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

Brian K. Hudson | Virtually Cherokee

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 10:01:31 -0000

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.

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Daniel H. Wilson | Crystalline

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 11:01:29 -0000

“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.

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Carrie Vaughn | Learning Letters

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:01:06 -0000

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 Hanfield.

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Jendayi Brooks-Flemister | From the Largest Crater

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 11:01:35 -0000

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. They said it helps to finish my recordings with “over” so that I know when I’ve gotten my thoughts out. Doesn’t that seem strange? ©2023 by Jendayi Brooks-Flemister. Narrated by Janina Edwards.

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

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 11:01:50 -0000

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 another fifteen-minute wait. | ©2022 by L.D. Lewis. Narrated by Roxanne Hernandez.

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Tania Fordwalker | Beyond the Shore

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 10:01:57 -0000

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 taking the path of least resistance to the nearest coast. They crossed the sand. The sea cooled their aching calves. Still, they walked. | Copyright 2022 by Tania Fordwalker. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Gene Doucette | Primordial Soup and Salad

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 10:01:05 -0000

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 ingest. The second was visibly worse: the left side of the burger looked like brown gravy, and not in a good way. | Copyright 2022 by Gene Doucette. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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MKRNYILGLD | The CRISPR Cookbook: A Guide to Biohacking Your Own Abortion in a Post-Roe World

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 10:01:14 -0000

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 your egg, he’s done, back to his star-studded career cranking out Science and Cell papers. | Copyright 2022 by MKRNYILGLD. Narrated by Judy Young.

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Adam-Troy Castro | My Future Self, Refused

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 10:01:03 -0000

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 Stefan Rudnicki.

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Peter Watts | Critical Mass

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 10:01:27 -0000

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.

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Jo Miles | Scientists Confirm: There’s a Black Hole in the Center of Your Heart

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 10:01:43 -0000

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 Judy Young.

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Grace Chan | Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu

Thu, 05 May 2022 10:01:23 -0000

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.

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Sandra McDonald | Advice from the Civil Temporal Defense League

Thu, 07 Apr 2022 10:01:43 -0000

Do: Be Aware of Strangers Who Ask You What Day It It. Be Aware of Strangers Who Ask You What Year It Is. Be Aware of Stunned Looking Strangers Who Murmur “Mom?” in The Squeeze-In Diner When You Stop By After School For a Chocolate Malt, Though Clearly You Have Never Given Birth to Them or to Anyone At All, Thank You Very Much. Be Aware of Strangers Wearing Clothing, Footwear, or Accessories That Seem Just A Few Years Out of Fashion or Incongruent With the Season, Climate, or Weather Forecast, or Perhaps Not Gender Appropriate Because No Woman Needs to Wear Trousers Anyway. | Copyright 2022 by Sandra McDonald. Narrated by Judy Young.

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Julianna Baggott | The Historiography of Loss

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 10:01:01 -0000

I didn’t expect the trailer to feel so small and that some of the blood would still be wet. But I must have expected some blood because I cuffed my jeans before going in. And I didn’t expect the cats would have come back---a window was open, its screen clawed loose. I didn’t expect how they pawed through the blood. Dotting the counters with their small footprints. I didn’t expect the trailer to feel so densely packed---a family had lived here, a mother, a father, a twelve-year-old son, and all of their stuff. | Copyright 2022 by Julianna Baggott. Narrated by Susan Hanfield.

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Isabel J. Kim | Plausible Realities, Improbable Dreams

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 11:01:58 -0000

The multiverse broke last week. Broke is perhaps the wrong word. More accurate would be performed a state-change or found new equilibrium, but tell that to Catalina Chang, who has been popping aspirin like M&Ms ever since last Thursday, 5:54 PM, when the Unspecified Incident in the Lab superimposed all versions of reality together like a flaky scallion pancake. Aspirin still exists. So do coffee and antidepressant commercials, except on alternate Tuesdays, except when they don’t exist at all. | Copyright 2022 by Isabel J. Kim. Narrated by Judy Young.

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Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko | Red is Our Country

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 11:01:44 -0000

After the incident with Grey, you have three hours of air left and the only possibility of resupply is two hours in the wrong direction. Burke has found references to an old terraformers’ cache---emergency water and oxygen and who knows what else---and now she’s acting like it’s foresight rather than blind luck. Like she can even be sure the supplies are still there. “We’ll find it. We’ll resupply.” | Copyright 2021 by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Timi Odueso | Cloudgazer

Thu, 25 Nov 2021 11:01:58 -0000

The nearest cloud cluster was sixty miles away, almost an hour’s journey if Bombay went at top speed. A fruit trader had seen it on her way to Sabon-Gari, floating lazily across the azure sky. “You don’t see that often,” the trader had said to the crowd, grappling her basket of mangoes. “A whole cluster, untethered, unbothered, what a sight! So you see why you have to buy my mangoes, they’ve been blessed by clouds!” | Copyright 2021 by Timi Odueso. Narrated by Christina Ogunade.

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Gene Doucette | Memoranda from the End of the World

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 10:01:17 -0000

Attached, please find your personal company-issued Breathing Apparatus, for immediate use within all corporate campus unfiltered air locations! This includes all outdoor locations, such as: the parking lots; the parking garage; the smoker’s hut; the paths between the buildings; the shuttlebus waiting area; the tennis court; and the corporate golf course. | Copyright 2021 by Gene Doucette. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Adam-Troy Castro | Judi

Thu, 02 Sep 2021 10:01:43 -0000

She sank to the ground on a world without name. We were far from home, farther than we had ever gone, maybe farther than anyone had ever gone. It was so far away, or at least so strange for some undefinable local cause, that we could have filled volumes with all the alterations in the way things worked; in the ways that light worked, in the way that time worked, in the way that mass worked. We spoke of bringing back word to the learned of my world and hers. We talked of making our names. | Copyright 2021 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas | Before the Haze Devours You

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 10:01:38 -0000

If time can stop, this is how it feels. 01:32:03 PLSS WARNING: Abnormal temperature detected in EMU. Yunuen was born to be trapped in this moment. She has been looking at the same alert in her helmet’s heads-up display for a perpetual instant that has become her whole existence. One billion kilometers away from home, she lies in the purgatory that is the red glow of this warning message. In front of her eyes, these petrified uppercase letters have lost all their meaning. Time does not exist anymore. | Copyright 2021 by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas. Narrated by Kate Orsini.

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Everdeen Mason | Miss the Zen, but Miss You More

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 10:01:11 -0000

“Welcome to Float Isolation Therapy, an intensive twelve-day experience. You will become one with the stars. During your time in your personalized FIT pod, we encourage you to explore the deepest recesses of your mind.” Bei Bei floated in mid-air and felt the strain in her lower back, but she didn’t care. The picture had to be perfect. The lighting in the egg-shaped pod was excellent. | Copyright 2021 by Everdeen Mason. Narrated by Janina Edwards.

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Endria Isa Richardson | Do Nothing

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 10:01:24 -0000

From where she lay on her back, on the grass of the Presidio in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge with all its painted trusses strung from tower to tower seemed most like a red haired boy running along a jetty. She tried, objectively, to see it as they might. A span or a wing. It connected two land masses; of course it would be seen as connective. But there was no ‘of course.’ However they perceived the thing---anchored and cabled and suspended; material hung from more material---would not be objective. | Copyright 2021 by Endria Isa Richardson. Narrated by Judy Young.

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Gene Doucette | Hypnopompic Circumstance

Thu, 06 May 2021 10:01:07 -0000

Thomas’s first encounter with the alien was terrifying. It happened in his bedroom. Thom was attempting to get to sleep at the time, after a long Friday night that had extended into early Saturday morning. Alcohol was involved, and a little pot, but nothing natively hallucinogenic, not unless someone slipped him something. Nothing that could explain the appearance of someone who wasn’t supposed to be there. | Copyright 2021 by Gene Doucette. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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An Owomoyela | The Equations of the Dead

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 10:01:50 -0000

The boyo working the transmitter doesn’t look like much, except his face is radiant. Radiant, like one of those pooka upworld adverts for neural templates. Dopamine-druggy, but lucid. Like he’s in love. Boyo also looks like he hasn’t spoken to a human in days, and like aside from the food allotments he doesn’t have a lick of capital. His clothes have that washed-while-wearing look, and they’re homespun; no fancy imported fabrics or styles. You’d walk away from this jondo in the market. | Copyright 2021 by An Owomoyela. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Claire Wrenwood | Homecoming

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 11:01:29 -0000

Only when Marlo and her mother have followed the attendants through the faux-marble foyer and into the room filled with diffusers and soft jazz and laid down on the massage tables covered in crisp, clean-smelling sheets; only when someone has placed a cool gel pack over Marlo’s eyes and set something against her skin that starts kneading, a familiar, needling motion that ignites a distant spark of recognition within her; only then does Marlo understand where her mother has taken her. She pushes back her eye mask and sits up. | Copyright 2021 by Claire Wrenwood. Narrated by Judy Young.

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Phoebe Barton | The Mathematics of Fairyland

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 11:01:09 -0000

If you had a warp drive, it would be easy. The mathematics are strange the way ley lines are strange, invisible yet divinable. You’ve pulled your way up sterner mountains, fingertip by fingertip. You’ve already compensated for stellar motion, spacetime curvature, hyperspatial congruences. You’ve scratched out hundreds of equations in cold blue hyacinth ink and piled them away in the knitted stocking under your bed, where only Berenice would think to look. Equations that would tell you exactly where to slice a hole between worlds, if only you had the right knife. | Copyright 2021 by Phoebe Barton. Narrated by Judy Young.

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D. Thomas Minton | The Memory Plague

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 11:01:26 -0000

In the beginning, we are one, and we are ignorance. Our skin is chaffed tender from the womb-sac and the exit ring. Out, we writhe blindly in the grit that cuts our softness until the dryness of the air hardens us. Slowly, receptors awaken. Muted colors curve across the night, outlining the glistening ribs of the drop chamber arcing over us like planetary rings. Instinctually, we grope through the hard stillness. Our tac-pads draw against lines of unmoving flesh, cold like a memory of interstellar vacuum. A dome of skin radiates faint warmth. | 2021 by D. Thomas Minton. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Andrew Dana Hudson | Your Mind is the Superfund Site

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 11:01:31 -0000

“Ever consider killing yourself?” the gecko said. “It’ll save you one hundred percent on your car insurance.” I was alone, but not. I tried to step on the creature, but my foot wasn’t there. I clenched my teeth, which felt like water. Alleyah’s Southie accent crackled a reminder of radio. “Tracey, are you paralucid yet? Need another poke of DMT?” I was back in high school---or somebody’s high school. The classrooms were vintage Sears catalogs and a spruce tree that grew sideways---not in a directional sense but just with a profound association with the concept of sideways. I climbed the tree and then fell. | Copyright 2020 by Andrew Dana Hudson and C. Y. Ballard. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Gene Doucette | Schrödinger’s Catastrophe [Part 2]

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 11:01:58 -0000

It took twice as long to get to the third deck from the first as it did to get to the first deck from the fifth. Alice was quite certain there was no mechanism in existence capable of adding fractional decks to the ship, and so was chalking this up to another aspect of the ongoing computer malfunction. She supposed a way to validate this was to ask that the elevator stop at, say, deck two-and-five-sixteenths, but she also didn’t want to encourage the computer’s departures from reality any more than necessary. | Copyright 2020 by Gene Doucette. Narrated by Justine Eyre.

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Gene Doucette | Schrödinger’s Catastrophe [Part 1]

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 11:01:06 -0000

Things began to go badly for the crew of the USFS Erwin around the time Dr. Marchere’s coffee mug spontaneously reassembled itself. Dr. Louis Marchere was not, at that moment, conducting some manner of experiment. Well, he was, only not on entropy and the nature of time. He was running several other tests, of the kind that make perfect sense on a scientific vessel such as the Erwin. About half of them were biological in nature, concerning how small samples of cellular material react to certain deep-space factors. | Copyright 2020 by Gene Doucette. Narrated by Justine Eyre, Stefan Rudnicki.

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Jenny Rae Rappaport | Everything and Nothing

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 10:01:19 -0000

Start with a romance: a man and a woman who are wildly and irrevocably in love with each other. Or two men. Or two women. Or two people, because life is beautiful and complex. Just know that these Lovers are important. The fate of the galaxy rests on their shoulders---because, of course, the fate of an entire portion of known space can be determined by two people in love. The laws of physics are remarkably vulnerable to the laws of love. | Copyright 2020 by Jenny Rae Rappaport. Narrated by Justine Eyre.

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Caroline M. Yoachim | The Shadow Prisoner’s Dilemma

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 10:01:53 -0000

Vivian sat at a café opposite Cass. Everything around her had a gritty, dingy quality. Even Cass looked run down, their face deeply tanned and distressingly wrinkled. They were old now, many decades past being the child that Vivian remembered. She looked down at her hands, so different than the black shadows that she’d grown accustomed to seeing during all her years as a Shade---the skin was covered in age spots and hung loose on the bones. | 2020 by Caroline M. Yoachim. Originally published in OR ELSE THE LIGHT, edited by John Joseph Adams, Christie Yant, and Hugh Howey. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Susan Hanfield.

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Caroline M. Yoachim | Shadow Prisons of the Mind

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 10:01:07 -0000

With the right overlays, the city was charming---apartment buildings done up like giant row houses, seamlessly blending Victorian and modern sensibilities, boutiques and cafés on tree-lined streets, parks bathed in sunshine. Vivian Watanabe had lived on this block, once, in a high-rise apartment painted cornflower blue with trim in teal and white. She couldn’t see it now, not the way she used to. | Copyright 2020 by Caroline M. Yoachim. Previously published in BURN THE ASHES, edited by John Joseph Adams, Christie Yant, and Hugh Howey. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Susan Hanfield.

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Adam-Troy Castro | The Author’s Wife vs. the Giant Robot

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 10:01:49 -0000

The year I turned five, my father got taken out by a giant robot. I was present and I took it very personally. You honestly don’t expect that kind of thing when you’re a kid, not even if you’ve seen the giant robot from a distance every day of your life and have been taught what random carnage the giant robot got up to. I had grown to that tender age knowing that the giant robot killed people at the rate of one a day. | Copyright 2020 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Katherine Crighton | Sing in Me, Muse

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 10:01:34 -0000

O Mother, dear Mnemosyne! It is I, Anisah, fifteenth of my line! Here is my song. Long have I waited for this, the end of my first shift; at last I am a daughter grown old enough to sing. I have sat at my post---I have looked out my mirrored window---I have logged my report with the cousins who keep the histories. But for you, my mother, on my first night’s watch, I will confirm that, port and starboard, there is nothing out my window but the black and endless sea. | Copyright 2020 by Katherine Crighton. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Caroline M. Yoachim | The Shadow Prison Experiment

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 10:01:13 -0000

The shopping district was crowded on a Sunday afternoon, and Vivian Watanabe was out running errands with her sixteen-year-old, Cass. Together they wove through throngs of shoppers wearing customized skins or the generic default. Vivian wasn’t fond of Generics---they fell into that uncanny valley between a nondescript human and a silver android. Cold and impersonal, plus it was hard to keep track of who you’ve interacted with. Narrated by Susan Hanfield.

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Ray Nayler | The Swallows of the Storm

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 10:01:53 -0000

One of the Senators cleared her throat, turned on the microphone in front of her, and began. “Would you like to tell us when you first became aware of the phenomenon, Doctor? Perhaps that would be the best place to start. We can formulate our questions from there.” The hearing was not in the main Congressional building. It was in a building on another part of Capitol Hill, in a room overdue for remodeling, with drop-ceiling panels stained by leaking pipes. But the room, however humble, was crowded. Harlan sat near the front of the room. | Copyright 2020 by Ray Nayler. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Adam-Troy Castro | The End of the World Measured in Values of N

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 10:01:03 -0000

Listen. The world ended thirty seconds ago. You greet this whisper with incredulity. After all, here you are, living and breathing. The people around you are living and breathing. You might be drinking coffee in lying in bed trying to decide whether to get up. You are reminding yourself of all the little life tasks awaiting you, things that need to be taken care of in order for you to continue going about your day. Thoughts of the apocalypse are a thousand miles away. Lunacy, they seem. | Copyright 2020 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Em North | Real Animals

Thu, 25 Jun 2020 10:01:49 -0000

The bear has been stalking the taxidermy garden for ten weeks now, ever since Raffi showed up. Sometimes it disappears for a few days or a week, but it always comes back. Prowls the perimeter, looking for weak spots. From inside the taxidermy garden, Raffi feels the bear’s presence tugging on her, as though it has become the pole of her personal compass. The taxidermy garden isn’t a real garden. It’s a ski chalet, or what used to be a ski chalet, all hand-hewn logs and wood stoves. | Copyright 2020 by Em North. Narrated by Judy Young.

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Marie Vibbert | Single Malt Spacecraft

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 10:01:29 -0000

The first time Fresia tasted scotch, it was true love. She was twenty-two. Her boyfriend had just turned twenty-one and had gotten a bottle of Glen Livet from his dad. He poured a shot for himself and for his friend, but none for Fresia. “Come on,” she said, “I want to taste it.” “Girls don’t like whisky,” he said. “Trust me, you’ll hate it.” “Let me find out for myself.” “Not for what this costs, sorry.” The friend gasped over his empty shot glass. “Oh, that’s good.” Her boyfriend put the whisky on the top of the fridge where he knew Fresia was too short to reach. | Copyright 2020 by Marie Vibbert. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Ada Hoffmann | Melting Like Metal

Thu, 21 May 2020 10:01:14 -0000

When the quantum supercomputing systems of the God called Nemesis registered the sighting of the heretic Candor Gray---already tried in absentia and slated for termination, and assigned the serial number of HA3-940QK322PF-P---Enga Afonbataw Konum of Nemesis was already waiting, as she’d waited during the last few dozen stupid assignments. Enga was an angel of Nemesis, a no-longer-human cyborg built for a singular purpose: to hunt down and destroy the Gods’ enemies. | Copyright 2020 by Ada Hoffmann. Narrated by Susan Hanfield.

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Andrew Dana Hudson | Voice of Their Generation

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 10:01:13 -0000

On their ninth rewrite of the third act of Detective Pikachu vs. Predator, it occurred to Thicket that they might just be the voice of their generation. In a fever, they swiped together the final epic speech where Detective Pikachu refutes Predator’s cynical attempts to turn him against his human partner, arguing that the Pokémon relationship with humanity was one not of servitude but of guardianship, for every Pokémon can see within each human the potential to rise above their flawed nature. | Copyright 2020 by Andrew Dana Hudson. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Veronica Roth | The Least of These

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 10:01:59 -0000

Two women, Best and Least, woke in a bright room. Best did so as if surfacing in a pool of water, her eyes wide and observant. Least woke with a start, and immediately slammed her back against the wall behind her, her arms splayed. Where are we? asked Best. Who the fuck are you? demanded Least. Now, now, came a voice from the doorway. There’s no need to be coarse. A tall, graceful Being entered the room, diaphanous fabric afloat around its slender body. | Copyright 2020 by Veronica Roth. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Adam-Troy Castro | Many Happy Returns

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 10:01:25 -0000

Gorman was on foot, crossing a frozen continent. It was not Antarctica. That was light years away, and so over. Nobody went there anymore. This continent he had chosen for his latest adventure was bigger, broader, colder, deadlier, nastier. It was not fun. Every step was an occasion for regret. He was probably going to die. He was glad he came. | Copyright 2020 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Russell Nichols | Giant Steps

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 11:01:32 -0000

The Blue Marble is shrinking; as Orion II lifts off, ripping from the grasping tentacles of Earth’s gravity, the world gets smaller, smaller, a blot on the cosmic sheet of infinite blackness, which closes in like a camera iris in a classic film’s final shot. Picture the planet’s surface, where the wonders of the old world buckle at the top of the hour under the weight of new wars; where down below, all those little people fall to their knees, desperate voices crying, crying out to their deity-du-jour for deliverance. | Copyright 2020 by Russell Nichols. Narrated by Janina Edwards.

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JT Petty | The Gamecocks

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 11:01:06 -0000

Leslie Anne Moore had known Hardy Devine since second grade, when he had bloodied her nose in a game of dodgeball and then the other boys caught him crying about it and beat him pissy. By the end of the school year, Hardy had picked a fight with each one of those boys individually and found more satisfactory results. He didn’t look Leslie-Anne square in the eye again until seventh grade when he asked her to the Boone County Middle School Homecoming Dance and she said no. | Copyright 2020 by JT Petty. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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N.K. Jemisin | The Ones Who Stay and Fight

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 11:01:32 -0000

It’s the Day of Good Birds in the city of Um-Helat! The Day is a local custom, silly and random as so many local customs can be, and yet beautiful by the same token. It has little to do with birds---a fact about which locals cheerfully laugh, because that, too, is how local customs work. It is a day of fluttering and flight regardless, where pennants of brightly dyed silk plume forth from every window, and delicate drones of copperwire and featherglass---made for this day, and flown on no other!---waft and buzz on the wind. | Copyright 2018 by N. K. Jemisin. Originally published in How Long Til Black Future Month. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Janina Edwards.

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J.R. Dawson | She’d Never Had a Name Before

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 11:01:33 -0000

I never had a sister. Okay, so I did have a sister. She just died before she was born. No one talked about her, because sometimes a family looks ahead and sees through a veil into another universe where tomorrow is a given. But then we end up not living in that reality, and it creates a terrible break in our brains. Her name was Sarah. My dad finally told me her name on the deep black road between Omaha and Chicago, on my return to college for junior year. | Copyright 2020 by J.R. Dawson. Narrated by Chloe Amen.

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Matthew Baker | A Bad Day in Utopia

Thu, 26 Dec 2019 11:01:58 -0000

She’d had a hard day. Earlier that morning she’d discovered that the game her company was developing, which was already months behind schedule for release, had a glitch somewhere in the code that caused the game to crash if the player character was equipped with diamond armor on the level with the meteors, and nobody could figure out why. It didn’t make any sense. It was a total nightmare. Anna, her boss, was mad at her for leaving dirty dishes in the kitchen again. | Copyright 2019 by Matthew Baker. Narrated by Justine Eyre.

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T.L. Huchu | Njuzu

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 11:01:07 -0000

Water looks the same everywhere. It’s only the background, lighting, and impurities that differ. I peer at the silver-gray surface of Bimha’s pond, calm and still, undisturbed by wind. It’s deep and the bottom is a black abyss. Midday here is like dawn on Earth in the middle of the Kalahari. Light shines through the transparent panelling of the pressurised geodesic dome that prevents the water boiling straight into vapour. “This is where it happened,” VaMutasa says to me on the crackling open channel. | Copyright 2018 by T.L. Huchu. Originally published in AfroSF, volume 3, edited by Ivor W. Hartmann. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Janina Edwards.

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Adam-Troy Castro | Eros Pratfalled, Or, Adrift in the Cosmos With Lasagna and Mary Steenburgen

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 11:01:10 -0000

Ellis Neider met his soulmate. The End. That’s his story. The rest is annotation. We would almost skip that part, were it not for the stone knowledge that any love story not about masturbation does require at least two characters. The object of his affection does deserve something approaching equal time. Ellis was a guy. Some men are guys, other men are dudes. Ellis was a guy. As a child, he was a little guy. As an adult, he was a bigger guy. Like most guys, he gave off the vibe that he knew the universe operated by a certain set of rules. | Copyright 2019 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Dominica Phetteplace | Her Appetite, His Heart

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 11:01:15 -0000

It came to Javi in a vision while he was at Burning Man. There was something calling out to him, and he’d hoped an ayahuasca ceremony would help him figure out what it was. It was during the ceremony that she appeared to him. Isla. In his vision, she was a temple priestess and he was laid out on a sacrificial stone table. She was literally eating his engorged heart out of his chest cavity. It wasn’t as frightening as it sounded. It was only when the vision disappeared that he felt an aching in his chest. Isla, come back. | Copyright 2019 by Dominica Phetteplace. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Ray Nayler | The Death of Fire Station 10

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 10:01:46 -0000

“The death of Fire Station 10 affected me deeply. She had not been the smartest building, but she had been a friend for as long as I can remember. She was one story tall, the sole holdover from a much earlier time in the neighborhood---a piece of cinderblock nostalgia, of high-maintenance wood and plaster from an earlier age. Her brain and smart utilities were a retrofit, cobbled onto the cinderblock building later, in a clumsy addition on the back. When she was built, buildings had no minds." | Copyright 2019 by Ray Nayler. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Eli Brown | Nesting Habits of Enceladan Jade Beetles

Thu, 10 Oct 2019 10:01:38 -0000

The pink frost coating my face shield is, evidently, my own blood. The gas jetting from the pea-sized hole in my wrist spins me around, and for a panicked moment, I wonder if I have somehow been shot. I think I am screaming, but that would alert Station, and Ocampo is silent. Evidently, I am holding my breath, only wanting to scream, like the nightmare of being on the wrong side of the airlock. Now the hissing has stopped and pain nails me to the ice. | Copyright 2019 by Eli Brown. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Jenny Rae Rappaport | The Answer That You Are Seeking

Thu, 26 Sep 2019 10:01:47 -0000

It’s the lollipops that break you. The thought of your child sucking on one during a lockdown drill carries enough cognitive dissonance that your brain has trouble actually comprehending it. You know the purpose---the methodology behind it all---lollipops in their mouths will keep preschoolers quiet, and surely the sugar can’t hurt. But the fact that your preschooler needs to know how to behave in case there’s an active shooter is so disturbing that you wish there was a way to retreat into your shell, like a defiant hermit crab. | Copyright 2019 by Jenny Rae Rappaport. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Seanan McGuire | Hello, Hello

Thu, 19 Sep 2019 10:01:16 -0000

Tasha’s avatar smiled from the screen, a little too perfect to be true. That was a choice, just like everything else about it: When we’d installed my sister’s new home system, we had instructed it to generate avatars that looked like they had escaped the uncanny valley by the skins of their teeth. It was creepy, but the alternative was even creepier. Tasha didn’t talk. Her avatar did. Having them match each other perfectly would have been . . . wrong. “So I’ll see you next week?” she asked. | Copyright 2015 by Seanan McGuire. Originally published in FUTURE VISIONS edited by Jennifer Henshaw and Allison Linn. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Justine Eyre.

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Kendra Fortmeyer | No Matter

Thu, 22 Aug 2019 10:01:51 -0000

First, I want to give you this moment. You will understand why in the end. We were walking on the trail, the way we did on Sundays: the sun-washed gully, the open air, the shadows of last night’s rain staining the earth dark and slick beneath our boots. At the river’s edge, I caught my husband’s hand and pointed at a stack of topaz-eyed turtles that had piled themselves ancient and precarious as a cairn. Here are the shapes and shades that colored my life, before. Then we looked up and saw you. | Copyright 2019 by Kendra Fortmeyer. Narrated by Justine Eyre.

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Andrew Penn Romine | Miles and Miles and Miles

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 10:01:07 -0000

Noah Stubbs eyes the large white pill pinched between his thumb and forefinger, remembering the first time he hit golf balls on the moon with Gord. “I wonder,” Gord says to him as Noah lines up on the tee, “just how far these suckers’ll really go?” THWACK! Noah swings. The little ball hurtles into the Lunar day, a pinprick of speeding light bright against the velvet sky. Long after the ball becomes invisible to the naked eye, his suit’s visor tracks its trajectory until it drops towards the ground. They parked the hopper at the top of the Virgo Escarpment. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Karen Lord | The Mysteries

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 10:01:05 -0000

“Light, dust, and water are the alchemy of the universe.” Ritual words murmured softly by myriad voices, powerful as a roar, effortless as a whisper. “I will consent to be made and unmade.” An initiate must never walk in. Many elders raise the cocooned body high upon their hands and process into the open space, to lasers alight in a pin-and-string arrangement of bright green on dark velvet. “To burn to ash and dissolve in dew.” The elders guide the still, surrendered form up and into the core of the lattice of light. “I am but dust and ashes; for me the world was created.” | 2018 by Karen Lord. Originally published in PARTICULATES edited by Nalo Hopkinson. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Yoon Ha Lee | Warhosts

Thu, 27 Jun 2019 10:01:01 -0000

The Warhosts sit in the lees of the starships while the sky grows less flushed with dawn, playing cards. At the same time, the regulators within the Red emissary and our own play their own game across a moist medium of flesh, chemical brew, and stench to determine where the next battle will be fought. We---the Purples---have been fighting the Reds for possession of this moon, jigsaw piece by slow jigsaw piece, as deliberately as a pavane or carved ice. The Reds have grown increasingly desperate. The moon has a certain strategic importance, and the Reds are very close to having to cede it entirely. | Copyright 2014 by Yoon Ha Lee. Originally published in War Stories, edited by Jaym Gates and Andrew Liptak. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Deji Bryce Olukotun | Between the Dark and the Dark

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 10:01:09 -0000

Two hundred ships moved through the stars, leaving an iridescent trail of transmission beacons in their wake. Five billion kilometers long, the beacons stretched all the way to Earth, a desiccated and shaken planet that the passengers once called home. Sometimes simple messages from the ships arrived in the data. After a long time, images came and---after an even longer time---clips of the passengers going about their lives. But the vast distances meant these clips were rare. Normally an image arriving on Earth was cause for celebration, because it meant the crew was still alive, or at least the ship’s systems were still functioning. | Copyright Deji Bryce Olukotun. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Max Gladstone | The Iron Man

Thu, 23 May 2019 10:01:43 -0000

The boy stopped playing after his Mom and Dad chained the iron man to the Kingdom’s heart. The boy used to run alone and brave through the welt within the walls, and even ranged as far as the borders of the wood. He tossed the ball his mother gave him into the sky, gold against blue with the sun behind, and laughing, caught it again. The ball purred in his grip. Sometimes he asked it questions---how to build a puppet, how to open the castle gates, how to change the color of the sky--- and it answered. | Copyright 2016 by Max Gladstone. Originally published in THE GRIMM FUTURE, edited by Erin Underwood. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Rati Mehrotra | This Way to Paradise

Thu, 09 May 2019 10:01:59 -0000

The mountains were beautiful, even though the roads that took you there were broken. Even though the whole world was broken. Tara sat on the side of the pitted road, soaking in the autumnal sun, gazing at the distant snow-capped peaks in awe. Forgetting, for the moment, the ache in her feet and the emptiness in her stomach. “The Sivalik Range, children,” said Anju, pointing at the green hills that rose around them. “The word literally means the ‘tresses of Shiva.’ Cross the valley, and you stand at the feet of Pir Panjal, the inner Himalayas.” | Copyright 2019 by Rati Mehrotra. Narrated by Justine Eyre.

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Matthew Corradi | Gundark Island, or, Tars Tarkas Needs Your Help

Thu, 18 Apr 2019 10:01:22 -0000

When Tommy Burke took me out to Gundark Island to see the alien, I wasn’t really expecting much. Maybe I was just going because I thought it would be cool to take a ride in Tommy’s canoe. Or maybe I was just hoping Tommy might turn out to be a friend. If there really was an alien there, too, then all the better. After passing a hand-painted sign that said “Please Don’t Feed the Alien,” we came to a clearing in the middle of the island where I saw a lump in the ground. At first it looked like a small boulder, except that it had a grayish-purple tint to it. Upon closer inspection it vaguely appeared to have scales. | Copyright 2019 by Matthew Corradi. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Caroline M. Yoachim | The Archronology of Love

Thu, 04 Apr 2019 10:01:30 -0000

This is a love story, the last of a series of moments when we meet. Saki Jones leaned into the viewport window until her nose nearly touched the glass, staring at the colony planet below. New Mars. From this distance, she could pretend that things were going according to plan---that M.J. was waiting for her in one of the domed cities. A shuttle would take her down to the surface and she and her lifelove would pursue their dream of studying a grand alien civilization. It had been such a beautiful plan. | 2019 by Caroline M. Yoachim. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Woody Dismukes | My Children’s Home

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 10:01:10 -0000

My children do not dream and neither do I. But that does not mean our sleep is sound. Sometimes they wake in the middle of the night, eyes wide and wet, grasping for a reason they stare into the darkness. I wish I could tell them it was a nightmare, that whatever they are feeling isn’t real, but instead I tell them to close their lids and lay lightly back into sleep, which they always do. My children are good at taking orders. | Copyright 2019 by Woody Dismukes. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Carolyn Ives Gilman | On the Shores of Ligeia

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 10:01:48 -0000

Seth Calder felt like he had barely dozed off when his alarm blared at 6:00 a.m. Level morning sunlight leaked through the blinds onto the birch and linen furniture of his Stockholm apartment. Amalia was already in the shower, so he lurched out of bed and went to check his news feed. NASA TO LAUNCH MARS CREW TODAY, said the first headline. The picture showed the ten crew members in flight suits, grinning at the camera. | Copyright 2019 by Carolyn Ives Gilman. First English language publication. Originally published in Chinese by the Future Affairs Administration. The story is inspired by “Technology and the Good Future” SF Workshop, which is jointly hosted by Future Affairs Administration (Guokr Publishing) and Ant Financial Services Group in Hangzhou, China. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Carrie Vaughn | Marlowe and Harry and the Disinclined Laboratory

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 11:01:15 -0000

Lieutenant James Marlowe watched a room full of grown, distinguished men act like young ladies at their first ball. Flustered, fidgeting, adjusting each others’ cravats, going back and forth from one table to another inspecting equipment and displays that were already perfect, they were exhausting to watch, and so he tried not to. He had only ever been to three balls in his life, before he ran off to join the Navy, and this was a reminder of why he hated them. | Copyright 2019 by Carrie Vaughn. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Matthew Baker | Life Sentence

Thu, 07 Feb 2019 11:01:22 -0000

Home. He recognizes the name of the street. But he doesn’t remember the landscape. He recognizes the address on the mailbox. But he doesn’t remember the house. His family is waiting for him on the porch. Everybody looks just as nervous as he is. He gets out. The police cruiser takes back off down the gravel drive, leaving him standing in a cloud of dust holding a baggie of possessions. | Copyright 2019 by Matthew Baker. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Tony Ballantyne | Midway

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 11:01:56 -0000

It’s not unusual to hear music in a spaceport arrival lounge. After all, if aliens didn’t enjoy music, I’d never have been able to travel. But this sounded familiar. Disturbingly familiar. Standing in line, I felt a sinking sensation as the tune wound its way to its conclusion. It was The Beatles. Millions of light years from Earth and I was listening to The Beatles. How did I feel? | Copyright 2019 by Tony Ballantyne. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Merc Fenn Wolfmoor | With Teeth Unmake the Sun

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 11:01:43 -0000

Io Destiny is a rich planet, home to three billion lives, built as a faceted gem to honor the Seven Suns. All the gods are worshiped equally here in peace. Temples caress the lower atmosphere and ships dance in celestial orbit; the Seven Suns are honored in effigy in great statues and holograms that mortals adore. Io Destiny is the only neutral world. While the gods chafe and feud with each other, hovering on the cusp of war, this planet is sacrosanct. | Copyright 2019 by A. Merc Rustad. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Seanan McGuire | Under the Sea of Stars

Thu, 27 Dec 2018 11:01:50 -0000

We have traveled here, to this most innocuous of country landscapes, to make good on a promise made by my grandfather, Carlton Whitmore, to a girl he loved in his youth. How foolish that sounds, writ down so! But it is true. Grandfather met her on the banks of the Bolton Strid, where she stood naked and confused, water drying on her skin. His notes state that she knew no modesty, and that “she was pale as the belly of a deep-river fish." Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Lizz Huerta | Mouths

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 11:01:11 -0000

Times were strange, and those who survived the collapse had a jarring mixtape of skills. Plumbers were holy men, exorcising the encampments of the demons of human waste. They brought forth, stored and dispensed the holiest sacrament of all, clean water. Warriors emerged from the strangest of places, sex workers commanded respect and were offered it gladly. | Copyright 2018 by Lizz Huerta. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Stephen Graham Jones | Moonboys

Thu, 22 Nov 2018 11:01:06 -0000

You ask how my brother died on the moon that day, but that’s the wrong question. Ask instead what he spelled with his bootprints when we first stepped down from the platform. Ask instead the one song he listened to, the whole flight there. Ask why he wanted me there instead of Jess, his wife. It’s because we used to pretend the backyard at night was the moon. That we were astronauts. That gravity was different. | Copyright 2018 by Stephen Graham Jones. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Theodore McCombs | Talk to Your Children About Two-Tongued Jeremy

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 11:01:52 -0000

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.

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Molly Tanzer | The Real You™

Thu, 18 Oct 2018 10:01:19 -0000

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.

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Dale Bailey | The Horror of Party Beach

Thu, 04 Oct 2018 10:01:09 -0000

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.

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Adam-Troy Castro | The Last to Matter

Thu, 20 Sep 2018 10:01:39 -0000

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.

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Vylar Kaftan | Her Monster, Whom She Loved

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 10:01:28 -0000

Ammuya birthed five hundred gods, followed by a monster. That was her first mistake. The gods tormented the monster because they feared it. They bound it inside a black hole, and the monster’s hatred seethed. Eventually the monster raged so fiercely he escaped the event horizon. Then he hunted down his siblings, one by one. On a silent desert planet, Ammuya cried for her children. | Copyright 2018 by Vylar Kaftan. Narrated by Pandora Kew.

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Alex Irvine | The Atonement Path

Thu, 16 Aug 2018 10:01:56 -0000

To think we used to put young criminals in jail. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to eavesdrop. Or should I say eaveswatch? What is the comparable term for using one’s visual sense in a surreptitious fashion? Dining establishments are a superb venue for such observations. But it is true, no? What good could their example do if they were shut away from public view? Ah. I am being rude. My name is Andrew Blankenship. Esquire, in the interest of completeness. | Copyright 2018 by Alex Irvine. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Sarah Grey | A Bond as Deep as Starlit Seas

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 10:01:43 -0000

Don’t sell her. The thought rises like a tide in the back of Jeri’s mind, where she’s spent three Nikutan launch cycles struggling to contain it. It leaves her breathless, drowning in guilt, and trying to hide it from the krosuta-whitened stare of the Henza abbess. This is Cleo, not a load of ore. This will break her. And how could it not break her? She’s a lumbering old Juno-class cargo beast, poor Cleo, one of the earliest models. | Copyright 2018 by Sarah Grey. Narrated by Janina Edwards.

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Adam-Troy Castro | Greetings, Humanity! Welcome To Your Choice Of Species!

Thu, 19 Jul 2018 10:01:56 -0000

Hello, there! If you have received this telepathic mailing, you are a member of the species currently self-designated Homo sapiens, as evolved on the planet locally known as Earth, orbiting the sun locally known, for some reason that escapes us, as Sol. Most of your kind is already aware of the legal proceedings just completed in Session 3,975,216.7b of the Exalted High Tribunal of the Interstellar Commission on the Minimum Standards for Worthiness of Indigenous Cultures. | Copyright 2018 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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G.V. Anderson | Waterbirds

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 10:01:46 -0000

Constable Kershaw has not uttered any overrides, nor issued a warrant to access her memory logs, but Celia understands nonetheless that she is expected to stay, to sit and answer his questions like a suspect. It surprises her, this treatment. Like she’s human. “Are you chilly, Constable? Shall I light the fire?” “Yeah, all right,” he says, removing his hat and settling into the armchair her employer always favours. Favoured. | Copyright 2018 by G.V. Anderson. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Lina Rather | A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Lighthouse of Quvenle the Seer

Thu, 21 Jun 2018 10:01:29 -0000

Your guidebook says: Do not ask which ships the lighthouse guides. It’s the same old joke everyone makes when they come, and the sisters who care for their prophetess Quvenle will not laugh. The other pilgrims will not laugh. You will not feel any less uncomfortable, and you’ll feel silly for selling your house and all the memories left inside to buy your passage. To reach the edge of known space, you have shed it all. | Copyright 2018 by Lina Rather. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Merc Fenn Wolfmoor | I Sing Against the Silent Sun

Thu, 07 Jun 2018 10:01:24 -0000

In the Principality there rule the Seven Suns. Armored gods, they marched through the universe eons ago, wreathed in subjected angels, and left footprints of conquest on galaxies. They dragged beneath them the corpse-heat from a billion burning worlds. The sixth Sun, the Gray Sun, is a god of silence. There is no voice, no mercy, no music within the Gray Sun. Beneath the Gray Sun there is only emptiness. | Copyright 2018 by A. Merc Rustad & Ada Hoffmann. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Jane Lindskold | A Green Moon Problem

Thu, 24 May 2018 10:01:16 -0000

No one had ever seen Tatter D’MaLeon’s face. Even those who thought she was just a legend agreed that she was always masked. That was about all anyone agreed upon. Although the female pronoun was usually applied to “her,” even Tatter’s sex was in doubt, as was her humanity, her age, and whether or not she existed. But believe or not, there was scarce a one who didn’t love the stories. Anthropologists had tried to pin down exactly when the first Tatter D’MaLeon stories had been told. | Copyright 2018 by Obsidian Tiger Inc. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Carolyn Ives Gilman | We Will Be All Right

Thu, 10 May 2018 10:01:51 -0000

Tomorrow is Easter, and I will have to welcome into my home the woman who is going to murder my son. I need to prepare side dishes in advance. Take a heaping bowl of injustice, mash it to a pulp, season with tears of rage, bake, and serve in a dish speckled with four-leaf clovers. The question is, should I put the rat poison in hers alone, or would it be better for all of us to go together? | Copyright 2018 by Carolyn Ives Gilman. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Steven Barnes | Mozart on the Kalahari

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 10:01:26 -0000

It took Michael “Meek” Prouder half an hour to magtube from Claremont to the Coachella Valley desert, near the Nestlé Reservoir entertainment pier. In this oasis of hot dogs, pinwheel fireworks, and whirlygigs, he could lounge and marinate himself, soak up rays as he listened to the music radiating from the dam wall, and sink under the rhythmic roar of artificial waves crashing against the artificial shore. He could walk out into the desert away from the city lights. | Copyright 2017 by Steven Barnes. Originally published in Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities, edited by Ed Finn, Joey Eschrich, and Juliet Ulman. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Timothy Mudie | The Elephants’ Crematorium

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 10:01:07 -0000

Liyana had seen elephants form into protective circles when calves were threatened, but this was different. These days, animal behavior was all but impossible to predict, of course---prey turning to predator; trees turning to stone in moonlight---but this didn’t feel random. There was intent in the way the elephants moved. The seven of them---she counted three juvenile males, two juvenile females, and two adult females---plodded into a loose formation. | Copyright 2018 by Timothy Mudie. Narrated by Nan McNamara.

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Will McIntosh | What Is Eve?

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 10:01:30 -0000

I’d never been on a quieter school bus. Kids were whispering to each other, looking scared as hell as the bus clipped stray branches from the endless forest pressing in on both sides of us. “This isn’t even a two-way road,” I murmured to Flora, the girl sitting beside me. She was chubby and had braces. “I know. Where IS this school? My parents said this would be the greatest thing ever for my college applications, but I don’t know about this.” | Copyright 2018 by Will McIntosh. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Ken Liu | Cosmic Spring

Thu, 15 Mar 2018 10:01:19 -0000

Qubits resolve and superimpose; information entangles and de-couples; consciousness re-emerges. I don’t know for how long I’ve been asleep. There’s so little energy left in the island-ship’s reservoir that I’ve been conserving as much as possible. A faint glow in the abyss, perhaps several thousand kelvins. It’s why I’ve been awakened. I change course and head straight for perhaps the last star in the universe. | Copyright 2018 by Ken Liu. First English language publication. Originally published in Chinese by the Future Affairs Administration on Weibo and WeChat as part of their “Spring Festival Gala” celebration in February 2018. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Bryan Camp | The Independence Patch

Thu, 01 Mar 2018 11:01:32 -0000

It is exam week, and Donny is 14 years 10 months 15 days 10 hours 16 minutes old. He is bored and hungry and his scalp itches and he hates school more than he’s ever hated anything before in his life. He hates exams in particular, and he hates his math exam most of all. 54 minutes and 20 seconds are left before he can leave, before he can take the damned dunce cap off and be himself again. | Copyright 2018 by Bryan Camp. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Ashok K. Banker | The Goddess Has Many Faces

Thu, 22 Feb 2018 11:01:46 -0000

Pillai expected Kali border security to be much tighter than it was. All he got was a body search that was routinely thorough, and a few old-fashioned tests and checks. It reminded him of a visit he had made as a very young rightwing Hindu activist to an Indian nuclear weapon testing facility back in 1998, after the Pokhran atomic tests. His briefings had been correct in this respect: Kali did not seem to have much use for twenty-first-century Safe Care. | Copyright 2018 by Ashok K. Banker. Narrated by Rajan Khanna.

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Bogi Takács | Four-Point Affective Calibration

Thu, 08 Feb 2018 11:01:58 -0000

Of course I can be angry. But I wear a headscarf. The moment I’m angry, you put me in your mental box labeled “TERRORIST” in neat, tidy small capitals. You store me under “Potential Danger” in the warehouse of your mind. When I cross the parking lot to the grocery store, sometimes people hit the gas, not the brakes. And this is a university town, supposedly liberal---or is it? I’m not a Muslim, but it’s not like most people around here can spot the difference. | Copyright 2018 by Bogi Takács. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Susan Jane Bigelow | The Eyes of the Flood

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 11:01:09 -0000

The river’s in flood again, and it feels like a blessing from God. You emerge from your home, built with wood and plastic scraps of ancient towns, and stand on the green hill high above the rushing waters. You remember from when you were young that the river would spill over its banks every year, submerging the low-lying land, turning fields that had lain fallow through the darkness and bitter cold of winter into lakes of rushing, wild water. And then when the waters had drained away, the corn could be planted in the deep sediments left behind. | Copyright 2018 by Susan Jane Bigelow. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Adam-Troy Castro | The Streets of Babel

Thu, 04 Jan 2018 11:01:50 -0000

The city surrounded him while he slept. He had been fleeing it for four days. Long before its walls became visible, it was a grayish smudge on the horizon, beneath which the air shimmered in silent testimony of its radiant heat. It was one of about ten living cities he knew of and he had avoided it for as long as he could, staying out of their usual migratory paths, contenting himself with the company of the small tribes who had also managed to keep out of the reach of the cities, living on roots and the small animals that fell to his bow. | Copyright 2018 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Cadwell Turnbull | A Third of the Stars of Heaven

Thu, 21 Dec 2017 11:01:36 -0000

Henrietta followed the receptionist down the hall of Schneider Hospital. The woman’s keys jangled as she walked, mixing with the echoing clicks of Henrietta’s blue church shoes. No other noises greeted them. Henrietta watched her shadow stretch itself in each unlit room, her form made large by the ultra-bright fluorescent lights of the hallway. One of the lights in the hall blinked on and off. Henrietta pinched her eyes closed to ward off dizziness. Her lower belly throbbed and she stifled a groan. | Copyright 2017 by Cadwell Turnbull. Narrated by Janina Edwards.

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Rachael K. Jones | The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant

Thu, 07 Dec 2017 11:01:00 -0000

Engineer’s meat wept and squirmed and wriggled inside her steel organ cavity, so different from the stable purr of gears and circuit boards. You couldn’t count on meat. It lulled you with its warmth, the soft give of skin, the tug of muscle, the neurotransmitter snow fluttering down from neurons to her cyborg logic center. On other days, the meat sickened, swelled inside her steel shell, pressed into her joints. Putrid yellow meat-juices dripped all over her chassis, eroding away its chrome gloss. It contaminated everything. | Copyright 2017 by Rachael K. Jones. Narrated by Claire Benedek.

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Charlie Jane Anders | Cake Baby (A Kango and Sharon Adventure)

Thu, 23 Nov 2017 11:01:40 -0000

Kango and Sharon first met at a party, one of those lavish debauch-fests where people fly in from all over the galaxy wearing sentient fetishwear that costs a whole asteroid belt. The specially grown building had melted, causing toxic fumes that killed a few hundred people, and then the canapés on the appetizer table came to life and started mutilating bystanders with their razor-sharp mandibles. The party was going according to plan, in other words. The only thing that nobody could have predicted, even the most OCD of the party-planners, was that two of the party’s minor entertainers ended up standing around near the Best Dressed Dead Guest lineup. | Copyright 2017 by Charlie Jane Anders. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Ashok K. Banker | A Vortal in Midtown

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 11:01:36 -0000

A Vortal ripped open in the heart of Manhattan. It began as a microscopic dot, invisible to the naked eye. Just hung there in midair, almost two meters above the street. People walked, drove, biked, rollerbladed, skateboarded, jogged, and one dude on his way to a Broadway audition even tap-danced by without noticing it. It grew. A day later, it was the size of a pea. A Metro bus struck it. It was still barely visible and the Sikh driver was hardly expecting to collide with a nearly invisible pea-sized obstacle suspended six feet up in the air. Narrated by Deepti Gupta.

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Adam-Troy Castro | What I Told My Little Girl About the Aliens Preparing to Grind Us Into Hamburgers

Tue, 24 Oct 2017 10:01:23 -0000

Pretty much everybody made peace with it very early on in the process. It wasn’t the most pleasant prospect in this world, or any other. But it had been explained to us in the most rational and persuasive terms imaginable, in sentences so simple that even the dumbest among us were capable of getting it; and once we swallowed that pill and incorporated it into our daily lives, it really didn’t make much of a difference in the scheme of things. We were adults about it. But that doesn’t make much of a difference when your four-year-old daughter looks up at you with her big brown eyes and asks you, “Daddy? Why are the space men going to grind us into hamburgers?” | Copyright 2017 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Merc Fenn Wolfmoor | Longing for Stars Once Lost

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 10:01:28 -0000

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 interior curve of the cockpit: the small star, bright and distilled against the void. | Copyright 2017 by A. Merc Rustad. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Giovanni De Feo | Ugo

Tue, 26 Sep 2017 10:01:19 -0000

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. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Timothy Mudie | An Ever-Expanding Flash of Light

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 10:01:23 -0000

“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 Stefan Rudnicki.

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Christopher East | An Inflexible Truth

Tue, 15 Aug 2017 10:01:30 -0000

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 Christopher East. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Ashok K. Banker | Tongue

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 10:01:27 -0000

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 2017 by Ashok K. Banker. Narrated by Pooja Batra.

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E. Catherine Tobler | Mix Tapes From Dead Boys

Tue, 18 Jul 2017 10:01:27 -0000

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. | Copyright 2017 by E. Catherine Tobler. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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John Grant | The Law of Conservation of Data

Tue, 04 Jul 2017 10:01:49 -0000

“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 by John Grant. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Matthew Kressel | Love Engine Optimization

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 10:01:37 -0000

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.

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Elizabeth Bear | The Heart’s Filthy Lesson

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 10:01:45 -0000

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 celebrate. | Copyright 2015 by Elizabeth Bear. Originally published in OLD VENUS, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Scott Dalrymple | Marcel Proust, Incorporated

Tue, 13 Jun 2017 10:01:27 -0000

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 Stefan Rudnicki.

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Susan Jane Bigelow | The Heart’s Cartography

Tue, 23 May 2017 10:01:58 -0000

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.

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Bruce McAllister | This Is for You

Tue, 09 May 2017 10:01:51 -0000

There was one girl I really liked in school when I returned to Earth, but it took me three months to say hello. I wasn’t good with human beings. We’d just gotten back from Pitipek (a red-dwarf star system “just left” of Tau Ceti, as the joke goes). My father had been stationed there for two years with the TU’s Planetary Safety Agency, and living with the slow, enigmatic, bipedal Pitipeki---especially in one of their villages, and under those endless clouds---tends to make you lose your people skills. | Copyright 2017 by Bruce McAllister. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Lina Rather | Seven Permutations of My Daughter

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 10:01:52 -0000

I’ve sought a world with a higher-than-average ratio of sunny days and a pharmaceutical industry that developed a decade before my own. Sun, of course, improves mental health. And a more developed pharmaceutical industry implies a more liberal outlook towards chemical intervention, a more specific range of treatment plans. It isn’t easy to write equations for these variables. | Copyright 2017 by Lina Rather. Narrated by Claire Benedek.

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Violet Allen | Infinite Love Engine

Tue, 04 Apr 2017 10:01:39 -0000

Beeblax beats its wings against a superlumic slurry of time and space, and the universe turns to liquid starlight in its periphery; inside rides Aria Astra---Stellar Champion of the Star Supremacy, Wielder of the Sister Ray, Spacetrotting Coolgal, and Humanity’s Last Hope---nestled within a blob of translucent pink jellymeat, and it is totally cool and only a little disgusting. | Copyright 2017 by Violet Allen. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Adam-Troy Castro | Death Every Seventy-Two Minutes

Tue, 21 Mar 2017 10:01:52 -0000

Negelein is at his workstation working on the Lafferty file when the bone spear arcs over the sea of cubicles and strikes just above his right ear, penetrating his skull with a wet crunch. Oblivion is not quite instantaneous; his neurons all fire at the moment his brain goes soggy with blood, giving him, in his last instant, an overwhelming taste of peppermint. | Copyright 2017 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Indrapramit Das | The Worldless

Tue, 07 Mar 2017 11:01:08 -0000

Every day NuTay watched the starship from their shack, selling satshine and sweet chai to wayfarers on their way to the stars. NuTay and their kin Satlyt baked an endless supply of clay cups using dirt from the vast plain of the port. NuTay and Satlyt, like all the hawkers in the shanties that surrounded the dirt road, were dunyshar, worldless—cursed to a single brown horizon. | Copyright 2017 by Indrapramit Das. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Jack Skillingstead | The Last Garden

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 11:01:06 -0000

The Surrogate walked past Casey’s window. She watched its shadow slip across the shade, then she stood and zipped up her flight suit. This was the day. No matter what. The doorbell rang. It was polite, the Surrogate. It had manners. It rang the doorbell. It said please and thank you. It had saved Casey’s life, twice, and the first time she had been grateful. | Copyright 2017 by Jack Skillingstead. Narrated by Susan Hanfield.

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Merc Fenn Wolfmoor | Later, Let’s Tear Up The Inner Sanctum

Tue, 14 Feb 2017 11:01:03 -0000

Still in the hospital. Radiation burns suck. Mom came to see me, though, which was nice. She probably had to argue with that dick of a boss she works for to let her off early. You’d think since I nearly died because superheroes were fighting above my school that I’d get some sort of benefits or medical insurance, but noooo, it’s all on me and Mom to foot the hospital bills because fights are not a novelty anymore. | Copyright 2017 by A. Merc Rustad. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Molly Tanzer | Nine-Tenths of the Law

Tue, 24 Jan 2017 11:01:12 -0000

Donna had picked up Jared’s favorite--Romano’s to go, he liked the rosemary bread and the penne rustica---and was just putting it in the oven to keep warm when they brought him in. _They_ being EMTs, after pounding urgently on the door, and _brought him in_ meaning he was on a stretcher. He had an IV in his arm and his eyes were bandaged with thick layers of gauze. | Copyright 2017 by Molly Tanzer. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Adam-Troy Castro | The Whole Crew Hates Me

Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:01:07 -0000

They hate me. They have told me this, again and again, starting from almost the first day of the mission, and continuing every day since then, carrying their hostility well outside the confines of the solar system and into the realm of bentspace. Their hatred does not quite extend to the realm of murder, at least not yet; but it does include telling me every day, in every possible way, that they find my presence intolerable. | Copyright 2017 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Violet Allen | The Venus Effect

Tue, 20 Dec 2016 11:01:36 -0000

This is 2015. A party on a westside roof, just before midnight. Some Mia or Mina or throwing it, the white girl with the jean jacket and the headband and the two-bumps-of-molly grin, flitting from friend circle to friend circle, laughing loudly and refilling any empty cup in her eyeline from a bottomless jug of sangria, Maenad Sicagi. There are three kegs, a table of wines and liquor, cake and nachos inside. | Copyright 2016 by Violet Allen. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Rich Larson | The Cyborg, the Tinman, the Merchant of Death

Tue, 06 Dec 2016 11:01:57 -0000

Sarge knew before I did, of course, but I still had to take him the transfer orders. I didn’t know how to feel on my way to the officers’ mess. I would miss my unit and I would miss my Sarge, but it was an honor, everyone said, to get shifted up to Incisive Maneuvers. To work with the Cyborg. The Tinman. The Merchant of Death. | Copyright 2016 by Rich Larson. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Alyssa Wong | Natural Skin

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 11:01:17 -0000

As I shrug on my jacket, moving across the carpet as quietly as I can, my sister Xuemei pushes her blankets aside and rolls over onto her belly with a soft murmur. “Liin jie. Where are you going?”Fuck. I glance at her across our shared bedroom, her pale skin glimmering in the near darkness. My shoes are already on; no use lying about it now. “Go back to sleep, kiddo.” | Copyright 2016 by Alyssa Wong. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Chris Kluwe | Dinosaur Killers

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 10:01:15 -0000

Another rock fell today. Jaurez, on 54b. Pretty sure that’s who it was. Maybe. Didn’t talk much during the daily vidcalls, brown eyes peering out from beneath his shaggy black hair, floating every which way in zee-g. Supposed to keep it short, but company regs don’t apply. Not anymore. His kids were on Croia Hab. Partner too. Three of thousands, now just clouds of matter joining all the other debris. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Mary Anne Mohanraj | Plea

Tue, 25 Oct 2016 10:01:22 -0000

Three families ahead of them in line. Many more behind, stretching along the beach; it had taken most of the day to get this far, and Eris’s sun was now setting, casting red-gold rays across the sand. Gwen resisted the urge to remind Jon to stand up straight. Their hosts--potential hosts--couldn’t stand up at all, and there was no reason cetaceans would even notice a human’s posture, much less care. | Copyright 2016 by Mary Anne Mohanraj. Narrated by Adenrele Ojo.

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Stephen S. Power | Fade To Red: Three Interviews About Sebold’s Mars Trilogy

Tue, 11 Oct 2016 10:01:09 -0000

I’ll be the first to admit that my homemade rover didn’t do the original justice and my color treatment was a better reflection of my Hollywood thinking than of the Martian landscape. What appealed to JPL was how I captured the tension of driving the rover across Gale, where every pebble can put years of training to the test. They were also impressed that I left my Curiosity outside Hanksville, Utah, not far from the Mars Desert Research Station, then controlled it and its cameras from a van several miles away. And they were amazed that my route for approaching the Mars Light almost perfectly mirrored their own. | Copyright 2016 by Stephen S. Power. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki; Jim Freund; Claire Benedek.

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An Owomoyela | Unauthorized Access

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 10:01:17 -0000

Prison 17 had been built long enough ago that it got next to no natural light—before all the studies that said that light was good for prison behavior and morale. And of course the rest of its district had been remodded in the past ten years, so the view from outside was a phalanx of solar panels over heat-reflecting paint, making a headache-inducing pattern of black and white. Prisons and hydroponics. Narrated by Jayme Grant.

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Sean Williams | The Lives of Riley

Tue, 13 Sep 2016 10:01:09 -0000

The sirens are growing louder. Riley doesn’t know how the peacekeepers found out---he was so careful, so sure he’d covered every trace of his existence, all of it---but that’s less important now than getting away. He cannot afford to make any more mistakes. The night seems dark and empty as he leaves the warehouse through the back door. | Copyright 2016 by Sean Williams. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Jeremiah Tolbert | Taste the Singularity at the Food Truck Circus

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 10:01:21 -0000

“There’s a stall in the new market where they cook just about anything on a stick.” These were the words, spoken by coworkers returning to the office from an early lunch, that drew me from my cubicle and onto the streets one late April afternoon. Everyone has their weaknesses, and mine has always been food. Anything? I thought. We’ll see about that. | Copyright 2016 by Jeremiah Tolbert. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Mercurio D. Rivera | Those Brighter Stars

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 10:01:29 -0000

The call came through as I paced outside the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, puffing on an e-cig and watching my breath turn to vapor in the chill. “Hello?” The bald, skeletal image of a stranger stared back at me on my phone. “Ava,” he whispered. “Oh, Ava.” It took me a few seconds to regain my composure. “Dad?” I said. | Copyright 2016 by Mercurio D. Rivera. Narrated by Claire Benedek.

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Jilly Dreadful | 5×5

Tue, 26 Jul 2016 10:01:10 -0000

Dear Scully, I should’ve been suspicious of the girl in the lab coat offering me psychic ice cream. But with you and your ponytail, the psychic ice cream just seemed so harmless. After it gave me a brain freeze that’d make the Sierra Nevada Mountains jealous, imagine my surprise when I started hearing people’s thoughts—thank science it’s only temporary! Good call on that, by the way. | Copyright 2016 by Jilly Dreadful. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki and Justine Eyre.

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Ted Kosmatka | The One Who Isn’t

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 10:01:42 -0000

It starts with light. Then heat. A slow bleed through of memory. Catchment, containment. A white-hot agony coursing through every nerve, building to a sizzling hum---and then it happens. Change of state. And what comes out the other side is something new. The woman held up the card. “What color do you see?” | Copyright 2016 by Ted Kosmatka. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Vandana Singh | Delhi

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 10:03:51 -0000

Tonight he is intensely aware of the city: its ancient stones, the flat-roofed brick houses, threads of clotheslines, wet, bright colors waving like pennants, neem tree-lined roads choked with traffic. There’s a bus going over the bridge under which he has chosen to sleep. The night smells of jasmine, and stale urine, and the dust of the cricket field on the other side of the road. A man is lighting a bidi near him: face lean, half in shadow, and he thinks he sees himself. | 2004 by Vandana Singh. Originally published in So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Uppinder Mehan and Nalo Hopkinson. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Vikas Adam.

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Steven Barnes | Fifty Shades of Grays

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 10:01:50 -0000

Terrorist. That’s what they call me, but I am something worse: both successful traitor and failed saboteur. I want to die, for all of this to be over. For my last request, I asked to have paper and pen to write my last will and testament. They won’t let me have it, forcing me to use the mindsynch. Damned Traveler tech. Maybe they’re scared I’ll ram the pen up my nose, scribble on my brain, and cheat the hangman. | Copyright 2016 by Steven Barnes. Narrated by Vikas Adam.

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Terence Taylor | Wilson’s Singularity

Tue, 21 Jun 2016 10:03:31 -0000

Wilson woke in bed, back to back with his husband, as warm morning sunlight crept around the room and settled on his face like a lazy cat. He tried to stay asleep, tried to block it out by nestling deeper under the covers, but it was no use. Now that he was awake, Unity would pop up the time and temperature in midair before him, and offer news updates and messages. The news would be filled with his name and today’s ceremony, and he’d heard enough about that for the last week. | Copyright 2016 by Terence Taylor. Narrated by Miebaka Yohannes.

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John Chu | Double Time

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:03:19 -0000

Skaters in black practice outfits swerved around Shelly. Her music was playing over the PA system. She had right of way. A scattering of figure skating fans sat in the rink’s hard, blue, plastic seats. Even to a practice session, some had brought their flags. Her mom sat near the boards and waved her US flag as though if only it had shook more fiercely last night, Shelly would have landed her triple Lutz-triple toe jump combination in the short program. | Copyright 2014 by John Chu. Originally published in Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Letty Valladares.

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Kevin Jared Hosein | Hiranyagarbha

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:02:32 -0000

Remember when I first see it while boating through the mangroves in Caroni Swamp. Was early morning—you coulda still see the flicker of a candlefly here and there. I was following a trail of dead tilapia floating belly-up in the water. Wasn’t the first time I see something like that—but not to this extent. Their lifeless bodies was washing up on the silt. Black halos of corbeaux circling overhead, like angels of death. | Copyright 2016 by Kevin Jared Hosein. Narrated by Vikas Adam.

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Nick T. Chan | Salto Mortal

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 10:03:50 -0000

Three days ago, Paul had thrown Mary onto the kitchen floor and kicked her everywhere except her face. For the first two days, the only time she left her bed was to go to the bathroom, drops of clotted blood from her insides deposited like coins in the toilet bowl. On the third day, high on oxycodone, Mary dreamed about the lucha libre. She hadn’t thought about wrestling since she’d left Mexico, but the hallucination was as bright and sharp as grief. | Copyright 2016 by Nick T. Chan. Narrated by Jeannette Godoy.

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Karin Lowachee | A Good Home

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 10:01:48 -0000

I brought him home from the VA shelter and sat him in front of the window because the doctors said he liked that. The shelter had set him in safe mode for transport until I could voice activate him again, and recalibrate, but safe mode still allowed for base functions like walking, observation, and primary speech. He seemed to like the window because he blinked once. Their kind didn’t blink ordinarily, and they never wept, so I always wondered where the sadness went. | Copyright 2016 by Karin Lowachee. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Mari Ness | Deathlight

Tue, 17 May 2016 10:01:40 -0000

Els wondered again if she should start recording her final words. If she could start recording her final words. There was cold, and then there was cold, and the Tolstar was cold. Dun had shut off every heating system that wasn’t absolutely needed to keep systems running outside of the main control room, and even that he left cold enough to let ice crystals form. Narrated by Claire Benedek.

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An Owomoyela | Three Points Masculine

Tue, 03 May 2016 10:01:51 -0000

I was serving in Baxon just north of Hescher, guard-dogging a queue of first responders heading into the riot zones, and John caught my eye. Her beard caught my eye. Some troublemaker flaunting the rules, I thought, or a guy sneaking in under cover of audacity, thinking the Womens Volunteer Corps was a good place to get laid. If that was the case, he was looking to get roughed up, and it was my job to oblige. | Copyright 2016 by An Owomoyela. Narrated by Andrea Thompson.

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Matthew Bailey | The Birth Will Take Place on a Mutually Acceptable Research Vessel

Tue, 26 Apr 2016 10:01:03 -0000

When they inform you the birth will take place on a mutually acceptable research vessel, you nod and smile as if it was your choice all along. Because smiling and nodding is what you’ve been doing since the beginning. Because this is bigger than you. Because at least this way it feels like you’re being honored and feted instead of herded and controlled. Mr. Kagawa, courteous and diplomatic by profession, does his best to make it all seem like a request. | Copyright 2016 by Matthew Bailey. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Carrie Vaughn | Origin Story

Tue, 12 Apr 2016 10:01:59 -0000

Living in Commerce City, odds are you’re going to get caught up in something someday---pinned down in the crossfire of some epic battle between heroes who can fly and villains with ray guns, held captive in a hostage crisis involving an entire football stadium, or even trapped by a simple jewelry heist or bus hijacking. When my turn came, I got stuck in a bank robbery. | Copyright 2016 by Carrie Vaughn. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Craig DeLancey | RedKing

Tue, 15 Mar 2016 10:01:40 -0000

Tain held a pistol toward me. The black gel of the handle pulsed, waiting to be gripped. “Better take this,” she said. I shook my head. “I never use them.” We sat in an unmarked police cruiser, the steering wheel packed away in the dashboard. Tain’s face was a pale shimmer in the cool blue light of the car’s entertainment system. “Your file says you are weapons trained.” “Yeah,” I said, “I got one of those cannons at home, locked in my kitchen drawer.” | Copyright 2016 by Craig DeLancey. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Caroline M. Yoachim | Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 11:01:52 -0000

You take a shortcut through the hydroponics bay on your way to work, and notice that the tomato plants are covered in tiny crawling insects that look like miniature beetles. One of the insects skitters up your leg, so you reach down and brush it off. It bites your hand. The area around the bite turns purple and swollen. You run down a long metal hallway to the Medical Clinic, grateful for the artificially generated gravity that defies the laws of physics and yet is surprisingly common in fictional space stations. | Copyright 2016 by Caroline M. Yoachim. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Sarah Pinsker | Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:01:44 -0000

The rock star washed ashore at high tide. Earlier in the day, Bay had seen something bobbing far out in the water. Remnant of a rowboat, perhaps, or something better. She waited until the tide ebbed, checked her traps and tidal pools among the rocks before walking toward the inlet where debris usually beached. All kinds of things washed up if Bay waited long enough. | Copyright 2016 by Sarah Pinsker. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Rachael K. Jones | Charlotte Incorporated

Tue, 02 Feb 2016 11:01:43 -0000

At night she pores over the corpus catalogues online: Incorporated Incorporated, Modern Anatomy, and Shoulders, Knees, & Toes. She weighs the merits of femur length and belly fat, redundant kidneys, attached earlobes, and pronated feet. Most people buy pre-configured corpi with symmetrical faces and standard organ kits, but she wants a custom build. Something completely unique. | 2016 by Rachael K. Jones. Narrated by Karyn O'Bryant.

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Keith Brooke | Beyond the Heliopause

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 11:01:42 -0000

As soon as the recorded message pinged in her peripheral vision, she accepted and listened to the call on her cochlear implant. “Suzanne, I need to see you. It’s urgent. I . . . well, I’ll tell you when I see you. All my love.” | Copyright 2016 by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown. Narrated by Bonnie MacBird.

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JY Yang | Secondhand Bodies

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 11:01:43 -0000

“Admit it, the only option left for that body is getting rid of it.” Cousin Aloysius says this as he sprawls uninvited along the length of my bed, and I hate him for that. | Copyright 2016 by JY Yang. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Aidan Doyle | Beneath the Silent Stars

Tue, 15 Dec 2015 11:01:31 -0000

Jean-Paul crawled out of storage and stretched his arms and legs. He avoided going into storage whenever he could help it, but the ship had insisted this time. “Hello, Jean-Paul,” Unattributed Source said. “I woke you as soon as we arrived within visual range of Amala.” | Copyright 2014 by Aidan Doyle. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Merc Fenn Wolfmoor | Tomorrow When We See the Sun

Tue, 01 Dec 2015 11:01:32 -0000

Wolflord (title): nomadic, nameless survivors of destroyed warships; those who did not accept ritual immolation during the Decommission. No allegiance to the Principality; outlaws. The antiquated title is self-taken from the first deserter, whose name and memory were erased upon execution; precise origin unknown. | Copyright 2015 by A. Merc Rustad. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Kameron Hurley | The Light Brigade

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 11:01:54 -0000

The war has turned us into light. Transforming us into light is the fastest way to travel from one front to another, and there are many fronts, now. I always wanted to be a hero. I always wanted to be on the side of light. It’s funny how things work out. | Copyright 2015 by Kameron Hurley. Originally published on Patreon.com/KameronHurley. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Naomi Kanakia | Here is My Thinking on a Situation That Affects Us All

Tue, 03 Nov 2015 11:01:45 -0000

I am a spaceship. My insides are oozy, and my outsides are metal. If you were to cut me open with a laser-gun, then it would not precisely hurt, but it certainly wouldn’t be a nice thing to do. | Copyright 2015 by Rahul Kanakia. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Gregory Benford | Time Shards

Tue, 20 Oct 2015 10:01:53 -0000

It had all gone very well, Brooks told himself. Very well indeed. He hurried along the side corridor, his black dress shoes clicking hollowly on the old tiles. This was one of the oldest and most rundown of the Smithsonian’s buildings; too bad they didn’t have the money to knock it down. Funding. Everything was a matter of funding. He pushed open the door of the barnlike workroom and called out, “John? How did you like the ceremony?” | Copyright 1979 by Gregory Benford. Originally published in UNIVERSE 9, edited by Terry Carr. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Maria Dahvana Headley | Solder and Seam

Tue, 06 Oct 2015 10:01:42 -0000

There was a man who built a whale out of wood. He built it in the middle of a field out in the dry country, where nobody bothered him but birds and a couple of farm cats. The whale was white, and it took two years to build. He made it out of planks from old barns, which he stole in the night. He didn’t steal them from anyone who’d miss them. Most people were gone. There were a lot of things falling down. | 2015 by Maria Dahvana Headley. | Art © 2015 by Reiko Murakami. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Megan Arkenberg | All in a Hot and Copper Sky

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 10:01:28 -0000

I have written a thousand letters to her in my head. Part of me is always writing to her, while I sit in front of the dusty yellow windows in the coffee shops on Market Street, or roll sticky cinnamon dough on my cold granite counter, or stand in the smooth gray sand at the very edge of the sea. I never wrote to her while she was alive, not even at the end, when letters might have comforted us both. | Copyright 2015 by Megan Arkenberg. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Caroline M. Yoachim | Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 10:01:25 -0000

Mei dreamed of a new Earth. She took her telescope onto the balcony of her North Philadelphia apartment and pointed it east, at the sky above the Trenton Strait, hoping for a clear view of Mars. Tonight the light pollution from Jersey Island wasn’t as bad as usual, and she was able to make out the ice caps and dark shadow of Syrtis Major. | Copyright 2015 by Caroline M. Yoachim. Narrated by Karyn O'Bryant.

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Sarah Pinsker | And We Were Left Darkling

Tue, 18 Aug 2015 10:01:24 -0000

I don’t remember her birth. My dream baby, the baby I have in my dreams, the one who crashed into my head one night and took roost. She is a day old, a week old, a year old, eight years old, three weeks old, a day old. She has fine blond hair, except when she has tight black curls. Once she had cornrows that lengthened every time I looked away. “Her hair grows faster than I can cut it,” I said to my dream family. | Copyright 2015 by Sarah Pinsker. Narrated by Judy Young.

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Chen Qiufan | The Smog Society

Tue, 04 Aug 2015 10:01:57 -0000

Lao Sun lived on the seventeenth floor facing the open street, nothing between him and the sky. If he woke in the morning to darkness, it was the smog’s doing for sure. Through the murky air outside the window, he had to squint to see the tall buildings silhouetted against the yellow-gray background like a sandy-colored relief print. The cars on the road all had their highbeams on and their horns blaring, crammed one against the other at the intersection into one big mess. | Copyright 2015 by Chen Qiufan. Translated by Ken Liu and Carmen Yiling Yan. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Taiyo Fujii | Violation of the TrueNet Security Act

Tue, 28 Jul 2015 10:01:40 -0000

The bell for the last task of the night started chiming before I got to my station. I had the office to myself, and a mug of espresso. It was time to start tracking zombies. I took the mug of espresso from the beverage table, and zigzagged through the darkened cube farm toward the one strip of floor still lit for third shift staff, only me. Zombies are orphan Internet services. They wander aimlessly, trying to execute some programmed task. | English translation copyright 2015 VIZ Media. Translated by Jim Hubbert. Japanese version copyright 2013 by Taiyo Fujii. Originally published in SF MAGAZINE in Japan. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Carrie Vaughn | Crazy Rhythm

Tue, 07 Jul 2015 10:01:35 -0000

George was about to declare his undying love for Annabell when the front of the train station fell over. Ross, the actor playing George, yelped and dashed away, his army cap flying off. Arlene — Annabell — merely put her hands on her hips and glared at the offending backdrop, a piece of dressed-up plywood that looked very much like the front of a train station, until it collapsed and revealed the braces behind it. | Copyright 2015 by Carrie Vaughn, LLC. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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AMJ Hudson | Red Run

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 10:03:04 -0000

Hinahon didn’t belong in that hotel. On that Monday, she should have been at her apartment on East Bradford Street preparing to meet Natalie at a cozy restaurant downtown. It was their two year anniversary, and she was expected in a few hours. | Copyright 2014 by AMJ Hudson. Originally published in ARDEN, VOLUME XVI. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Amal El-Mohtar | Madeleine

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 10:01:01 -0000

Madeleine remembers being a different person. It strikes her when she’s driving, threading her way through farmland, homesteads, facing down the mountains around which the road winds. She remembers being thrilled at the thought of travel, of the self she would discover over the hills and far away. She remembers laughing with friends, looking forward to things, to a future. | Copyright 2015 by Amal El-Mohtar. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Chaz Brenchley | The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red Red Coal

Tue, 16 Jun 2015 10:03:40 -0000

“Paris? Paris is ruined for me, alas. It has become a haven for Americans — or should I say a heaven? When good Americans die, perhaps they really do go to Paris. That would explain the flood.” “What about the others, Mr. Holland? The ones who aren’t good?” “Ah. Have you not heard? I thought that was common knowledge. When bad Americans die, they go to America." | Copyright 2015 Chaz Brenchley. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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K.M. Szpara | Nothing is Pixels Here

Tue, 16 Jun 2015 10:01:06 -0000

“System Error ahead. Please turn around,” the Concierge’s voice speaks over the metallic growl of my dirt bike. I rev the throttle and lean into the warm wind. My seat bounces as mud ricochets up around me. Ahead, knobby limbs and crisp leaves dissolve into broken pixels. The SimGrid mutes as the soft voice fills the space between my ears, again. “System Error ahead. Please turn around.” | Copyright 2015 by K.M. Szpara. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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RJ Edwards | Black Holes

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 10:03:43 -0000

“What do you think it would feel like to die in a black hole?” Joey asked, then immediately added, “Not being morbid.” Kant laughed. He had a loud belly laugh that made the bare bedroom feel full and bright. The mattress they were lying on had no bed frame, and, at the moment, no sheets. The only set not being used as makeshift curtains were drying in the basement. | Copyright 2012 by RJ Edwards. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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E. Saxey | Melioration

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 10:02:44 -0000

Gramophone music crackles out over the quad. “Read that last part again, Jay,” Professor Norris says. I raise my voice. “‘They’ has been used as a singular pronoun since Chaucer: whoso fyndeth hym —” A champagne cork pops, the drinkers cheer. I can’t compete. “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” “You don’t approve?” asks the Prof. “This college isn’t a theme park.” | Copyright 2015 by E. Saxey. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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

Tue, 02 Jun 2015 10:01:10 -0000

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

Tue, 02 Jun 2015 10:00:54 -0000

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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Seanan McGuire | The Myth of Rain

Tue, 19 May 2015 10:01:20 -0000

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

Tue, 12 May 2015 10:01:18 -0000

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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Jason Gurley | Quiet Town

Tue, 21 Apr 2015 10:01:06 -0000

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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Kat Howard | The Universe, Sung in Stars

Tue, 07 Apr 2015 10:01:03 -0000

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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Ursula K. Le Guin | The New Atlantis

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 10:01:16 -0000

Coming back from my Wilderness Week, I sat by an odd sort of man in the bus. For a long time we didn’t talk; I was mending stockings and he was reading. Then the bus broke down a few miles outside Gresham. Boiler trouble, the way it generally is when the driver insists on trying to go over thirty. It was a Supersonic Superscenic Deluxe Longdistance coal-burner, with Home Comfort, that means a toilet, and the seats were pretty comfortable. | Copyright 1975 by Ursula K. Le Guin. Originally published in THE NEW ATLANTIS AND OTHER NOVELLAS OF SCIENCE FICTION, edited by Robert Silverberg. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Cat Sparks | Hot Rods

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 10:01:13 -0000

The winds blow pretty regular across the dried-up lake. Traction's good — when luck's on your side you can reach three hundred KPH or faster. Harper watches the hot rods race on thick white salt so pure and bright the satellites use it for colour calibration. Harper doesn't care about souped-up hot rods. | Copyright 2015 by Cat Sparks. Narrated by Cassandra de Cuir.

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David Barr Kirtley | Veil of Ignorance

Tue, 24 Feb 2015 11:01:05 -0000

Something strange is happening to me. We’re at Conrad’s vacation house, a sprawling mansion that orbits the gas giant Hades-3. (His father owns both the house and the planet.) Conrad is in the living room watching sports. His girlfriend Alyssa is standing by the mirror in the bathroom, fixing her hair. Her friend Kat is sitting near the bay windows, watching the stars and the roiling vermeil clouds on the world below. | Copyright 2004 by David Barr Kirtley. Originally published in ALL THE RAGE THIS YEAR, edited by Keith Olexa. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Brooke Bolander | And You Shall Know Her By The Trail Of Dead

Tue, 03 Feb 2015 11:01:57 -0000

The mobster has a gun pressed to Rack’s forehead. The mobster has a god-shitting GUN pressed to her partner’s fucking forehead, and the only thing Rhye can do is watch and scream as the man smiles at her and pulls the trigger and blows Rack’s perfect brains out from between his ears. | Copyright 2015 by Brooke Bolander. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Jeremiah Tolbert | Men of Unborrowed Vision

Tue, 27 Jan 2015 11:01:22 -0000

We are not terrorists. We have not done this because we wish to terrify or instill fear. We do what we have done in order to bring the truth to everyone, a truth that burns away the lies and leaves only itself. We are no more terrorists than the invisible hand of the market is a terrorist. | Copyright 2015 by Jeremiah Tolbert. Narrated by Jamye Grant and Stefan Rudnicki.

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Theodora Goss | Beautiful Boys

Tue, 06 Jan 2015 11:01:06 -0000

You know who I’m talking about. You can see them on Sunday afternoons, in places like Knoxville, Tennessee or Flagstaff, Arizona, playing pool or with their elbows on the bar, drinking a beer before they head out into the dusty sunlight and get into their pickups, onto their motorcycles. Some of them have dogs. Some of their dogs wear bandanas around their necks. | Copyright 2012 by Theodora Goss. Originally published in ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Vandana Singh | Wake-Rider

Tue, 16 Dec 2014 11:01:00 -0000

This is a story from the time before she was famous. In the early days, she was known as Leli, or Lelia, a tease-name that had stuck. On her first mission for the revolution, she sat cramped, fists clenched with tension, waiting in the tiny scabship Tinka, out of sight in a radar deadzone. The salvage ship Gathering Moss, which she was stalking, lay like a giant, rusting silver slug in the docking bay. | Copyright 2014 by Vandana Singh. Narrated by Cassandra Campbell.

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Shale Nelson | Pay Phobetor

Tue, 02 Dec 2014 11:01:50 -0000

8:00 PM: Congratulations! Your MindPlant has been successfully updated to version 5.0. You can now enjoy enhanced versions of all of your favorite think-apps, including text, email, social networking, and GPS, all delivered directly to your brain at lightning speeds. Platinum users enjoy access to our full library of XP technology apps: movies, games, books, and TV shows you can “experience” with all five senses. | Copyright 2014 by Shale Nelson. Narrated by Judy Young.

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Annalee Newitz | Drones Don’t Kill People

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 11:01:59 -0000

I was always already a killer. There was no hazy time in my memory before I knew how to target a person’s heart or brain for clean execution. I did not develop a morbid fascination with death over time; I did not spend my childhood mutilating animals; I was not abused by a violent parent; I did not suffer social injustice until finally I broke down and turned to professional violence. From the moment I was conscious, I could kill and I did. | Copyright 2014 by Annalee Newitz. Narrated by Claire Benedek.

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Sunny Moraine | What Glistens Back

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 11:01:51 -0000

Come back. You hear the call as the lander breaks up around you. You’re aware of the entirely arbitrary concepts of up and down before you realize what’s happening, and then they’re a lot less arbitrary. Down is not so much a direction as a function of possibility, of what might happen to you, of what is happening now. You finally get down as an idea. | Copyright 2014 by Sunny Moraine. Narrated by Claire Benedek.

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Marie Vibbert | Jupiter Wrestlerama

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 10:01:21 -0000

Two-Ton Tony had a hard body, and though Karen knew the facts of life cold and backward by the time she got her chance to push him against a wall, she’d never had anything so sweet. Biceps like boulders, arms to swing on and hips to ride: a body like a playground. She’d held on to him and never quite believed her luck that he let her. | Copyright 2014 by Marie Vibbert. Narrated by Susan Hanfield.

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Daniel José Older | Dust

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 10:01:14 -0000

Very late at night, when the buzz of drill dozers has died out, I can hear her breathing. I know that sounds crazy. I don’t care. Tonight, I have to concentrate extra hard because there’s a man lying beside me; he’s snoring with the contented abandon of the well-fucked and all that panting has heavied up the air in my quarters. | Copyright 2014 by Daniel José Older. Narrated by Cassandra Campbell.

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Sam J. Miller | We Are the Cloud

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 10:01:19 -0000

Me and Case met when someone slammed his head against my door, so hard I heard it with my earphones in and my Game Boy cranked up loud. Sad music from Mega Man 2 filled my head and then there was this thud like the world stopped spinning for a second. I turned the thing off and flipped it shut, felt its warmth between my hands. Slipped it under my pillow. Copyright 2014 by Sam J. Miller. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Saundra Mitchell | Starfall

Tue, 09 Sep 2014 10:01:12 -0000

KV-62 went supernova today. Well, according to the news, it went supernova on March 14, 1592, but we’re just now finding out about it. Other things that happened on this day in history: Eli Whitney got a patent for the cotton gin, Charles I granted a royal charter to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and I was fished out of a trash can in the Union Square subway station. | Copyright 2014 by Saundra Mitchell. Narrated by Judy Young.

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E. Catherine Tobler | A Box, a Pocket, a Spaceman

Tue, 19 Aug 2014 10:01:29 -0000

The spaceman shows up on a hot summer afternoon, not in the dead of night when you’re crouched in the garden peering through a telescope that shows you the endless glories and wonders of the night sky. There’s no spaceship making a bright arc against a star-spangled sky. Just a man in a spacesuit, standing at the edge of your hammock. | Copyright 2014 by E. Catherine Tobler. Narrated by Judy Young.

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An Owomoyela | Undermarket Data

Tue, 05 Aug 2014 10:01:19 -0000

A drink arrived that Culin hadn’t ordered. No one sent drinks to the crowded annex where Culin sat, crammed in with seven other people, all with contagion bands on their sleeves and matching tattoos on their arms. Sending drinks was an affectation Culin didn’t see much in the Dead Engine at all. | Copyright 2014 by An Owomoyela. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Howard Waldrop | All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 10:01:35 -0000

It’s all over for humanity, and I’m heading east. On the seat beside me are an M1 carbine and a Thompson submachine gun. There’s a special reason for the Thompson. I traded an M16 and 200 rounds of ammo for it to a guy in Barstow. | Copyright 1980 by Howard Waldrop. Originally published in SHAYOL. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Adam-Troy Castro | The New Provisions

Tue, 01 Jul 2014 10:01:10 -0000

Phil called the toll-free number he’d been given, and after the usual twenty-minute hold time, reached a human being who explained that the tow truck driver really did have the right to haul away his car. It didn’t matter that the car had been parked in his driveway or that it had been completely paid for, and it certainly didn’t matter that it was the only form of transportation he and his wife had for getting back and forth from work. | Copyright 2014 by Adam-Troy Castro. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Tananarive Due | Like Daughter

Tue, 24 Jun 2014 10:03:00 -0000

I got the call in the middle of the week, when I came wheezing home from my uphill late-afternoon run. I didn’t recognize the voice on my computer’s answer-phone at first, although I thought it sounded like my best friend, Denise. There was no video feed, only the recording, and the words were so improbable they only confused me more. | Copyright 2000 by Tananarive Due. Originally published in DARK MATTER, edited by Sheree R. Thomas. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Emily Rankin.

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Heather Clitheroe | Cuts Both Ways

Tue, 24 Jun 2014 10:01:53 -0000

The kids know he’s coming to visit. They’ve been texting him to tell him about the snow and how cold it is, and they helpfully send links to their Amazon wish lists with pages of moon-eyed dolls and odd sets of dueling robots and creatures sold according to series. The things they like are incomprehensible to him, but they know he’s good for it. | Copyright 2014 by Heather Clitheroe. Narrated by Grover Gardner.

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Rhonda Eikamp | The Case of the Passionless Bees

Tue, 17 Jun 2014 10:06:53 -0000

Of all the strange sights I had been privy to during my acquaintanceship with that illustrious detective, none was as disturbing as seeing my old friend covered in bees. Naturally I was not concerned; his manaccanite skin was impervious to harm and I myself was at a safe distance, ensconced behind the clerestory window at Shading Coil Cottage. | Copyright 2014 by Rhonda Eikamp. Narrated by Jonathan L. Howard.

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Carrie Vaughn | Salvage

Tue, 17 Jun 2014 10:03:54 -0000

“You two ready?” I ask. “Yes, ma’am,” Gert says with forced brightness, and Rally nods quickly, a shake of motion behind her helmet’s faceplate. She’s nervous, but she always seems to be a little nervous, so I’m not too worried. | Copyright 2014 by Carrie Vaughn. Narrated by Susan Hanfield.

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N.K. Jemisin | Walking Awake

Tue, 10 Jun 2014 10:03:15 -0000

The Master who came for Enri was wearing a relatively young body. Sadie guessed it was maybe fifty years old. It was healthy and in good condition, still handsome. It could last twenty years more, easily. | Copyright 2014 by N. K. Jemisin. Narrated by Bahni Turpin.

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James Tiptree, Jr. | Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death

Tue, 10 Jun 2014 10:01:07 -0000

—I am hugely black and hopeful, I bounce on six legs along the mountains in the new warm! . . . Sing the changer, Sing the stranger! Will the changes change forever? . . . All my hums have words now. Another change! | Copyright 1973, 2001 by the Estate of Alice B. Sheldon. Previously published in THE ALIEN CONDITION and HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER. Reprinted by permission of Jeffrey D. Smith and the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Seanan McGuire | Each to Each

Tue, 03 Jun 2014 10:03:31 -0000

Condensation covers the walls, dimpling into tiny individual drops that follow an almost fractal pattern, like someone has been writing out the secrets of the universe in the most transitory medium they can find. The smell of damp steel assaults my nose as I walk the hall, uncomfortable boots clumping heavily with every step I force myself to take. The space is tight, confined, unyielding; it is like living inside a coral reef, trapped by the limits of our own necessary shells. | Copyright 2014 by Seanan McGuire. Narrated by Janis Ian.

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Kris Millering | A Word Shaped Like Bones

Tue, 03 Jun 2014 10:01:16 -0000

The dead man sits in the corner of the chamber enclosed by spaceship on all sides. He takes up a lot of space. He has been there for three days. | Copyright 2014 by Kris Millering. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Sandra McDonald | Selfie

Tue, 27 May 2014 10:01:39 -0000

If you ask me, I’m more like my mom than my dad. She and I love astronomy and the mysterious origins of the universe. Dad’s not only stuck on the past, he literally would move there if he could. Every summer he drags me along on his research trips to eras where sweaty-smelling people with wool bathing suits hole up in seaside deathtraps. | Copyright 2014 by Sandra McDonald. Narrated by Judy Young.

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Seth Dickinson | A Tank Only Fears Four Things

Tue, 06 May 2014 10:01:30 -0000

The surgery makes Tereshkova into a tank. In the war, she never showed any fear, not at Fulda, not even in the snows of Vogelsberg when the Americans dropped the first bomb. When Clinton and Yeltsin shook hands at Yalta, when the word came down to the 8th Guards Army to yield Frankfurt and withdraw to Soviet soil, Tereshkova spat into the dirt and said: “Too bad." | Copyright 2014 by Seth Dickinson. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Shaenon K. Garrity | Francisca Montoya’s Almanac of Things That Can Kill You

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 10:01:29 -0000

If you get ill after eating or touching something that didn’t make anyone else sick, you may be allergic to it. Especially if there’s a rash. Allergies are caused by your body rejecting substances it doesn’t like. There is no treatment but to avoid those substances. Fortunately, only a few types of allergies can kill you. Narrated by Roxanne Hernandez.

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Linda Nagata | Codename: Delphi

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 10:01:24 -0000

“Valdez, you need to slow down,” Karin Larsen warned, each syllable crisply pronounced into a mic. “Stay behind the seekers. If you overrun them, you’re going to walk into a booby trap.” | Copyright 2014 by Linda Nagata. Narrated by Roxanne Hernandez.

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RoboNinja | The Legend of RoboNinja

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 10:01:54 -0000

RoboNinja. A name for garbled tongues and garbled times. Interstate mudlarks peer at him from beneath grotty brows as he passes, eyes the size of headlamps reflecting the gelid glow of his visor. He once tried obscuring the light with handfuls of ash, smeared across LEDs and his shining silver carapace like the penitential marks of a sect long forgotten. It had worked for a time, until the monsoon came mocking once more. Copyright 2014 by Lightspeed Magazine. Narrated by Lex Wilson.

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Chen Qiufan | The Mao Ghost

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 10:01:02 -0000

I still remember that evening: In the heavy air, the plastic dragonflies hovered just below the eaves like miniature helicopters, drifting about slightly even though there was no wind. I came home, and Dad was already in the house but kept the lights off. The setting sun came in through cracks in the window, and his face seemed indescribably thin in the dim, yellow light, like a stranger’s. | Copyright 2014 by Chen Qiufan (translated by Ken Liu). Narrated by Alex Hyde-White.

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Sofia Samatar | How to Get Back to the Forest

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 10:01:49 -0000

“You have to puke it up,” said Cee. “You have to get down there and puke it up. I mean down past where you can feel it, you know?” She gestured earnestly at her chest. She had this old-fashioned cotton nightgown on, lace collar brilliant under the bathroom lights. Above the collar, her skin looked gray. Cee had bones like a bird. She was so beautiful. She was completely beautiful and fucked. Narrated by Emily Rankin.

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Carrie Vaughn | Harry and Marlowe and the Intrigues at the Aetherian Exhibition

Tue, 18 Feb 2014 11:01:35 -0000

Finally, Harry arrived at the Royal Albert Hall in Kensington with her mother and her older sister Victoria. Once they entered through the great gilt doorway, a friendly attendant waited to show them to the royal salon. Harry glimpsed, through another ornate archway, the main hall and the exhibition installed there. | © 2014 by Carrie Vaughn. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Jess Barber | Coma Kings

Tue, 04 Feb 2014 11:01:14 -0000

So I guess the story begins, fittingly, with someone handing me a Coma rig and saying, play me. Two a.m. and I’m at this party in somebody’s trailer out in the trashy part of town. I’m stoned out of my mind and there’s something on the television, either one of those cheesy infomercials or some sort of comedy thing making fun of those cheesy infomercials, and I’m trying to figure out which. | © 2014 by Jessica Barber. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Terry Bisson | Bears Discover Fire

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 11:01:25 -0000

I was driving with my brother, the preacher, and my nephew, the preacher’s son, on I-65 just north of Bowling Green when we got a flat. It was Sunday night and we had been to visit Mother at the Home. We were in my car. The flat caused what you might call knowing groans since, as the old-fashioned one in my family (so they tell me), I fix my own tires, and my brother is always telling me to get radials and quit buying old tires. | © 1990 by Terry Bisson. Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Jeremiah Tolbert | In the Dying Light, We Saw a Shape

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 11:01:29 -0000

.@neiltyson calls them “space diatoms,” but I say “space whales.” They’re beaching themselves on our interstellar shores. Question is: why? —Tweet by @lilmeyer, January 7, 2021 | © 2014 by Jeremiah Tolbert. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Maureen F. McHugh | Dead Fads

Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:01:00 -0000

The dead have fads. I work in Deadtown, at a bar mostly frequented by the Dead. They call me PD for Pre-Dead. The Dead tip for shit because they just aren’t all that interested. That’s what I think. Cory, one of my regulars, says it isn’t like that. The Dead are interested fine, he said. They’re just poor. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Hao Jingfang | Invisible Planets

Tue, 03 Dec 2013 11:01:49 -0000

Chichi Raha is a fascinating place, its flowers and lakes unforgettable to all visitors. There, you cannot see a single inch of exposed soil because the land is covered by vegetation: the anua grass, as fine as silk thread; the kuqin tree, tall enough to scrape the clouds; and many varieties of unnameable, unimaginably strange fruits, exuding seductive aromas. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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James Stoddard | The Battle of York

Tue, 26 Nov 2013 11:03:13 -0000

Young General Washington rode alone on his white stallion through the vast forest of Yoosemitee. His battle-axe, Valleyforge, hung glistening from the pommel of his saddle, the blood fresh-scrubbed from its edge. He had slain too many soldiers in the war against the Gauls and American Natives, and was glad to be going home. Narrated by Vikas Adam.

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Sean Williams | Death and the Hobbyist

Tue, 05 Nov 2013 11:03:03 -0000

It wasn’t enough for my mother Juliet to be crazy. Of course not. She was always going to find a uniquely inconvenient way to drive us mad along with her. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Ken Liu | Ghost Days

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 10:01:59 -0000

Ona watched her Teacher turn around. The helmetless Ms. Coron wore a dress that exposed the skin of her arms and legs in a way that she had taught the children was beautiful and natural. Intellectually, Ona understood that the frigid air in the classroom, cold enough to give her and the other children hypothermia even with brief exposure, was perfectly suited to the Teachers. But she couldn’t help shivering at the sight. The airtight heat-suit scraped over Ona’s scales, and the rustling noise reverberated loudly in her helmet. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki & Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Keffy R. M. Kehrli | HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:25:50 -0000

As late as ten years ago, a mad scientist with a dream could expect to turn a decent profit with his lesser inventions and build enough capital to put his (or her!) real plans into play. Those days are sadly over, although my father, fool that he was, claimed that they never existed. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Will McIntosh | Dry Bite

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 10:01:08 -0000

Josephine had been up all night, her heart pounding, thinking about this day, about whether she would survive it. Now, out on the road and exposed on all sides, she was so scared she could barely breathe. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Lisa Tuttle | Ragged Claws

Tue, 17 Sep 2013 10:01:58 -0000

Last night, after a short struggle, I went out. It’s like that most evenings, the slow, silent battle between my desire to stay in, with my thoughts and dreams and memories, and the need to go where other people gathered. Much as I preferred my own company, no one, these days, was paying me to keep it. I lived as frugally as I could on what I’d saved, but the price of electricity had soared recently, and I was in the red again. If I went out, there was at least the chance of making money. Narrated by Alex Hyde-White.

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Sean Williams | Face Value

Tue, 27 Aug 2013 10:03:29 -0000

News of the disappearance of inventor Felix Frey spread through the Air with electric ease. It was exactly the kind of distraction I needed. There are only so many quaint old thefts and counterfeit scams I can pluck from policing archives while my girlfriend Billie works in her studio, adjusting facial nerves, muscles, and skin cells to fit her clients’ desires. Narrated by Alex Hyde-White.

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Yoon Ha Lee | The Knight of Chains, the Deuce of Stars

Tue, 06 Aug 2013 10:03:48 -0000

The tower is a black spire upon a world whose only sun is a million starships wrecked into a mass grave. Light the color of fossils burns from the ships, and at certain hours, the sun casts shadows that mutter the names of vanquished cities and vanished civilizations. It is said that when the tower’s sun finally darkens, the universe’s clocks will stop. Narrated by Susan Hanfield.

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Ryan North | Cancer

Tue, 16 Jul 2013 10:01:14 -0000

This certifies that HELEN FRANCES LAWRENCE, sex FEMALE was born to JOHN DENISON LAWRENCE and VIRGINIA MATILDA LAWRENCE on SATURDAY at SIX TEN PM, this EIGHTEENTH day of AUGUST, 1990 at the MONTFORT HOSPITAL in OTTAWA, ONTARIO and will die of CANCER. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Benjamin Roy Lambert | Division of Labor

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 10:01:19 -0000

No one said anything, but Sull could tell they were all a little jealous when he lost his arms and legs. The arms went first, the left one during a bath and the right one a few days later, while he was being fed. Then both legs went at once, which was rare, and Sull was proud of it. He was sitting in a marketing meeting with Glenda and Farook when suddenly his legs quivered and then turned into a slightly viscous liquid that ran out of his trousers like toothpaste from a tube. The liquid ran down the drain under the table with a soft slurping sound. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Sylvia Spruck Wrigley | Alive, Alive Oh

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 10:03:13 -0000

The waves crash onto the blood-red shore, sounding just like the surf on Earth: a dark rumbling full of power. It’s been seventeen years since we left. Narrated by Sile Bermingham.

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Paul Park | Get a Grip

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:03:10 -0000

Here’s how I found out: I was in a bar called Dave’s on East 14th Street. It wasn’t my usual place. I had been dating a woman in Stuyvesant Town. One night after I left, I still wasn’t eager to go home. So on my way I stopped in. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Maria Dahvana Headley | The Traditional

Tue, 07 May 2013 10:01:35 -0000

By your first anniversary, the world’s stopped making paper, and so you can’t give your boyfriend the traditional gift. You never would have anyway, regardless of circumstances. You’re not that kind of girl. You pride yourself on your original sin. It’s the hot you trade in. Narrated by Kathe Mazur.

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Hugh Howey | Deep Blood Kettle

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:03:20 -0000

They say the sky will fill with dust in a bad way if we don’t do something soon. My teacher Mrs. Sandy says that if the meteor hits, it’ll put up enough dirt to block the sun, and everything will turn cold for a long, long while. When I came home and told Pa about this, he got angry. He called Mrs. Sandy a bad word, said she was teaching us nonsense. I told him the dinosaurs died because of dust in the sky. Pa said there weren’t no such thing as dinosaurs. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Kathleen Ann Goonan | A Love Supreme

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:03:24 -0000

Ellie Santos-Smith grabs a clean white coat as spring dawn brightens her worn Oriental rug and streaks with sun her only luxury, a grand piano. She runs a comb through her jet-black hair, cut short because she thinks that makes her look older. Her smooth skin glows with 20-ish health, though she is 47. Narrated by Claire Bloom.

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Angélica Gorodischer | The Sense of the Circle

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:01:29 -0000

Have you seen those houses on Oroño Boulevard, especially the ones that face east, those dry, cold, serious, heavy houses, with grilles but without gardens, maybe at the most a tile patio paved like the sidewalk? In one of those houses lives Ciro Vázquez Leiva, Cirito. Narrated by Roxanne Hernandez.

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Rich Larson | Let’s Take This Viral

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 10:01:38 -0000

Default hadn’t been down in the nocturns for some time, probably half an orbit, but he had just dissolved the geneshare contract with his now-ex-lover and needed to get completely fucking perforated to take his mind off things. His lift was full of revelers all laughing and widecasting the same synthesized whalesong from Old Old Earth. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Carrie Vaughn | Harry and Marlowe Escape the Mechanical Siege of Paris

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 11:01:23 -0000

Harry looked out the window and thought: At least I saw Paris one more time before it was destroyed in the bombardment. Narrated by Gabrielle De Cuir.

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Robert Reed | Eight Episodes

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:01:10 -0000

With minimal fanfare and next to no audience, Invasion of a Small World debuted in the summer of 2016, and after a brief and disappointing run, the series was deservedly shelved. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Cherie Priest | Addison Howell and the Clockroach

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 11:03:26 -0000

Addison Howell didn’t so much arrive in the town of Humptulips as appear there sometime around 1875. He had money, which set him apart from everybody else—because everybody else was working for the logging company, and mostly they didn’t have a pot to piss in, as my Daddy put it. Narrated by Emily Rankin.

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Matthew Kressel | The Sounds of Old Earth

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 11:03:30 -0000

Earth has grown quiet since everyone’s shipped off to the new one. I walk New Paltz’s empty streets with an ox-mask tight about my face. An acidic rain mists my body, and a thick fog obscures the vac-sealed storefronts. Last week they hauled the Pyramids of Giza to New Earth. The week before, Stonehenge. The week before that, Versailles and a good chunk of the Great Wall. But the minor landmarks are too expensive to move, the NEU says, and so New Paltz’s Huguenot Street, seven centuries old, will remain here, to be sliced to pieces in a few months when the planetary lasers begin to cut the Earth apart. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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D. Thomas Minton | Dreams in Dust

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:03:48 -0000

The arrival of the dust-covered girl caught Keraf by surprise. The girl’s slender face, sun-beaten to a deep brown, blended seamlessly into the cloth wrapped around her head. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, but she wielded her rifle with ease. Narrated by Rajan Khanna.

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Ken Liu | The Perfect Match

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 11:03:57 -0000

Sai woke to the rousing first movement of Vivaldi’s violin concerto in C minor, “Il Sospetto.” He lay still for a minute, letting the music wash over him like a gentle Pacific breeze. The room brightened as the blinds gradually opened to the sunlight. Tilly had woken him right at the end of a light sleep cycle, the optimal time. He felt great: refreshed, optimistic, ready to jump out of bed. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Tobias S. Buckell | A Game of Rats and Dragon

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 11:01:35 -0000

Moonlighting as a non-player character was a hell of a way to earn a living. Never made much sense to spend all that time garbing up in a virtual uniform that matched gamespace, but Overton took pride in the details. So getting punched in the stomach by someone so caught up in an augmented reality fantasy they couldn’t tell real from script, that left him in a foul mood. All the man had to do was ask the right questions, get Overton’s responses, and move on. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Sandra McDonald | Searching for Slave Leia

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 11:01:29 -0000

A slip, slide, falling through icy coldness, white noise like TV static. A breeze of hot buttery popcorn. Giddy laughter, sweaty bodies, fanfare music over the intercom, and what’s this? A ten-foot-wide movie poster of young, pale, undernourished Carrie Fisher, posed seductively in a gold metal bikini with a collar and chain around her neck. Narrated by Gabrielle De Cuir.

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Nancy Kress | Art of War

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 10:03:04 -0000

“Return fire!” the colonel ordered, bleeding on the deck of her ship, ferocity raging in her nonetheless controlled voice. Narrated by Rajan Khanna.

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Robert Reed | Flowing Unimpeded to the Enlightenment

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 10:03:40 -0000

Kartar is forty and Irish-Indian, blessed with an avatar’s sterling looks and a fine deep voice that lingers in the mind. He wears a piezosuit and a bright necktie advertising Chinese wetware, and a new Everything is pinned to his broad lapel. Twenty admirers have him surrounded. Narrated by Nathan Dana Aldritch.

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Harry Harrison | The Streets of Ashkelon

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 10:01:22 -0000

Somewhere above, hidden by the eternal clouds of Wesker’s World, a thunder rumbled and grew. Trader Garth stopped suddenly when he heard it, his boots sinking slowly into the muck, and cupped his good ear to catch the sound. It swelled and waned in the thick atmosphere, growing louder. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Adam-Troy Castro | My Wife Hates Time Travel

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 10:01:17 -0000

From the very beginning—which I guess is also the middle and the end if you follow the bent logic involved and arrange events by some scheme other than strict chronological order—there was never any way of knowing which one of us, my wife or myself, was going to invent time travel. Narrated by Rajan Khanna.

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Ken Liu | The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 10:03:40 -0000

There is no definitive census of all the intelligent species in the universe. Not only are there perennial arguments about what qualifies as intelligence, but each moment and everywhere, civilizations rise and fall, much as the stars are born and die. Time devours all. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Joe Haldeman | Four Short Novels

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 10:01:42 -0000

Eventually it came to pass that no one ever had to die, unless they ran out of money. When you started to feel the little aches and twinges that meant your body was running down, you just got in line at Immortality, Incorporated, and handed them your credit card. As long as you had at least a million bucks—and eventually everybody did—they would reset you to whatever age you liked. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Jake Kerr | Requiem in the Key of Prose

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:01:40 -0000

There is such a thing as an antifuse. This device is used to maintain the ongoing flow of electricity when there is local failure. The antifuse works similarly to a fuse in that it is designed to be sacrificed for a specific goal. But while a fuse is sacrificed to stop electricity from flowing, an antifuse is sacrificed to guarantee that the electricity does not stop. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki & Gabrielle De Cuir.

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George R.R. Martin | The Way of Cross and Dragon

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 10:03:39 -0000

“Heresy,” he told me. The brackish waters of his pool sloshed gently. “Another one?” I said wearily. “There are so many these days.” Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Simon McCaffery | The Cristóbal Effect

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 10:03:45 -0000

The wooden detour barricade is barely in place when I spot the car closing fast from the east. Just a glint of light against the desert hills, yet I know it is his car. I ignite the last flare and toss it onto the centerline of the lonely rural two-lane highway. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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C.C. Finlay | The Cross-Time Accountants Fail To Kill Hitler Because Chuck Berry Does The Twist

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:01:47 -0000

Mabel blurred through the Doorway and stumbled into a wall. She groped for a fingerhold, anything to prop herself up until the gut-twisting vertigo passed. Every time she experienced the blur it got a little worse. All that worse added up to worst because she had made hundreds of auditing trips to the past during her thirty-nine year career in cross-time accounting. Narrated by Mirron Willis.

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Linda Nagata | Nightside on Callisto

Tue, 01 May 2012 10:01:25 -0000

A faint, steady vibration carried through the igloo’s massive ice walls—a vibration that shouldn’t have been there. Jayne heard it in her sleep. Age had not dulled her soldier’s reflexes, honed by decades spent on watch against incursions of the Red. Her eyes snapped open. She held her breath. The vibration hummed in the walls, in the bed frame, in the mattress, perceivable even over Carly’s raspy breathing. Narrated by Hillary Huber.

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Kim Stanley Robinson | Our Town

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:03:34 -0000

I found my friend Desmond Kean at the northeast corner of the penthouse viewing terrace, assembling a telescope with which to look at the world below. He took a metal cylinder holding a lens and screwed it into the side of the telescope, then put his eye to the lens, the picture of concentrated absorption. How often I had found him like this in recent months! It made me shiver a little; this new obsession of his, so much more intense than the handmade clocks, or the stuffed birds, or the geometric proofs, seemed to me a serious malady. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Vandana Singh | Ruminations in an Alien Tongue

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:03:38 -0000

Sitting on the sun-warmed step at the end of her workday, Birha laid her hand on the dog’s neck and let her mind drift. Like a gyre-moth finding the center of its desire, her mind inevitably spiraled inward to the defining moment of her life. It must be something to do with growing old, she thought irritably, that all she did was revisit what had happened all those years ago. Yet her irritation subsided before the memory. She could still see it with the shocking clarity of yesterday: the great, closed eyelid set in the enormous alien stronghold, opening in response to her trick. Narrated by Vikas Adam.

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Steven Utley | Test

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:01:51 -0000

Something is eating the starship Stephen W. Hawking, chewing it slowly and efficiently to pieces. Hurtling through hyperspace, or merely hanging suspended therein (who can really tell about hyperspace?), the vessel has become entangled with an unknown entity that exhibits at least one recognizable attribute: curiosity.stev Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Kathleen Ann Goonan | Electric Rains

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:01:28 -0000

Ella sat by Nana’s body for two days before she pushed it out the window. She had spent the first half-day realizing what death was, the next half-day grieving, the following morning waking and feeling reverent if somewhat nauseated, and trying to decide what to do. It was three in the morning when she finally did it, and it was almost the season of electric rains. Narrated by Christie Yant.

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Mary Rosenblum | My She

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:01:44 -0000

I wait outside the speaking chamber, where the young Speakers learn to Hear and Speak. The walls and carpeted floor are purest white, the color of this God place and the Speakers who live here walk by, all dressed in white like the walls and the floor, their palms on the shoulders of their guides. Narrated by Kathe Mazur.

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Carrie Vaughn | Harry and Marlowe and the Talisman of the Cult of Egil

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:03:34 -0000

Carefully, with gloved hands, she removed the object from its stone niche, where it had rested for centuries deep underground, inside the dormant volcano where the mysterious Icelandic cult that guarded it made its home. It hardly weighed anything. Narrated by Roxanne Hernandez.

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Gregory Benford | Dark Sanctuary

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:03:53 -0000

In the asteroid belt you either have fast reflexes or you’re a statistic. I slammed into the airlock bulkhead and stopped dead, waiting to see where the laser beam would hit next. Narrated by John Rubinstein.

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Ken Liu | The Five Elements of the Heart Mind

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:00:48 -0000

The Dandelion lost structural integrity so quickly that I doubt the bridge even had time for a distress call, and this escape pod’s radio is only sub-light. Narrated by Ted & Heather Scott.

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Andrew Penn Romine | The Parting Glass

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 11:01:05 -0000

I gulp the whiskey and it burns my plastic throat, sets my nutrient sac on fire. I've got filters, but they haven't been changed in six months. Too expensive. Narrated by Joe Barrett.

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Vylar Kaftan | The Sighted Watchmaker

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:01:22 -0000

The Makers had been dead for billions of years, yet Umos discovered one caught in the starship's net. A young one, naked, with still-fused dorsal fins. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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John Crowley | Snow

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 08:01:55 -0000

Georgie got rid of most of what she'd inherited from him, liquidated it. It was cash that she had liked best about that marriage anyway; but the Wasp couldn't really be got rid of. Georgie ignored it. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Lisa Nohealani Morton | How Maartje and Uppinder Terraformed Mars (Marsmen Trad.)

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 07:01:04 -0000

As her breath hissed out it thickened and spread and wrapped around the planet. Before long it was pushing everything down; my mother's breath became the atmosphere of Mars. Narrated by Claire Bloom.

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David Farland | Against Eternity

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:01:25 -0000

The wan gray of polluted skies will weigh on your soul, and you will recall bluer days, and wish for your childhood, when the grass seemed taller and would rub your inner thighs as you rambled through the fields. Narrated by Stephan Rudnicki.

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Adam-Troy Castro | Her Husband’s Hands

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:01:22 -0000

They opened the box and showed her Bob’s hands, resting side by side on a white pillow. The left one lay palm-down, the right one palm-up. The one that was palm-up twitched and waggled fingers at Rebecca when it saw her. Narrated by Kathe Mazur.

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Ursula K. Le Guin | The Island of the Immortals

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 10:01:07 -0000

Somebody asked me if I'd heard that there were immortal people on the Yendian Plane, and somebody else told me that there were, so when I got there, I asked about them. Narrated by Gabrielle De Cuir.

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David Brin | Bubbles

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 07:01:00 -0000

Serena still felt the heat of her passage through Kaluza space. That incandescent journey via the bowels of a singularity had raised her temperature dangerously near the fatal point. Narrated by Harlan Ellison®.

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Genevieve Valentine | The Nearest Thing

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:01:45 -0000

We know you love your family. We know you worry about leaving them behind. And we know you've asked for more information about us, which means you're thinking about giving your family the greatest gift of all: You. Narrated by Arte Johnson.

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John Varley | Just Another Perfect Day

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 07:01:21 -0000

I know how you’re feeling. You wake up alone in a strange room, you get up, you look around, you soon discover that both doors are locked from the outside. It’s enough to unsettle anybody. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Kat Howard | Sweet Sixteen

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:01:41 -0000

When it came time for her restructuring on her sixteenth birthday, she was going to walk into the room, and ask to be made a Tiffany. Narrated by Taylor Meskimen.

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Jake Kerr | The Old Equations

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:01:51 -0000

I miss you already. But you know that. What you don’t know is just how proud I am of you. You were born for this, and no one could possibly be able to handle such a demanding job as well as you. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, Heather Scott, Gabrielle de Cuir, Ted Scott.

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Grady Hendrix | Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:01:04 -0000

The following transcript details the last known use of the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor, once a mandatory install on all craft equipped for interstellar travel. Narrated by Amanda Carlin, with Stefan Rudnicki and Paul Boehmer.

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K.C. Ball | Snapshots I Brought Back from the Black Hole

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 07:01:28 -0000

No one knows what happens when an object crosses the point around a black hole known as an event horizon and falls into the singularity. Narrated by Stefan Rudniki.

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Nancy Kress | Eliot Wrote

Tue, 17 May 2011 10:01:39 -0000

Eliot’s father had been entered into Ononeida Psychiatric Hospital ten days ago, for a religious conversion in which he saw the clear image of Zeus on a strawberry toaster pastry. Copyright 2011 by Nancy Kress. Narrated by Jim Meskimen.

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Eric Gregory | The Harrowers

Tue, 03 May 2011 07:01:43 -0000

Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Anne McCaffrey | Velvet Fields

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:01:38 -0000

Of course we moved into the cities of the planet we now know we must call Zobranoirundisi when Worlds Federated finally permitted a colony there. | Copyright 1973, 2001 by Anne McCaffrey First appeared in Worlds of If, from The Girl Who Heard Dragons Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, The Virginia Kidd Agency. Narrated by Paul Boehmer.

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Tom Crosshill | Mama, We are Zhenya, Your Son

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:01:11 -0000

Narrated by Stefan Rudniki.

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Robert Reed | Woman Leaves Room

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 07:01:50 -0000

Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Maggie Clark | Saying the Names

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 08:01:52 -0000

Narrated by Emily Janice Card.

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James Patrick Kelly | Breakaway, Backdown

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 08:01:43 -0000

Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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Ken Liu | Simulacrum

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 08:01:46 -0000

Narrated by Gabrielle De Cuir and Stefan Rudnicki.

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Cat Rambo | Long Enough and Just So Long

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:01:27 -0000

Narrated by Susan Scott.

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Orson Scott Card | The Elephants of Poznan

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:01:13 -0000

Narrated by Orson Scott Card.

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Tanith Lee | Black Fire

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:01:23 -0000

Narrated by Rosalyn Landor.

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Ursula K. Le Guin | The Silence of the Asonu

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 11:01:21 -0000

The silence of the Asonu is proverbial. We know now that the Asonu are not dumb, but that once past early childhood they speak only very rarely, to anyone, under any circumstances. | Copyright 1998 by Ursula K. Le Guin. Originally published in Orion. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.

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David Tallerman | Jenny’s Sick

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 08:01:13 -0000

Narrated by Mirron Willis.

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Kristine Kathryn Rusch | The Observer

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:01:09 -0000

Narrated by Sarah Tolbert (via Drabblecast).

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Nancy Kress | Ej-Es

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:01:31 -0000

Narrated by Sheri Mann Stewart (via Escape Pod).

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Alice Sola Kim | Hwang’s Billion Brilliant Daughters

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 11:01:35 -0000

Narrated by Cassandra Campbell.

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Charles Yu | Standard Loneliness Package

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 10:00:22 -0000

Root canal is one fifty, give or take, depending on who’s doing it to you. A migraine is two hundred. Not that I get the money. The company gets it. What I get is twelve dollars an hour, plus reimbursement for painkillers. Not that they work. I feel pain for money. Other people’s pain. Physical, emotional, you name it. Copyright 2010 by Charles Yu. Narrated by Christian Rummel.

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John R. Fultz | The Taste of Starlight

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 07:00:57 -0000

Narrated by Kristoffer Tabori.

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Joe R. Lansdale | Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:00:06 -0000

(Boom!) That’s a little scientist joke, and the proper way to begin this. As for the purpose of my notebook, I’m uncertain. Perhaps to organize my thoughts and not to go insane. | Copyright 1986 Joe R. Lansdale. First appeared in Nukes edited by John MacLay. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Cat Rambo | Amid the Words of War

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 07:01:23 -0000

Narrated by Don Leslie.

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Yoon Ha Lee | Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:01:20 -0000

Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Joe Haldeman | More Than the Sum of His Parts

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:01:24 -0000

21 August 2058. They say I am to keep a detailed record of my feelings, my perceptions, as I grow accustomed to the new parts. To that end, they gave me an apparatus that blind people use for writing, like a tablet with guide wires. It is somewhat awkward. But a recorder would be useless, since I will not have a mouth for some time, and I can't type blind with only one hand. | Copyright 1985 by Joe Haldeman Originally appeared in Playboy. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Adam-Troy Castro | Arvies

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:01:29 -0000

Narrated by Christie Yant (for StarShipSofa).

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Catherynne M. Valente | How to Become a Mars Overlord

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:01:09 -0000

Welcome, Aspiring Potentates! We are tremendously gratified at your interest in our little red project, and pleased that you recognize the potential growth opportunities inherent in whole-planet domination. Of course we remain humble in the face of such august and powerful interests, and seek only to showcase the unique and challenging career paths currently available on the highly desirable, iconic, and oxygen-rich landscape of Mars. | Copyright 2010 by Catherynne M. Valente. Narrated by Robin Sachs.

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Genevieve Valentine | The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:01:41 -0000

Narrated by Rosalyn Landor.

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Carol Emshwiller | No Time Like the Present

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 07:01:40 -0000

Narrated by Judy Young.

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Carrie Vaughn | Amaryllis

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:00:39 -0000

I never knew my mother, and I never understood why she did what she did. I ought to be grateful that she was crazy enough to cut out her implant so she could get pregnant. But it also meant she was crazy enough to hide the pregnancy until termination wasn't an option, knowing the whole time that she'd never get to keep the baby. That she'd lose everything. That her household would lose everything because of her. | Copyright 2010 by Carrie Vaughn. Narrated by Gabrielle De Cuir.

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David Barr Kirtley | Cats in Victory

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:01:03 -0000

Narrated by Rajan Khanna (from Starship Sofa).

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Jack McDevitt | The Cassandra Project

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:01:10 -0000

Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

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Vylar Kaftan | I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:02:50 -0000

Narrated by Mur Lafferty of Escape Pod.

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