StarShipSofa

Blast Off with the StarShipSofa
Hosted by	Tony C. Smith
Genre	Science Fiction
Updates	Weekly
Debut	July 2006
Website	www.starshipsofa.com

StarShipSofa is a science fiction podcast from the United Kingdom hosted by Tony C. Smith with Jeremy Szal as the fiction editor. It was the first ever podcast to be both nominated for and to win a Hugo Award for Best Fanzine. StarShipSofa was also nominated for Best Fan Podcast in the 2007 Parsec Awards. StarShipSofa is free directly from the web site and is available for subscription and automatic download through iTunes.

The show was first broadcast in July 2006 by Smith and Ciaran O'Carrol with an episode focusing on Alfred Bester. The next 70 episodes ran weekly and featured commentary on such subjects as Harlan Ellison, Samuel R. Delany, Charles Stross, and other well-known science fiction authors. StarShipSofa also covered subjects such as films and specific themes such as religion in science fiction.

In 2010 many of these original podcasts were transcribed and published in book form as StarShipSofa: The Captain's Logs.

At the end of this initial run O'Carrol left StarShipSofa and the podcast began to transition to an audio fiction magazine, with narrated fiction mixed with commentary and essays. Now calling itself StarShipSofa - The Audio Science Fiction Magazine, in October 2007 StarShipSofa began podcasting Hugo Award winning audio stories for free. In March 2008, for the first time ever, all five of the short stories that had been shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Best Short Story were made available on the StarShipSofa in audio narrated format.

Adam Pracht was the assistant editor up until September 2014, when he left to pursue other activities. He was replaced with Jeremy Szal, which was announced in Episode 361.

On 4 April 2010, StarShipSofa became the first podcast to ever be included on the Hugo Awards ballot. It was nominated in the category Best Fanzine. On 5 September 2010 StarShipSofa went on to become the first podcast to win a Hugo Award. The award was presented at Aussiecon 4 in Melbourne, Australia.