Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

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Science Fiction Podcasts

Science Fiction

An Incomplete Body Has No Answers

You don’t know why you ask because you already know he can’t answer. A body is only a body when it has all its parts. And he—that beloved man you once hiked through Angkor Wat’s abandoned halls and root-choked courtyards with, who once pulled you from the dizzying edge of the Queens-Manhattan skywalk—is now just an unsightly array of incomplete parts.

Science Fiction

Let the Star Explode

The last picture that Karu has of her father alive is on the day of her graduation. She has this big smile that by the placing of her dimples makes it obvious that she is his daughter. He stands next to her holding her waist in the space between his biceps and his lower arm. And her mother who is half an inch shorter than her stands on her left side.

Science Fiction

But From Thine Eyes My Knowledge I Derive

It was a long fall in-system from the warp point, so Va Sojourner had plenty of time to observe. She found a peace in her observations that was expensive or painful to scratch out anywhere else, when she had to organize herself around the demands and expectations of everyone around her.

Science Fiction

The Pearl Captain

Josea Dream was the pearl captain at the heart of the bivalve ship Blue Spring, which had swum the black for a thousand years. It was a mystery to Josea—it was a mystery to anyone who’d ever thought about it—why the bivalves suffered their captains’ proddings.

Science Fiction

Scarlett

Scarlett’s eyes had to be perfect. Jon was the artist who’d made her, so it bothered him to think that so much of Scarlett would be crafted by other people. Scarlett’s limbs were carved from silicon polymer and coated in a soft synthetic skin from the best prosthetics companies in the world.

Science Fiction

Companion Animals in Mahō Shōjo Kira Kira Sunlight

Mahō Shōjo Kira Kira Sunlight is an American web series created by an unknown animator or animators. The show combines magical girl anime tropes with cosmic horror, following high schooler Sally Hoshino (Kira Kira Sunlight) and her friends.

Science Fiction

We Shall Not Be Bitter at the End of the World

It’s my twelfth birthday and we’re all waiting for Wormwood and everyone is here and I mean everyone. Me and Mom and Dad and Big Pa which is my grandpa who was the strong man at one of the last traveling carnivals in America, and Bigfoot of course, and a swarm of killer bees collectively named Kyle who aren’t really so mean.

Science Fiction

Night Desk Duty at the Infinite Paradox Hotel

“Good evening, sir,” Dave says pleasantly, hiding his crossword puzzle under his computer keyboard, as the front door chimes. “Do you have a reservation?” “Afraid not.” The guest fiddles with his suitcase. “I saw the No Vacancy sign, but I gotta ask—” “No problem at all.” Dave’s keyboard clatters busily, a series of well-practiced keystrokes.

Science Fiction

Shadow Films

Alvin’s scripts arrived in yellow envelopes. They were hand delivered, placed inside his letter box as if part of the regular mail, but with no address or stamps on it. The scripts were typed on unlined paper. They were short, never longer than a page, never more than a scene. The scene would be set inside a shop, or a bar.

Science Fiction

Five Views of the Planet Tartarus

Once a decade, a titanium-nosed shuttle plows through the rings of the planet Tartarus with a new batch of prisoners destined for the Orpheus Factory. The debris that makes up the rings is so thick that it thunders like a hailstorm, deafening the passengers. As the orbiting debris bounces and scrapes against the hull, the prisoners squeeze their eyes closed

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