • 51min
Theodore McCombs | Talk to Your Children About Two-Tongued Jeremy
His name was Two-Tongued Jeremy; he was a monitor lizard with a forked tongue, thick glasses, and a wild, wagging smile meant to convince children that learning could be fun, too. He came highly rated. He updated automatically. When our promising children propped their tablets against their stacks of textbooks, their glazy angelic eyes took on that ferocious determination we liked to see in ourselves. | Copyright 2018 by Theodore McCombs. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 1, 2018 • 1h 7min
Theodora Goss | Queen Lily
Once upon a time, there was a princess named Little Snowdrop, who had six brothers and four sisters. Her brothers were ravens, and her sisters were swans. Whenever they wished, they would fly around the castle on their black or white wings, but Snowdrop, not having any wings of her own, could not join them. She could only wave at them from the window of a high tower as they flew by. Her father was the King, and he loved her very much. | Copyright 2018 by Theodora Goss. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 25, 2018 • 33min
Mel Kassel | Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake
I’m fourteen the first time I bargain with the indigo snake. I find it basking on the rocks that are piled against the south side of our house, a lazily drawn line of black, like a cursive letter that has gotten away from itself. It lifts its head as I walk up. “Can you hurt Sam Mueller?” I ask. I’ve taken health class by this point, so I know that I’m not supposed to speak to snakes. There are videos about what happens to the kids who do. But they’re so poorly made, the actresses too peppy and the snakes no more than plastic-eyed puppets. Hardly sinister. | Copyright 2018 by Mel Kassel. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 18, 2018 • 33min
Molly Tanzer | The Real You™
We were getting coffee, which we used to do all the time, when Tierney told me she was thinking of having it done. “Really?” I asked, half-laughing---I didn’t think she was serious. “Why?” “What do you mean, why?” Tierney looked annoyed. “Do I need a reason? Why did you get your tattoo?” I’d hurt her feelings. I hadn’t meant to. As I tried to think of what to say I followed the line of her eyes to a woman who’d just walked in and was ordering a latte. Her face was merely a suggestion, like a Cycladic head or a more abstract Brâncuși. | Copyright 2018 by Molly Tanzer. Narrated by Pandora Kew. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 11, 2018 • 27min
Cameron Van Sant | Super-Luminous Spiral
Even though your creative fiction professor fawns over Joyce, you don’t understand the copy of ULYSSES you checked out from the library, so you hide behind it while you stare at your classmate whose skin flickers. His blue and green skin is speckled in spirals of twinkling lights. When you stare long enough, you realize the spirals spin like galaxies. Part of your brain should tell you he is abnormal, but it does not. He stands up and reads his assignment. He reads poetry. This is not a poetry class. | Copyright 2018 by Cameron Van Sant. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 4, 2018 • 1h 6min
Dale Bailey | The Horror of Party Beach
All this happened a long time ago, in the summer when Blackboard Jungle ruled the screen, “Rock Around the Clock” shot up the charts, and Hal March asked the first $64,000 Question. That was the year our friend the atom lit up the streetlights of Arco, Idaho, the world’s first atomic city. Reddy Kilowatt had slain Bert the Turtle, who’d been telling us to duck and cover for years. | Copyright 2018 by Dale Bailey. Narrated by Norm Sherman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 27, 2018 • 50min
Maria Dahvana Headley | You Pretend Like You Never Met Me, and I’ll Pretend Like I Never Met You
The worst day of Wells the Magician’s life begins pleasantly enough, with a shot of whiskey at the Lost Kingdom bar. It’s a birthday party day, and as all low-rent magic men know, birthday party days begin with booze and move laterally through coffee, cake, and whichever divorcee can be convinced to unhook her bra, whether offsite or in a back bedroom. Onward from there into (dire case) helium, (better case) weed, or (best case) coke. | Copyright 2018 by Maria Dahvana Headley. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 20, 2018 • 35min
Yoon Ha Lee | The Coin of Heart’s Desire
In an empire at the wide sea’s boundaries, where the clouds were the color of alabaster and mother-of-pearl, and the winds bore the smells of salt and faraway fruits, the young and old of every caste gathered for their empress’s funeral. In life she had gone by the name Beryl-Beneath-the-Storm. Now that she was dead, the court historians were already calling her Weave-the-Storm, for she had been a fearsome naval commander. | Copyright 2013 by Yoon Ha Lee. Originally published in ONCE UPON A TIME: NEW FAIRY TALES, edited by Paula Guran. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sep 20, 2018 • 1h
Adam-Troy Castro | The Last to Matter
Kayn knew he was being rejected by the orgynism for almost a full year before it fully expelled him. He could easily live a million years past this humiliation and never understand what he had done to deserve such a rejection from the collective that had loved him so well, for so long. He had been one of the orgynism’s founders, the man who had provided its organizing principles and solicited the first participants. | Copyright 2018 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
