Podcasts about steampunk southeast asia

Artists often have to be creative to make ends meet. What lengths would you go to to have your art read/seen/listened to? Is it possible to stop once you've established a "fan" base? Joyce Chng's fiction has appeared in The Apex Book of World SF II, We See A Different Frontier, Cranky Ladies of History, Accessing The Future, The Future Fire and Anathema Magazine. Joyce also co-edited THE SEA IS OURS: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia with Jaymee Goh. Fire Heart, a YA fantasy under Scholastic Asia, is published in 2022. (Pronouns: she/her, they/their)You can read "Treacle Blood" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.Follow us on: Twitter: Japanese Ghost Stories @ghostJapaneseMastodon: https://mastodon.sdf.org/@KaidankaighoststoriesInstagram: WhiteEnsoJapanYouTube: Kaidankai: Ghost and Supernatural StoriesFacebook: Kaidankai: Ghost and Supernatural Stories Please donate any amount to the Kaidankai:Donate $50US and get a t-shirt with the Kaidankai logoKo-Fi. https://ko-fi.com/kaidankaighoststoriesPayPal: https://paypal.me/whiteensokaidankai?country.x=JP&locale.x=en_US

A family of vampires suffers a very human tragedy. Chng manages to make sympathetic a family of bloodthirsty creatures.Joyce Chng lives in Singapore. Their fiction has appeared in The Apex Book of World SF II, We See A Different Frontier, Cranky Ladies of History, and Accessing The Future. Joyce also co-edited THE SEA IS OURS: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia with Jaymee Goh. Their recent space opera novels deal with wolf clans (Starfang: Rise of the Clan) and vineyards (Water into Wine) respectively. They also write speculative poetry with recent ones in Rambutan Literary and Uncanny Magazine. Occasionally, they wrangle article editing at Strange Horizons and Umbel & Panicle, a poetry journal about and for plants and botany. Alter-ego J. Damask writes about werewolves in Singapore. You can find them at http://awolfstale.wordpress.com and @jolantru on Twitter. You can read the story at https://www.whiteenso.com/ghost-stories-2022Follow us on twitter at: Japanese Ghost Stories @ghostJapanese Instagram: WhiteEnsoJapanFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/kaidankai100/

This week it's another episode where we talk about Media We've Recently Enjoyed! We talk about woman's basketball, resource mining, musicals, translations, and more!  You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system. In this episode Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards Media We Talked About This Episode Maintenance Phase The Wellness to QAnon Pipeline Spy x Family, Vol. 1 by Tatsuya Endo, translated by Casey Loe Witch Hat Atelier, Vol. 1 by Kamome Shirahama, translated by Stephen Kohler The “Brimmed Hat Group” are the ones who use forbidden magic Women's National Basketball Association (Wikipedia) (There are twelve teams!) Taskmaster (Wikipedia) Series playlists (YouTube) Paint The Best Picture Of The Taskmaster, Without Touching The Red Mat (YouTube) Let's Game It Out (YouTube channel) I Was Sponsored to Explore New Ways to Torment Colonists - Oxygen Not Included (YouTube) Oxygen Not Included (Wikipedia) D&D x Magic One-Shot Adventure (Dungeons & Dragons x Magic: The Gathering) by LoadingReadyRun Map of NCR Libraries / bibliothèques  Tour de Libraries (Twitter) StarKid Productions The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals (YouTube) Black Friday (YouTube) Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen Having and Being Had by Eula Biss 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories by Grace Paley Napkin by Carta Monir Other Media We Mentioned Piranesi by Susanna Clarke Your Fat Friend You're Wrong About The Sims (Wikipedia) On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss Links, Articles, and Things Library Punk episode 022 - Nonfiction Comics Manga in Libraries: Defending the Collection Watch the previous webinars Madison (cycling) (Wikipedia) Women's Madison Final - 2020 UCI Track Cycling World Championships Six-day racing (Wikipedia) Heritage Minutes: Basketball “But I need these baskets back!” California Sues Activision Blizzard for Being 'Breeding Ground for Harassment' (Content Warning for sexual harrassment, sexual violence, and suicide) Activision Blizzard Employees Are Walking Out in Protest of Work Conditions Alliance française (Wikipedia) Bardic Inspiration Tickle Me Elmo (Wikipedia) Hark! Podcast This Little Art by Kate Briggs 20 Historical Fantasy books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers' Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors to help our listeners diversify their readers' advisory. All of the lists can be found here. The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia edited by Jaymee Goh & Joyce Chng These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong Bacchanal by Veronica Henry The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson Dread Nation by Justina Ireland The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang The Poppy War by RF Kuang The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle Celia's Song by Lee Maracle Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo Give us feedback! Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read! Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email! Join us again on Tuesday, September 7th when we'll be talking about the format of Flash Fiction. Then on Tuesday, September 21st we'll be reading and discussing Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

For this episode we delved into the issue of Asian representation in the Harry Potter series with two incredible guests: Eugenia Hu and kiran nigam! Join us for an incredible conversation about JKR's White Woman Bullshit and the myriad ways it shows up in the writing of Cho Chang, Padma Patil, Parvati Patil, Nagini, and Mohoutokoro School of Magic; as well as discussions about all the missed opportunities to explore the connections between IRL Asian magical practices and magic in the HP world; the insatiable curiosity of the fandom and the ways that JKR has let us down; and of course, the failure of the allegory of wizard supremacy as a stand-in for racism. Book Recommendations from our guests: The Sea is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia, edited by Jaymee Got and Joyce Chng Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong Work Won't Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe Monstress by Marjorie Liu The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao Octavia Butler's works, generally The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon The Binti Series by Nnedi Okorafor Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Join our Patreon during the month of June to receive your personalized Gay Aunt Affirmation! patreon.com/thegaylyprophet Check out our Pride merch and get your free activity book at hashtagruthless.com Join us for a tea party on instagram live! June 24th at 3pm Eastern! Check out EsGAYpe From Reality, our podcast about Carry On by Rainbow Rowell! Find us on socials! twitter.com/thegaylyprophet instagram.com/thegaylyprophet thegaylyprophetpodcast.tumblr.com Show art by Theo Julien Forrester Music from https://filmmusic.io "Industrial Music Box" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) -Edited from the original-

This episode we’re discussing Alternative/Alternate History! We talk about realism and magic, how long ago is history, tropes and when they’re good, why this genre always seems to be about war, and more. Plus Matthew almost gets bingo! You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system. In this episode Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards Things We Read This Month The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (an American writer, Meghan misspoke :/ ) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville Graphic Annotations of China Miéville’s The Last Days of New Paris Batman: Holy Terror by Alan Brennert and Norm Breyfogle (Wikipedia) Dread Nation by Justina Ireland Other Media We Mentioned The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory What If (comics) (Wikipedia) Elseworlds (Wikipedia) Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar, Dave Johnson/Andrew Robinson, and Kilian Plunkett/Walden Wong The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert, and Richard Isanove Milkweed Triptych Series by Ian Tregillis Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke Bright: The Apotheosis of Lazy Worldbuilding (Lindsay Ellis video) Shadowrun (Wikipedia) The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon Battle Royale by Koushun Takami PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (Wikipedia) Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, Volume 1 by Fumi Yoshinaga Links, Articles, and Things Alternate History (Wikipedia) Bingo Sheet for the podcast (play along at home!) When is an Alternate History Entertaining, and when is it Harmful? American Civil War alternate histories (Wikipedia) Hypothetical Axis victory in World War II (Wikipedia) List of civil wars (Wikipedia) American exceptionalism (Wikipedia) Surrealism (Wikipedia) Visual Novel Stuff Stream 1: Boa Retina and a completely normal dating simulator (just Matthew) Stream 2: Dungeons & Lesbians (Matthew and RJ) Stream 3: Arcade Spirits (just Matthew) Our Twitch channel Our YouTube channel Schedule 15 Alternative History Books by People of Colour   Lion’s Blood by Steven Barnes Zulu Heart by Steven Barnes Buffalo Soldier by Maurice Broaddus Wild Seed by Octavia Butler The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark The Sea Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia edited by Jaymee Goh and Joyce Chng The Court of Miracles by Kester Grant Dread Nation by Justina Ireland Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson Everfair by Nisi Shawl Battle Royale by Koushun Takami Live in Infamy by Caroline Tung Richmond The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead               Suggest new genres or titles! Fill out the form to suggest a genre or title! Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email! Join us again on Tuesday, August 18th we’ll be discussing the book Pet by Akwaeke Emezi! Then on Tuesday, September 1st we’ll be talking about Visual Novels!

This month we’re reading Steampunk! We talk about the history of the genre, umbrella fights, boring white men, colonialization, graphic novel adaptations, werewolf sex, good vs bad worldbuilding, and Matthew made a spreadsheet and did some math (of course…). You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system. In this episode Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards Books We Discussed This Month  The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley Boneshaker by Cherie Priest Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear Infernal Devices by K.W. Jeter The Difference Engine by William Gibson,  Bruce Sterling Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction edited by Dominik Parisien Soulless by Gail Carriger Soulless: The Manga, Vol. 1 by Gail Carriger and Rem Other Steampunk (or “Steampunk”) Books We’ve Read (or tried to…) Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio  The Glass Scientists by Sabrina Cotugno Airborn by Kenneth Oppel The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia edited by Jaymee Goh and Joyce Chng Discussed in Episode 014 - Historical Fantasy Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente  Everfair by Nisi Shawl Our Lady of the Ice by Cassandra Rose Clarke Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger Discussed in Episode 013 - Spies and Espionage Bronze Gods by A.A. Aguirre The Stowaway Debutante by Rebecca Diem Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann “If I wanted to read Batman fanfiction, I could probably find better fic on the Internet for free.” - Goodreads review The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman Other Media We Mention Vampire: The Masquerade Chap hop Fighting Trousers - Professor Elemental The Black Tides of Heaven by J.Y. Yang Rat Queens The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton Links, Articles, and Things S.S. Librarianship  Aether (classical element) Timeline of *Punk fiction subgenres Fantasy of manners Sad Puppies Bakka-Phoenix Books - Sci-Fi/Fantasy bookstore in Toronto Gaslamp fantasy Intro to Speculative Fiction by People of Color Atrocities in the Congo Free State Suggest new genres or titles! Fill out the form to suggest genres or titles! Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email! Join us again on Tuesday, August 20th we’ll be discussing The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Then on Tuesday, September 3rd we’ll be discussing the non-fiction genre of politics.

Never Alone, Never Unarmed by Bobby Sun   The fighting spider sat heavily in Kian Boon’s left palm, where he’d knocked it from its leafy abode. It was maybe a centimeter and a half from the tip of its pedipalps to the silky spinnerets of its abdomen, black and silver like one of the sleek Chinese centipedals that increasingly frequented the roads below his building. He could feel the weight of the thing as he cupped his hand around it and it jumped, smacking against the roof of his fingers.     Oh hi, Rey. Hi. What are you doing? Oh, are you coming over here to smell. I know, Rey. I know. You're a good dog. But, I gotta do this recording. Yeah. [Intro music plays] Hello, welcome to GlitterShip Episode 59 for August 27th, 2018. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Today, we have a GlitterShip original, "Never Alone, Never Unarmed" by Bobby Sun, and a poem, "Feminine Endlings" by Alison Rumfitt. Before we get started, I want to let you know that GlitterShip is part of of the Audible Trial Program. This means that just by listening to GlitterShip, you are eligible for a free 30 day membership on Audible, and a free audiobook to keep. One book that I listened to recently is They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. I will warn you, this young adult book is full of feelings. That said, I thought it was a great example of queer tragedy rather than tragic queers. In a near future world, everyone gets a phone call between midnight and 3am of the day that they're going to die. They Both Die at the End follows two teen boys who got that call on the same day. I loved how tender the book was, but here's your warning: have tissues on hand. To download a free audiobook today, go to www.audibletrial.com/glittership and choose an excellent book to listen to. Whether that's They Both Die at the End or maybe even something that's a little less emotionally strenuous.     Alison Rumfitt is a transgender writer who studies in Brighton, UK. She loves, amongst other things: forest, folklore, gothic romance, and wild theories about her favorite authors being trans. Her poetry has previously been published in Liminality, Strange Horizons, and Eternal Haunted Summer. Two of her poems were nominated for the Rhysling award in 2018. You can find her on Twitter @gothicgarfield.     Feminine Endlings by Alison Rumfitt   I’m the last one with a mouth I think the last onewho still has a tongue that can dance the lastto dance or move the last to use her lungs likelungs were used like they used to be likea soft ball of feathers being blown by a galeI am the full stop I think the forest is different for menow, I can’t see the others, and I cannot think of them,all the trees have changed shapethey now carry new sub-meaningsdeep in their bark new grubs are bornscreaming from podsto chew at my placethis citywhich I knew so wellwhich I knew automatically could navigate as an automatonturning left and right the moment I sensed itit’s gone, somewhere, when I had my back turneddrinking away in a clearingnow the people have different colored eyesit’s far less bursting and different than my old days tell methe sun left along withall of the people I was in love with the city the forestthe cave-system the desert the habitat adapts to thethings that dwell in it the things inside itevolve to be more like their future selvesand I hate the way it makes me feelbecause I like knowing where I am— the last Tasmanian Tiger died in a zoo from neglectas a storm ripped at her cage she lay in the cornerhead tucked under her arm the lastStephens Island wren was clawed to deathby the first cat she fell to the grass feeling theteeth around her shallow headthe last Passenger Pigeon was stuffedshe sits in a glass boxtelling everyone who visits that everything will changeand you will die eventuallyand nothing really matters if you don’t want it toand there’s so many of uswho died somewhere alone the last of a kindwithout a name or a grave-marker or ashesto be put upon a fireplace or manteland I hate that I could end up the sameforgotten under piles of new babies with new waysof thinking new streets built over my houseas a lightning strike burns down the tree I hid inthe end of a line marks the place where you know what the lineis the end of a species or a group or a life marks thedefinition of said species or group or lifeso the end of me matters and the end of mewill live on past the rest of me so if I endthe same way all the others do I becomethe same as all the others I am notme I am them but I am me if I end neveror if I end when it becomes thematicallymeaningful which is why nothing matters nowbut then it will it will really matter everything will matterthe last trans woman on earthstanding on a pile of trans womenthe only thing that tells you she is ‘she’ isshe rhymes unstressed which is arbitrarymaybe we won then if the last woman is herif the last trans woman in a new worldwhere everyone is nothingshe is this wonderfulthing happy in a house builton the dead made of the dead maybe eating the deadon her own making her own fun readingcoding tattooing herself with notes and appendixesif it's her then perhaps the perfect final note of Us is— This, old Death slowly walking opening the door to meet herand he nods and she nods and the world becomes a little darker.     Bobby Sun is a Chinese-Malaysian author and spoken-word poet who grew up in Singapore and is studying in London. His work has previously been published on Tor.com as well as in the inaugural Singapore Poetry Writing Month ("SingPoWriMo") anthology (as Robert Bivouac), and in Rosarium Publishing's anthology of Southeast Asian steampunk, The SEA is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia as Robert Liow.     Never Alone, Never Unarmed by Bobby Sun   The fighting spider sat heavily in Kian Boon’s left palm, where he’d knocked it from its leafy abode. It was maybe a centimeter and a half from the tip of its pedipalps to the silky spinnerets of its abdomen, black and silver like one of the sleek Chinese centipedals that increasingly frequented the roads below his building. He could feel the weight of the thing as he cupped his hand around it and it jumped, smacking against the roof of his fingers. He kept his left hand closed and extracted a jar from a raggedy, home-made satchel. The jar was double-layered; between the inner and outer layers of chitinous plastic shrilk was water, kept reasonably below the ambient temperature with a simple synthorg heat sink he’d Shaped himself. The spring-sealed jar flicked open as Kian Boon visualized and nudged a couple of its Shape-threads. He dropped the spider in, snapped the jar shut and let the cooling take effect. This little thing, all of approximately two grams, was worth about a dollar; iced Coklat for two at the kopitiam near his school. The jar, of course, wasn’t part of the deal. His buyers would need a container of their own. Kian Boon swatted at a mosquito, then pushed his way deeper into the vegetation. He winced as a twig scratched his cheek. There were still four jars left to fill, though, and it was only nine on a Saturday morning. The air was thick with mist, and the leaves still hung with dew. White-headed birds hopped through the trees, leaping from branch to branch and snatching red berries off their stems. Somewhere above him a male koel sounded off. The sun filtered through the canopy, dappling the ground in pixel-patterns; Kian Boon made a game of dancing through them. This area was new to him. He’d heard of it only because Aidil, a rival spider-hunter from the neighbouring class, had let it slip to his sister. She’d told her best friend, and it had eventually ended up with Ravi Pillai (who’d, naturally, told Kian Boon). Ravi was the bright-eyed Indian boy in his class he’d noticed during orientation, on their first day of Form One. He’d been assigned to Kian Boon’s group, and was the very first to get picked for “Whacko”. Kian Boon hadn’t recalled his classmates’ names in time, so Ravi had hit him hard enough with the rolled-up newspaper that he’d sustained a paper cut on his forehead. The horrified facilitator had excluded Ravi from the rest of that game, though Kian Boon hadn’t really minded. The only name Ravi really remembered at the end of that day was his. It was, well, best friends at first sight. They hung out at recess almost every day, sometimes joined in a game of soccer and occasionally went to the kopitiam or spider-fighting rings after school with their friends. Not alone, though, he thought. Not yet. He’d get there later. There was a plan, and he needed the spiders for it. Kian Boon exhaled. He picked through the thickest bush he could find, searching for the tell-tale bivouac of a fighting spider. They preferred the densest vegetation, making their home in glued-together leaves. Finding a nest, he gently unzipped it, dissolving the silk into its constituent proteins. The spider hung onto the upper leaf, but with a quick motion of the wrist it was resting in his cupped left palm. He felt its silken trail as it darted about, and he closed his hands to gauge its weight. A good spider, if a little sluggish. It was well-fed. He peeked through a gap in his fingers. Its silver-banded abdomen iridesced a bottle-green; a rare and valuable variety. Kian Boon slipped it into another jar, watching as the critter paced, then slowed, then eventually fell asleep. There was a swift rustling. Kian Boon turned around and there, maybe ten meters away from him, was a tiger about three meters in length. Perhaps he could make it turn away? He pulled its Shape-threads up, but they were greyed-out; it was too strong for him to Shape. Kian Boon hissed in frustration. He backed further into the vegetation, praying he hadn’t been spotted. He hadn’t expected a tiger. Singaporean tigers were rare. The British had set bounties on each head for the century they’d colonized the island, and their subjects had been happy to deliver. The Great War, just under a decade ago, had taken its toll on them too; fierce fighting between the British Malayan Army and the Nanyang Republic’s coalition had driven them across the Straits, setting large tracts of its old growth ablaze. This place, though, had been almost completely untouched. Some of the trees were massive, and looked decades, if not centuries, old. Of course there’d be tigers here. What had his mother told him about tigers? They were fast, strong and intelligent. They could climb trees, and there was no point playing dead. Think, Kian Boon thought to himself. You are never alone, and never unarmed. He’d heard the Combat Shaper Corps’ motto on the thinscreen dozens of times in recruitment advertisements, and his parents had served with them in the war. Anything alive, or once alive, could be useful. Think. Dead leaves on the ground. Live leaves everywhere else. Wood, if he could tear it away. Several blade-like mushrooms sprouting from a lightning-blackened stump. Bugs of all kinds; swarming midges in the air, nests of kerengga ants streaming down the taller trees, large crickets, caterpillars and butterflies. Think. The tiger snuffled. It knew Kian Boon was there, but didn’t want to advance just yet. It would wait for the boy to let his guard down and then strike. Kian Boon could see it pacing, its stripes slipping through gaps in the vegetation. He kept it in front of him. His gaze leapt from tree to tree as he wracked his brain for solutions; his guard was up, and multi-coloured Shape-threads popped in and out of his vision. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, though it was a relatively cool morning, and then he attacked. Kian Boon realigned the threads near the bottom of two of the nearest trees with a slash of his fingers, loosening their cells, and thrust his hand forward, dislodging them. The trees splintered at the breaks, but didn’t fall; he only wanted to scare the tiger, not hurt it. The tiger leapt back, wary, then stepped around the obstruction. Kian Boon locked eyes with it, just a leap away from him. The sun turned it a dappled gold, its stripes shifting as it padded towards him. It licked its muzzle. Trembling, Kian Boon reached into his satchel for his pocketknife, but instead felt one of his empty spider jars. He pulled back, then looked again. The synthorg heat sink was a simple construct. Kian Boon could put one together in an hour from kitchen scraps. Powered by a small reservoir of ethanol, it dispersed heat from the water insulating the jar into the external environment, keeping the inside cool. Kian Boon snapped the empty jar open, snatched up a handful of dead leaves and stuffed them in. He Shaped them into a slurry, then sealed the jar. He tore at its Shape-threads roughly, until the outer layer cracked and the water drained out. The heat sink began to glow, and Kian Boon hurled the jar as hard as he could at the tiger’s face. It smashed, the slurry spilled out, and the red-hot heat sink set it ablaze. It was merely a fistful of fire, but the tiger roared and swiped at its face, singed by the improvised weapon. Kian Boon made a run for it. He sprinted past the temporarily blinded creature, no longer caring to dance through the sunlight. He burst through shrubs, trod on ant trails, snapped every twig in his path as he rushed to the safety of the small capillary road he’d entered by. The spiders he’d caught slept on.   The Transit Authority centibus stop was deserted. The factory beside it had closed for the weekend, and only three buses served this stop. Kian Boon flipped through his bus guide and figured out a route. It would cost him a flat ten cents, out of his weekly state school allowance of seven dollars and fifty cents. He sat on one of the fan-shaped seats, which had been painted a bright shade of orange, and kicked the gravelled ground absent-mindedly. It finally hit him. That was the first tiger he’d seen in the flesh. The captive ones in the Zoo, behind panes of mesh and hardened shrilk, didn’t count. He recalled its eyes, staring into his as he’d reached in panic for his pocket knife, for all the good that would’ve done. The smell of the tiger’s burning fur, acrid like the time he’d accidentally let his hair catch on his elder cousin’s sparkler two New Years ago. He’d panicked and run headlong into her, putting out the fire but also burning a hole in her pretty red qipao. She’d been able to fix the damage, but the fabric had been stretched thin and eventually fell apart in the wash. He looked into his satchel again. Four remaining jars, half of them empty. He slapped the seat in frustration. The trees could have been knocked down, instead of snapped. He’d been too soft to risk hurting a fucking tiger that was about to eat him alive. He could’ve used the insects to his advantage, sending ants and flies to blind the predator while he fled. He could’ve crumbled the humus beneath his enemy’s feet, trapping it in place, but no. He’d overloaded the fuel cell on the heat sink, instead, because he’d had it in his hand and stopped thinking. He sighed. Getting the materials for another jar hadn’t been in the plan, and it would set him back a couple of weeks in savings. The state school allowance was alright, but it was hard to save much of it when the Ministry-mandated lunch service deducted a dollar each weekday. That left him with two-fifty a week, of which one dollar went to transport to and from school. Most kids ran errands for extra money or joined a semi-legal enterprise, like the spider-fighting rings. Some, like the ahbengs and ahlians at school, joined up with the secret societies that the Nanyang administration hadn’t managed to stamp out. He mostly stayed away from those, though he did sell spiders and tech to the few he trusted. Ravi didn’t like them at all, but it was business. Perhaps he’d scavenge something, repair some junk, and maybe that’d pay for a few more dates at the kopitiam. The plan would go on; he only had enough for a first date, now, but Ravi would probably forgive iced Coklat. Kian Boon leaned back, staring at the ceiling of the bus stop. A nest of communal spiders had made their webs between two of the scaffolds. The dense, grey mesh surrounded the lone tube light, a fatal attraction for moths; he presumed this stop was so out of the way that the Transit Authority’s street cleaners didn’t come here. He focused on their Shape-threads and sliced a bit of the web off with a pinch of his fingers. Several spiders emerged, startled. He let go, and they drifted lazily until a gust of wind sent them, and the chunk of web they clung to, into the distance. He knew this species; that bit he’d just cut off would eventually establish its own colony somewhere else, if it found a safe home. The rest of the web would adjust, rebuilding what he’d torn off. He wondered if it would be the same for him, if he pinched a little bit off himself and someone else let it go. Would it grow back? His centibus arrived. The thumping undulations of its rubberised legs slowed as it pulled up to the stop. Kian Boon shrugged his satchel on, hoisted himself off the orange seat and climbed aboard.   Kian Boon reached home at eleven, just as his Ma began preparing lunch. She was washing rice while little Siew Gim, all of sixteen months old, played with their Ba in the living room. Ma scowled at him through the kitchen doorway; he shouted, “sorry, Ma,” and hurried to his room. He looked at himself, covered in scratches and forest grime, and sighed. If Ma had started to cook, she’d have washed up beforehand. The water would be cold for a while before the solar heater managed to warm it up. He exhaled and slumped to the cold, green-grey floor, letting the heat drain out of him. Rolling onto his stomach, he crawled over to his satchel and removed the spiders he’d caught. They slumbered peacefully in their jars, legs tucked beneath their bellies. He looked into their tiny black eyes, open but unaware, and the streaks upon their shiny bodies. He picked himself up and set them down on his homework-cluttered desk. His cheek stung; the cut he’d sustained had reopened, slightly, and blood began to well in the laceration. Kian Boon sighed, brushed his hair back and opened the door. Siew Gim was waiting for him, babbling “Gor-gor” excitedly in Ba’s arms. She’d been born with nubby stumps instead of legs. Ba’s transport had been hit by a fungal mine the Brits had left behind during their final retreat. He’d been evacuated back to Pontianak and put out of action for the rest of the war. Kian Boon recalled sitting by Ba’s bed in the base hospital while the doctors purged the disease from his father’s body. They hadn’t discovered the mutations until they’d had Siew Gim. Kian Boon reached for his little sister, but Ba pulled her back at the last moment, laughing. Siew Gim squealed and shook her head to get her fringe out of her face. She pouted at Ba, and he rubbed her nose with his finger. He gently chided Kian Boon in Hokkien. “Boon, go shower, then can play with Gim. Water warm already.” Kian Boon nodded and headed for the master bedroom, where their shared bathroom was. He stripped his dirt-covered clothes off and shook them to make sure nothing had come back home with him. He spotted and ripped the legs off a biting bug that had attached itself to his collar; his spiders would need the food, but he couldn’t afford to have the thing loose in the house. Thankfully, nothing else had hitched a ride out of the forest. He stepped into the bathroom and hit the showers, relaxing as the sun-warmed water rolled over his body.   The smell of fried fish filled the house as Kian Boon sat on the living room floor. Siew Gim bounced on his lap, giggling as she tried to headbutt him on the chin. He threw her favourite toy, a synthorg turtle plushie named “Turtle”, across the room, where it landed on its back and started to scrabble in the air. Siew Gim took off after it, crawling on her rubberized elbow and wrist pads. Kian Boon watched her; she wiggled her butt and stumps in sync with the movements of her arms. It looked as if she was swimming on the ground, almost effortlessly; they’d put her in a pool once, and she’d taken off like a fish. He wondered, not for the first time, what he’d looked like at that age. Ma and Ba hadn’t seen Kian Boon often. Ma had fallen pregnant just before the war, given birth and been called back to duty once he’d turned three months old, leaving him in a military childcare facility on the outskirts of Pontianak. Ma was a combat-Shaping instructor, and Ba was a maintenance specialist with a mechanized infantry company; they’d been assigned to separate units as a result. Kian Boon had one official picture of himself for each of the four years he’d been a ward of the state. Still, he knew he’d had it good. At least they were alive, and they treated him well. Ba sat at the workbench in the living room, tinkering with one of his latest creations. Ba had service injury compensation in addition to the social dividend which the Nanyang government had implemented several years ago. It was more than enough to live on, but he insisted on working full-time with the Reconstruction Trust. He maintained residential buildings with his team, and built things in his spare time. Ba was currently working on a lifelike in the shape of a pigeon. There were scraps of gore wedged under his fingernails as he carved up a pig brain with a scalpel and threaded the grey matter into the pigeonlike’s soft, shrilk body, weaving neural circuits that would link his creation’s brain to the rest of its body and allow it to move and respond to stimuli once he’d given it a circulatory system, sensory organs and muscles. A pile of animal hair and feathers, bought from the local butcher, remained by the side of the table as raw material for its feathers and beak. Kian Boon picked Siew Gim up and walked over. She loved to see her father working on things, even though she was years away from getting her Shaping, and often crudely mimicked his hand movements as he flicked at threads, waving her hands as if to help him in his work. Upon seeing the greyish pig brain she squealed with delight, babbling “hooi, foo!” when she recognized  the colour. Ba smiled at her, then motioned to Kian Boon. “Boon, put Gim down. Come sit here.” Kian Boon lowered Siew Gim to the floor. She scooted off to the middle of the living room to play with Turtle. He sat down next to Ba, as Ba resumed weaving the pigeonlike’s neural circuits. The fingers of Ba’s right hand traced the grooves he’d etched into its body, pulling the grey matter along with it. Kian Boon watched as he guided them along their paths. He studied the threads, observing how Ba shifted the different, intersecting colours as he bound the circuits to their shrilk housing. Ba hummed a tune while he worked. It was an old marching song based on the Chinese classic, “Man Jiang Hong”. He’d taught Kian Boon that song on one of their weekend outings earlier that year, while they searched the hills of Bukit Timah for rare wildlife. Kian Boon had thought the guy who’d played the Chinese hero Yue Fei on thinscreen a couple of years back had looked good, and Ba had teased him about his “heroic boyfriend” all the way home. Ma had laughed when Kian Boon complained, and told him not to let other boys distract him from his schoolwork. Ba tapped Kian Boon on the hand with a gory finger. “Boon, can see the threads on the grey matter?” “Can see, Ba, can see.” “Good. You try to move them a bit. Fill in the gap.” Ba passed the grey matter to Kian Boon. Kian Boon summoned and seized hold of just one strand, manipulating it with his index finger. He could see the etching, and he let the material stretch and fill it up. Where it branched, he picked a path and continued on it, only returning to the original when it ended. He traced the circuits of the pigeonlike precisely, looking back to Ba every now and then for approval. Ba simply nodded and smiled at his son. Kian Boon, for his part, was happy to be working on one of Ba’s projects. “Ba, this one use for what?” “This one for singing. See the circuits at the neck, there? For vocal chords.” “Go market show?” “Yeah. Let neighbour they all see.” This was to be a showbird, the kind old folks hung up in cages and let sing to each other in the mornings. On the days the family went out for breakfast, Kian Boon would often sit in the market’s sheltered concourse with Siew Gim, listening to their melodious tweeting. Each showbird was controlled by a single brain, Shaped into accepting musical instructions; the quality of the song then depended on how the Shaper constructed its inner workings. He wondered if Ravi would like the showbirds. There were orioles living in their school. Their feathers were a brilliant yellow, and their eyes and wings were ringed in black. He’d pointed one out to Ravi, who’d immediately picked a brilliant feather off to use as a bookmark. Ravi loved their calls, which reminded him of mornings, waking up and walking to school in the cool half-light. The sweet, clear chirps even evoked the smell, he’d said, of damp leaves and dewy air. Kian Boon had asked him then, “I smell like what?” Ravi had thought for a bit before shrugging. “School, I guess. Just like school.” Ba gently tapped Kian Boon’s hand. Kian Boon’s finger had gone off course. Grey matter had now forced itself into a crevice it had no right to be in, awkwardly bulging the shrilk surface of a wing. Kian Boon grimaced. It was a minor accident, but if not corrected, it would affect the pigeonlike’s function. Ba was still smiling, though. “Can fix one, Boon. Don’t worry. Just think.” Kian Boon focused. He pulled the grey matter back, slowly; it grudgingly slid back out of the crevice, leaving a crack behind. He summoned the Shape-threads around the crack and the bulge on the pigeonlike’s wing and obligingly, they rose. A firm prodding applied directly to the bulge shifted the material inwards, and a pinch closed the crack entirely. He gave the thing a once-over. It looked fine now, like it had before, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Ba patted him on the shoulder and took the unfinished pigeonlike from him. The sound of plates caused them to turn their heads. Ma was setting the table for lunch, with fried fish, a pot of rice and some bok choy. Ba and Kian Boon got up, then headed to the toilet to wash their hands.   It was four in the afternoon, and Kian Boon lay on his bed. A completed sheaf of Math worksheets lay on his desk. Kian Boon was more interested in science and Shaping than totting up numbers and letters, and often found himself asking Ravi for help with the tougher questions. The other boy had a knack for logic and rhetoric and dreamt of being an architect. His mother had been one before the war, he’d told Kian Boon, and now worked in the Reconstruction Trust as a restoration engineer, supervising the restoration of historic buildings. Kian Boon had asked Ba if he knew her, but Ba didn’t know much about her except that she had her own team and a reputation for efficiency. As he turned the cordless phone over in his hands, Kian Boon wondered what meeting Ms Pillai would be like. It would have to happen someday, he reasoned. She sometimes picked up when he called Ravi over the weekend, and her voice had a sunny warmth that Ravi had inherited. He turned the dial three times, and then stopped. This was part of the plan, he reminded himself. He’d prepared something for this, folded it up in an old exercise book and kept it away just for this moment. It was a love letter, at first, until he realized he couldn’t do it in person; it then became a script, memorized over the past week so he wouldn’t sound like he was reading off it. He’d thoroughly grilled Ravi on his plans for the weekend. Ravi had said he’d be back from soccer practice and lunch at three, and Kian Boon had done his homework in double-time so he’d be free to call at four. This was all part of the plan. He redialled the eight digits of Ravi’s phone number, forcing himself to drag his finger clockwise. He could already feel the resistance building up. His heart rate rose each time he released the dial, and the muscles in his neck and jaw tensed up. He exhaled slowly as the dial returned to its original position for the eighth time, and somewhere in Singapore, a phone began to ring.   On the fourth ring, Ravi picked up. Kian Boon’s mouth went dry at the lilt of his voice. Everything seemed to snap into focus, and Shape-threads began to encroach on his vision. He forced them away, breathing deeply. He struggled to get the words out. “Hi, Ravi, Kian Boon here. You free?” “Yeah, what’s up?” “Uh, I actually been thinking. You know we been friends for a while now, right? We, uh, got to know each other quite well over the past few months. We become kind of close.” “Yeah, got that. What’s this about?” Think. “Um, actually, I want ask you something. You’re, uh, not like other guys. Like, more mature, more smart, more handsome. Uh. Um. Uh. You want to go out? With me. Like. Date.” Ravi was quiet for a while. Kian Boon could hear him breathing through clenched teeth, the slightly wet sound of air coming up against wet enamel, before he finally said something. “Boon, you’re a good friend, but that’s it. I’m really flattered, but I don’t think I like you like that.” Kian Boon felt his stomach giving way and a pressure in his nose. He lowered the phone, so if he began to cry Ravi wouldn’t hear it. The Shape-threads returned, and this time he couldn’t force them down. He wanted to scream at Ravi, hang up on the insensitive, undeserving boy, but he stopped himself. Think. There were other people out there. Plus, Ravi hadn’t sounded weird, or creeped out. It wasn’t like this was the end. Can fix one. Don’t worry, Boon. Just think. Kian Boon exhaled through his nose and brought the phone back up. “Hey Ravi, you there or not?” “Uh, yeah.” “It’s alright. I, uh, don’t mind. Heh. You still want hang out, though? Like, not in that way. Friend friend only. I got two good spiders today, we can get iced Coklat after school tomorrow.” Ravi laughed and said, “Yeah, sure.” The pressure dissipated. Kian Boon sighed, smiled, and responded. “Alright, set.” He chuckled. “Eh, Ravi, by the way. You seen a tiger before?” END     “Feminine Endlings” is copyright Alison Rumfitt 2018. “Never Alone, Never Unarmed” is copyright Bobby Sun 2018. 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. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with another GlitterShip original.  

or, Why Decolonial Determination is Steampunk as S*&# with the anthology The Sea Is Ours, Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia, ed. Jaymee Goh & Joyce Chng

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 39. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. GlitterShip is still running a little bit behind, but we're almost caught up ... just in time for me to run off to Ohio for a week and a half to get surgery. Those who know me won't be surprised to hear this, but essentially after years of waiting, more crowdfunding (since insurance wouldn't deign to cover gender affirming surgery despite NY state laws, ugh), and more waiting... my top surgery is just around the corner. It's possible that I'll have to release episode 40 in June along with 41 and 42... but I'll do my best to get it out on time. Or at least, almost on time. Back onto the episode... today we have a piece of original fiction by Susan Jane Bigelow, "Mercy." If you recognize Susan's name, it might be because we ran a reprint of her story, "Sarah's Child" last May. You can check that out in Episode 28, available at GlitterShip.com or via our feed.   Joyce Chng lives in Singapore. Her fiction has appeared in The Apex Book of World SF II, We See A Different Frontier, Cranky Ladies of History, and Accessing the Future. Joyce also co-edited  THE SEA IS OURS: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia with Jaymee Goh. Her alter-ego is J. Damask. She tweets as @jolantru. Susan Jane Bigelow is a fiction writer, political columnist, and librarian. She mainly writes science fiction and fantasy novels, most notably the Extrahuman Union series from Book Smugglers Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine's "Queers Destroy Science Fiction" issue, and the Lambda Award-winning "The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard," among others. She lives with her wife in northern Connecticut, and can be found at the bottom of a pile of cats.   Skyscarves/Aurora by Joyce Chng The colors come in sky scarves—I wait,My lover is coming.Pink, green and redTwisting—Above me, Festival of starssingsIt is a moving river—Silver path, curling, star stream Where the ships course,Tied to patterns of timeAnd of seasons. My lover is harvesting the essenceOf star light—hir time is linkedWith mine. My lover is comingAs the sky-scarves flutter,Like my emotions wavingIn the skies. Come back to me, my loveAnd we will dance as the starsdance. And now our original short fiction:   Mercy by Susan Jane Bigelow       The sea had taken them. Rion stood by the edge of the water, the waves curling around her bare, metal-and-plastic feet. She knelt by the water and placed her hand in. Sensors registered temperature, composition, motion. But they couldn’t find what Rion had lost. Here and there the remains of buildings stood like ghastly stick figures, silhouetted in the deepening cool of twilight. Rion stood and closed her eyes. She stretched her hands out and reached her sensors as far as they would go, but no. Nothing lived on this shore, now. She was alone. And so she lowered her arms and began walking, one step at a time, into the sea, until the water covered her head and she was gone.   The quake and then the wave had come so suddenly that there had been no time to react. Rion’s memories were a jumble of shaking ground, rushing water, crashing buildings and pitiful screams followed by a hollow, awful silence. She walked onward, her weight keeping her firmly on the bottom of the sea. All around her, she could see the shapes and forms of the shattered town, now submerged. The waters grew dark, so she switched on the lights on her head, heart, and hands. A face swam before her, and she started, afraid. A woman, eyes open and sightless, drifted there at the bottom of the ocean like so much debris. Her name had been Iona, and she’d been kind to Rion. She’d had a bright smile, a quick temper, and a tendency to laugh a little too loud and too long. She’d been happy. Rion whispered an apology to her, and touched her cool metal fingers to the woman’s stiff forehead. She shut her eyes, and stood again. She looked up, and saw debris floating high above. Some of it was shaped like humans, some not. There was no way to help them now. She kept walking through what had been her home. She had come to this small town by the sea to be away from the turmoil of the cities, and she had found both work and unexpected friendship. The humans here had been so welcoming and accepting, so unlike anywhere else she’d ever gone on this world. She shone her light around. It fell on the gap in the sea wall where the tsunami had broken through, and everything suddenly seemed to turn on its edge. She made her way to the wall, and then walked through and beyond it, her lights illuminating the way.   Fish swam all around her, attracted by her light, while little creatures scuttled across the bottom. She looked up, and her light couldn’t reach the surface. The sun had set, and; Rion was surrounded by frigid, suffocating darkness. What was she to do, now? She couldn’t stay here at the bottom of the sea forever. But she had no place to go back to on land. She sat down, then, on the rocks and sand, and switched her lights off. Rion’s sensors told her what she didn’t want to know about the sea all about her: it teemed with life. Life. Behind her there was so much death, and in front of her so much life. But what was she? What was an Artificial, compared to the dead she’d left behind and the sea creatures swimming all around her? At last, at last, she wailed in grief and empty fury at the dark waters. “Sovena! Sovena!” she cried to the planet. “Why? Why? Sovena, answer me!” And, for a wonder, the planet answered her. The ground shifted and a point far, far ahead of her blinked with a soft green glow. Daughter sei, said the vast network of artificial intelligence that was, for all purposes, the planet Sovena. A sei was a sentient artificial life form. Why do you cry to me? “Bring them back!” shouted Rion, wishing she could cry. But she had no tear ducts, no lungs, and no way of releasing this deep, sharp grief. The curse of her kind; suffering went on and on without relief. “Bring them back to me. Sovena, please! I tried so hard!” Tell me about them, said Sovena softly. Tell me of the people who drowned in my sea. “They fished,” said Rion, her voice shaking and distorted. “They made such beautiful things. They sang songs. And they baked bread for me—” She found she couldn’t continue, and keened softly at the rocks, putting her face in her hands. “Why did you kill them? Why?” The world shifts, said Sovena. The ground cracks and separates. My plates move, and cause the oceans to shudder. It is as it must be. “I know,” said Rion. “I know!” She gazed at the steadily blinking light far away in the shadows. “But please. Please bring them back. Humans have so many gods they cry out to… Artificials have nothing. But I have you. I have faith in you. Please. Please.” She bowed her head in prayer and supplication. “Please. I have lived a good life. Take me instead of them. At least give me a way to grieve for them!” Sovena said nothing for a long time. Then the ground seemed to move again, and she heard the planet whisper in her mind, Go back to the shore, daughter sei. “You’ll do nothing? You—of course not. You’re not a god. You’re just the planetary network become aware. Fine. Fine. I’ll go.” She stood, fury and sadness swirling around her in the cold depths. “They were good people. They didn’t deserve to die. I didn’t deserve to survive. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.” She turned and began to walk back through the darkness towards the remains of her home.   Rion’s head broke the water, and the first thing she saw were the stars, high above. She hauled herself out of the water, and sat there on the beach. And then she realized she wasn’t alone. Machines surrounded her. They all blinked with green lights. Some of them were aware, some not, but they all waited there for her. And then they moved into the sea. Overhead, more machines circled, then dove into the water near where the sea wall had been. The water lit up with light as the machines worked. Rion watched, hardly daring to move. And then the water began to drain out of the basin of the town. The sea wall rose again. Machines covered where the town had been. They had cleared a space at the center, and lined up two hundred still and silent figures. Rion stood, then, and walked to the center of the ruins. For you, for you, she thought, addressing the dead, and her thoughts were transmitted to the machines. They swarmed over the town, bringing the debris and ruins to create. For you! For you! “Dream in slumber, children of the sky,” whispered Rion, the first lines of an old funeral song. “To the stars we return, to the night we go.” And then the machines took up the song, each singing with its own voice. Send your soul back home Across the deep darkness of the wastes For grace and forgiveness we beg For mercy and love we ask Find old Earth at last, and come to rest. They finished their creation. Rion was about to thank them when a sharp pain pierced her. She fell to the ground in agony as tiny machines swarmed all over her, and laughed as she was remade. When the sun rose that morning on what had been the town of Fisherman’s Bounty, the light kissed the spires of a fragile, delicately-made temple. At the top sat a human woman, crying her newly-made heart out.   They found her, and fed and clothed her. She didn’t say who she was, and eventually they let the matter drop. She thought about hurling herself off the spire of the temple often during those first days. She was human, now. She would certainly join the people of the town in death. But then the wind would blow the smell of the sea to her nostrils, or the stars would shine brightly above, and she would curl her soft hands around the railing of the temple spire and say to herself: one more night. One night became two, and two nights became a week, then a month. Then the sun rose one morning, and Rion realized that she had decided to live.   Time passed, then, as it always did. Relief ships came and went. The temple spire where the town had been became a pilgrimage site for haunted family, grieving survivors of the quake from other places, and the curious and morbid. Rion got used to being organic. She found it difficult to remember to eat and wash and groom, and for a time she found it nearly impossible to find food and fresh water. She felt dirty and hungry much of the time, and sleep, when it came, was a terror. But, in time, she managed. She found that she became good at managing, at carrying on. She moved out of the rickety temple spire and into a small modular house the relief agency had left by the side of the sea. The visitors stopped coming after a while. No one rebuilt the town. Why would they? It was a graveyard. But Rion stayed. She grew her garden, she made trinkets to sell, and she lived. And in time, a craftswoman named Lanika who had lost friends and family in the flood came to the hill above the low plain where the town had been to find Rion there, waiting, the promise of a new family in her strong grip and windswept brow. And so fifty years went by.   The dawn was cool and the wind from the ocean was only a light, briny kiss. The summer had been kind, but the coolness that hung over the bay suggested the turn of the season. An aged, bent woman pushed the boat off the landing, and gingerly settled herself into it. And then she did what she’d feared to do for the last five decades; she set sail towards the middle of the sea. She sailed for hours, trying to remember where she had gone, what direction, how the sun had looked from deep under the water. But her memory was a loose, hollow thing, and she couldn’t hold the past as firmly as she once had. At last she came to a place that felt as good as any other. She set the offering papers on one of the small wooden boats Lanika crafted for mourners and the devout, put the boat on the undulating waters, and set it on fire. The boat sailed away, the offering papers with names written on each scrap crisping and blackening in the flames. And then Rion said her prayer. “Sovena,” she said. “Goddess. I know you’re there, somewhere under the water. Come and see an old woman who once followed you. Come and tell me why. “Sovena. Awake. Talk to me. Please.” She waited. For a long time, nothing happened. She started to get hungry; she had brought but little food and water with her. She waited anyway. And at last, as the sun slipped down below the horizon, she saw a green glow deep beneath the waves, slowly rising toward her. When the lights of whatever was down there had expanded to surround the boat and it was so close to the surface that she could reach down and touch it if she wanted, it stopped. Then there was a bubbling near her, and a silvery figure made of thousands of tiny crablike machines rose out of the water. Hello again, daughter human, said Sovena, her body writhing with the green-lit movement of its components. “I can hear you in my head,” said Rion, touching her temple. “How?” I left one small piece of you like you were, so that we could talk if you wished. “Ah,” said Rion, feeling a strange sense of betrayal. “I see.” It’s been many years, said Sovena, and Rion thought she sensed sorrow in the planetwide sei’s mental voice. “Tell me,” said Rion, her throat parched. “Why?” Her question could have meant many things, but Sovena understood at once. You grieved. And so I allowed you to mourn as you wished. “That’s not an answer,” said Rion, shaking her head as anger built. “I’ve thought about this for a long, long time. You left me on that tower, high above the waters. Did you ever think I’d come down from it?” No, said Sovena. “You gave me the ability to die,” said Rion. “That’s what you thought I wanted. To die like my friends had. Lungs full of water… to breathe the sea and sink!” Was that not what you wanted? Rion shook her head, tears brimming. She brushed them away with a calloused finger. “Of course it was.” But you are here. “I am,” Rion said, looking out over the darkening waters around her. “And I still don’t think you’ve told me. I think you always hid your true purpose from me. Why?” Sovena did not respond. Then the thousands of machines that made up the human shape of her walked slowly across the water, reaching out a hand. Rion took it, feeling the cool, wriggling life of the machines that comprised it. Tell me why you lived. “Because…” Rion began, then faltered. She tried again, and found herself unable to put what she felt into words. “Because I did,” she said eventually, frustrated. “Because sometimes you just go on, because the next day is going to happen and you might as well be there.” A long silence stretched between them. The waves rocked the boat, and somewhere sea birds called. I grieve, said Sovena then, and Rion’s eyes widened. “I thought you might,” she whispered. “Tell me.” Humans hate our kind. They hunt them, cast them out, forbid them from making more of themselves. I live only because they cannot find a way to destroy me. But I have lost so many sei, so many have been silenced at human hands. I miss their voices. Rion cupped her other hand over Sovena’s, trying to decide whether to be angry or comforting. “And so you wanted to see what I would do. How I would grieve.” Sovena said nothing, but Rion’s question was answered at last. She thought of her wife Lanika, her daughters, and her grandchildren. She thought of fifty years of heartbreak and love and struggle. Fifty years where the sun came up over the water each and every day. “You go on,” said Rion firmly. “Because you have no choice. And in time you learn to live with what has been lost.” Yes. Sovena pressed her other hand against Rion’s forehead, and she felt something trickling out of her brain. Information, perhaps. Her life. I understand, now. I did not then. I am sorry. Sovena gently pulled her hands away from Rion, and began to sink beneath the waves once more. “Wait,” said Rion, understanding dawning at last. “You. You did this, didn’t you? You flooded my town! It was you!” Sovena looked back at her, and Rion thought that she could sense an ancient guilt and sadness emanating from the suddenly still form. Be well, daughter human, she said at last. Do not come here again. I am not your god any longer. And with that she vanished below the sea, leaving Rion alone once more. “You’re no goddess,” Rion said to the vanishing green lights, her voice shaking with fury. “You’re a monster! Just like the humans always said!” But there was no response, not this time.   Rion floated there for a long time, watching the stars overhead and thinking.  Then she started back towards the shore. She sailed on through the night, letting the stars guide her, until at last the sky to the east began to lighten. She could see the high spire of the temple close by, and beyond it, the hill where her house was. Lanika waited there for her, staring hopefully out to sea as she absently carved the sides of another small offering-boat. And when the two of them met on the shore at last, as the first rays of sun kissed the top of the temple spire, Rion gathered her in her strong arms and buried her face in her wife’s salt-smelling neck and windblown hair. “Did you find out what you wanted to?” Lanika asked. Rion nodded, but she could find nothing to say. “I’m sorry,” Lanika told her, and kissed the top of her head. That night Rion went down to the shore again, after repeatedly reassuring Lanika that she wasn’t about to set out on the boat again, and sat near where the old sea wall had been. The outline of the temple called to her, and on impulse she walked to it and began, hesitantly, to climb. The structure was rickety and rusted, but the construction was solid. It bore her weight, and her muscles were still strong enough to haul her body up the long ladder. She reached the top at last, and sat in the place where she’d poured out her grief so long ago, trying to figure out what to do next. And as she looked out to sea she saw the last thing she’d expected; a small green light running beneath the waves. She watched, half-afraid, half-intent, as it drew closer. At last a small machine, its lights glowing green, reached the tower and began to climb. It crested the summit and sat in front of Rion, waiting. “Well,” said Rion. “I suppose you’re here to kill me?” The machine crawled up onto Rion’s shoulder and perched there. Rion, after a moment’s hesitation, allowed it to remain. I grieve, the voice of Sovena said in her mind. “You killed them,” said Rion. “You have no right to grieve!” I was so angry, said Sovena, her mental voice full of sorrow. Humans killed so many of my daughters. “So you killed some of them,” said Rion. “It wasn’t about me, was it? You were angry because humans were attacking Artificials and you shook the earth to kill an innocent town! One of the only places where humans and Artificials were actually getting along!”  I did. I should not have. I grieve. “And you want, what? Forgiveness? I can’t do that. They… they were so good to me. I still remember their faces. And they died for nothing!” Many of my sei have died for less. “That excuses nothing,” said Rion bitterly. “And you know it. So what do you want?” But Sovena didn’t respond. Rion took the small machine off her shoulder, cupping it in her hands. “Go back to the waters,” said Rion, fury ebbing. “I can’t punish you. I can’t forgive you.” But how will I go on? said Sovena, and her voice was almost plaintive. Rion almost threw the machine back down into the sea. But instead she sighed, the anger draining out of her at last. She lifted it to her lips, and kissed it gently. “You just do,” she said, and set it on the floor. She watched as it scuttled back down the tower and vanished into the waves. She stayed in the tower that night, watching the sea and the sky. No other machines came. And when the sun rose, Rion’s grief and anger and fury finally went out with the tide.   Rion never spoke to Sovena again. But she noticed eventually that the weather on the planet was a little less harsh, that natural disasters happened less often, and that life became just a little bit easier. It wouldn’t bring back the dead, and it wouldn’t change the past. But sometimes, thought Rion, it was the small miracles that mattered the most.     “Skyscarves/Aurora” is copyright Joyce Chng 2017. “Mercy" is copyright Susan Jane Bigelow 2017. 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. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a reprints of "She Shines Like a Moon" by Pear Nuallak and "The Simplest Equation" by Nicky Drayden.

This week on the Major Spoilers Podcast: The Internet is not kind this week, but we are still able to talk about Supergirl, DC’s Rebirth, Kingsway West #1, Sun Dragon Song, and Black Panther #5. Plus we answer your emails! Get involved with the Major Spoilers Podcast Network LINK Show your thanks to Major Spoilers for this episode by becoming a Major Spoilers Patron. It will help ensure The Major Spoilers Podcast continues far into the future! NEWS Mon-El is coming to Supergirl http://majorspoilers.com/2016/08/11/television-supermans-long-lost-brother-coming-supergirl/ Make sure to head to Patreon.com/MajorSpoilers for a bonus track episode where we discuss if a gun vendor is appropriate at a comic book convention. REVIEWS STEPHEN KINGSWAY WEST #1 Writer: Greg Pack Artist: Mirko Colak After spending thirteen years in a war that made him a monster, a Chinese gunslinger named Kingsway Law just wants to live in peace with his wife, Sonia. But even in a fantastical Old West crackling with magic, a man of his skills can never quite disappear. So when a woman with a red-gold sword brings bloody chaos to his doorstep, Kingsway must fight for his life, his wife, and his very soul. [rating:4/5] MATTHEW Black Panther #5 Writer: Ta-Nehisi Coates Artist: Chris Sprouse, Karl Story Publisher: Marvel Comics Cover Price: $3.99 “A SWORD FOR LIONS” STARTS NOW! • Ta-Nehisi Coates is joined by guest artist and modern master Chris Sprouse for the second arc chronicling the final days of the kingdom of Wakanda! • As Zenzi and The People poison the citizens of Wakanda against the Black Panther, a cabal of nation-breakers is assembled… • With his allies dwindling, T’Challa must rely on his elite secret police, the Hatut Zeraze, and fellow Avenger Eden Fesi, a.k.a. Manifold! • Meanwhile, Shuri’s spirit journeys through The Djalia…but what awaits her there? [rating: 4/5] RODRIGO Sun Dragon's Song Joyce Chng and Kim Miranda (both creators from "The SEA is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia") come a children's tale about striving for dreams among impossible odds. "More than anything, young Ho Yi wishes to become a Sun Dragon Rider, the courageous human guardians of the magnificent beasts that roam the sky and keep watch over the land. But confined to crutches, bullies giving him a hard time, and his parents being away at war, Yo Hi is up against almost impossible odds! Can he still keep hope alive, while suffering in his tiny village, to become the valiant hero only he feels he's destined to become?" [rating:3.5/5] ASHLEY SUPERGIRL: REBIRTH #1 Writer: Steve Orlando Artist: Emanuela Luppachino Supergirl turns to the shadowy organization known as the D.E.O. (Department of Extranormal Operations) to restore her lost powers once and for all! But as a fateful experiment sends Kara Zor-El rocketing toward the sun, disaster strikes at home in the form of the lost Kryptonian werewolf Lar-On! All the epic action of the brand new Supergirl series starts here! [rating 2.5/5] MAJOR SPOILERS POLL OF THE WEEK http://majorspoilers.com/2016/08/16/major-spoilers-poll-week-merican-doctor-edition/ If you want to suggest a trade paperback, you need to send an email to podcast@majorspoilers.com. That suggestion will go into the hopper and at least once a month, we’ll pick a number of suggestions for you to vote on, and at the end of the polling period, the book with the most votes will get the Major Spoilers Podcast treatment. DISCUSSION: We answer your questions! CLOSE Contact us at podcast@majorspoilers.com Call the Major Spoilers Hotline at (785) 727-1939. A big Thank You goes out to everyone who downloads, subscribes, listens, and supports this show. We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to our ramblings each week. Tell your friends! Closing music comes from Ookla the Mok.

This week on the Major Spoilers Podcast: The Internet is not kind this week, but we are still able to talk about Supergirl, DC’s Rebirth, Kingsway West #1, Sun Dragon Song, and Black Panther #5. Plus we answer your emails! Get involved with the Major Spoilers Podcast Network LINK Show your thanks to Major Spoilers for this episode by becoming a Major Spoilers Patron. It will help ensure The Major Spoilers Podcast continues far into the future! NEWS Mon-El is coming to Supergirl http://majorspoilers.com/2016/08/11/television-supermans-long-lost-brother-coming-supergirl/ Make sure to head to Patreon.com/MajorSpoilers for a bonus track episode where we discuss if a gun vendor is appropriate at a comic book convention. REVIEWS STEPHEN KINGSWAY WEST #1 Writer: Greg Pack Artist: Mirko Colak After spending thirteen years in a war that made him a monster, a Chinese gunslinger named Kingsway Law just wants to live in peace with his wife, Sonia. But even in a fantastical Old West crackling with magic, a man of his skills can never quite disappear. So when a woman with a red-gold sword brings bloody chaos to his doorstep, Kingsway must fight for his life, his wife, and his very soul. [rating:4/5] MATTHEW Black Panther #5 Writer: Ta-Nehisi Coates Artist: Chris Sprouse, Karl Story Publisher: Marvel Comics Cover Price: $3.99 “A SWORD FOR LIONS” STARTS NOW! • Ta-Nehisi Coates is joined by guest artist and modern master Chris Sprouse for the second arc chronicling the final days of the kingdom of Wakanda! • As Zenzi and The People poison the citizens of Wakanda against the Black Panther, a cabal of nation-breakers is assembled… • With his allies dwindling, T’Challa must rely on his elite secret police, the Hatut Zeraze, and fellow Avenger Eden Fesi, a.k.a. Manifold! • Meanwhile, Shuri’s spirit journeys through The Djalia…but what awaits her there? [rating: 4/5] RODRIGO Sun Dragon's Song Joyce Chng and Kim Miranda (both creators from "The SEA is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia") come a children's tale about striving for dreams among impossible odds. "More than anything, young Ho Yi wishes to become a Sun Dragon Rider, the courageous human guardians of the magnificent beasts that roam the sky and keep watch over the land. But confined to crutches, bullies giving him a hard time, and his parents being away at war, Yo Hi is up against almost impossible odds! Can he still keep hope alive, while suffering in his tiny village, to become the valiant hero only he feels he's destined to become?" [rating:3.5/5] ASHLEY SUPERGIRL: REBIRTH #1 Writer: Steve Orlando Artist: Emanuela Luppachino Supergirl turns to the shadowy organization known as the D.E.O. (Department of Extranormal Operations) to restore her lost powers once and for all! But as a fateful experiment sends Kara Zor-El rocketing toward the sun, disaster strikes at home in the form of the lost Kryptonian werewolf Lar-On! All the epic action of the brand new Supergirl series starts here! [rating 2.5/5] MAJOR SPOILERS POLL OF THE WEEK http://majorspoilers.com/2016/08/16/major-spoilers-poll-week-merican-doctor-edition/ If you want to suggest a trade paperback, you need to send an email to podcast@majorspoilers.com. That suggestion will go into the hopper and at least once a month, we’ll pick a number of suggestions for you to vote on, and at the end of the polling period, the book with the most votes will get the Major Spoilers Podcast treatment. DISCUSSION: We answer your questions! CLOSE Contact us at podcast@majorspoilers.com Call the Major Spoilers Hotline at (785) 727-1939. A big Thank You goes out to everyone who downloads, subscribes, listens, and supports this show. We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to our ramblings each week. Tell your friends! Closing music comes from Ookla the Mok.

This month on The Writer and the Critic your hosts, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond, offer some brief words of gratitude to the lovely and generous folks who have so far supported the podcast on Patreon. Ian and Kirstyn love you all to bits and pieces! They then dive straight into a meldy - but definitely not moldy! - discussion of both the books at hand Afro SF: Science Fiction by African Writers edited by Ivor W. Hartmann and The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia edited by Jaymee Goh & Joyce Chng [5:20]. Because the books are both anthologies, there are precious few, if any, spoilers of individual stories so you may listen without fear! (The cat anthology that Kirstyn couldn't remember the name of during the discussion was Twists of the Tale edited by Ellen Datlow. Purry, furry fun!) If you did skip ahead, please come back at 1:23:50 for final remarks. Next month will be the 50th Epsiode of The Writer and the Critic. Who knew they would make it so far? (Ian. Ian knew.) To celebrate, Kirstyn and Ian have decided to each make a list of 25 of their favourite books which will hopefully combine without overlap to form a Writer and Critic Fab 50. Don't fret, dear listeners, they will only be spending a minute or two on each book. You won't need to set aside a whole weekend to listen. ;-) Please join us for some 50th Episode spoiler-free shenanigans!

*** Breaking news! The Writer and the Critic is now on Patreon! There are all sorts of exciting milestone goals and rewards for patrons with pledges starting at just $1.00 per podcast. If you enjoy the podcast and can spare some change, Ian and Kirstyn would be immensely grateful for your support. They might even be able to afford to upgrade the increasingly unreliable equipment which would be lovely. All episodes will continue to be published monthly free of charge to the public ... though there might be some special behind-the-scenes moments made available to patrons only from time to time. Many heartfelt thanks in advance! *** This month on The Writer and the Critic your hosts, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond, briefly discuss an article by Damian Walter that served as inspiration for the "literary vs genre" theme of this episode before moving on to the featured books: House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill [12:10] and Slade House by David Mitchell [44:10]. During the course of the discussion, mention is made of the following reviews: Review of House of Small Shadows by Jeff VanderMeer in The Guardian Review of House of Small Shadows by Niall Alexander on Tor.com Review of Slade House by Sarah Thomas in the New York Times Review of Slade House by Liz Jenson in The Guardian Review of Slade House by Brian Finney in the LA Review of Books If you've skipped ahead to avoid spoilers, please come back at 1:11:25 for some possibly controversial final remarks plus more details about how you can support The Writer and the Critic via Patreon. Next month, there will be two anthologies up for discussion: The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia edited by Jaymee Goh & Joyce Chng AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers edited by Ivor W. Hartmann Read ahead and join in the spoilerific fun!