Three Days Before Icarus
Three days before Tom Wright boards the Icarus for humanity’s first interstellar mission - a journey that will return him to Earth 150 years in the future - star presenter Bengt Palmgren sits down with the world’s most enigmatic traveller.
In this fictional interview inspired by First Light Rising, Palmgren presses Tom about the mission, the strange phenomenon known as the Dive, and the secrets he may be carrying into the stars. As the questions become sharper, a controlled studio conversation turns increasingly tense—and reveals just how little humanity understands about the man chosen to leave it behind.
From Outcast to Immortal: An Immortal Sci‑Fi Origin Story (rev)
This episode introduces a desert rite of passage turning into a speculative novel origin episode by KA Langfeld. Meet Thumee, a young woman on a desert planet who is stung by a GoRak—a creature whose venom is said to be incurable. Facing certain death, Thumee discovers she can enter a meditative trance called the Dive, where she manipulates Light to purge poison and keep her body alive without food, water, or shelter.
But the Dive comes with a devastating cost: it distorts time. When Thumee vanishes, she can reappear decades—sometimes centuries—later, severed from everyone and everything she knew. As her reality fractures, she learns the Dive isn’t only a mental state—it’s a connection. That link leads her to IlaRia, an alien traveller who reveals Thumee’s so-called “eccentricity” is actually an immortal heritage in Kalangfeld alien contact stories.
This episode bridges five millennia of history and rewrites Thumee’s identity: she isn’t the demon her village feared—she’s part of an ancient interstellar family—the Kindred of Old.
Want to read along? Thumee’s Origin Story is free to read on KA Langfeld’s blog.
Flow of time: the truth - not Sci-Fi
Time feels universal, but the speed of light—fixed at about 300,000 km/s—forces a startling conclusion: if light’s speed can’t “add” to a moving train the way a thrown tennis ball does, then time itself must flex. In this episode, we explore that simple contradiction to the reality of personal time—time differences too small to notice in daily life, yet confirmed by atomic clocks, particle accelerators, and even GPS—and we unpack the famous twin scenario to show why it isn’t a paradox once you drop the idea of one universal clock. Finally, we explore the bigger consequence for space exploration fiction: you might reach distant stars while only aging a few years, but centuries could pass back home—interstellar travel is for beings for whom time (and aging) doesn’t matter.
Into the Three-Mooned Desert: A Break of Dawn Deep Dive
In this episode, we’re doing a deep dive into the short sci-fi with an emotional story, “Break of Dawn.” We’ll unpack the themes, key moments, and the choices that shape the story’s emotional punch—zooming in on what’s happening beneath the surface and why it lingers after the final line.
Want to read along? “Break of Dawn” is free to read on the blog, where it explores a vision of future fiction.