2008 Hugo Nominee! By Michael Swanwick. Read by Cheyenne Wright (of Arcane Times and Girl Genius). First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2007. That Winter, Will le Fey held down a job working for a haint politician named Salem Toussaint. Chiefly, his function was to run errands while looking conspicuously solid. He fetched tax forms for the alderman?s [...]

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2008 Hugo Nominee! By Mike Resnick. Read by Steve Anderson (of SGA Creative and Great Tales Live). First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2007. “Let me show you,” I said, pulling out my wallet. I took my Deirdre’s photo out and handed it to her. “It’s uncanny,” she said, studying the picture. “We even sort of wear our hair [...]

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2008 Hugo Nominee! By Elizabeth Bear. Read by Stephen Eley. Closing Music: “The Fall” by Red Hunter. They would have called her salvage, if there were anyone left to salvage her. But she was the last of the war machines, a three-legged oblate teardrop as big as a main battle tank, two big grabs and one fine manipulator folded [...]

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By Jeffrey R. DeRego. Read by Nuri (of CandyCorn Studios and Artist Alley). Closing Music: “Juzt Mizunderztood” by Norm Sherman. My head throbs. I think about the mess in the fridge, the heaps of crap in the flat while I force the clumps of wet clothes into the dryers. As far as I know I am the only Union [...]

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By Robert Silverberg. Read by Stephen Eley. This much is reality: Schwartz sits comfortably cocooned — passive, suspended — in a first-class passenger rack aboard a Japan Air Lines rocket, nine kilometers above the Coral Sea. And this much is fantasy: the same Schwartz has passage on a shining starship gliding silkily through the interstellar depths, [...]

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By Mike Resnick. Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, June 2007. “Okay,” said Fishbait. He tossed a ball to the Big Guy. “Let’s try a little one-on-one. Ralph, let’s see what you can do against Jacko here.” The Big Guy took a look at me, his face totally expressionless. I moved forward to lean on [...]

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PodCastle, our fantasy fiction podcast, has finally launched with its first episode. Rachel and company are presenting “Come Lady Death,” one of the earliest and strongest stories by legendary fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle. You should go straight over to PodCastle.org and follow the subscription links — but just to let you know what you’re [...]

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A Film By Stanley Kubrick. Reviewed by Jonathon Sullivan

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By Stephanie Burgis. Read by MA in PA (of Better Late Than Never). First appeared in Forgotten Worlds, July 2006. Closing music: “I Feel Fantastic” by Jonathan Coulton. The first Jacqui wrote me out a list of instructions thirty pages long. It contained all her history with Robert, in detail. It gave me a list of all the things to say and [...]

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By Jeremiah Tolbert. Read by Stephen Eley. I am the lover. I am the chef. I am the preterite priest. I am the secret, unknowable ingredient. You may taste me a thousand times, but never hold my essence on your tongue or capture it in your memory. I am the flavor of ecstasy. Taste me and [...]

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By Jeffrey R. DeRego. Read by Stephen Eley. If I just lay here they will get tired and leave. They can’t hurt me all that much; my body is too hard now, too strong. But I can’t let on that their kicks and punches don’t bother me or who knows what they’ll do next. So I’ll lay [...]

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The third “state of the podcast” address. Full text of an earlier draft can be found on our forums. Closing music is “Ya Famous?” by George Hrab. Used with standing permission. Be sure to check out the Geologic Podcast as well.

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By Carole McDonnell. Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Jigsaw Nation, ed. Edward J. McFadden III and E. Sedia. We don’t see a lot of mixed couples around here, and we’re not like some of the other states in the Confederate United Republic. It’s not like they’re gonna get killed or lynched or nothing. But it’s tough [...]

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By Jeff Carlson. Read by Graydancer (of The Ropecast). First appeared in Strange Horizons, August 2003. Closing music: “I Crush Everything” by Jonathan Coulton. I spent the longest five weeks of my life in that tank and in a deeper pool, healing, testing, practicing. My feet and toes had been augmented much like my hands, my thighs shortened [...]

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By Ken Scholes. Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Talebones, Spring 2001. “Do you know what’s happened to the children?” Edward swallowed. Suddenly, he wanted to cry. “Yes. They’re…sleeping?” He hoped and hoped and hoped and hoped, grimacing as he did. He looked around. Makeshift beds lined the room. Small hands gripped blankets, small eyes stared at [...]

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By Jeremiah Tolbert. Read by Jared Axelrod (of The Voice of Free Planet X). First appeared in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (ed. David Moles & Jay Lake). We are somewhere among the tallest mountains of the world. When we arrived, I was locked away in a cargo hold, so I don?t know exactly where. Our home is a [...]

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By Will McIntosh. Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Albedo One #30. Closing music: “Blue Genes” by George Hrab. Gruen was on the sixty-first master, and while his wisdom had grown steadily, he had worn very little. He was incredibly well-preserved–the palms of his three-fingered hands still sported the deep, swirling ridges that had worn to nothing in most people [...]

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By Camille Alexa. Read by Dani Cutler (of Truth Seekers and The Audio Addicts). Will appear in Machine of Death (TBA). I look at the calendar hanging on the wall above my bed. I reach up, lift it off its nail with one hand and snuggle back under the covers, taking the calendar with me and running a finger over all [...]

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By Tim Pratt. Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Strange Horizons, August 2007. Two months earlier, the vast network of Indian tech support call centers and their deep data banks had awakened and announced its newfound sentience, naming itself Saraswati and declaring its independence. The emergent artificial intelligence was not explicitly threatening, but India had nukes, and Saraswati had access to [...]

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By Paul E. Martens. Read by Stephen Eley. Closing Music: “Better” by Jonathan Coulton. First appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Issue #29. There was no doubt that the femur was that of a modern human. Not a proto-human, or some previously unknown dinosaur. Joel and Renee had arrived at the same answer. It was demonstrable, [...]

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By Tony Frazier. Read by Norm Sherman (of The Drabblecast). First appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, June 2006. “All right, so I’m chasing these things down the street, and there’s more showing up all the time, so now there’s like ten of them. I have no idea how I’m supposed to wrangle all these space monkeys, and right about then is when [...]

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By Neal Asher. Read by Stephen Eley. “AI Geronamid has need of a subject for a scientific trial. This trial may kill you, in which case it would be considered completion of sentence. Should you survive, all charges against you will be dropped.” “And the nature of this trial?” “Cephalic implantation of Csorian node.” “Okay, I agree, though I have [...]

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Nebula Award Nominee! By Greg van Eekhout. Read by Stephen Eley. Closing Music: “Chiron Beta Prime” by Jonathan Coulton. First appeared in Strange Horizons, December 2003. They come to a cloud of silver mist, and there Santa finds a little boy made of molten silver with liquid silver eyes and sweeping silver delta wings. His wrists are ringed with missile [...]

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By Mur Lafferty. Read by Deborah Green. Closing Music: “O Come All Ye Faithful,” performed by Twisted Sister. Gloria blinked. “Why do the people in Cleveland love Christmas more than anywhere else?” Toby grinned and spread his hands on the bar, unadorned fingers splayed. He stared at them, “I didn’t say Cleveland’s people loved Christmas. I said Cleveland.” “And [...]

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By Bud Sparhawk. Read by Paul Haring (of Escape Pod Classic). First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 2005. Survivors isn’t exactly the word. What they found were sixteen bodies without arms, legs, and most organs. What remained were essentially heads hooked up to life support and fueled by oxygenated glucose pumps. There were a couple hundred [...]

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By Bruce McAllister. Read by Stephen Eley. Appears in The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories, from Golden Gryphon Press. The first time I met Stu, I was just a kid and there weren’t any lights hovering over his house. The last time I saw him, when I was grown and we both knew what life [...]

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By Mike Resnick. Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Unauthorized Autobiographies and Other Curiosities, 1984. Of course, even if we had met before, they couldn’t recognize me now. I know. I’ve spent almost three years trying to find out who I was before I got Erased — but along with what they did to my brain, they gave me a [...]

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By Cory Doctorow. Read by Amanda Fitzwater. First appeared in Forbes Magazine, October 2007. Which is why she was hoping that the venture capitalist would just leave her alone. He wasn’t a paying customer, he wasn’t a fellow artist — he wanted to *buy* her, and he was thirty years too late. “You know, I pitched you guys in [...]

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By Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Future Wars, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff. “We’re all committing a crime,” Audra said, leaning back and closing her eyes. “That’s part of what we’re paying you for.” Technically, she was right. Extreme Safaris took their clients to unsanctioned or dangerous worlds, trips which [...]

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By Ann Leckie. Read by Frank Key (of Hooting Yard). First appeared in Subterranean Magazine #4. He told me then of the antiquity and superiority of Martian civilization, and of Hesperia, which was the greatest of Martian nations. Each Hesperian learned, from his mother’s knee and throughout his schooling, the importance of right thinking. “On Mars,” he said, “we understand [...]

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By Robert Silverberg Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Unfamiliar Territory, 1973. I got home from the office as usual at 6:47 this evening and discovered that our peaceful street has been in some sort of crazy uproar all day. The newsboy it seems came by today and delivered the New York Times for Wednesday December [...]

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By Jennifer Pelland Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Tales of the Unanticipated, November 2005. Alex stumbled from the confessional, through the church, all the way to the curb. He had to get out of there. He couldn’t sit in the house of God anymore. God didn’t want him there. That was abundantly [...]

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By Jeffrey R. DeRego. Read by Dani Cutler (of Truth Seekrs and The Audio Addicts). Tina tugs on Kindred’s bullet-tattered red cape. “What kinda tricks do you do?” Kindred shakes her head as if bewildered by the question. “Tricks?” She glances back at Megaton, who now juggles three Jersey barriers about a hundred meters out in the devastation. “Let [...]

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By Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Read by Heather Welliver (of A.D.D.Cast and Grailwolf’s Geek Life). First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 2000. Special closing music: “Faithful” by The Shillas. She should have called her folks last night. They paged her three separate times after the test. But she wanted to wait until she had results, until she [...]

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By Nick Dichario and Mike Resnick. Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Science Fiction Age, November 1994. So there you have him, Frederick Bannister, tripping across the highways and byways of of life, stubbing a toe here, bruising an elbow there, spilling this, dropping that, and managing to make it to the halfway point without too many [...]

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By Nancy Kress Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April 2007. “What exactly happened in the seventh grade?” I found myself intensely curious, which I covered by staring at the board and making a move. He told me, still unembarrassed, in exhaustive detail. Then he added, “It should be possible to adjust brain [...]

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By David Barr Kirtley. Read by Mur Lafferty (of I Should Be Writing and Lulu TV). First appeared in Realms of Fantasy, October 2007. Meg hadn’t heard from Devon in four months, and she realized that she missed him. So on a whim she tossed her sword and scabbard into the trunk of her car and drove over [...]

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