Showing results by author "Steve Berman" in All Categories

Lightspeed was founded on the core idea that all science fiction is real science fiction and that science fiction is vast. It is inclusive. Science fiction is about people, and queer people, no matter how they identify, are a big part of that. They always have been. They're just sometimes harder to see. So, in the interests of visibility, Queers Destroy Science Fiction! shows just how wide the spectrum of sexuality and gender identity can really be.

On a chilly autumn night on a lonely New Jersey highway, a teenager meets the boy of his dreams dressed in vintage clothing. When the boy vanishes, the teenager discovers he’s encountered the local legend, the ghost of a young man who died four decades earlier and has haunted that stretch of suburban road ever since. Curious and smitten, the next evening the teen returns with his best friend. So begins an unusual story of boy-meets-ghost complete with Ouija boards, hours spent in cemeteries, scares, and macabre humor.

The phrase "you are what you eat" is taken to heart; these are stories of men facing strange appetites within their own physicality, within a lover or, perhaps, a stranger's hungers. A young athlete attends an exclusive wrestling camp, but some of the campers are more focused on the unwelcome boys they claim lurk inside their bellies. A fixit man on a mission to retrieve a runaway finds himself forced into impersonating a pulp hero by her captor.

This is an audiobook of men and monsters who find themselves captivated by one another in the night. With the taste of skin and sweat and, yes, blood, on their lips, kisses that are pained and painful, and bodies left to cool on the sheets like spent seed. Twelve stories that feature vampires and their victims indulging in libidos and mortidos. In New Orleans, an old flame becomes a vampire's new meal. A new student at a boarding school discovers that the local urban legend is hovering outside his window and eager to come inside.

Germany, 1922: Tabner and Emrick are young ne'er do wells hiding from Paragraph 175, legislation over a half-century old that forbids homosexual activity. Emrick sleeps through the days so he can enjoy the cabaret culture. Tabner is his semi-willing partner-in-crime, though of late he has become obsessed with his pen pal, Florence Balcombe, the widow of Bram Stoker. When F.W. Murnau's infamous film Nosferatu is about to premier, both Tabner and Emrick find themselves beguiled, yet distressed, by a strange older man met at the cabaret.

Thirteen weird and queer short stories by one of the more notable names in gay speculative fiction. But these passionate hookups and romantic encounters range from the eerie to the horrifying to the wondrous.

On a cold winter night, a young lady is picked up at the train station by a pair of odd parents. Once more she has been hired to babysit their precocious children. The house happens to be in a blighted fishing village on the coast of Massachusetts. The train stop is Innsmouth. All aboard for a night of terrible events.

A lonely gay teen bides his time with trips to strangers' funerals and Ouija board sessions, desperately searching for someone to love - and a reason to live following a suicide attempt. Walking an empty stretch of New Jersey highway on an autumn night, he meets a strange and beautiful boy who looks like he stepped out of a dream. But the vision becomes into a nightmare when the boy turns out to be the local urban legend, the ghost of a star athlete killed in 1957.

Set in San Francisco during the Gold Rush era, Ji Yuan, a Chinese youth who immigrated to America with his brother to seek his fortune but has found only disappointment. Now, his brother lays sick, dying, and Yuan must seek the help of two local spirits. But being tricksters, nothing these spirits tells the youth is ever the whole truth. To save his brother, Yuan was uncover the means to return their servant, a hatchet-man, from jail...dead or alive.

In acclaimed author Steve Berman's second collection of 13 stories and essays, he again guides listeners through the darker pathways of his imagination. These are stories of regret: the scent of loneliness enticing odd children to eat away a fussy caretaker's historic house; a depressed accountant turns to monster hunting; and a young lover's temptation by handsome nursery rhyme. After each tale Berman provides a tangential author note that offers insight into his past trysts as well as his fears and dreams.

Hosts Simon and Steve talk all things 30k including the Horus Heresy miniatures wargame, Heresy novels, and even Adeptus Titanicus!