Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

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Science Fiction Podcasts

Science Fiction

Dekar Druid and the Infinite Library

Dekar Druid lives in an infinite library. Besides Ebizenum, who is in a special category of their own, he is the only living person in the library’s single tower. Outside, a forest surrounds the tower. There’s a lake a short walk to the north and a peak to the distant south. And nothing else. The lake is easy to get to, a respite on hot summer days, but Dekar Druid has never made it to the mountains, not even close, though he’s walked for miles southward.

Science Fiction

After the God Has Moved On

We saw her staggering down the promenade, gills flaring as she sucked for the gods’ aether that no longer fueled her breathing. By her gasping breaths we knew the god had moved on, swimming the invisible aether to another, leaving her gasping in the void as she fell back into the strained, recycled, and slightly fishy-smelling air of the space station.

Science Fiction

The Exquisite Pull of Relentless Desire

The dancer switches the camera on as his ship falls into orbit around the black hole; the opening image of his unmuscled chest squeezed beneath translucent polyester blasts out toward a thousand points of watching light. He’s shaved his body for the first time in his life, the nicks of the razor lingering in little scabbing cuts. He hits the music.

Science Fiction

Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness

USER: this is a message for Milwaukee Elementary’s curator Jude Towers, I hope this is the right address. anyway thanks for the story you had RIGHTR generate for my 10th graders’ Empathy Week. it was really great! can you tell me more about it?

CURATOR: I am happy to have fulfilled the assignment.

Science Fiction

Get Hyped!

Rachel knew Jacko Hype before just about anybody. That’s what she told people when they asked what made her some kind of expert; she knew who he was, what he was, and what he was not, because she met him first.

Science Fiction

Inside the House of Wisdom

This is the eighth floor of the Al-Ahli Memorial Library, my favorite place in the building. When the elevator door opens, it’s like walking into a quiet circle of glass. So, as we walk, I’m going to whisper. People are reading, writing, drawing—it’s such a beautiful place to work.

Science Fiction

Ancestor Code Error

It is 3024, and there are no longer shrines. They long since washed away by nature’s fury in the form of quakes that split across continents, countries, cities, down schools, fields, homes neatly in two. You are to receive the memories of a late mother, a late father.

Science Fiction

Antyesti For a Dead Ganesa, Part 2

The pratikriti squats beside him on the terrace. Now that he is able to see again through his borrowed eyes, Neel is surprised at how obviously inhuman it looks. Then he remembers a briefing from a long time ago: the AI implants filter the appearance of artificials.

Science Fiction

Antyesti For a Dead Ganesa, Part 1

Two hours out of deadsleep is too soon to be staring at the butchered corpse of a dead god. Neel looks down as the kalipeeli begins its descent to Chowpatty Beach and feels his stomach flip. Even from a mile up, he can see it. His retinacam zooms, focus and enlarge a portion of the beach.

Science Fiction

Two Motes in the Zeugma Dark

Every date followed the same pattern. After the dinner and drinks, and the long moonlit walk along the canal, Jules would casually remark that the hangar was not far from here, and would they like to come see? Once outside the heavy metal door, he would pause with his hand above the security scanner,

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