Episode 247: The Golem of Deneb Seven by Alex Shvartsman• Narrated by
Rachel Swirsky• Audio production by
Jeremy Carter• Originally published in
InterGalactic Medicine Show Issue 40 (July 2014)
Click here to listen to Episode 247Click here to read the text of the storyAlex Shvartsman is a writer, translator and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. Over 90 of his short stories have appeared in
Nature, Galaxy’s Edge, InterGalactic Medicine Show, and many other magazines and anthologies. He won the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction and was a finalist for the 2015 and 2017 Canopus Awards for Excellence in Interstellar Fiction (more about this later). He is the editor of the
Unidentified Funny Objects annual anthology series of humorous SF/F. His collection,
Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories and his steampunk humor novella
H. G. Wells, Secret Agent were both published in 2015. Follow his work
online or on
Twitter.
Rachel Swirsky holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and she graduated from Clarion West in 2005. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Hugo, Locus, World Fantasy and Sturgeon Awards. She’s twice won the Nebula Award: for her 2010 novella,
The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window and her 2014 short story "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love". You can read or listen to her
free online fiction, or buy her
collections, singles and anthologies. Find her on
Twitter, and follow what she’s up to in her monthly
newsletter. You can also support her on
Patreon.
I was eleven years old when the war came to the Deneb system.
At first, we didn’t know that anything was wrong. Mom and Dad were clearing the table after dinner, Avi was building some sort of a castle out of plastic construction blocks, Sarah was asleep in her crib, and Grandpa was reading one of his thick Hebrew books, leaning into the volume and squinting a little by candlelight. I sulked because I was going be the only girl in my class to miss Karen’s birthday party tomorrow.Tags: Alex Shvartsman, Cast of Wonders, death, faith, family, growing up, heroism, Jeremy Carter, planet side, Rachel Swirsky, refugees, robots, Science Fiction, sfici, war, Young Adult fiction