This week’s Escape Pod podcast story is Madeline Ashby’s βoyfriend, a marvellous, sweetly romantic science fiction story about teenagers who use clever artificial intelligences as “training wheels” on the way to their first real love, but who quickly find themselves substituting the warm companionship of their imaginary friends for the confusing and fraught people around them. It’s got Ashby’s sly humor, heart and it’s got clever to spare. I bought Madeline’s first published story for Tesseracts 11 and it’s wonderful to see where she’s gone since.