← LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy Story Podcast (Sci-Fi | Audiobook | Short Stories)
LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE - Science Fiction and Fantasy Story Podcast (Sci-Fi | Audiobook | Short Stories)
"The Stars Look Away From This Vessel" by dave ring + "Ten Unsent Letters to the Dark Lord" by Ada Hoffmann
00:33:39
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- [00:05]
Janina Edwards
Lightspeed.
- [00:07]
Hello Starshine. The Earth says hello. And welcome to the Lightspeed Magazine Story Podcast. I'm your host, Janina Edwards. In this episode, you'll be listening to the Stars Look Away from this Vessel by Dave Ring and 10 unsent letters to the Dark Lord the by Ada Hoffman. Today's narrator is Stefan Ratnicki. First up is our short shot. The Stars Look Away from this Vessel by Dave Ring Coming up right after this message.
- [00:44]
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- [01:16]
Janina Edwards
Welcome back. And now the Stars Look Away from this Vessel. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.
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Stefan Radnicki
The Stars Look Away from this Vessel by Dave Ring Draw a rectangular shape, put a cylinder around it. Add a few small rectangles to any lines such that they straddle them at least one on the rectangle and another on the cylinder. These are airlocks. The engine should look like a lighter stacked on top of a pack of cigarettes. Don't take too long drawing it, but make sure you color it in red and then draw over it with a black marker. Redact it, because that engine might not be alive, but it sure ain't dead. The message didn't make complete sense, but it was being broadcasted on the old emergency signal, so everyone on the Eurydice drew straws. Sure enough, the new guy and the taciturn Butch were the ones who'd be in the star yacht while the tenured folks sat pretty a hundred clicks out. Charlie was surprised when I offered to go in her stead, but I wasn't one to turn down danger pay. As soon as we were alone, I hit up Denny on the local channel. If we find anything good that fits in my pocket, I'm keeping it. Denny grunted. Won't catch me saying shit. Hold on. The mag beam is rusty. The yachty's controls were a little finicky. Denny bumped us against the station like it was a pier, painfully grinding us against the station's massive hull. But we didn't even budget according to the Eurydice. Nothing showed on the scans. So we hooked up the yachty to the airlock, suited up, and flung ourselves into vacuum towards the doors. What's one of your most selfish emotions. That's what took you here. Draw a perimeter in a long, meandering line. Write the emotion on the line over and over. If you have to stretch the letters so they fill it right up. Roll a die, draw that many flickering stars nearby, then lick your finger and blur their lines as best you can. The impact of our maglocks on the floor echoed through the station, but there was no gravity, so nothing else to do about it. The walls were inlaid with lifeless panels thick with dust, ancient pictographs barely visible at each junction. I turned to Denny and he decisively pointed. I didn't know much about him, just that he was serving two years to pay for his downplanted girlfriend's FFS and not interested in playing cards. He had the right of it, I decided. Love didn't last without a steady supply of cash. Maybe my man wouldn't have left if I'd had my accounts in better order. Part of me wanted to fill the silence, talk about it, but Denny seemed to know his way around, and I didn't want to distract him. How's it looking down there? Kit Parker asked from the Eurydice. Too loud in the darkness. Denny nearly jumped out of his boots. Nothing so far, I said back after the third turn. Something about the shapes we'd been passing at intervals twigged something in me. I don't think this is a station, I said, dropping onto a local frequency. Then he slowed down while I wiped away a thick rind of dust. The shape of a crash couch gradually became more obvious. Doesn't meet regulations, I acknowledged. But this isn't a station. Denny whistled, the high note of it briefly muted by the mic as the top of its range. Before I could ask him to, he switched local Holy shit. It's a ship. A cursed ship is only like a time capsule long enough to let entropy in. Think of the meanest part of you least open. What color reminds you of that feeling? If you have one, use a colored pencil to fill in the space between the cylinder and the rectangular shape with tight crisscrossing cross hatches. That feeling is in the walls. Draw an eye right in the middle of everything, beside a dozen seed like ovals, and then exit out the stars. Haven't been able to look directly at this ship in centuries. By the time we got to the hold in the center of the ship, Denny and I were throwing back dumb ideas like popcorn shrimp. But pretty soon we were going to have to say something more substantial to Kit. Too impractical. He called my idea of attaching some of these crates to the hull of the star yacht just long enough to get back to the ship. And what if they wanted to jump as soon as we got back? Everything inside would be obliterated. I nodded, drifting over to a console. You're right. You're right. I could have sworn it flickered yellow. The other man kept talking while he popped open cargo pods, but I was only half listening, surprised to find that the screen blinked alive. A moment later, the display shone with schematics. The output from the outdated UI made me look around the hold with new eyes, then pull up a star chart. If it still worked. The ship had an automated cargo shuttle keyed to three different trade hubs, and at least one was still active all these centuries later. Yo, Cooper, denny said, exasperated. I'm talking to you. Hold up. What if we didn't have to bring it back to Eurydice at all? At the edge of the paper, you need to give a warning. Roll another die, then roll it again. Use the bigger number to determine how many words you can use and hold the message in your mind. The signal has been corrupted. Use the smaller number to replace that many words. Look behind you or inside. Look closely. That's where you'll find the words that worm their way in. Take over your warning. Write the warning over and over at the edge of the page. Kitty pinged me for the sixth time, so I cycled back to the right channel, but I had to switch past that emergency signal, broadcasting over and over again from this behemoth of a ship. One of the phrases in that signal caught my attention. When I ran it through the translator. It read, this place is a message. The phrase was emblazoned in orange over more than half of the pods in this hold, alongside a string of numbers. Hey, Denny, what did you find in these orange yolks? Anything good? Those ones were mostly empty. Had to pry them open. The hack codes weren't working. Just a bit of grav suspended trash in each one. Then he reached into one of the open pods and drew out a thin filament of metal, about the length of a forearm. Featureless, still gray. Even before I asked Kitty to do another scan, I knew what it was. My plan fell away like the husk of a cicada. The ship's computer is even more corrupted than the signal, but this close to the other side, prophecy juts bleakly from its memory. Use the predictive text on your phone to find it. Type the ship is dying so soon it will. And use your phone's answers to learn what is to come. Ask three times, writing down each answer beside a different emoji text inquiry, followed by those emojis to a friend. Interpret their reply. Do your best to illustrate it. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited. By the time we understood the message, it was too late. Denny had wedged himself into the corner and started humming an old folk song. He wouldn't switch off his mic, no matter how kid, he begged. Nausea rose in me like a wave, but the suit adjusted the cocktail of drugs being released into my bloodstream and the wave receded. Though my tongue was still swollen and hot, blood slid from my sinuses down my throat. Decide what shape contagion reminds you of. This is heads. Do the same for radiation. This is tails. Flip a coin and draw the appropriate shape around the ship until your hand starts to hurt. Then use something messy, like a paintbrush or the side of a marker to draw a great sweep of color. This is the ship's dead trajectory. Hold your grief close. Clench it tight beneath the raw meat of your jaw. When you are ready to scream or sigh, write a name at the end of that line. Stare at it. Say it aloud. Give it all to Charlie. I decided the Eurydice lingered long enough to confirm the beneficiary of my will. It felt fitting that I'd be worth more dead than I amounted to alive. I wasn't one for the opiate of the masses or even manifesting good fortune, but in those last moments, that was what I found myself doing in that hollow place I once thought would find love again. I imagined myself an emanation of emotion flowing outward, a love that could still be present in some future time, as it was in mine.
- [11:41]
Janina Edwards
That was the stars. Look away from this vessel. By Dave Ring Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki Directed by Alison Bell Pears Dave Ring is a queer writer of speculative fiction living in Washington, DC. He is the author of The Hidden Ones, 2021, Rebel, Satori Press, and numerous short stories. He is also the publisher and managing editor of Neon Hemlock Press and the co editor of Baffling Magazine. Find him online@dave-ring.com. Next we have 10 unsent letters to the Dark Lord by Ada Hoffman Coming right up.
- [12:33]
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- [14:30]
Janina Edwards
please enjoy 10 unsent letters to the Dark Lord Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki
- [14:38]
Stefan Radnicki
10 Unsent Letters to the Dark Lord by Ada Hoffman 1. I'm sorry my Lord. 2. I miss the sound of your voice deep enough to shake the mountain fortress's stones. I miss feeling it rumble in the soles of my feet. I miss the glow of your eyes while you paced the chamber of mysteries, lava burning in the pools below and the pointed arc of your throne at your back. When you would say with a confidence that once traveled up my spine, that our victory was assured, the world would soon be ours, a blue green gem in the palm of your hand. I miss the way you would nod to me when the weekend's crop of would be heroes had been bound and fed to the slicer beasts, or when the construction of the Armageddon weapon was nearing completion and tell me in that voice that I had done well for you, that you were proud. 3. The conditions in Good Queen Frida's Dungeon are strangely adequate. I sit on a tiny cot between clean stone walls. By torchlight, the guards come by with wholesome day old bread and pure water. They Ask if I am comfortable. I do not know if all the good Queen's prisoners are treated so well, if she really is as kind and fair as she makes herself out to be, or if it is because they have found out through some means what happened at the very end. A kindness done for me in particular, when, in truth, I wished for no such thing. I tell you all this as if you could hear it, as if it was possible for this letter to reach you, because I imagine you would want to know. You used to ask after me sometimes, when there were no more pressing matters. You used to ask idly about the family I left back in the village of the Shade Tree, and about what I did to amuse myself when not occupied with my orders, and about how this whole arrangement felt to me. I am not sure if I ever told you this or thanked you, but I liked to believe that there was a real interest in your eyes. That you, the one who razed villages and salted the Queen's, earth, still possessed a secret heart that could take ordinary interest in human things for a human who'd earned it. I have always been aware what a privilege it was to be looked at in that way, with a gaze such as yourshow easily it could be taken away again. In truth, I wish I were more uncomfortable. I miss the spiked irons you used to clap me in when I had failed at my work. I miss the lightning you would send coursing through my body. I do not say this to the good Queen's guards, who would laugh at me, but at least when I screamed to you for mercy, I knew that what I did mattered. That when I pleased you, it was good. And that when I failed you, it was worth punishing. It meant the loss of something you had genuinely wanted. I wonder what the good Queen thinks of me. She has never deigned to visit this dungeon cell in person. I like to think that she hates me. That this cell is the most devious punishment her meek, pure heart can devise. 4. Although the war is over, I am being interrogated. Not that I didn't expect to be. When the good Queen's guards dragged me howling from your body and brought me here, I imagined they would brandish screws and hot irons. I imagined they would ask me about the hoarded treasures of the Fortress of Mysteries, the slicer beasts and other foul creatures who lived there. Or the would be heroes who breached its walls and met their demise. I imagined they would want to know if you had created any means of surviving your own death. Returning to haunt Them even now. Alas, you had no such thing. But they have no screws or hot irons and have yet to ask me any of this. Instead, they ask me what I thought of you as a person. They have no technique for this, except persistence. At first I ignored them. Lately, out of exhaustion or boredom, I have answered on occasion. I told them good things, of course. Your greatest victories. The villages you left in smoking ruins. The cut of your jaw, the noble curve of your brow. The way I labored to perfect your blood armor. Every foul sigil on its surface, every spike on its edge. When I tell them these things, they do not look especially convinced. I wonder why it worries me. 5. Come back, my lord. Find some way. If anyone could return from death victorious, it surely would be you. 6. The guards have switched to questions about the nature of our arrangement, which vexes me. What did he pay you to work for him? They ask. What did he threaten? What do you fear? I tell them that service to the greatest dark power of our generation is its own reward. Also, I had room on board in an impressively large and well kept fortress. Better than laboring in a manor lord's fields, starving and dying of disease. Even if that lord does pay fealty to the good queen, I've seen that life, as you know. I have no wish to return. How did he treat you? They ask. When they returned after asking this last question, it was with a stack of parchments. Primly hand illuminated ones, describing spells of loyalty, spells of obedience. I understood what they meant. They had seen how I spoke of you and they had decided it didn't make sense unless I was somehow enthralled. As if I didn't choose of my own free will to leave my raised burned village and my plague ridden family and follow you. As if that choice meant nothing. I snarled at them until they gave up and left. Is it really so difficult to understand? You were not unfair to me in your idiom. And I did not want to be parted from you. Surely you know this. Surely you knew, even at the end. Even though. My lord, I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so sorry. 7. We were supposed to rule the world. It was all perfect, or about to be perfect. And then I ruined it, didn't I? I can write you all the useless, obsequious letters I want, but you will not read them. You are dead. You are dead. And it is all because. 8. I can deny it all I like, but you are dead because of me. Do you remember what you said that last day when the armageddon weapon was complete, you said. Now I will rule the world. I miss the way you used to talk like that. I miss the thrum of your voice and the thrill of your confidence in your power. Even then I closed my eyes and enjoyed the sound. But it had always been we before, not I. Once the good Queen is vanquished, you said, I'll release you from service. Of course, I said. That is not necessary, my lord. Of course it is, you said. I will be all powerful and therefore I will not require assistance. Who wants servants needing things the way servants do at all hours of the day, needing to talk about their precious families in the village of whatever tree it was, and to double check so many times about exactly which sigils ought to go where on the stupid blood armor? Hasn't that always been as tiresome to you as it has to me? It has not been, I said. But you looked at me then with the expression you always wore when I'd irritated you, and I knew that if I said one more word it would be the irons and the lightning and the lava. Again you said, I have other matters to attend to. To which I said, yes, my lord. I scurried out and I thought about the life of a villager, toiling away on a tenant farm, starving and dying of disease. Whether the manor lords were loyal to you or to the good queen. The result for the peasants was the same. You massacred peasants more often, I suppose. I thought about how I could have failed you so badly and notice no sign. It is only happenstance that the good Queen's champion crept into the fortress of mysteries that day, as would be heroes do. It is only happenstance that I stumbled across him. I looked at him, there in the shadows of the corridor. He was a young man, like most of them, tall and blond and shallowly beautiful. He had a sword at his hip. He had not yet seen me. It was far from the first time I had seen such a trespasser in our domain, but I was distressed, and so I did not do what I would normally have done for you. I did not summon the horde of slicer beasts. I did not rush to the next room to press the lever that would tumble the hero into the lava pools. I did not draw my own sword and attack, laying down my measly life for you. I reasoned instead that if you were so ready to rule alone, you could handle this yourself. And I slipped away silently into one of those side rooms where you keep the slicer beast's fodder until he had passed I did not expect him to kill you. In my heart, I thought nothing could kill you. I thought it would irritate you, having to dispose of the hero without my assistance. And then you'd punish me. But when the punishment was over, you'd realize that you needed me after all. Everything would work out if it went that way. But now you are dead. I didn't see it until it was already done. The Hero and the Good Queen's guards had to pull me screaming, from the side of your cooling body with the Hero's sword stuck in one of the joints of your blood armor. I didn't mean it. Do you understand? It wasn't what I meant to do. But now you are dead, and I sit imprisoned in this clean gray cell, which isn't even torturous enough to be interesting. And it is what we both deserve. 9 I miss you. Do you know they even took me outdoors today, chained and under supervision. A whole courtyard lined with plain, clean stone under the open sky. I have never much cared for the sky. I liked the dark and cavernous domes of the Fortress of Mysteries far below ground. But the smell of the sky, the green hint of life somewhere outside these dungeon walls, struck me more deeply than I had expected. They allowed me to pace the yard and stretch my limbs, and then to sit on a stone bench next to another prisoner, a man my age who'd also been brought there for exercise, who shut his eyes as he breathed in the warm outside air. We got talking, that other prisoner and I. He wasn't one of yours. He'd belonged to some criminal faction that never interested you or me. But he'd read the Good Queen's parchments. He wanted to know what I thought of them. When they talk about spells of obedience, he explained, they mostly don't mean literal spells. You can come under someone's thrall without any magic. You can feel desperate in any number of ways, and you can convince yourself. I wonder if he was even really another prisoner. I wonder if it was a trick, some magician of the Good Queen's in disguise, pretending to open up about his own petty criminal masters and how it had felt for him to serve them. Oh, why am I bothering? Why am I writing these letters to you at all when you can't read them? You wouldn't deign to even if you were alive. You aren't even here to be angry with me. I can blame myself, or I can blame you, or the Hero or the Good Queen, but either way I end up back here in my cell, scratching out these words to myself alone. 10 I am so sorry, my lord. I am adrift without you. These bland good guards will never understand. They want me to transfer my loyalties in some way to the good Queen. They want me to understand that she is your opposite in every way. Good and pure, generous and forgiving and kind. They imagine that if I understood this, I would follow her gladly, that no one in their right mind would prefer anyone else. But what they cannot grasp is that I loved you because of your darkness. The fact that you lived grandly and cruelly and wickedly is a point in your favor, not hers. You had power along with everything worth desiring. I wanted to share it with you. There's only one more thing I keep thinking now that I've dared to put into words how I betrayed you. It's that I miss you and long for you and Will for the rest of my miserable life. But were our positions reversed, had I died and you had gone on to victory, imprisonment or some other fate, then I somehow think you would not miss me at all. The next time the good Queen's guards come, perhaps I will remember this. And perhaps I will with the greatest of regrets. Take a look at their parchments.
- [30:27]
Janina Edwards
That was 10 unsent letters to the Dark Lord by Ada Hoffman Narrated by Stefan Radnicki Directed by Alison Belbius Ada Hoffman they them is the author of the upcoming sci fi novel Ignore All Previous Instructions as well as the Outside Space Opera Trilogy, the collection's Resurrections, Monsters in My Mind and Million Year Elegies, and dozens of speculative short stories and poems. Ada's novel length work is represented by Hannah Bowman. Ada was diagnosed with autism at the age of 13 and is known for including ownvoices, queer and autistic characters in their work. Their former review series Autistic Book Party was a source of in depth analysis of autistic characters and themes in speculative fiction. Ada lives in eastern Ontario and teaches computer science, cognitive science and critical AI literacy at a major Canadian university. Their research on the relationship between computers and creativity has been presented at conferences around the world. Ada is also a classically trained soprano. They share their home with a sweet natured black cat named Ninja. Today's narrator, Stefan Radnicki is a double Grammy winning audiobook producer and an award winning narrator who has won 17 Audie Awards as well as more than 35 Earphones Awards and been named one of Audiophile's Golden Voices. Stephan has been producing Lightspeed magazine podcasts since 2010, eventually adding nightmare and Fantasy magazine and sharing the Hugo Awards for Best Semi PRO scene in 2014 and 2015,
- [32:18]
Glass Cannon Podcast Host
the war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the Darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadowdark, the Darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s. And man, it is so good to be back Join the Glass Cannon Podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8pm Eastern on YouTube.com theglasscanon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.
- [33:20]
Janina Edwards
The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not so dark, not so stormy, hard boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the intrepid Chaotix Detective Agency as they take on their biggest case yet. This high flying, action packed adventure will take them across the world fighting for every clue they can find. It's one heck of a tale, which is good because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives. Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you.
- [34:00]
Wait, what
- [34:04]
all will be revealed in Sonic the Hedgehog Presents the Chaotix Case Files Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
- [34:14]
Stefan Radnicki
The Chaotix are on the the Case.
- [34:19]
Meg Bashwiner and Joseph Fink
Hi, we're Meg Bashwiner and Joseph Fink of welcome to Night Vale and on our new show the Best Worst we explore the golden age of television. To do that, we're watching the IMDb viewer rated best and worst episodes of classic TV shows. The episode of Star Trek where Beverly Crusher has sex with a ghost. The episode of the X Files where Scully gets attacked by a vicious house cat. And also the really good episodes too. What can we learn from the best and worst of great television? Like for example, is it really a bad episode or do people just hate women? The best Worst available wherever you get your podcasts.
- [35:03]
Janina Edwards
Lightspeed Magazine is edited by John Joseph Adams and published by Adamant Press. The podcast is co produced by Stephane Radnicki and Allison Belbuse at Skyboat Media and the stories and podcast are copyright 2026. Post production was by Alex Barton at Phase Shift and our music was composed and performed by Jack Kincaid. Thanks for listening, Starshine. This is your host, Janina Edwards. See you next time and all the next time times to come.