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PODCAST

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy Story Podcast (Sci-Fi | Audiobook | Short Stories)

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

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All Episodes

47:32

Martin Cahill | The Moment Before the Moment

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/11/30

Azahn had been the ninety-third Imperial Foresight to the Dynasty of Silken Flame for only three weeks when he was forcibly retired. His body had been blessed by the holy waters of the Sky-Vein River, and he had earned the named-blade Stalwart Thy Mind, Strong Thy Arm, even now strapped to his back. He had trained his entire life. © 2023 by Martin Cahill. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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64:20

Regina Kanyu Wang (translated by Rebecca F. Kuang) |...

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/11/23

How did we end up here? The humans before me had the same physiological traits as I did, yet still we had no means of communicating with one another. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Words and phrases spilled from their mouths, a torrent of sounds bleeding into one another, syllables pouring out in a drum roll, unending and uninterrupted. | © 2023 by Regina Kanyu Wang. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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32:01

Osahon Ize-Iyamu | Last Ritual of the Smoke Eaters

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/11/16

I didn’t want to eat Joshua, but he turned into dust, and the way things go in Carrucchi village is that if someone turns into ashes you inhale them till there’s nothing but smoke in your lungs and redness in your eye. Sometimes we have to eat people to make us less lonely. I didn’t want to do it, but Joshua named me as his eater, so my entire village forced me. | © 2023 by Osahon Ize-Iyamu. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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21:54

MKRNYILGLD | The CRISPR Cookbook (Chapter Two): A...

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/11/09

If you’re reading this, in a self-destructing DM, on the reverse strand of a plasmid, in the recipe binder you found in a deported neighbor’s belongings dumped on the curb, you’re no longer angry. You’re hungry. Your last co-op got raided by the Department of Homeland Biosecurity, hunting for pharmaceuticals “dangerous” to those at risk of getting pregnant. | © 2023 by MKRNYILGLD. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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68:03

A.L. Goldfuss | Where the God-Knives Tread (Part 2 of 2)

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/10/19

Every Teshiarr metropolis, town, and hamlet had featured an agora, the community centerpiece for shopping, conversing, and joining. It was where one received their daily meals, heard news from leaders, and reported to communal soul alcoves. © 2023 by A.L. Goldfuss | Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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70:16

A.L. Goldfuss | Where the God-Knives Tread (Part 1 of 2)

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/10/05

When the ship’s scanners first chirped in the dead of night, Sien figured it was another misfire: light reflecting off asteroid ice, solar radiation, space dust. But xe still slid from xir berth into the chilly, cramped cockpit, eyes bleary. © 2023 by A.L. Goldfuss | Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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43:28

Yvette Lisa Ndlovu | His Thing

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/09/28

The house was on the same street as a bakery whose only offering was penis-shaped waffles. Rufaro didn’t like American houses very much. They looked paper thin like doll houses that would lift off into the clouds if a strong wind came by. | © 2023 by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu. | Narrated by Christina Ogunade. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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73:46

John Kessel & Bruce Sterling | Money in the Bank

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/09/06

“I lined up a new gig for you,” said the Glovemaster. “All you have to do is protect one special guy.” I sat in my trailer with my Bluetooth headphones on and my laptop perched on an Amazon box. I wore a boonie hat with a militia logo. | © 2023 by John Kessel & Bruce Sterling. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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49:35

Lowry Poletti | In the Nest Beneath the...

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/08/24

Dr. Nirwater Leera only agreed to study Mr. Girat because he is supposed to be dead. Tomorrow, they will meet in person for the first time. But today, Leera wastes time by staring at a cellophane bag full of Girat’s vomit. | © 2023 by Lowry Poletti. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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49:38

Sloane Leone | The Blade and the Bloodwright

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/08/03

The soldiers slit the woman’s throat every evening before bedding down so they can sleep without worry. She mocks them but never fights the knife coming to her. Two of the men still take turns watching her in case she heals before the rest of the cadre wakes. | © 2023 by Sloane Leong. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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58:07

Isha Karki | Muna in Barish

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/07/27

Muna shuts the storeroom door as quietly as she can. Holding a just-waxed bundle of letters to her chest, she sticks out her head to check the bookshop floor. If she walks between the shelves on the far right, she can slip out unnoticed in ten heartbeats. The main door of the bookshop is propped open, the sun shining after what feels like a year of sodden clouds and sludged streets---she can’t wait to feel its warmth on her skin. | © 2023 by Isha Karki. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about

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15:37

JB Park | Six Months After All Life on Titan Died

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/07/06

I need a binge-worthy banger about the incident on Titan. Let’s start with that one picture from Titan that leaked, the one of the weird fishes in those underwater ruins dying. Let’s get going with a second-person narration of You looking at it, thinking about how extinction just happened, and your hands are trembling, and history---your memories of all the tragedies and scandals past---informs you that everyone will forget about it in a few weeks. Insert some beefy workplace drama in the

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39:49

Deborah L. Davitt | Philoctetes in Kabul

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/06/29

Call me Philoctetes. My real name doesn’t matter, and I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you what it is, anyway. Security concerns, you understand. What you need to know about me is that I was a US Army Green Beret---one of the Quiet Professionals. Usually tasked with working with the locals in counterinsurgency efforts and the like. The stuff that doesn’t---or shouldn’t---make the newspapers. | © 2023 Deborah L. Davitt. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

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39:09

Dominique Dickey | Spaceship Joyride

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/06/08

The most beautiful boy you have ever seen in your life is hot-wiring a spaceship. It’s an objectively unsexy spaceship, insofar as a spaceship can be unsexy---a six-seater built like a 2008 Honda Odyssey, a car model you’re only aware of because it continues to appear in memes. The boy is decidedly not unsexy, though. His name is Eddie, he’s your xenobiology lab partner, and he’s currently bent over the spaceship’s popped hood. | © 2023 by Dominique Dickey. Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about

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72:15

Timothy Mudie | Blood For a Stranger

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/05/25

Crunches and shrieks buffeted the Magellan LLC smartship as it plunged into Enceladus’s kilometers-thick ice crust, making their way to the subsurface ocean and the rival LuxeSpace corporation’s station situated there. Warning signals flashed through Jarrell and his fellow shipminds’ readouts, but they followed their orders and continued inward. They’d long since learned to ignore such dangers---the digitized brains of former human corporate-soldiers that controlled smartships could afford to take

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25:57

Kat Howard | One Heart, Lost and Found

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/05/04

I came to the city to find an egg. A robin’s egg, to be precise, an oval of pale, perfect blue that echoed the spring sky. Inside, not a robin, but an emerald. Inside the emerald, a wizard’s heart. He had decided he missed it, and he wanted it back. It was the usual sort of thing, or so he had assured me. His heart taken out and stored for safekeeping, a place where his enemies---and certainly there were many, jealous of his power---would never think to look. So well hidden, in fact, that he himself

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18:20

Amanda Helms | The House, the Witch, and Sugarcane...

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/04/27

The house wakes from its somnolence as the witch trudges up the path made of tarts. Through its rock-candy windows, the house scans her figure for any signs of hurt. The witch’s errands in the city make her nervous. And the house, being made of her magic and therefore of the witch, worries along with her that the wrong person might recognize her, or simply think they do. | ©2023 by Amanda Helms. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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52:13

Brian K. Hudson | Virtually Cherokee

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/04/06

What I observed was a giant anthropomorphized ribbon microphone, the type one might imagine standing in front of a radio announcer and his studio audience, selling soap in the dirty 1930s. It sauntered lazily over to an overstuffed red couch, walking on stick-figure legs that looked like they’d been hand-drawn by a young child. The large red couch sat next to a five-foot tall elephant ear plant. | ©2023 by Brian K. Hudson. Narrated by Scott Peterson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

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47:38

Benjamin Peek | The Ministry of Saturn

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/03/23

The town was not called Byzantium. The Ministry named it during the first meeting. “It’s not a colony,” Thomas James would have said if he could, but the office was hot and bright, the sun in the windows, in his eyes. He felt like he was surrounded by faceless figures even though there were only two other people in the room. The town they were talking about was located between worlds. The entrance was in the remains of Ooldea, out on the edge of The Nullarbor Plain. | ©2023 by Benjamin Peek

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27:17

Daniel H. Wilson | Crystalline

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/03/02

“Who loves you?” I ask. My daughter looks away. Doesn’t answer. I lean down and turn her to face me, resting my thumb in the dimple in her chin. It’s the same dimple her mother has. Or had. “You love me, Daddy.” “That’s right, so please listen closely,” I say. She’s only nine, but Anya’s eyes are flat and black and hard to read in the dim light of the cave. “Only you can make our family whole again.” “But. Last time. I saw . . .” ©2023 by Daniel H. Wilson. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more

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