StarShipSofa

Coming up… Two selections from “HELP ME FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! And Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects” edited by John Joseph Adams   Main Fiction 1: “Liberty: Seeking Support for a Writ of Habeas Corpus for a Non-Human Being” by Samuel Peralta Acknowledgement I would like to acknowledge the law firm of Campbell Gatewood Adams for providing the use of a Weyman magnetic resonance facility to reco...

I’ve woke up this morning and my world has just fell away.  My friend  Lawrence Santoro  has died. I thought of Larry as my brother. I will miss him so very very much.  Tycelia  my thoughts and prayers surround you and give you comfort at this time.  Will miss you Larry – your friend Tony Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more in...

Coming up… Main Fiction: “The Region of Jennifer” by Tony Ballantyne The region of Jennifer extended to about thirty kilometres. Out there, amongst thedecaying factory belt, daffodils pushed their heads through the tired earth of the canal banks. The Steam Barons may have lost their power, but the world still bore their scars.  Even so, Jennifer was at work to make things beautiful.   Tony Ballant...

Coming up… Fact: Fiction Crawler No 15 by Matthew Sanborn Smith  01:35   Short Fiction: 2014 Hugo Nominee – “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” by Rachel Swirsky  10:20 If you were a dinosaur, my love, then you would be a T-Rex. You’d be a small one, only five feet, ten inches, the same height as human-you. You’d be fragile-boned and you’d walk with as delicate and polite a gait as you could manage...

Coming up… Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H. Sturgis  03:40 Fact: Happy Birthday Dad (Jonathan Segal aged 70) by Ariel Segal 15:00 Main Fiction: “Trading Rosemary” (Part 2) by  Octavia Cade Rosemary wasn’t particularly fond of jam. She disliked the way the pips clung to her teeth like crows on carrion.  Octavia Cade is a PhD candidate in science communication at the University of Otago...

Coming up… Cover Art by  Juan Ochoa Main Fiction: “Trading Rosemary” (Part 1) by Octavia Cade Among those who could accurately judge such things, it was generally acknowledged that Rosemary’s library was the finest of its kind in the entire archipelago. Rosemary was justifiably proud of it. Begun by her great-grandfather, it had passed down through the family, with each generation adding to the co...

Coming up… Fact: Science News by J J Campanella  Main Fiction: 2014 Hugo Nominee – “The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere” by John Chu Narrated by the author   The water that falls on you from nowhere when you lie is perfectly ordinary, but perfectly pure. True fact. I tested it myself when the water started falling a few weeks ago. Everyone on Earth did. Everyone with any sense of lab safety a...

Coming up…   Main fiction: “The Sky that Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and Into the Black” by  Jay Lake I believe that all things eventually come to rest. Even light, though that’s not what they tell you in school. How do scientists know? A billion billion years from now, even General Relativity might have been demoted to a mere Captain. Photons will sit around in little clusters of massles...

Coming up…   Main Fiction: “The Firewall and the Door” by Sean McMullen ​ Entanglement technology had brought the final frontier as close as the living room. All we had to do was get an uncrewed probe out to whatever was to be explored, and the entangled telepresence established in its computers would provide practically instant communication. Everything was easy. Too easy. People took the wonders...

Coming up… Cover Art by Jim Burns Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis  02:10 Introduction: “Dead Man’s Hand” anthology , edited by John Joseph Adams  20:00 Main Fiction: “The Old Slow Man and His Gold Gun From Space” by Ben H. Winters Whether Caleb and Crane came out to California separate and partnered up later on—or whether they knew each other from some eastern clime and made t...

Coming Up Main Fiction: Defending Elysium by Brandon Sanderson   The woman thrashed and spasmed in the hospital bed. Her dark hair was matted to her head  with  sweat,  and  her  uncontrolled  motions  seemed  almost  epileptic.  Her  eyes, however,  did  not  have  the  wildness  of  the  insane—instead  they  were  focused. Determined. She was not mad; she just couldn’t control her muscles. She ...

Coming up… Main Fiction: “The Philip Sydney Game” by Alan DeNiro This narration of “The Philip Sydney Game” was created by and appears courtesy of Audible. The complete Audible audiobook of “Tyrannia and Other Renditions” – in which this narration first appeared – may be downloaded from www.audible.com/StarShipSofa .   Several years ago, I started writing a story about a man who was flying into Mi...

Coming up… Main Fiction: “Ray of Light” by Brad Torgersen ​ My crew boss Jake was waiting for me at the sealock door.  I’d been eight hours outside, checking for microfractures in the metal hull.  Tedious work, that.  I’d turned my helmet communicator off so as not to be distracted.  The look on Jake’s face spooked me. ​ “What’s happened?” I asked him, seawater dripping from the hair of my beard....

Coming up… Fact: Looking Back at Genre History by Amy H. Sturgis  02:30 Main fiction: “Bugs” by Ron Collins  15:30 Dr. Caulder kept talking, but John could scarcely follow along.  The government needed authorization.  Would he sign a waiver?  Of course, Jesus Christ, of course.  His hospital gown disappeared.  A nurse sprayed his chest with shaving creme.  Carol’s beautiful face filled his view, t...

Coming up…   Main Fiction: “Number 73 Glad Avenue” by  Suzanne J. Willis  02:00 “What time does the clock have, Charlie?” Mary looked left, dark, bobbed hair brushing her shoulders. She heard him mutter then carefully shut the doors, locking the timepieces away, before walking around to face her, his little tin feet clicking softly  against the wooden floor. “12 May 1923. Six pm.” Suzanne J. Willi...

Coming up… Far Fetched Fables is now LIVE! Subscribe:  http://farfetchedfables.com/feed iTunes:  https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/far-fetched-fables/id861359355 Fact: Science News by J J Campanella Main Fiction: “The Biggest” by James Patrick Kelly  33:30     “The Genesee Street fire,” said Big. “There were eighteen people trapped on the fifth floor.”      “And you rescued... Support this show...

Coming Up: “In the Age of Iron and Ashes” by Aliette de Bodard.   They ran the girl down, in the grey light of dawn: a ring of copper-mailed horsemen, racing after her until her exhaustion finally felled her. Yudhyana sat on his horse, shivering in the cold morning air, and thought of home—of the narrow, spice-filled streets of Rasamuri, and of his daughters shrieking with delight as he raced them...

StarShipSofa is proud to present all four nominees in the “Best Short Fiction” category of the  British Science Fiction Association ! You can vote for the BSFA awards  here  by Monday, April 14.   Main Fiction 3: “Selkie Stories are for Losers” by  Sofia Samatar  02:00 I hate selkie stories. They’re always about how you went up to the attic to look for a book, and you found a disgusting old coat a...

StarShipSofa is proud to present all four nominees in the “Best Short Fiction” category of the British Science Fiction Association ! You can vote for the BSFA awards  here  by Monday, April 14. Part 2 coming next week!  SeaDriftSoaps Main Fiction 1: “Saga’s Children” by  E.J. Swift  2:30 You will have heard of our mother, the astronaut Saga Wärmedal. She is famous, and she is infamous. Her face, i...

Coming up… Mothering Sunday Special! (March 30 in the UK): Two stories of maternal angst. Main Fiction 1: “Pause Time” by Mary Soon Lee  03:40 Twenty minutes into the transatlantic flight, Connor started wailing. Pauline cradled him in her arms. Then she rocked him, she offered him her breast, she sang to him; Connor continued to cry. The man sitting on her right gave her a thin smile. “Did you fo...

Coming up… Spacetime Special! Short Fiction: “Karina Who Kissed Spacetime” by Indrapramit Das  01:53 I always remember snow speckling the orange cone of streetlight that held my first kiss. It wasn’t snowing that night. This was before time fractured, left me slipping through its cracks like a bead of water. Perhaps it had been snowing in some other timeline during that first kiss. But not that on...

Coming up… Fact: Looking Back at Genre History by Amy H. Sturgis  03:00 Introduction to “The End is Nigh” – Vol. 1 of “The Apocalypse Triptych” Edited by John Joseph Adams  and Hugh Howey  16:20 Main Fiction: “The Balm and the Wound” by Robin Wasserman  22:00 Robin Wasserman is the author of several books for children and young adults, including The Waking Dark, The Book of Blood and Shadow, the C...

Coming up… Cover Art: Aeon Lux Fact: Synthetic Voices by Jimmy Rodgers  06:00 Main Fiction: “Pupa” by David D. Levine  20:00 She had already molted seven times and knew this feeling well, but this next molt would be her last as a juvenile. After this molt, she would pupate for three months, her ugly juvenile body replaced by a gleaming adults’. She was thrilled. She was terrified.  David D. Levine...

Coming up… Fact Article: Science News by J J Campanella  01:40 Pick the name for the new fantasy podcast from StarShipSofa and the District of Wonders Network: http://poll.fm/4nusd Main Fiction: “The Schrödinger War” by D. Thomas Minton  37:00 You’d think after seven tries, I could get the living part right, or at least be a pro at dying, but both are still messy and painful. At least dying doesn’...

Coming up… Main Fiction: “This Villain You Must Create” by  Carlie St. George  06:00 Granite killed Mr. Malevolence on a Tuesday. In his defense, Mr. Malevolence had been trying to destroy the entire world at the time.   Carlie is a writer, a pop culture geek, a math class survivor, and a silly hat enthusiast. She’s a 2012 graduate of Clarion West Writer’s Workshop. She also writes rather lengthy...