Uncanny Magazine

Welcome to Episode 72B of the award-winning Uncanny Magazine Podcast! In Episode 72B you will hear: Introduction: Michael Damian Thomas  Story: “Children of Calliope” by Seanan McGuire, as read by Erika Ensign Poem: “Butterfly Effect” by Angela Liu, as read by Matt Peters Interview: Michael Damian Thomas interviews Seanan McGuire This podcast was produced by Erika Ensign an...

  I always liked this idea: how we’d walk to the end of the subway tunnel and there’d be a door where everyone was waiting on the other side with all the things we’d ever lost.   I always liked how to die means to never lose anything again. I want to remember the last […] The post Butterfly Effect appeared first on Uncanny Magazine .

By the early days of the twenty-first century, advocates of book bans had managed, however accidentally, to elevate their hobby to the level of near-religion, and with it created a class of concepts that could only be called into existence if a person read them in a book. By controlling what children could read outside […] The post Children of Calliope appeared first on Uncanny Magazine .

Nobody dances the way he does, and he knows it, and everyone can tell. The beat is something ancient and otherworldly, or that’s what it feels like; it wakes something inside him, half-remembered, half-submerged like the marble arm of a maiden or a piece of amphora lying for millennia at the bottom of the sea. […] The post Horse Boy appeared first on Uncanny Magazine .

I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know how to read. My earliest memory is from around 1975 or so, and I am sitting with my grandmother in the farmhouse I loved. Together, we are reading a book called Willie and the Whale. It’s a little thing, just about four inches, […] The post Being a Brief History of <i>It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton</i> appeared first on Uncan...

  She carries jasmine in her hair, the empire in her hands. Even now she folds up her youth, until the magnolias stop bleeding in the imperial gardens. Death follows in its place, a loyal hound. When famine comes, Chang’an is feverish with desire, gutted by thirst. She eats pomegranates then, an autumn craving she […] The post Huangdi appeared first on Uncanny Magazine .

Welcome to Episode 72A of the award-winning Uncanny Magazine Podcast! In Episode 72A you will hear: Introduction: Michael Damian Thomas  Story: “Horse Boy” by Natalia Theodoridou, as read by Matt Peters Poem: “Huangdi” by Kailee Pedersen, as read by Erika Ensign Essay: “Being a Brief History of It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton” by Wil Wheaton, as read by Wil Wheaton Th...

Content note: suicidal ideation   “Please—turn it off!” A pained, painful wail from the room across the hall; soundtrack laughter dissolving into guttural thunder as a film projector slowed to a stop. “Well damn,” said the stranger who was entering the same room as me, and we both let out nervous laughs. It was enough […] The post The Cinema of Babel appeared first on Uncanny Magazine .

On the cold bathroom tiles I took off my skin with all its nerve bundles and severed connective tissue and left it like a silk robe in the clawfoot tub to soak and stumbled outside and laid on the ground, hot and earthly, and listened to the berserk of traffic. This sound is the sound […] The post I called the swan down appeared first on Uncanny Magazine .

Welcome to Episode 71B of the award-winning Uncanny Magazine Podcast! In Episode 71B you will hear: Introduction: Michael Damian Thomas  Story: “The Cinema of Babel” by Sam J. Miller , as read by Matt Peters Poem: “I called the swan down” by Laura Cranehill, as read by Erika Ensign Interview: Michael Damian Thomas interviews Sam J. Miller This […] The post Uncanny Mag...

Welcome to Episode 71A of the award-winning Uncanny Magazine Podcast! In Episode 71A you will hear: Introduction: Michael Damian Thomas  Story: “Leavetaking” by Tia Tashiro, as read by Erika Ensign Poem: “Instructions for Becoming Fire” by Chisomaga Umenyi, as read by Matt Peters Interview: Michael Damian Thomas interviews Tia Tashiro This podcast was produced by Erika Ensi...

Kate was cursed by her cousin on his deathbed to never stay. She and her cousin Bo didn’t hate each other—far from it. They’d grown up together: same small farming town in the inland northwest, population 394. So small that when Bo finished high school, he and his classmates each got a lamppost of their […] The post Leavetaking appeared first on Uncanny Magazine .

Begin with every swallowed word. Pile them carefully, as though silence were wood and humiliation tinder.              Strike memory against memory until sparks come. Do not fear the crackle.              Let your lungs fill with flame, not apology. Let your bones harden into ember.   […] The post Instructions for Becoming Fire appeared first on Uncanny Magazine .

Welcome to Episode 70B of the award-winning Uncanny Magazine Podcast! In Episode 70B you will hear: Introduction: Michael Damian Thomas  Story: “Immigrant Girl from the End of the World” by Hannah Yang, as read by Erika Ensign Poem: “Quorum” by Ceridwen Hall, as read by Matt Peters Interview: Michael Damian Thomas interviews Hannah Yang This podcast was produced […] T...

Half of us wish the angels would stay forever.  Half want them to  leave  now.  Both factions admit that angels hold mirrors to the abyss inside us.  We too hover just above despair.  They are winged, is all, and more beautiful. Being eternal, they tell fewer stories.  We  are  narrative  little  mortals;  there  are  hours  of argument  while  angels  […] The post Quorum appeared first on U...

Before the world ends, Miri’s family saves up enough money to escape to 2004. 2004: a safe haven. The year lilts off the tongue, like a promise. Miri and Lise spend their last evening together in their favorite spot, sitting on the top of the holotower at the edge of town, where they can see […] The post Immigrant Girl from the End of the World appeared first on Uncanny Magazine .

I didn’t think much About trading my voice and scales away When I fell into the air and happily drowned:              As long as we’re happy I happily said, air drunk Love mad—              I continued, happily All the years after Keeping peace Between sea and land Ensuring everyone was happy Because I thought […] The post A Mermaid Looks at 40 appeared first on Uncanny Magazine .

Out in the great expanse of cosmos, little seeds float. They have been drifting for billions of years in the cold darkness of space from one planet to the other, driven by the need for survival and propagation, but most of all driven by spite (they will later claim an absence of emotions in favor […] The post The Snatchers appeared first on Uncanny Magazine .