GlitterShip

An LGBTQ Science Fiction & Fantasy podcast

Category: 2019

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


 

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Episode 77 is part of the Autumn 2018 issue!

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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 #73 — “Désiré” by Megan Arkenberg

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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

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

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Episode 71 is part of the Summer 2018 issue!

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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

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

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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

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Episode 69 is part of the Summer 2018 issue!

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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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Episode #68 — “These Are the Attributes By Which You Shall Know God” by R.B. Lemberg

 

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Episode 68 is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL and part of the Summer 2018 issue!

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

 

 

 

These Are the Attributes By Which You Shall Know God

by R.B. Lemberg

 

Father is trying to help me get into NASH. He thinks that seeing a real architect at work will help me with entrance exams. So father paid money, to design a house he does not want, just to get me close to Zepechiar. He is a professor at NASH and a human-Ruvan contact.

Reason and matter­—these are the cornerstones of Spinoza’s philosophy that the Ruvans admire so much. Reason and matter: an architect’s mind and building materials. These are the attributes through which we can know God.

And then, of course, there’s particle technology.

 

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Episode #67: “Instar” by Carrow Narby

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Episode 67 is part of the Summer 2018 issue!

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Instar

by Carrow Narby

 

 

 

They just broke ground this week on a new high rise. When they cracked into the earth it flooded the neighborhood with the stench of sulfur. There’s a layer of ancient rot beneath the pavement. Centuries worth of life, ground into filth.

Or so I imagine. I had to look up the source of the smell and some local news site attributed it to “organic materials” in the soil. I was worried that it might be a gas leak.

For the past few mornings the wind has pushed the awful smell in through the screen above my bed. As bad as it is, it isn’t worth shutting the window. Even as late summer beats on, I can’t sleep without the weight and softness of ten thousand blankets. Without the breeze my nest would become unbearably hot, so I tolerate the smell of brimstone and corruption. It’s sort of fitting, I think, given the maggoty turn that my life has taken.

 

Full episode after the cut.

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Episode #66: “Tell the Phoenix Fox, Tell the Tortoise Fruit”

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Episode 66 is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL and part of the Summer 2018 issue!

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

 

Tell the Phoenix Fox, Tell the Tortoise Fruit

by Cynthia So

 

On the day Sunae turned nine years old, there was no joyful feast. A monster burst from the sea that night and ate five people. The Mirayans gathered upon the shore to watch this, as they did every Appeasement. Sunae’s mother covered Sunae’s eyes, but Sunae still heard the screams. The crunch of brittle bone between teeth. The wet gulp of gluttonous throats.

Sunae prayed to the Goddess that the warrior Yomue might rise from the dead and defeat the monster yet again. No warrior came, but a hand grasped Sunae’s and squeezed. A hand as small as her own.

When it was over, Sunae’s mother murmured, “Now we will be safe for another ten years.” She removed her hands from Sunae’s eyes, and Sunae flinched from the gore before her. The older children always said that this was why Miraya’s beaches were pink, but she hadn’t been convinced until she saw the sands now drenched with fresh blood. Dark red on dusk pink.

Full transcript after the cut:

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