GlitterShip

An LGBTQ Science Fiction & Fantasy podcast

Category: Uncategorized (page 1 of 8)

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.]

Continue reading

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.]

Continue reading

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.]

 

Continue reading

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.

 

Continue reading

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.

 

Continue reading

Episode #65 — “A Memory of Wind” by Susan Jane Bigelow

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

Episode 65 is part of the Spring 2018 issue!

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

 

 

A Memory of Wind

Susan Jane Bigelow

 

Yeni looked up at the right time, just for a single moment, and she saw a girl fly past far overhead.

No one else in the wide dome of Center Garden, the bustling, cavernous heart of the greatship, noticed. Yeni had to run to catch up with her mother, who walked a few steps ahead.

“Did you see?” she demanded. “A flying girl!”

“Don’t lie,” her mother said tiredly.

 

[Full story after the cut.]

Continue reading

Episode #64 — “Sabuyashi Flies” by Sebastian Strange

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

Episode 64 is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL and is part of the Spring 2018 issue!

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

Sabuyashi Flies
by Sebastian Strange

Sofie Faucher advertised her solution to the age-old magic problem well. I can still remember the first night I stepped out of Ellen’s dorm building, late, and looked up to see one of Faucher’s billboards; a crisp square of white and silver against the darkest, featuring Faucher’s trim torso and winning smile. Her large dark eyes were fixed on the future, somewhere behind me and much higher up, and her hands clasped a glass pitcher full of shimmering silver.

NOBODY HAS TO DIE was written across the bottom. FAUCHER’S SPARK.

[Full story after the cut.]

Continue reading

Episode #63 — “Gravedigging” by Sarah Goldman

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

Episode 63 is part of the Spring 2018 issue!

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

 

 

GRAVEDIGGING

by Sarah Goldman

 

When I woke up, I noticed first that Clarissa was there, because she was always the first thing I noticed.

I noticed three things immediately after that: it was dark, I could feel dirt under my fingers, and my mouth tasted disgusting, like charcoal and rubbing alcohol and cotton.

“What the fuck?” is what I tried to say, except I don’t think the words came out quite right. I started coughing and I couldn’t stop.

“Just give it a second,” Clarissa said, rubbing my back. I got a good look at her once the coughing subsided and my eyes stopped watering, and she looked like she’d been run over by a truck a few times: dark circles, greasy hair, unwashed skin. Clarissa always tried to look as put together as people expected her to be. I’d seen her look this messed up once or twice before, and it never meant anything good.

 

Continue reading

Episode #62 — “Stories My Body Can Tell” by Alina Sichevaya

Download here.

 

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

Episode 62 is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL and is part of the Spring 2018 issue!

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

 

Stories My Body Can Tell

by Alina Sichevaya

 

My mama used to tell me I was born screaming, sticky, and uglier than every sin she’d ever known, which was all of them. I still like to remember that. Gives me a warm feeling in my stomach. Especially when it looks like I’m about to die the same way.

I’m remembering it now. My throat feels skinned, but on the inside, and my lips stick to each other, the blood from my nose drying over them. It’s definitely broken, and one of my lips might be split. One of my eyes is swelling shut. I’ve had worse—I’m not exactly dying—but it hurts to breathe, and my ribs feel like they’re falling to pieces inside of me. They probably are.

 

[Full story after the cut.]

Continue reading

Episode #61 — “To Touch the Sun Before it Fades” by Aimee Ogden

Download episode.

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

 

Episode 61 is part of the Spring 2018 issue!

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

 

 

To Touch the Sun Before it Fades

by Aimee Ogden

Mariam watches a week of night roll toward her.

On Pluto, the Sun is only a spectacularly bright star. It’s easy to pick out, hanging low in the sky—only just visible in the domed window in the hub of Sagacity Station. If Mariam could reach up and hold back the Sun, if she could slow its progress down the sky, she would. She can’t, of course. Just another bead to add to the strand of impossibilities hung around her neck.

A scuff on the floor behind her breaks her gaze from the starfield overhead. Captain Valencia stands there, waiting. The pale fluorescent light from the station walls disappears into the hard, dark planes of his face. His forehead is Tombaugh Regio, the deep valleys of his cheeks are the shadows at the foot of Wright Mons. All the contrast of Pluto’s surface, but not nearly so cold. His eyes are molten puddles in the shadow of his brow and Mariam realizes he’s talking to her: “You don’t have to go out today. You can stay by the radio, if you like.”

 

[Full story after the cut.]

Continue reading

Older posts

© 2024 GlitterShip

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑