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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

84:54

Jeremiah Tolbert | The Dragon of Dread Peak (Part 1)

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/10/10

When I made the decision to take up an after-school job closing trans-dimensional portals into pocket-worlds full of dangerous monsters and traps, I thought it would be easier—or at least more fun—than working the counter at a fried cockatrice joint or selling newssheets on a street corner at the crack of dawn. My team’s first outing into dungeonspace—when we defeated The Cavern of the Screaming Eye on our first try—had gone pretty good. Since then, we’d been running low threat level, poorly synced

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38:31

Merc Fenn Wolfmoor | Longing for Stars Once Lost

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/10/03

The ship dies in orbit above an abandoned world. Kitshan curses. Metal bones shudder around him as the last of the ship’s breath is sucked into vacuum. His skill at the helm and hasty patch jobs have kept the engines together, but luck is scarce out here, and his is gone. The ship is unminded. Lifeless metal, basic programming, and manual flight operations are things he can tolerate better than another consciousness wrapped against his. The viewscreen flickers and a cold vista stretches across the

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63:02

Giovanni De Feo | Ugo

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/09/26

That’s how Cynthia and Ugo met. The Easter egg hunt had just started when little Cynthia noticed a dark, short-haired nine-year-old boy, all alone, sitting by the church steps. Her first impression of him was his quietness, and the way he stared at her. When she told him (well, shouted) that it was impolite to stare at strangers, and why wasn’t he running like all others?---the dark-haired boy walked quietly over and told her that they didn’t need to hurry. | Copyright 2017 by Giovanni De Feo

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44:05

Tony Ballantyne | A Pound of Darkness, a Quarter of...

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/09/19

There was something sinister about the representative’s perfection. The oiled and combed dark hair, the even white teeth, the polished fingernails. His immaculate dark jacket and trousers, the pressed collar and cuffs of his shirt. He looked as if he’d dressed in the shop itself, not ridden up the damp valleys from Manchester on some dirty, smoking steam train, inevitably acquiring the grime and the dust from the tired upholstery of a grubby carriage. No one who had undertaken the walk down the wet

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34:14

Timothy Mudie | An Ever-Expanding Flash of Light

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/09/12

“Ladies and gentlemen, everyone you know---the entire world you know---is now dead.” Murmurs ripple through the assembled cadets. Not because they’re shocked---everyone knew what they were signing up for---but because it all happened without fanfare, a jump across light-years of space unaccompanied by any grand orchestral swell or roaring engine thrusts. The wiry guy with a shaved head standing next to Tone mutters, “Jesus, I didn’t even feel anything.” | Copyright 2017 by Timothy Mudie. Narrated by

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24:03

Jaymee Goh | The Last Cheng Beng Gift

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/09/05

There was definitely something to be said about being Mrs. Lim, even into the Underworld: something about comfort, something about privilege, something about a status quo carried into the afterlife. The previous matriarch that bore the title of Mrs. Lim had moved on long before Mrs. Lim got there, but since Mrs. Lim had not liked the domineering nature of her predecessor, this did not bother her overmuch. One of things to be said about being Mrs. Lim was that during Cheng Beng, she received many,

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31:50

Bruce McAllister | Ink

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/08/22

The American boy, whose name was David, had always collected things. Coins, minerals, seashells, insects, and even house-brand bars of soap from hotels in his family’s travels. His collections helped him know who he was when so much of life did not; and the things he collected did not make him bleed, when so much of the world—the sharp, angular things of it—did. When you bought an old coin in a store, the coin didn’t bruise your skin or scratch your fingers. | Copyright 2017 by Bruce McAllister

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58:53

Christopher East | An Inflexible Truth

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/08/15

As the commuter jet descended toward the ruins of Las Vegas, Roland Zhang craned his neck at the window, watching the skeleton towers grow nearer. Billowing clouds of dust clogged the air, and wind-blown dunes partially buried the filthy, abandoned buildings. He’d viewed footage from the far corners of the Earth, every remote hellhole imaginable, but this was the first time he’d ever seen the real deal in person. He tugged at his collar, sweating in spite of the air conditioning. | Copyright 2017 by

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36:57

Susan Palwick | The Shining Hills

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/08/08

“Are you all right?” The voice, sharp and worried, shot out of the pocket of shadow to her left. Startled, she turned and found herself blinking at a cop, one of the ones who patrolled the park on foot. In the last light of dusk, she could just make out his half-frown, his badge, the hand resting on a nightstick. He reminded her of her father. She shivered and pulled her sweatshirt more tightly around her. She should have brought warmer clothing, but she wasn’t going to be here long. | Copyright

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26:52

Ashok K. Banker | Tongue

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/08/01

Namaste, helloji, please to come in. First time visit, so nice you came. Thank you for removing gravity shoes. Please be comfortable, no formality. It is like your home only. What for I can get you? Mineral tea? Carbon Filter coffee? Gel Cola? If it is not in our supply ration, we can send Senthil to fetch from company concessionary on main asteroid. Senthil is our homebot, see, he is understanding our language fully now. Beginning time he was little confuse. Now he is fully understand. | Copyright

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58:52

Debbie Urbanski | How to Find a Portal

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/07/25

I remember as children we were warned about the women who drove the unmarked white vans that circled around our neighborhood during those long hot summers, in particular creeping slowly down the boulevard which ran alongside the park, where if you positioned yourself at the right angle, I suppose in front of the swings, you might be able to see a flash of a child’s private yellow underwear as they pumped their legs upward. | Copyright 2017 by Debbie Urbanski. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn

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48:57

E. Catherine Tobler | Mix Tapes From Dead Boys

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/07/18

The derelict hangs in Neptune’s blue orbit, a chip of shadowy flint from a distance. Up close, it’s old and rusting, myriad old systems cobbled together, and Hadley swallows her nervous and exhilarated heart a dozen times as she latches the pod to its belly, makes a hard seal at the airlock, and geckos her team inside. The exterior of their spatulae suits—hands and knees and hips—permits them freedom of movement even in zero gee. Especially in zero gee. She glances back at their pod once. |

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39:51

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro | A Touch of Heart

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/07/11

Many years ago, in Shangdong Province, there lived an unfortunate farmer by the name of Dou Zhuo. Like most of us who walk this teeming Earth, he was trapped in the circumstances that fortune had provided him. He owned a patch of land that supported crops only after backbreaking effort, and then with results that betrayed its resentment of the demands he put on it. His cucumbers were bitter, his cowpeas difficult to boil, his leeks over-pungent, his pak choi stiff, and his edible amaranth hardly

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68:26

John Grant | The Law of Conservation of Data

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/07/04

“Slots Palace,” says Suze. You all stare at her. Staring at her is worth doing. She’s moved into a new bod since coming here, and the change has been a big improvement. There wasn’t exactly anything wrong with the one she initially adopted for the pentagon’s pre-consensuality union, but she became dissatisfied with it and the dissatisfaction affected the rest of you---especially Kagura, who said it reminded him in all the wrong ways of a past consensual of his who turned out badly. | Copyright 2017

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38:55

Matthew Kressel | Love Engine Optimization

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/06/27

I rooted her system on the first day. It was the only way to be sure. Sure that she’d love me. Step by matching step, I walk her under the boughs of great elms in Prospect Park, while the slanting sun passes through the tangled mesh of leaves to dapple her smiling face. When her heart rate spikes, I know she’s excited. When it slows, she’s bored. | Copyright 2017 by Matthew Kressel. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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84:34

Elizabeth Bear | The Heart’s Filthy Lesson

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/06/20

The sun burned through the clouds around noon on the long Cytherean day, and Dharthi happened to be awake and in a position to see it. She was alone in the highlands of Ishtar Terra on a research trip, five sleeps out from Butler base camp, and---despite the nagging desire to keep traveling---had decided to take a rest break for an hour or two. Noon at this latitude was close enough to the one hundredth solar dieiversary of her birth that she’d broken out her little hoard of shelf-stable cake to

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33:46

Scott Dalrymple | Marcel Proust, Incorporated

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/06/13

It’s 12:15, and Monica West is late for our lunch. We’re meeting at a trendy Greenwich Village bistro, one of the few to survive the depression that bankrupted the City, and so many of its residents, nearly two decades ago. There are few reminders of those trying times here now. The place is packed with the young power elite, the air thick with talk of mergers and screenplays and spring designer collections. I order a glass of Cabernet and wait. | Copyright 2017 by Scott Dalrymple. Narrated by

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56:05

Shweta Narayan | World of the Three

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/06/06

Then the Bird of A Hundred and Eight Names gathered together her three new children, and she said, “You have passed our people’s tests and joined our ranks, and may leave if you wish. But leaving will take you among the Alabar, who collect salt in their bare hands and have no fear of rust, and call themselves merely people. Some among us speak slightingly of them, for their lives are short and easily ended, and they don’t protect one another as we do. You should be more wary." | Copyright 2017 by

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47:50

Susan Jane Bigelow | The Heart’s Cartography

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/05/23

Jade was the sort of backwoods girl who had a map of the countryside tattooed on her heart, and she could feel it in her bones when the pieces of her world shifted. So when the new family moved into the house across the road that late summer, she felt ripples of wrongness radiating out from them and their too-bright clothes, their bizarrely old-fashioned wood-paneled station wagon, and their rolling words. | Copyright 2017 by Susan Jane Bigelow. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your

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46:37

Kendra Fortmeyer | Octopus vs. Bear

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy... ·

2017/05/16

You woke up female this morning, so now you have a choice: do what other people want, or be a bitch. It is a thing you know without precisely knowing it. The knowledge is built into the muscle memory of this miraculous new body; it is draped across the bones like a weight. You shudder, stretching your delicate female limbs beneath the unfamiliar, sun-drenched sheets. Female for a day, you think. | Copyright 2017 by Kendra Fortmeyer. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices

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