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

Latest Episodes:

John Chu | 勢孤取和 (Influence Isolated, Make Peace) Jun 02, 2015

Show notes

Jake acquired his target as soon as he stepped into the cafeteria. For the good of the war, he had passed without a trace through forests and mountains to reconnoiter and assassinate. For the good of the subsequent peace, Jake now needed to have lunch with a random stranger and emulate a human being. | Copyright 2015 by John Chu. Narrated by Vikas Adam.

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Kate M. Galey | Emergency Repair Jun 02, 2015

Show notes

I work the tip of a flathead screwdriver into the barely visible notch along the sternum and pry up the aluminum polymer casing covering the android’s chest. My fingers burn when they make contact with the exposed skeletal components — no time to let it cool down. If I were back in the R&D lab at Hess Industrial, I’d spray the unit with a liquid nitrogen compound to get it down to temperature quickly and use therma flec gloves to handle the carbon-nanotube motors. | Copyright 2015 by Kate M. Galey. Narrated by Cassandra Campbell.

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Matthew Hughes | The Blood of a Dragon May 26, 2015

Show notes

The moment Erm Kaslo’s flesh touched the substance of the entity, he understood everything — but only for that moment. Then it turned out that everything was far, far too much for a human brain to take in all at once. He felt as if his skull was straining not to burst its seams, and as if the mind it housed was a thimble into which someone had crammed a barrel’s worth of knowledge. Just sorting all the information into gross categories would be the work of several lifetimes; subdividing it into manageable portions would take millennia. | Copyright 2015 by Matthew Hughes. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Seanan McGuire | The Myth of Rain May 19, 2015

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Female spotted owls have a call that doesn’t sound like it should come from a bird of prey. It’s high-pitched and unrealistic, like a squeaky toy that’s being squeezed just a little bit too hard. Lots of people who hear them in the woods don’t even realize that they’ve heard an owl. They assume it’s a bug, or a dog running wild through the evergreens, beloved chewy bone clenched tightly in its jaws. | Copyright 2015 by Seanan McGuire. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Annie Bellet | Goodnight Earth May 12, 2015

Show notes

Karron leaned over the rail of her boat, the Tarik, and watched the meteor shower from its reflection in the river below. The bright streaks of light looked like underwater fireflies and the Ring more like a soft blue disk, a monochromatic rainbow that ruled their lives in constant reminder of how broken the world was. “Water, water, everywhere,” she murmured to herself. | Copyright 2015 by Annie Bellet. Originally published in THE END HAS COME, edited by John Joseph Adams & Hugh Howey. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Emily Rankin.

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Merrie Haskell | Sun’s East, Moon’s West May 05, 2015

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I shot the sparrow because I was starving. Though truthfully, I was aiming at a pheasant; the silver snow and the silver birches played tricks with the light, and as if by magic, pheasant turned into sparrow. When I saw what my arrow had done, I cried with empty eyes, too dry to make tears. | Copyright 2009 by Merrie Haskell. Originally published in ELECTRIC VELOCIPEDE. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Judy Young.

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Dale Bailey | The Ministry of the Eye Apr 28, 2015

Show notes

Mornings were queues and cigarettes. Queues for the underground turnstiles and queues for the train, queues for stale bagels and queues for lukewarm coffee at the kiosk outside the station. By the time he queued up at the west gate of the pit, Alexander Gerst — tall and grizzled at forty-five, slope-shouldered and running slowly to fat — was lucky if he wasn’t already halfway through his daily ration of tobacco. | Copyright 2015 by Dale Bailey. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Jason Gurley | Quiet Town Apr 21, 2015

Show notes

She was in the laundry room, bent over a basket of Benjamin’s muddy trousers and grass-stained T-shirts and particularly odorous socks, when a rap sounded on the screen door. She didn’t hear at first; she’d noticed, bent over there, a cluster of webbed, purplish veins just below her thigh, beside her knee. She didn’t like seeing them there. They were like a slow-moving car wreck, those veins, a little darker, a little more severe each time she looked. | Copyright 2015 by Jason Gurley. Narrated by Kimberly Farr.

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Violet Allen | We’ll Be Together Forever Apr 14, 2015

Show notes

Audrey took her dinner quietly, without words beyond the obligatories (please, thank you, no, work was fine), and I obliged her the silence. We just ate, together but not together, in that way that you do when there are too many things to say. The meal in question was on the bad side of decent, days-old stir-fried noodles from the Japanese place down the street from her apartment, reheated and reconstituted into a slimy Pan-Asian gruel with the addition of fish sauce, soy sauce, sriracha, curry powder, chili powder, and neglect. | Copyright 2015 by Violet Allen. Narrated by Peter Alzado.

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Kat Howard | The Universe, Sung in Stars Apr 07, 2015

Show notes

There is music in the stars. The stars, the planets, the asteroids, the galaxies. Everything that is flung, whirling in orbit through space and time. We dwell inside an enormous, ever-changing symphony, and each of the many universes sings a song of its own. I replicate them. | Copyright 2015 by Kat Howard. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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