GlitterShip

An LGBTQ Science Fiction & Fantasy podcast

Episode #77 — “The Quiet Realm of the Dark Queen” by Jenny Blackford


 

Direct download here

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

Episode 77 is part of the Autumn 2018 issue!

Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: https://www.glittership.com/buy/

The Quiet Realm of the Dark Queen

by Jenny Blackford

 

 

Dumuzi—my beautiful brother Dumuzi, lovelier than the first green shoots of barley rising from the dark mud of an irrigated field—Dumuzi was dead.

Father had not spoken for six days. Not long ago, he’d been a great king in the fullness of his manhood, but now he was hobbling around the halls of the palace like an old grasshopper waiting for death. His hair was gray; his face was grayer still.

Mother was quiet at last. For six full days and nights she’d wailed and screamed on her wide bed of gold, tearing her soft face and her lovely breasts with her nails, pulling great lumps of curled and scented hair from her luxuriant head, berating all the gods for their cruelty to her. The people said that she was no mere mortal beauty but a goddess walking on earth with us, and she did not disagree; but even if this were true, it did not diminish her fury against the other gods.

[Full story & transcript after the cut.]

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Episode #76 — “Of Clockwork Hearts and Metal Iguanodons” by Jennifer Lee Rossman

Direct download here.

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

Episode 76 is part of the Autumn 2018 issue!

Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: https://www.glittership.com/buy/

 

Of Clockwork Hearts and Metal Iguanodons

By Jennifer Lee Rossman

They weren’t real, but they still took my breath away.

The model dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasties lived on and swam in the waters around three islands in Hyde Park. Enormous things, so big that I’d heard their designer had hosted a dinner party inside one, and so lifelike! If I stared long enough, I was sure I’d see one blink.

I turned to Samira and found her twirling her parasol, an act purposely designed to bely the rage burning in her eyes. She would never let it show, her pleasant smile practically painted on, but I’d spent enough time with her to recognize that fury boiling just beneath the surface.

Befuddled, I looked back at the dinosaurs, this time flipping down my telescopic goggles. The craftsmanship was immaculate, the color consistent all along the plesiosaur’s corkscrew neck, and the pudgy, horned iguanodons looked structurally sound, what with their bellies dragging on the ground.

Dinosaurs were Samira’s everything; how could seeing them practically coming to life not give her joy?

 

[Full story after the cut.]

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Episode 75 — “The Chamber of Souls” by Zora Mai Quýnh

Direct download here.

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

Episode 75 is part of the Autumn 2018 issue!

Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: https://www.glittership.com/buy/

 

 

The Chamber of Souls

by Zora Mai Quỳnh

 

 

Today it is announced that our quarantine is over and our refugee camp sufficiently detoxified to enter the Waterlands of Lạc, the home of our rescuers. Cheers and song rise in the air as the airship descends from the sky. A magnificently carved rồng on the bow of the vessel glistens of lacquered red, orange and gold scales, as its body, decorated by gems, wraps under  the hull to reappear in a long curved tail on the other side of the vessel.

Thirty days ago, our sinking fishing boat cramped with a hundred refugees fleeing Việt Nam emerged from a hidden corridor of the South China Sea. We were rescued by the Guardians who descended from a similar vessel that barely skimmed the surface of the water and we, arms waving and voices strained in desperation, failed to observe what should have been obvious — that our rescuers bore an element of foreignness that we were wholly unprepared for.

 

[Full story under the cut.]

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Episode #74 — “Best for Baby” by Rivqa Rafael

Direct download here!

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

Episode 74 is part of the Autumn 2018 issue!

Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: https://www.glittership.com/buy/

 

 

Best for Baby

by Rivqa Rafael

When I jack in, I shove the plug into its socket harder than I should. The disconnect–reconnect tone combination sounds; the terminal is as grumpy as I am. Who wouldn’t be? I’ve been kept back late in the lab to finish a job. Which was stolen from me. By the person who asked me to do this, as a “favor.” Who also happens to be my supervisor, so I can’t say no.

I load up the interface, drilling straight down to the zygote’s chromosomal level. Hayden’s been a bit careless, like he always is on the rare occasions he actually gets in the wet lab. I get to work, fixing his mistakes. Back in my body, I’m grinding my teeth and hunching my shoulders. Before I sink deeper into the VR, I take some deep breaths and roll my shoulders the way Lena showed me. Her yoga obsession has fringe benefits for me—my body needs to be relaxed if I’m going to do my job properly. Just for a moment, I’m back in our living room with Lena coaxing Kris and me to stretch with her. It’s enough to refocus me.

For all that it’s a science, there’s an art to working in the interface. The prion scalpel is tiny—obviously—and delicate; it needs to be handled with care, the type of care that only comes from being completely in tune with your neural implant and the system it’s connected to. It’s something Hayden seems to lack. Keeping my movements graceful (thank you, Lena), I begin to repair the damage. In here, I’m both the pipette and the hand depressing the button; I’m the prion scalpel; I’m the machine. The translation overlay is just a guide; I’ve been able to recognize bases by shape for a long time now. When I started, I thought I’d never remember the sequences, but I know our most common mods by heart now.

[Full story after the cut.]

 

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Episode #73 — “Désiré” by Megan Arkenberg

Direct download here.

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

Episode 73 is part of the Autumn 2018 issue!

Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: https://www.glittership.com/buy/

 

 

 

Désiré
by Megan Arkenberg

 

  1. From Albert Magazine’s interview with Egon Rowley: April 2943

            Egon Rowley: It was the War that changed him. I remember the day we knew it. [A pause.] We all knew it, that morning. He came to our table in the coffee shop with a copy of Raum – do you remember that newspaper? The reviewers were deaf as blue-eyed cats, the only people in Südlichesburg who preferred Anton Fulke’s operas to Désiré’s – but Désiré, he had a copy of it. This was two days after Ulmerfeld, you understand. None of us had any idea how bad it was. But Raum had gotten its hands on a letter from a soldier, and Désiré read it to us, out loud, right there over coffee and pastries.

[Full story after the cut.]

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Episode #72 — “Raders” by Nelson Stanley

Direct download

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

Episode 72 is part of the Autumn 2018 issue!

Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: https://www.glittership.com/buy/

 

Raders

by Nelson Stanley

 

They called themselves the Raders, and if you didn’t know, you’d swear that they were waiting for something: a bunch of boyed-up cookers, second-string hot hatches and shopping trollies adorned with bazzing body-kits parked down at the overcliff again, throttles blipping in time to the breakbeats. Throaty roar from aftermarket back-boxes you could shove your fist up, throb of the bass counter-pointed by an occasional crack as a cheap six-by-nine gave up the ghost. Occasionally a sub overheated, leaving nothing but ear-splitting midrange and treble howling into the gale blowing rain off the sea.

Mya had pushed half a pill into Maggie’s hand when the red XR2 picked her up outside the all-night Turkish takeaway, and Maggie regretted dropping it already, though at first she’d thought the high percentage of whizz in it might lend her enough chemical bravery to finally say what she wanted. Now her eyes rolled in her head and the rush made it difficult to speak. Sparks came off the edges of the headlights splitting the mizzle outside. Her nervous system uncoiled and re-knitted itself, reducing her to a warm soup through which the uppers fizzed and popped.

 

 

[Full story after the cut.]

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GlitterShip Year 2 is part of a Pride Month Story Bundle!

Collage of all 10 covers included in the Pride Story Bundle.

 

Happy Pride month!

There’s new GlitterShip coming very, very, very, soon. But in the meantime, you should check out the Pride Month bundle over at StoryBundle.com.

It includes GlitterShip Year Two!

Click here for queer fic!

If you’re not familiar with StoryBundle, it’s a bundle site that focuses on fiction. The bundles are curated mixes of books that you’ve probably heard of and new authors that you really need to check out—all available DRM-free at the price you set.

You can also use sliders to determine how much money goes to the authors.

The books in this bundle are at two different tiers depending on if you’re willing to pay $5+ or $15+

At the $5 or more tier:

  • Scourge of the Seas by Catherine Lundoff
  • Underdogs by Geonn Cannon
  • Transcendent 3 edited by Bogi Takács
  • Sea, Swallow Me by Craig Laurance Gidney

At the $15 or more tier:

  • Wireless and More Steam-Powered Adventures by Alex Acks
  • GlitterShip Year Two edited by Keffy R.M. Kehrli
  • Skin Deep Magic by Craig Laurance Gidney
  • Underdogs 2: Beware of Wolf by Geonn Cannon
  • The Eagle’s Heir by Jo Graham and Amy Griswold
  • Spectred Isle by KJ Charles

Yep! You get 9 books and a story game for $15, which is only $1.50 per book. If you’re looking for some great fantasy to dig into for Pride Month, this is a great set of ebooks to pick up!

StoryBundle also includes the option for giving 10% of your payment to a charity, and for this bundle, the charity is Rainbow Railroad. Rainbow Railroad helps our fellow queers living in fear around the world get somewhere safe where they’ll be safer from violence both on the individual, and in some cases, state-sponsored level.

I really hope you’ll click that button.

(If you want to give more than that 10%, you can donate directly to Rainbow Railroad at https://www.rainbowrailroad.com/donate. A large part of Pride is lifting each other up and looking out for our fellow queers who are trying to survive on the margins.)

Have a great Pride—and read some books!

Get the bundle here!

Episode #71 — “Barbara in the Frame” by Emmalia Harrington

Direct download 

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

Episode 71 is part of the Summer 2018 issue!

Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: https://www.glittership.com/buy/

 

Barbara in the Frame

by Emmalia Harrington

 

 

Bab’s stomach growled for the third time in five minutes. “You were right,” she said, pushing away from her desk, “It’s time for a break.”

Summer classes meant papers and tests smashed close together. There was hardly time to get enough sleep, let alone shop on a regular basis. The only food in her dorm room was an orange. Bab picked it up and walked to her dresser, where the portrait of Barbara, her grandfather’s great-aunt, sat.

 

Full story after the cut.

 

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Episode #70 — “The Girl With All The Ghosts” by Alex Yuschik

Download directly here.

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

Episode 70 is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL and part of the Summer 2018 issue!

Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: https://www.glittership.com/buy/

The Girl With All The Ghosts

by Alex Yuschik

It’s her second-to-last Friday night at Six Resplendent Suns Funeral Palace and House of the Dead, and Go-Eun is getting terrible reception on her cell.

Part of it’s because everyone’s on the network, but mostly it’s the ghosts, garden variety specters who unfold themselves into nine-story menaces, shadow-thin and barbed with carcinogens. Go-Eun would not have thought they could bring this many cell phone towers down running from fox mechs, but then again, she never thought she’d end up working the night shift at an inner-city funeral palace either.

 

Full story after the cut.

 

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Episode #69 — “Ratcatcher” by Amy Griswold

Direct download

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

Episode 69 is part of the Summer 2018 issue!

Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: https://www.glittership.com/buy/

 

 

Ratcatcher

by Amy Griswold

 

 

 

1918, over Portsmouth

The souls in the trap writhed and keened their displeasure as Xavier picked up the shattergun. “Don’t fuss,” he scolded them as he turned on the weapon and adjusted his goggles, shifting the earpieces so that the souls’ racket penetrated less piercingly through the bones behind his ears. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

The two airships were docked already, a woman airman unfastening safety ropes from the gangplank propped between them to allow Xavier to cross. The trap rocked with a vibration that owed nothing to the swaying airships, and Xavier lifted it and tucked it firmly under his arm. He felt the soul imprisoned in his own chest stir, a straining reaction that made him stop for a moment to catch his breath.

 

Full story after the cut:

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