Podcasts about sf signal

Alexander Darwin is an author living near Boston with his wife and three daughters. Outside of writing, he teaches and trains martial arts (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu). He's inspired by old-school Hong Kong action flicks, jRPGs, underdog stories and bibimbap bowls. Outside of writing fiction, Alexander has written for publications such as Rolling Stone Magazine, Jiu Jitsu Style and SF Signal. His latest piece, The Lost Diary of Anthony Bourdain, was a featured piece in Rolling Stone's January 2022 Issue. His debut novel, Combat Codes, is out now.We had a great chat with Alex, hearing about how he got started thanks to the SPFBO (Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off), and how he made a success of self-publishing. We also talk about the transition to trad publishing and discuss what aspects of self-publishing he misses now he has made the change. Plus, we discuss whether Star Wars is a fantasy movie...Links:Buy Combat Codes nowFollow Alex on TwitterVisit Alex's websiteBuy tickets for talks hosted by Tariq and Marco at this year's Bloody Scotland:Tariq's event - High Seas, High Stakes: Will Dean, Amy McCulloch and Catherine CooperMarco's event - Deadly Deceptions: Gilly MacMillan, Stig Abell, Katherine FaulknerPage One - The Writer's Podcast is brought to you by Write Gear, creators of Page One - the Writer's Notebook. Learn more and order yours now: https://www.writegear.co.uk/page-oneFollow us on TwitterFollow us on FacebookFollow us on InstagramFollow us on MastodonFollow us on BlueskyFollow us on Threads: @ukpageone Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Things aren't going well for Stan Candera - the alien vessel that's been hovering above Bethlehem Tower since he was 16 has sparked into malevolent life, he's fallen in with a Cambodian street-gang, and he's about to miss his little sister's sixteenth birthday...Written by Chris KelsoNarrated by Justin FifeEdited by Duncan MuggletonWith music by Umcorps and Thom Robson And sound effects provided by FreesoundThe episode illustration was provided by Luke Spooner of Carrion HouseChris Kelso is a British Fantasy Award-nominated, multi-translated genre writer, illustrator, and anthologist. His work has been published in - 3AM Magazine, Black Static, Locus, Interzone, Daily Science Fiction, Antipodean-SF, SF Signal, Dark Discoveries, The Lovecraft e-zine, Sensitive Skin, Evergreen Review, Verbicide, The Unquiet Dreamer - a Literary tribute to Harlan Ellison, and many others. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Fifty by Chris Kelso Chris Kelso is an award-winning genre writer, editor, and illustrator from Scotland. His short stories and articles have appeared in magazines and journals across the UK, US, and Canada, including Antipodean-SF, Lovecraft ezine, Daily Science Fiction, SF Signal, Dark Discoveries, Pantheon, Evergreen Review, Sensitive Skin, Shoreline of Infinity, The Airgonaut, New Coin, Verbicide and many more. His work has been translated into French and he is the two-time winner of the Ginger Nuts of Horror Novel of the Year (in 2016 for 'Unger House Radicals’ and in 2017 for its sequel 'Shrapnel Apartments').’The Black Dog Eats the City’ made Weird Fiction Reviews Best of 2014 list. http://www.chris-kelso.com/ 600 Second Saga Music is provided by MADS. You can support 600 Second Saga by giving us a 5-star review on iTunes Become a Patron! Follow me on Facebook Follow me on Twitter

"Kat began her publishing career as a collaborating artist on such projects as UTOPIATES, a CATWOMAN story for BATMAN 80pg GIANT for DC Comics and TITANIUM RAIN. She produced numerous concept designs for Spartan Games and has had work featured in Interzone magazine. She began her own comic series entitled LD30: The Adventures of a Swinging Robot in 2010. In 2011 Kat founded 01Publishing with the goal of producing the best in science fiction, fantasy, and horror of both prose and graphic story telling. 01Publishing’s catalog of books have received acclaim from the Huffington Post, SF Signal, Kirkus Reviews, Innsmouth Free Press, and The Examiner." (From: http://01publishing.com/about-01-publishing/creators/kat-rocha/) In the second hour, we talked about our favorite novels in various categories! Plus, the Lovecraftian game Omen Exitio, which is currently on sale at Steam: http://bit.ly/Omen-Exitio-game Become a Patreon: get access to our bonus podcasts, get free books, become a guest panelist, and more! Help me to keep the eZine projects going: http://bit.ly/2ojoby9 Check out the Lovecraft eZine Press books: https://lovecraftzine.com/ezine-books/ Follow Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/misanthropemike Follow Mike on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/misanthropemike Email the show: lovecraftezine@gmail.com If you prefer to watch this episode, go here: https://youtu.be/o4QVMN9BmdM  

In this podcast Chris Kelso talks about early life lessons, hybrid stories, the worst writing advice, and much more. About Chris Kelso Chris Kelso is an award-winning genre writer, editor, and illustrator from Scotland. His short stories and articles have appeared in magazines and journals across the UK, US, and Canada, including SF Signal, Lovecraft ezine, Daily … Continue reading

In this podcast Chris Kelso talks about writing from the wound, turning thirty, confusing the art with the artist, and much more. About Chris Kelso Chris Kelso is an award-winning genre writer, editor, and illustrator from Scotland. His short stories and articles have appeared in magazines and journals across the UK, US, and Canada, including SF Signal, … Continue reading

Staggering like a phoenix that has consumed too much coffee and cigarette butts, The Three Hoarsemen come at you with our first episode since the sad demise of our former home, the much-loved SF Signal. We discuss SF Signal, how we met in cyberspace and meatspace, our lives since the site closed. Hard to believe that we have collectively spent one year on a project, gotten a job, moved, and started a business! Fred Kiesche, Jeff Patterson and John E.O. Stevens are pleased to make your acquaintance. Host Fred Kiesche, John E.O. Stevens and Jeff Patterson.

Word came down this week that the online magazine SF Signal was shutting down, and we take a moment to examine the narrowing field of geek journalism in the wake of changes at io9. Plus: more controversy surrounding the Hugo Awards! (surprise) And are they ever going to reboot I Dream of Jeannie? We talk about why it might not be such a good idea as we await Barbara Eden's appearance at Planet Comicon.

Patrick talks publishing with Jody Lynn Nye, Ramon Terrell and Josh Vogt

The authors talk about the forthcoming conference.

Her Last Breath Before Wakingby A.C. WiseShe is a city haunted by a ghost.When the architect dreams, her sinews are suspension bridges, her ribs vaulting arches, her bones steel I-beams, and her blood concrete. In her dreams, the city is pristine and perfect. She is perfect.The architect has a lover who is afraid to sleep. At night, the lover lays her head against the architect’s chest. Instead of breath and pulse, she hears the rumble of high-speed trains.Full transcript after the cut.----more----Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 21 for February 2, 2016. I am your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.Today's story is "Her Last Breath Before Waking" by A.C. Wise.Before I get to the story, I just wanted to mention that GlitterShip is currently eligible for the Best Fancast category of the Hugo Awards. I wasn't really sure if GlitterShip was a "fancast" or a "semiprozine" but I thought I should check just in case anyone asked me.That said, if you like GlitterShip, the best thing you can do is tell your friends to start listening. If they're interested in LGBTQIA short fiction but are unable to access audio (or just don't like it!), they can read all of the GlitterShip stories on our website at glittership.comA.C. Wise's short stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, Shimmer, and, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2015, among other places. Her debut collection, The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again, was published by Lethe Press in October 2015. In addition to her fiction, she co-edits Unlikely Story, and contributes a monthly Women to Read: Where to Start column to SF Signal. Find her online at www.acwise.net.Our guest reader this week is Amanda Fitzwater.Amanda Fitzwater is a dragon wearing a human meat suit from Christchurch, New Zealand. A graduate of Clarion 2014, she’s had stories published in Lethe Press’ “Heiresses of Russ 2014”, “Daughters of Frankenstein: Lesbian Mad Scientists”, and recently an essay in Twelfth Planet Press’ “Letters to Tiptree”. Look out for stories coming soon from Shimmer Magazine and The Future Fire. As a narrator, her voice has been heard across the Escape Artists Network, on Redstone SF, and Interzone. She tweets under her penname as @AJFitzwater   Her Last Breath Before Wakingby A.C. WiseShe is a city haunted by a ghost.When the architect dreams, her sinews are suspension bridges, her ribs vaulting arches, her bones steel I-beams, and her blood concrete. In her dreams, the city is pristine and perfect. She is perfect.The architect has a lover who is afraid to sleep. At night, the lover lays her head against the architect’s chest. Instead of breath and pulse, she hears the rumble of high-speed trains.The architect stands on the balcony of her close apartment looking over the city-that-is and seeing the city-that-might-be. She smokes thin cigarettes and mentally replaces the burnt-out factory and its blind-eye smashed windows with a row of gleaming, silver towers. Once she builds them, her towers will scrape the stars.“The city is rotten,” she says; she doesn’t turn around.“I like the city,” says the architect’s lover, so softly she might not be heard. “It’s where we met.”But the architect isn’t listening. Her hands sketch forms on the air, rewriting the view with shimmering art deco buildings, glistening fountains, and wide, chilly plazas.The architect’s lover creeps outside to stand beside the architect. She hates visiting the architect here; it’s too high. The wind plucks at her. She doesn’t like seeing the city spread out this way, reduced to brick and wood, stone and smudges of light. Her own apartment is close to the ground, where she can step out the door and feel worn cobblestones beneath her feet.Sometimes, even though she knows the architect would disapprove, the architect’s lover goes outside barefoot. She stands in her doorway and breathes in the stench of factories, blanketing the city in smoke. She breathes in the crackling, golden scent of fresh bread from the bakery on the corner. She breathes in the rotting geraniums in her neighbor’s window box. But most of all, she breathes in the stink of the river, because once upon a time it smelled like the promise of a new world.On those days, the architect’s lover curls her toes around the worn-smooth cobbles and drinks in the life of all the people who came before her — every horse’s hoof, every shoeless urchin, every factory-man and whore, every rainfall wearing the cobbles as round as they are now. It makes the city feel alive. It comforts her.More than once, she has tried to show the architect her city, the one she sees with her feet curled around the cobblestones, but the architect only frowns. The architect has plans. The architect’s lover would re-write the city with new-forged memories; the architect would re-write it with glass and chrome.The architect slides her arm around her lover’s waist, drawing her closer to the view, but she’s still looking at the city.“One day this will be beautiful,” the architect says.The architect’s lover looks at the architect instead of the city — the plane of her cheekbones, the sweeping lines of her neck and throat, the dark spiral of her hair.“It’s beautiful now,” she says.In the morning, the architect’s lover finds plans scattered throughout the apartment. She lay beside the architect all night, listening to the high-speed rumble of dreams moving under the architect’s skin. The architect couldn’t have drawn the plans. She must have shed them from her body in her sleep like unwanted skin.In two weeks, a tower rises where the architect’s hands traced the air, even though there have been no work crews, no scaffolds, no sound of hammers and nails. Like the plans, the architect must have dreamed it, brought it into being by force of will.The architect’s lover cannot remember what stood there before the tower, if anything at all. This makes her weep, sitting alone in a café near the river, where the architect will not see. The architect’s lover wants to remember everything about the city, imprint it on her bones: here is where she held the architect’s hand, there is where they watched long barges pole down the canal. If she can keep the city from changing, maybe she can keep the architect from changing as well.People pass the café where the architect’s lover sits, but no one seems to notice the tower. It has always been there. They take it for granted; this is the way the city is meant to be. When she tries to ask about it, people merely shrug. They walk faster; they look at the architect’s lover with strange, indulgent smiles. They shake their heads before going about their days.The next time the architect’s lover visits, the architect calls her out onto the balcony. She points to the tower that has always been there.“You see?” the architect says, indicating the top of the tower, a pyramid of glass all lit up with giant spotlights and faceted like a jewel. “One day I’ll buy you a diamond bigger and brighter than that one. I’ll string stars around your waist and wrap moonlight around your throat. I’ll drape you in fur and put pearls and feathers in your hair. You’ll never want for anything.”The architect’s lover shudders; she imagines drowning under all that weight.The architect’s lover still longs to become the architect’s wife some day, even though she fears she will die of neglect if she does, so long as she doesn’t die of a broken heart first. She has tried not to love the architect every way she knows how, but her heart keeps circling back to the day they met. It is a fixed point in time, and for the architect’s lover, it will never change.They were both strangers in the city, recognizing in each other someone else who had not yet learned to call it home. They discovered it together, exploring every street, every alley, every rooftop and doorway. As they did, the architect’s lover wrote each location on her heart, remembering the way the architect looked when she touched that lintel, this railing. The architect’s lover never saw the city until she saw it through the architect’s eyes, and now they are inextricably intertwined. After so long adrift, these twin points, architect and city, anchored her. In the secret places inside her skin and her bones, her name for both architect and city is home.What secret name the architect has for her, the architect’s lover does not know. This, she does know: The architect never learned to name the city home and she will rewrite all the places they’ve ever been together — the smoky café where they first met, drinking absinthe and watching bloated corpses float down the river; the crumbling bridge where they shared their first kiss, the architect tasting of heady wine and the architect’s lover tasting of nothing at all; the factory where they first fucked, the rough brick against the architect’s lover’s back, and broken glass crunching under their boots. Even the rotten pier where the boats that brought them both from different places long before they knew each other first landed.Even so, the architect’s lover cannot fall out of love.All the places she has written on her heart will vanish. Her heart will remain. But when those places are gone, who will they be — the architect and the architect’s lover? Who will they be, separate and together? With no history, what hope can there be for their future?The architect’s lover is afraid the architect will rewrite her if she falls asleep. So she stays awake, eating cold, tart plums the color of new bruises. She smokes cigarettes she can’t stand the taste of, and drinks coffee so thick the spoon stands on its own when she forgets it halfway through stirring.She does all these things and tries not to think of the architect’s hands on her body when they fuck, placing causeways in the curve of her hip, a spiral staircase winding around her spine, a domed cathedral to replace her skull.She can’t tell the architect of her fear. She can’t tell her she’s afraid, or she’ll lose the architect even sooner. She is losing her. Has lost her. Will lose her again and again. She wants to lose her, and yet the architect’s lover is afraid of coming unmoored again, losing the only place she can call home.So instead she tries to imagine making herself vast enough to hold a city entire, her arms long enough to encompass bridges and canals, wrapped so tight nothing will ever crumble. Even in her dreams, in the rare moments she lets herself sleep, she fails.These are the architect’s dreams.One: She replaces her bones with scaffolding. Her eyes become window glass, shattering sunlight. Her jaw sings a bridge’s span, made musical by the tramping of a thousand feet. All through her are tunnels, connecting everything. Her veins are marble. Her foundation stone. Her heart a cavernous station thundering with countless trains. She is vast and contains multitudes. And she is beautiful.Two: She is very young and playing on the river bank with her brother and her cousin. It is summer and they are barefoot, squishing mud between their toes, feeling the wet, green life of fish and frogs and stilt-legged birds. They break off reeds from the shore and whip-thin branches from the overhanging trees, weaving them into impossible, organic structures. She is not the architect yet, in these dreams, but hers are always the strongest buildings. Her brother and cousin are too impatient, their fingers too quick. They splinter the reeds, snap the wood, and throw the wrecks into the sun-glinting water. They don’t want it badly enough. Her constructions can withstand anything, bound by her force of will.Three: She is very old, but ageless. Her skin, stretched taut over bone-that-is-not-bone, is so thin the light shines through it. There is metal everywhere she can fit it. She has carved away as many pieces of herself as she can and still walk, still breathe. She has cut windows in her flesh, replaced skin with glass so the delicate structures within, the winding catwalks and promenades, are visible. She is light, so light, but she abhors the body that remains, holding her down.At night, she calls her children to her. They come creeping from the shadows, their fingers bloody from tearing her city apart by day and building it anew as dusk falls. Metal spines protrude through their skin. Electricity sparks in their bones, makes their eyes glow. They never speak, but they crackle. She has given them whips to hold, downed power lines with frayed copper ends. At her bidding, they flay her, drawing blood from her remaining skin. She closes her eyes, cries ecstasy from a throat clogged with emotion. They are so perfect, her beautiful children, but it is never enough.She is never enough.Four: In her house near the river, she lies snugged tight between her brother and cousin, breathing in their dreams. Elsewhere in the house, her mother, father, and uncle snore. The door bursts open, shatters, raining splinters. Her family, all of them, is dragged from their beds, pushed barefoot into the snow.She can see her breath as they are marched, all in a line, to the river and forced out onto the frozen surface. Under the snow, the ice is impossibly blue, and under the blue, the water is impossibly black. She is separated from everyone but her mother, who grips her hand so tight their bones grind together, and refuses to let go. There are other families, nearly the whole village, teeth chattering, shivering, confused. One man protests, and a soldier in his warm coat and fur hat breaks the man’s nose with the butt of his gun. The man makes a choking noise. He spits blood on the ice, and one yellow-white tooth. He doesn’t protest again.One of the soldiers wears a star on his hat. He barks a command in a language she doesn’t understand, and two of his men go to either end of the shivering line. They walk slowly, with their guns drawn, and shoot every third person they come upon.One, two, three. Crack. One, two, three. Crack. Her father, uncle, and cousin are sixth, eighteenth, and twenty-first in line. Her mother is thirtieth, and she is thirty-first.Each bullet is the sound of the ice cracking, her heart breaking, the feel of her mother’s cold-chapped hand grinding against her bones then letting go as the force of gravity and the terrible color of blood upon the snow pull her down.Her brother survives. She survives. The solider with the star on his hat lays a heavy hand on her shoulder. He leans forward and breathes in her face, against her ear. His breath, the only hot thing on the frozen lake, smells of sausage and cheap whiskey.“Go,” he says. “Go, and take your brother with you. I want you to remember. I want you to carry this moment with you wherever you go.”There are tears on her lashes, freezing in place. She will never let them fall. They are perfect, inverted globes, holding the last image of her family. If they fall, they will shatter, and her family will be lost forever.This is what the architect dreams.The city changes. Weak and rotten flesh is scraped away to reveal shining bone. Towers rise. Bridges cross and re-cross the city. A train thunders from uptown to midtown and beyond, rattling windows paned in sparkling glass.The architect recruits an army of children, urchins with dirty fingers. The architect’s lover sees them in the shadows of old bridges, chipping away fragments of old stone. She sees them in the streets, hurling those chunks of stone through dirt-streaked windows, exploding brick dust from ancient buildings, hastening decay. She sees them digging between the cobbles, pulling them like teeth, prying between ancient boards until they snap. Their fingers are everywhere.She listens to the architect’s plans. She listens to the trains run beneath the architect’s skin when she sleeps. The city will never be finished, never be done. By night the children will build it up, by day the children will pull it down, and put new, shining structures in its place when the moon rises again.The city will never be complete. The architect will never be complete.Although they have never spoken of it, the architect and the architect’s lover disagree.To the architect’s lover, the river smells of promise, a particular promise that smells of her mother’s skin — fried onions, boiled cabbage, and harsh soap.To the architect, the river is the smell of sickness. It is the feel of her brother’s fevered skin under the palm of her hand. The river is the color of his eyes, glazed, muddy silt from its bottom occluding his sight. It is the sound of him parting blood-cracked lips at the end, rattling out one last breath, and calling her by her mother’s name. It is the memory of him surviving the ice, and dying — as so many others did — on the refugee-choked boat carrying them to a new life, a new shore.The architect is determined she will stitch the river closed. Her thread will be iron and steel, binding up the city’s wounds, sealing her brother’s ghost underneath its skin like a bruise, where it needs must fade.Sometimes the architect likes to imagine she never touched down on the city’s shore. When her brother died, she climbed up on the rail of the boat, crowded with so many stinking refugees, and let herself fall into the churned, muddy water. She sank, rag doll arms and legs drifting loose around her, hair trailing like weeds. She breathed out and out, silver bubbles rising toward the surface, the only bright and beautiful thing in all the muck. She did not jump, but sometimes she wishes she did. Sometimes, even though she knows it is not true, she convinces herself she did jump. The river swallowed her whole. Some other girl, a drowned girl, a ghost, entered the city in her place.At her core, who the architect truly is, is different. She is still under water, still exhaling, watching those bubbles rise. She is waiting. And one day soon, she will breathe in, light, perfect, and stripped clean. She will breathe in. And wake.She tries to tell her lover these things, but she knows her lover doesn’t hear them. Somewhere, somehow, they lost their way. They met in one city, and somewhere along the way, they diverged. They look at the city now, and they see different things. The architect wonders if she can ever build a bridge strong enough to pull her lover across. And if she can’t, what will happen to them, then?The architect’s lover takes to drinking. She drinks in cafes and bars along the ever-changing river, which she scarcely recognizes anymore.Is that the place where she met the architect? Or was it over there? What of the factory, the stone bridge? What of the taste of the architect’s skin, smoky with the factory’s ghosts, sweat-slick beneath her lover’s lips? What of absinthe cradled on the architect’s tongue, and their hands held palm to palm — so tight — bone to bone? So tight they will never let go. Where are the echoes of their heels cracking in rhythm, one, two, three, as they run from one place to the next, running wild into the future?The architect’s lover doesn’t recognize herself anymore. She doesn’t know where she fits — not on the streets, where cobbles no longer rise to meet the arches of her feet; not against the architect, where sharp juts of bone meet her fingers in place of the soft hollow of a throat, the gentle curve of a hip, or the warm swell of a breast.She drinks and she smokes until her memories blur, until their edges round and grow soft like the scarcely-remembered thousand-year cobble stones. The architect’s lover shouts at strangers, her words slurring as she tells them of factories and piers and bridges that never existed.She tells them of home.When she slips up and says she is the architecture’s lover, not the architect’s, no one corrects her.She is a ghost, in love with a city.And in time, because she is afraid and she doesn’t know how to fall out of love, the architect’s lover takes home a beautiful boy whose name she can’t be bothered to remember. She fucks him precisely because it means nothing. Smoking still more cigarettes, eating chilled and bruised plums, watching him sleep, she is terribly afraid she’ll marry him one day. Still never knowing his name, the architecture’s lover will use up her body bearing the beautiful boy’s children. Children who will become the monsters of the architecture’s dream.The architect, the architecture, is all angles and planes now, the glint of steel, concrete skin. The architecture’s lover doesn’t recognize anything anymore. She is a stranger in a city she once loved, a city that held so much promise. A city she called home.The architect’s lover remembers her mother putting her on a boat. There were so many boats in those days, all leaving from different places, but all traveling to the city — a place of promise, a place of dreams. She remembers clinging to her mother’s skirt, sobbing and not wanting to let go as her mother’s hands — red and blistered from washing — urged her up the wooden gangway.“It’s a better life,” her mother told her. “You’ll have opportunities I never had, things I can’t give you. You’ll be happy there, in time. Promise me you’ll try.”She remembers gripping the ship’s rail so hard her knuckles turned white, leaning out over the churning water, waving and straining her eyes until her mother was only a vanished speck on the horizon. Landing on the city’s shore didn’t take the pain away, but stepping from the boat’s swaying deck onto firm land once more, the architect’s lover straightened her spine, keeping her promise to try. Determined to make her mother proud.This is not the city she once called home.This city is hostile. It is like the place she came from, on a boat, so long ago, a place that pushed her out, not wanting her anymore. It does not love her. It barely knows she’s alive.And yet, still, she cannot fall out of love.The architecture’s lover looks at the beautiful boy whose name she doesn’t know, and tries to love him. Silent tears run down her cheeks; she doesn’t remember why.The architect stands on her balcony high above the shining city. Her city. Towers stab defiant at the sky, bridges stitch old wounds closed, trains hum deep underground, and the winking glass that is everywhere catches the sun. Strong and true, it will never crack, never break, never crumble.Her skin is planed clean, scraped thin. Still, it is too heavy for her bones. But there is time, she knows. This is only the beginning.The architect shades her eyes, and looks toward what was once the river. People stride along what are no longer banks, small as ants from up here. They are laughing, smiling. Women, sleek in cool silk the color of her towers. Men, in crisp suits the color of ice cream that will never melt. Their teeth are impossible in the sun. They don’t remember a life other than this one. She has made it so.Everyone should have the luxury of forgetting the times when they weren’t as happy as they must be now.Still, something tugs at the edges of the architect’s mind. There is a ghost in the city. The shadow of towers, spewing smoke, and the memory of a kiss, and salt-tasting skin against her lips haunt her mind. Before her marble skin, before the columns of her spine, the tension bridge of her jaw, before the diamond pane windows of her eyes, wasn’t she someone else? Wasn’t there someone who knew her as she was, and loved her just the same?There, amid the ant-bustle on the once-shores, is a lone girl. Her feet are bare and spattered with mud. She is looking straight at the architect, across all the distance, and the people part around her like water breaking around a stone. Like she isn’t there.The architect wonders: Is that her? Or someone she used to know?Even though she can’t see them from her balcony, the architect knows: The girl’s eyes are the color of stirred silt, and blue ice. There are weeds in her hair. She raises her hand — a drowned girl, waiting to breathe, waiting to rise from the river and come ashore — and waves to the architect, but she does not smile.The architect’s lover leaves the café. She is utterly lost. She recognizes nothing here.She goes toward the water, some vague memory pulling her. But the map written on her skin is muddled. The streets, everything she thinks she knows, has been re-written.The architect’s lover is looking for someone, but she doesn’t know who. No one looks familiar here. Except…Except there is a girl, standing and looking across the water. It is a girl the architecture’s lover almost knows. The girl has eyes like silt and ice. They remind the architect’s lover of home.The architecture’s lover raises her hand, catching the girl’s attention. The girl looks at her, and the architect’s lover falls to her knees. A name catches in her throat and stalls. She can’t remember. She weeps, and doesn’t know why. In her mind, there is one word, echoing persistently and meaning nothing: Home.The architect stands on her balcony, and looks at the girl and the water. For a moment, the architect thinks there is something she has forgotten. Then she puts the thought from her mind.Soon the city will be perfect. She will tear it down and rebuild it until it is so.The architect turns. She does not raise her hand to the girl on the shore. Or the weeping woman on her knees by the girl’s side.The architect goes inside. And she does not say goodbye.END"Her Last Breath Before Waking" was originally published in 3-Lobed Burning Eye in December 2013.This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on February 16th with "Into the Nth Dimension" by David D. Levine.

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Patrick chats with author Beth Cato (THE CLOCKWORK CROWN) on today's SF Signal podcast

Welcome to Episode 141 of Speculate! The Podcast for Writers, Readers and Fans.  In this episode we begin a new triptych of shows with our reader response to Helene Wecker‘s extraordinary The Golem and the Jinni.  Along with Paul Weimer (of SF Signal and Skiffy and Fanty fame), we talk about the incredible worldbuilding in […]

2015 Nebula Award Novels - Time for our annual review of the Nebula Award nominees for the best SF or Fantasy novel of the year, with podcasters from Skiffy and Fanty, SF Signal, and The Three Hoarsemen! We’ll cover (in a spoiler-light fashion) books about space stations, alien invasions, empires, mushrooms, and tea ceremonies. There’s even a deadly incident involving a Zeppelin! Host Jason Snell with Fred Kiesche, Shaun Duke, Paul Weimer and Scott McNulty.

Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith talk to me about their YA novels (Stranger and Hostage), and C.S.E. Cooney talks to me about her music project, Brimstone Rhine.First, a congratulatory note to all the Nebula nominees this year! Many OA members on that list, which is full of awesome people and awesome stories! Special congratulations to Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette), Ann Leckie, Ken Liu, Richard Bowes, Rachel Swirsky, Sarah Pinsker, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Aliette de Bodard, Alyssa Wong, Sam J. Miller, Usman T. Malik, Carmen Maria Machado, Ursula Vernon, and Eugie Foster (who passed just after her last story was published). Hugo nominations are open until the 10th of March. If you are an attending or supporting member of Sasquan, or if you attended or supported LonCon last year, you should be eligible to nominate! I (Julia Rios) personally am eligible in Best Editor Short Form for my work with Strange Horizons, and on Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories. I'm also eligible in Best Fancast for this very podcast as well as for The Skiffy and Fanty Show, and Strange Horizons is eligible in Best Semiprozine. There are a bunch of other super worthy OA member projects, but I wanted to give another special shoutout to Catherine Lundoff's series on LGBT SF History over at SF Signal. I believe she's eligible for best fan writer for that series. Stranger and Hostage are the first two books in the Change quartet, set in a post apocalyptic LA. Rebel and Traitor (books 3 and 4) should be out later this year and early next year respectively.Prisoner, Partner, and Laura's Wolf are Rachel's three books featuring werewolf marines, hot sex, and PTSD. You can download Prisoner for free.Angel in the Attic is Rachel's lesbian werewolf romantic comedy.Brimstone Rhine is C.S.E. Cooney's made up rockstar alter ego, who is crowdfunding two EPs right now on indiegogo. Rewards include things like Claire's books (in addition to the music of course). For a free taste of Claire's Witch's Garden world, you can read "Witch, Beast, Saint" in Strange Horizons. The books that are part of the Brimstone Rhine campaign rewards include The Witch In the Almond Tree, The Breaker Queen, The Two Paupers, and Bone Swans. The Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadors are one of C.S.E. Cooney's other music  and storytelling projects, which, if Brimstone Rhine ends up hitting far beyond the initial funding goal, might also produce an album of Distant Star Ballads.

SFWA Vice President Cat Rambo joins me to talk about SFWA, her work, and more.SFWA is the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Cat is currently Vice President, and is running for President. Her presidential platform statement is here. SFWA members can nominate and vote for the Nebula Awards, which are presented at the Nebula Awards Weekend each year. 2015 is the 50th year!Cat talked a bit about her forthcoming novel, The Beasts of Tabat, and her forthcoming collection, Neither Here Nor There. You can find out more about those and all her other work on the fiction section of her website. If you'd like a free taste with some QUILTBAG content, Cat Recommends starting with "Miss Liberty Gets a Haircut" in Strange Horizons. A good starter collection to purchase is Near + Far, which contains her Nebula-nominated story, "Five Ways to Fall in Love on the Planet Porcelain". Cat Also recommended Catherine Lundoff’s SF Signal series on LGBT SF.

                       Welcome to Episode 117 of Speculate! The Podcast for Writers, Readers and Fans.  In this episode, simultaneously run on two other podcasts, we talk about the medium and message as we chat with authors and podcasters Patrick Hester (of the Hugo award-winning SF Signal […]

Flying so close to the Sun their duct tape and bailing wire melts and their headphones explode, John E. O. Stevens, Fred Kiesche and Jeff Patterson return this month for our lucky thirteenth episode! Not only have we seamlessly spliced together two different recording sessions (thanks to said duct tape and bailing wire), but we are joined by one of SF Signal’s most prolific irregulars Sarah Chorn as we spelunk the depths of the genre to discuss overlooked works of fantasy and science fiction that deserve more attention. If your wallet survives that list, we once again bring you a list of books (and other things) that we’ve consumed since last month that may finally tumble Mount ToBeRead down upon your heads! Host Fred Kiesche, John E.O. Stevens and Jeff Patterson with Sarah Chorn.

It's high time for another silly Verity! Extra! This week's topic is inspired by a "Mind Meld" in SF Signal. Join Deb, Erika, Liz, and Lynne as we discuss where we'd go if we had one trip in the TARDIS. Who wants to do something historical? Who wants something literary? Who wants the future? Or alien adventures? Perhaps most important of all, who is our very own Meddling Monk? (Spoiler: that one's Liz. Surprise.) Where would you take the TARDIS if you had one trip? Let us know in the comments! ^E Associated links (on our site):MIND MELD: Where Would You Take the T.A.R.D.I.S.?Dumb Ways to Die (I may never get this out of my head. THANKS DEB. ^E)Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh

Loncon 3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, has announced the nominees for the 2014 Hugo and Campbell Awards. As is our practice, this week we have a special episode of the podcast devoted to discussing the awards and all of the wonderful nominees. We are very grateful to John De Nardo (of SF Signal) and Tansy Rayner Roberts (Galactic Suburbia and Verity) for joining us for what we think is an interesting conversation.  We would also like to thank all of our listeners for nominating Coode Street for our third consecutive Best Fancast Hugo Award. We could not be happier, or more grateful. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast and we'll be back next week with more! Other links: Larry Correia and the Sad Puppy Hugo slate.

The Unheard Voices of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror panel from Arisia. Catherine Lundoff moderated this panel, with K. Tempest Bradford (standing in for Nisi Shawl), Julia Rios, Trisha Wooldridge, Andrea Hairston, and Victor Raymond. Listening to this doesn't give you the visual cues that people in the room had, so a note up front: Nisi was in the audience, but wasn't up for sitting on the panel. There was an ongoing joke about Tempest being Nisi, and about Nisi being Nalo Hopkinson, who was not at the convention. Awards season!*Lambda finalists include lots of OA members like Nicola Griffith, Sacchi Green, Mary Ann Mohanraj, Alex Jeffers, Alaya Dawn Johnson, The editors and contributors to Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam Gay City: Volume 5, Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold, Richard Bowes, Lee Thomas, and more. Full list here: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/news/03/06/26th-annual-lambda-literary-award-finalists-announced/*The Nebula nominee list is also out, and lots of OA types are there too, including Sofia Samatar, Nicola Griffith, Ellen Klages and Andy Duncan, Vylar Kaftan, Catherynne Valente, Christopher Barzak, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Sarah Pinsker, Rachel Swirsky, Karen Healey, and Nalo Hopkinson. Full nominee list here: http://www.sfwa.org/2014/02/2013-nebula-nominees-announced/The Galactic Suburbia Award and Honor List is out now, and the joint winners are N.K. Jemisin and Elise Matthesen. Full Honor List here: http://galactisuburbia.podbean.com/2014/03/23/episode-96-19-march-2014/*Carl Brandon Society is a group for fans and writers of color. They give out the Kindred and Parallax Awards for fiction by and/or about people of colors, and also administer scholarships for students of color to attend Clarion.*Broad Universe is a group for women who write and publish science fiction and fantasy. They have a website, a podcast, and many promotional and support networking opportunities for members, including organizing group readings and book sale tables at conventions. *WisCon is a feminist science fiction convention held each year at the end of May in Madison, Wisconsin. The Carl Brandon Society and Broad Universe both have strong presences there. *Con or Bust is an organization that raises money to send fans of color to conventions. The Carl Brandon Society administers the funds. *Gaylaxicon and Outlantacon are conventions specifically for the QUILTBAG SF fandom community. Gaylaxicon is a roving con (like WorldCon), and Outlantacon happens each year in May in Atlanta. This year's Gaylaxicon will be hosted by Outlantacon.Work by people on the panel:*Filter House is Nisi Shawl's Tiptree Award Winning short story collection (Tempest joked that her collection would be called Filter House 2).*Redwood and Wildfire is Andrea Hairston's Tiptree Award Winning novel (for which she had also just received a Carl Brandon Award on the day of this panel).*Silver Moon is Catherine Lundoff's novel about menopausal werewolves*Catherine writes a series about LGBT SFF for SF Signal.*Julia is an editor for Strange Horizons, which is always interested in publishing diverse voices.*Kaleidoscope is an anthology of diverse YA SF and Fantasy stories Julia is co-editing with Alisa Krasnostein, which is scheduled to launch in August of 2014.*In Other Words is an anthology of poetry and flash by writers of color Julia is co-editing with Saira Ali, which is scheduled to launch at WisCon in May, and which will benefit Con or Bust.Other things mentioned: *Lorraine Hansberry was an African American lesbian playwright, best known for Raisin in the Sun, but Andrea pointed out that she also wrote a lot of science fiction plays. *The SFWA Bulletin incited a lot of pushback in 2013. Here is a timeline: http://www.slhuang.com/blog/2013/07/02/a-timeline-of-the-2013-sfwa-controversies/. It has since changed editorial staff and has just put out the first of the new team's issues, which seems to be a lot more favorably received, as evidenced here: http://www.jasonsanford.com/jason/2014/03/the-new-sfwa-bulletin-is-blowing-my-mind.html.*"The Serial Killer's Astronaut Daughter" by Damien Angelica Walters was written partly in response to the SFWA bulletin's sexism. *A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar came up as an example of a novel by a person of color put out through an independent (not one of the big New York houses--Andrea argued for calling these sorts of publishers independent rather than small) publisher, Small Beer Press. Since the panel, A Stranger in Olondria has won the Crawford Award and been nominated for the Nebula. *Crossed Genres, Twelfth Planet Press, and Papaveria Press are independent presses that publish diverse voices.*Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Apex are magazines Tempest sees publishing diverse stories. Tor.com is also publishing more diverse stories now, like "The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere" by John Chu. *The Tiptree Award celebrates work that expands our notions of gender.*Dark Matter is an anthology exploring a century of SF by black writers. *Blood Children was an anthology put out by the Carl Brandon Society in 213 to benefit the Octavia Butler Scholarship, which sends students of color to Clarion. *Bending the Landscape, Kindred Spirits, and Worlds Apart were brought up as examples of QUILTBAG anthologies from more than just a few years back. All of these were mentioned as early examples, but the panel agreed we need more. *Daughters of Earth is a collection of stories by women from the early 1900s to 2000 with accompanying critical essays. This collection is edited by Justine Larbalestier. Andrea wrote a critical essay about an Octavia Butler story in this book. *The Cascadia Subduction Zone has a feature where an established writer recommends and reviews an older work that might be obscure. Andrea and Nisi have both done this. *Lethe Press publishes best gay SF stories each year in Wilde Stories, and best lesbian SF stories each year in Heiresses of Russ. Nisi and Julia are both in Heiresses of Russ 2013.*From the audience, Saira Ali recommends Goblin Fruit and Stone Telling as diverse poetry magazines, and Aliens: Recent Encounters (edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane) as a good anthology.

Coming up…  Harry Turtledove special! Flash fiction: Lure 07:70 Gladly Wolde He Learne 20:00  Short Fiction: Clash of Arms 30:00 Not All Wolves 51:00  Main Fiction: The Barbecue, The Movie, and Other Unfortunately Not So Relevant Material 01:57:00 SofaCON Quiz: Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy vrs SF Signal 01:12:00 Narrators: Dennis M. Lane, Amy H. Sturgis, Nick Camm, Ibba... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Stephen Euin Cobb (author and futurist) is today's speaker. Topics include: Entropia Universe--a huge online game somewhat like World of Warcraft but with an economy pegged to the US Dollar. (Players are allowed to put money into the game and to take money out. Apparently some people are making their real-world living by playing the game.) Also: A push to make more advanced robotic prosthetic arms for amputees; a pacemaker-like device which has been used to produce deep-brain stimulation which has shown good results in reducing the effects of Alzheimer's disease; and a website called GovTrack.us which allows any person to track what any member of congress is doing, saying and voting for. Also: your host's recent guest-blog entry for the online magazine SF Signal (in which he makes some positive predictions about the future); his being interviewed for the online magazine Hofstra Pulse (about why movies, TV shows and novels so frequently depict an awful future no one would want to line in); comments on your host's experiences writing and training neural nets (a form of artificial intelligence); and his conviction that our "do-nothing" Congress is a direct product of our elected officials constantly squirming under the massive scrutiny of the voters watching them through the unblinking Internet. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 13, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 36 minutes]  Stephen Euin Cobb is an author, futurist, magazine writer and host of the award-winning podcast The Future And You. A contributing editor for Space and Time Magazine; he is also a regular contributor for Robot, H+, Grim Couture and Port Iris magazines; and he spent three years as a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen's Universe Magazine. He is an artist, essayist, game designer, transhumanist, and is on the Advisory Board of The Lifeboat Foundation. His novels include Bones Burnt Black, Plague at Redhook and Skinbrain.

Holy crap! I’ve been telling you to go to SF Signal for dozens of episodes and I’ve never stuck the link on the sidebar to the right. I suck! That egregious error has been fixed. Go visit the best science fiction blog ever and the only one that loves the Mango so much, you can […]

Badger! Badger! Badger! (Thank you, John DeNardo of SF Signal for turning us onto this!) Beware the Hairy Mango – Episode 50 – The Anarchist by Matthew Sanborn Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Warning: This episode contains volume spikes, dirty words and a poem concerning the happenings of my ding-ding. Check out SF Signal here: http://sfsignal.com/ Beware the Hairy Mango – Episode 41 – Leonardo Da Countertop by Matthew Sanborn Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.