Welcome back, travelers! Every week I step into the booth and resurrect another lost corner of science fiction— tales of strange doubles, meteor-born miracles, and neighbors you really should have checked on sooner. Pour your coffee, slip on your headphones, and let’s launch into another orbit of imagination.

Help us become a better podcast! Your input makes The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast better with every transmission.

Which author wrote the 1944 story “Killdozer!”, about a possessed construction machine rampaging on a remote island work site?
(We’ll reveal the answer later in this issue!)

When we launched The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, our mission was simple: bring forgotten vintage sci-fi back to life. We focused on obscure authors — writers who penned one or two incredible stories and then vanished into the footnotes of genre history.

Then the requests started pouring in. Many of the stories you hear now come directly from you. A perfect example is H. P. Lovecraft. At first, we weren’t planning to narrate his work — his stories have been recorded countless times. But the messages kept coming: “When are you going to do Lovecraft?” We listened… and you were right. Lovecraft episodes are now some of the most popular on the entire podcast.

So never forget: you help shape what we record. We have hundreds of requests in the queue and can’t always get to them as fast as we’d like, but when you recommend a story, our goal is to narrate it and beam it out on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast as soon as we can. Keep the requests coming — your influence is what keeps this galaxy spinning.

Poet, sculptor, painter, and weird fiction mastermind, Clark Ashton Smith was one of the great dark stars of early 20th-century speculative fiction. From the dying continent of Zothique to the frozen horrors of Hyperborea and the haunted province of Averoigne, his stories feel less like casual reading and more like stepping into an exotic, forbidden dream.

Smith’s language is lush, strange, and absolutely fearless — the kind of prose you can almost taste. Whenever we bring his work to The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, I get to lean into the baroque, atmospheric side of narration and let the words drip like molten starlight. If you like your sci-fi and fantasy weird, haunting, and a little decadent, Clark Ashton Smith is your guy.

Some trade routes are dangerous because of pirates. This one is dangerous because it seems cursed. In George Whittington’s Space-Lane of No-Return, a routine haul turns into a nightmare as rumors of vanished ships, strange signals, and a fatal “jinx” begin to feel a little too real for the crew.

It’s classic early-’50s pulp: tense, spooky, and soaked in cosmic unease. If you like haunted houses, ghost ships, or stories where the universe itself feels like it’s keeping score, this one belongs in your personal Deep Cuts file.

Apple · Spotify

“This is the first podcast I have ever subscribed to. Scott has a voice made for audiobooks! I love everything about this podcast — the selection of the pieces, the way they are introduced, the backstory.”

— Nannypow, Apple Podcasts (Canada) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

On a harsh, sun-blasted world where time seems to move wrong, children grow up too fast, hope burns out too soon, and no one remembers Earth for very long. Ray Bradbury’s The Creatures That Time Forgot is one of his most unsettling visions of what happens when human lives and alien environments refuse to fit together.

It’s part tragedy, part nightmare fairy tale — full of heat, dust, and the ache of people who know something is terribly wrong with their world but can’t quite say why. Classic Bradbury: beautiful, bleak, and unforgettable.

Apple · Spotify

Long before modern dystopias, Jack London imagined a world shattered by a global pandemic. Set decades after a devastating plague has wiped out most of humanity, The Scarlet Plague follows an old man wandering the ruins of civilization, telling frightened children what the world used to be — and how quickly it all fell.

It’s eerie, prophetic, and surprisingly intimate; a story about memory, class, and the fragile illusion of “normal life.” Coming soon to The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.

Don’t miss this week’s free vintage sci-fi stories — available for a limited time! Forward Lost Sci-Fi Weekly to a friend and share the signal.

Answer: Theodore Sturgeon, author of the classic 1944 story “Killdozer!”

Out here among the lost stories and long-quiet voices, the signal eventually fades — but the echoes never really stop. My dad always said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing to the best of your ability.” That’s what I try to bring to every episode, every page, every old magazine pulled off the shelf. Until the next transmission — stay curious, stay inspired, and stay Lost in Sci-Fi.