How did we end up here? The humans before me had the same physiological traits as I did, yet still we had no means of communicating with one another. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Words and phrases spilled from their mouths, a torrent of sounds bleeding into one another, syllables pouring out in a drum roll, unending and uninterrupted. | © 2023 by Regina Kanyu Wang. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Regina Kanyu Wang (translated by Rebecca F. Kuang)  |  A Record of Lost Time

Edited by bestselling anthologist John Joseph Adams, LIGHTSPEED is a Hugo Award-winning, critically-acclaimed digital magazine. In its pages, you'll find science fiction from near-future stories and sociological SF to far-future, star-spanning SF. Plus there's fantasy from epic sword-and-sorcery and contemporary urban tales to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folk tales. Each month, LIGHTSPEED brings you a mix of original short stories and flash fiction featuring a variety of authors, from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven't heard yet. When you read LIGHTSPEED, you'll see where science fiction and fantasy have come from, where they are now, and where they're going. The LIGHTSPEED podcast, produced by Grammy Award-winning narrator and producer Stefan Rudnicki of Skyboat Media, features original audio short stories 6-8 times a month.

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Arts

Literature

Performing Arts

Design

Food

Fashion & Beauty

Visual Arts

Books

As with Robert Johnson, a lot of people who believed in the devil also believed that Jack Malagan had made a deal with him. | © 2024 by Rory Harper. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rory Harper | Done Deal

Lester swung his chainsaw, mowing a path through the mob of needle-toothed quantum parasites, while Kit batted clean-up with her Louisville Slugger. Across the plain of dark rock, their destination: a whirling, gnashing portal that could doom all humanity. It wasn’t ideal timing for an awkward conversation, but it never was. | © 2024 by Rich Larson. Narrated by Judy Young.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rich Larson | Limping Toward Sunrise

Welcome, Stranger! This is a story for you, you who wait for my words to fall into your ear, so that we can share being and become more than we are alone. | © 2024 by Vandana Singh. Narrated by Annette Oliveira, with Stefan Rudnicki.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vandana Singh | Travelers’ Tales from the Ends of the World

All of us remember what Mother’s Day was like before we became sterile: flowers and candy for living mothers and tears for dead ones and anger at bad ones, and women who couldn’t be mothers or who’d lost children marinating in grief, and nobody really profiting from any of it except Hallmark and the restaurants and florists. | © 2024 by Susan Palwick. Narrated by Judy Young
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Susan Palwick | Mother's Day, After Everything

There is a city called Salemo. Salemo sits atop a cliffside at the edge of a sea. | © 2024 by David Marino. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Regina Kanyu Wang (translated by Rebecca F. Kuang) | A Record of Lost Time

Download our free app to listen on your phone