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GlitterShip is an LGBTQ SF&F fiction podcast - bringing you audio versions of great queer science fiction & fantasy short stories!
Episodes
Tuesday Sep 22, 2015
Tuesday Sep 22, 2015
They Jump Through Fires
By Gabriela Santiago
“They jump through fires, you know.”
We were behind a glass window and at least ten feet off the ground, but Sam’s voice startled the rabbit that had been standing frozen on the asphalt, one large brown eye twitching as it stared up at me. Its ears jerked up and it twisted away, hopping into the underbrush.
I kept looking out the window. “They what?”
“Jump through fires. Instead of running away.”
“Did you read that on Wikipedia?”
She changed the subject. “You going to be all right here by yourself?”
“Of course.”
“I left my number on the kitchen table, if, you know, you need anything—”
“Thanks for helping carry her. You can go now.”
Full transcript appears after the cut.
Tuesday Sep 15, 2015
Tuesday Sep 15, 2015
Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon
By Ken Liu
“Tell me a story,” said Se. She had changed into her pajamas all by herself and snuggled under the blankets.
Se’s big sister, Yuan, was just about to flip the switch next to the bedroom door. “How about you read a story by yourself? I have to … go see a friend.”
“No, it’s not the same.” Se shook her head vigorously. “You have to tell me a story or I can’t sleep.”
Yuan glanced at her phone. Every minute tonight was precious. Dad was out of town on business, and Mom was working late and wouldn’t be home till midnight. Yuan needed to be home before then, but if she could get her little sister to sleep quickly, she’d still have a couple of hours to see Jing on this, her last night in China.
Full transcript appears after the cut.
Tuesday Sep 08, 2015
Tuesday Sep 08, 2015
All That Fairy Tale Crap
by Rachel Swirsky
I was supposed to go to the ball, but I spent the night licking out my stepsister instead.
Bethesda moaned and rustled mulberry silk high up her thighs. “There, there, no, faster, come on, faster, please…”
The friendly mice put out their eyes and ran out in trios to join a different fairy tale.
Never marry a prince when you can eat a pussy.
Never ride a pumpkin when you can steal cab fare.
Never wear a ball gown when you can slink in snakeskin pants.
Never listen to a fairy godmother.
Full transcript appears after the cut.
Tuesday Sep 01, 2015
Tuesday Sep 01, 2015
Sugar
by Cat Rambo
They line up before Laurana, forty baked-clay heads atop forty bodies built of metal cylinders. Every year she casts and fires new heads to replace those lost to weather, the wild, or simple erosion. She rarely replaces the metal bodies. They are scuffed and battered, over a century old.
Every morning, the island sun beating down on her pale scalp, she stands on the maison's porch with the golems before her. Motionless. Expressionless.
She chants. The music and the words fly into the clay heads and keep them thinking. The golems are faster just after they have been charged. They move more lightly, with more precision. With more joy. Without the daily chant they could go perhaps three days at most, depending on the heaviness of their labors.
Full transcript appears under the cut.
Friday Jul 10, 2015
Friday Jul 10, 2015
Swan-Brother
by Gabriel Murray
The—woman—took snuff. "Good morning, Captain," she said, Capitaine in her accent. "This is a colder day than I imagined." She looked out over the swells, her mannish periwig bobbing as she tilted her head up to regard the horizon. "Do you know, I hardly expected to see it."
Gregory Everett clasped his hands behind his back. "Your Captain did the correct thing," he said.
He had. Galatea's American captain had struck colours almost as soon as the Indefatigable beat to quarters. If he hadn't Gregory would have sent him to the bottom of the sea. Gregory had no way of knowing that the privateer Galatea carried but one petty sorceress, not one of Bonaparte's magi that could kill him and his men with an incantation and a splinter of Indefatigable's hull. He'd have sunk her.
Full transcript appears under the cut.
Thursday Jul 02, 2015
Thursday Jul 02, 2015
Bonzaiships of Venus
by Kate Heartfield
The work of aesthetics is the aesthetics of work.
—Principles of Graphene Cultivation, by Johanne St-Pierre, Vol. II
Makoto adjusted the angle of his scalpel’s electron beam, exhaled and made the cut. A fingernail-sized section of the airship’s graphene skin peeled away to join the miniature airship attached to its exterior like a soap bubble.
This was neither Makoto’s only bonsaiship nor his first. But it was and would always be the most precious to him. He had made the first cut nearly a year before, on the day of his husband’s death. It was a tribute to Reuven, nearly perfect, nearly complete.
Full transcript appears under the cut.
Thursday Jun 11, 2015
Thursday Jun 11, 2015
King Tide
by Alison Wilgus
Some particular trick of the moon, the weather, and the Earth's closeness to the sun had pulled the tide all the way to 5th Avenue, a good half-block further uphill than usual. The city had put out an alert, so Jordyn knew to clear out the basement ahead of time. Their landlord was smart enough to have the foundation sealed years ago—that would be fine—but there wasn't much to be done for cardboard boxes and old futons. Those had to be kept above the tide line, or they were garbage.
Full Transcript appears under the cut:
Tuesday Jun 09, 2015
Tuesday Jun 09, 2015
Sooner Than Gold
By Cory Skerry
I tug on clean underwear in case I get arrested, paint my makeup perfectly because there's nothing sadder than a grown man in badly applied eyeliner, and climb out my apartment window, onto the fire escape.
I can't be late to this assignment, and if I go through the lobby, there's a strong chance the night doorman will have a thing or two to say about the video footage of our card game last night. I forgot there was a camera pointed at the lobby desk.
The asphalt below reeks of garbage and piss; about half of the latter is probably mine. Don't judge. If I'm drunk enough, there's not even any point in aiming for the toilet.
My boots land softly as I hit the ground, but the ladder clangs as my weight slides off. I look back up at the enchantment, where it strings out from my leg to the trunk in my apartment.
Thursday May 28, 2015
Thursday May 28, 2015
Love Over Glass, Skin Under Glass
by Penny Stirling
The seasick lover becomes a saltwater cistern
She built her first lover out of glass.
"I was often disappointed," she said as she showed her creation around her gallery, "that the things I make with such skill cannot admire my handiwork. Now at last I have made something that can look on itself with wonder." But, she had to admit, she liked it even better when the lover looked upon her with wonder.
Her lover's skin was glass, her lover's touch was soft.
The nights were fine since she was skilled enough at glassblowing to give her glass lover skill enough, but soon she began to dread the mornings. More often than not when the sun had risen and they roused from their sleep, her lover would turn to her and say something like, "I dreamed the ocean bore down on me, rubbing and grinding me down until I was nothing but the finest fragments scattered all around the world."
A full transcript appears under the cut:
Thursday May 21, 2015
Thursday May 21, 2015
Stalemate
by Rose Lemberg
He wakes to warmth. The floor beneath his head. He stares at the spider-patterns etched into the ceiling, tiny and dense, gray against darker gray. No power runs through them. Inert now. Unneeded.
He wants to make the patterns work again.
—how could anyone survive a descent through Calamity storms? Above him, someone’s shiny dark shirt smells of static, a faraway storm passing. How are they still alive?
Alive, forever, trapped inside this loneliness.
A full transcript appears under the cut: