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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

36:46

Sam J. Miller | His Guns Could Not Protect Him

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/02/23

I punched my brother because he was an idiot, because he couldn’t see what I saw, how hard mom held onto the dish rag when she came out onto the deck to tell us dad had been in an accident, which is why the first thing out of his idiot mouth was “So can we go to Pizza Hut for dinner instead?” And her face had already been enough to tell me dad was in real danger, but the fact that she didn’t scold me for punching Rem made my skin prickle up like when a snowball hits the back of your head. | ©2023 by

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43:57

Carrie Vaughn | Learning Letters

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/02/02

Enid sat on the front porch of Haven’s clinic with a half a dozen books, some paper, and a small chalkboard. Three days a week, when she was in town, she taught reading to Haven’s children who wanted to learn. The last two weeks, Rose was the only kid who came to the lessons. Her household’s daughter, Rose, eight years old, stared at her while wearing a resentful frown that begged to be allowed to do anything else at all in the whole world but this. ©2023 by Carrie Vaughn. Narrated by Susan

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38:52

Jendayi Brooks-Flemister | From the Largest Crater

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/01/26

AUDIO LOG BF-0003 / 2083-14-09 13:36 / This . . . feels strange. They said that it’s healthy for those of us whose spouses take Return Missions to record our thoughts. Audio journaling, they called it. Zeli, if you saw the way these devices look, you’d have laughed at the very suggestion of it. They said other spouses who’ve done it have found it helpful for “processing difficult emotions.” It just makes me think they want to keep tabs on what I say and do, but that’s my father’s paranoia coming in

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43:13

Scott Edelman | A Man Walks Into a Bar: In Which More...

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2023/01/05

My father was so honest, people often spoke of him in cliches. For example---you know the way someone will sometimes say so-and-so was so honest they’d walk five miles to return an extra nickel they’d been given in their change? Nobody means anybody actually did that kind of thing when they say it, of course---you and I both know they’re only exaggerating for effect. Except in the case of my father. My Dad had really done that. Around the neighborhood, he was seen as so calm and understanding when

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25:03

Aimee Ogden | Mad Honey

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/12/22

The three wolves in the sun-smeared wood did not turn and run when Aran approached with his musket in hand. Wolves were supposed to run from men with guns. This was the way of the world. Sweat and necessity made his musket slide against his palms. He gripped tighter, not wanting to startle the beasts by bringing the musket to bear too quickly. Two of the beasts stood over the third, which reclined on its side in the patchy grass. He could count their rib-bones through their thin hides. His own

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31:38

L.D. Lewis | Last Stand of the E. 12th St. Pirates

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/12/01

STAND BACK DOORS CLOSING. Dee heard the musical bing-bong of the departure warning between song transitions in her headphones, and watched as the heads of workers in line ahead of her lolled back in the universal why, God gesture of commuters everywhere. There was only one freight car down the wall into the Flood District, and it was shared by all bulk service providers who came bearing gifts: maintenance workers, solar installers, grocery and package delivery, and the like. A bing-bong meant

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61:01

Kristina Ten | The Noon Witch Goes to Sound Planet

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/11/24

The Noon Witch is not a cat person. She likes the color purple, hates police procedurals, loves breakfast foods, thinks scented bath products and anchovy pizza are gross. Hates platform shoes. Hates walnuts in brownies. Used to like the electropop group all the girls at school like, until they used too much synth on their latest album, so now she hates them too. The Noon Witch isn’t an overcritical person. She’s just at that difficult age when you’re desperate to figure out who you are, so you lean

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20:16

Tania Fordwalker | Beyond the Shore

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/11/03

Nobody noticed the first few. They walked. One by one, in the beginning. Isolated instances. On every continent, mid-meal, mid-shower, mid-work, mid-fuck, right out the door of a pulled-up car in the middle of a freeway---ordinary people turned their backs on their ordinary lives and walked. They walked, shedding their hair in clumps along the way, sloughing their skin in translucent sheets to reveal pale grey beneath. On bleeding feet they walked down highways and lanes and trails, unerringly

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78:57

Debbie Urbanski | The Dirty Golden Yellow House

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/10/27

On the first floor of a Colonial-style house constructed last century out of planks of old growth cedar, a monster is dragging a woman’s husband from room to room. The specific path this monster takes will be evident the next morning from the gashes in the wood floors and the splattering of the husband’s innards upon the plaster walls. Blood on the ceiling. The woman herself is hiding in the upstairs bedroom in her closet, face buried in the nylon hems of her patterned dresses, hands to her ears, a

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80:42

Gene Doucette | Primordial Soup and Salad

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/10/06

Wallace Englund, captain of the United Space Fleet vessel Caroline, stared out his private office window at the only view he’d had for nearly four years---outer space, in all its dull glory---and wondered why he couldn’t get a decent cheeseburger. Behind him were the last three attempts at a burger made by the ship’s food replicator. The first looked okay until Wallace bit into it and discovered a soft, gelatinous interior that still tasted like a cheeseburger but whose texture made it impossible to

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31:03

Martin Cahill | Her Five Farewells

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/09/29

When the Asphodel Queen decides she’ll die to save our people from her ex-husband’s tyranny, she commands me to build her a coffin, the very first in our world’s history. Her ageless face of ivory and emerald is water on a windless day; her stillness betrays nothing of her decision. As the Senate screams in sorrow, I am held by her imperial glare, the enormity of my task sinking in like sunlight on skin. “Me, Your Majesty? I’m but a humble craftsman.” Her voice rises above the growing din, as panic

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23:29

MKRNYILGLD | The CRISPR Cookbook: A Guide to...

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/09/08

If you’re reading this---on some godforsaken imageboard, or dog-eared book page, or in encrypted base pairs sequenced off 3D-printed oligos---you’re probably grappling with a pretty tough decision right now. Breathe. I’m not judging you. I know how it goes. You tried your best but nothing’s infallible, or you slipped up one night, or he just straight-up went, your biological clock’s ticking, and hacked your birth control, knowing once it happens you won’t have a choice. The second his sperm enters

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36:25

Tobi Ogundiran | The Clockmaker and His Daughter

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/08/25

Gaza looked down at the city of Nyss, surveying his creation. He thought it was perfect. Well, almost. In the city centre stood several griots spinning a tale to a captive audience, their camels and brightly-coloured caravans sheltering in the shade of palm trees. The griots should be dusty---after all they had travelled some distance, spent several months weathering the harsh terrain of the desert. As it was they looked too pristine. | Copyright 2022 by Tobi Ogundiran. Narrated by Mirron

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62:21

Adam-Troy Castro | My Future Self, Refused

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/08/04

This much was clear. At some point in my future, I would have access to a time machine. This was a ridiculous sentence and a tragically irrelevant concern while my wife Judi was on the floor and possibly dying, but there it was: nonsense, in the presence of death. This was the central tragic absurdity of the day. My future self had materialized in the corner of the room, as solid as a blow to the face, and it was not even my most important concern. | Copyright 2022 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by

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57:39

Micah Dean Hicks | Hungry as the Mirror Bright

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/07/28

She was born a low and needful thing. Hatched down in the tannin dark, dead leaf pillowed, gnashing her mouth in the loam. Burrowing deep where shed buttons and broken boot laces lay. Alone and babbling, prowling for worm-meat and snail-slick in the wet ground rot. Fattened on maggot and grub, she hardened white and lay sarcophagal. Then a second birth, splitting free and strange in new skin. | Copyright 2022 by Micah Dean Hicks. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

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60:13

Peter Watts | Critical Mass

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/07/07

Leo Gregory is losing altitude. He coasts on the thermals of a legacy fading behind him: a documentary here, a retrospective there, some greatest-hits collection down in the corner for the dilettantes. Oh, the work has lost none of its grandeur: his buildings remain timeless, his objets d’art still serve up facets upon layers from each new angle. | Copyright 2022 by Peter Watts. Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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14:13

Jo Miles | Scientists Confirm: There’s a Black Hole...

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/06/30

The black hole in the center of your heart devours everything around you. It always has, but when you were small, your event horizon was, too: you might pull in a teddy bear, your corgi puppy’s love, your grandma’s snickerdoodles. Small fuel for a small hunger. But you didn’t stay small. In school, you pulled other children into your orbit, cool kids and nerds and loners, along with shelves of books, the faded basketballs from the gym, the classroom iguana. | Copyright 2022 by Jo Miles. Narrated by

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15:54

Susan Palwick | Picnic, with Monster

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/06/09

Freedom means walking through the park on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon, instead of being locked up in the hospital or a group home. Caleb was released from the hospital this morning, not because he’s well---he knows he’ll never be what the doctors call well---but because they had nothing left to offer him. He dutifully took their pills when he was locked up, because otherwise, they just get a court order to force you. No freedom in hospitals. | Copyright 2022 by Susan Palwick. Narrated by Stefan

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47:03

Lina Rather | The Cheesemaker and the Undying King

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/05/26

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

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29:47

Grace Chan | Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2022/05/05

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

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