Episode 682-With Auston Habershaw

The Functional Nerds Podcast

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Auston Habershaw, author of Faceless Galaxy.

About Faceless Galaxy: Throughout the gutters and sanitation systems of the civilized galaxy, amorphous, nameless blobs called Torrhoids digest other species’ trash to clean air and water.

The Great Races don’ t consider Torrhoids intelligent. But when one Torrhoid receives a baffling kindness, its curiosity ignites. The shapeshifter discovers it can mimic its overlords— not only their voices, but their forms and movements, too.

It can escape the prison planet where it is kept cold, hungry, and fighting for life. It can evade those who would throw it back into the sewers. With ingenuity, quick thinking, and the power of surprise, it can strike down even the oligarchs and influence traders who rule the galaxy. So begins the career of the assassin known only as “Faceless”.

Still learning the cultures of the beings it impersonates, testing the limits of its abilities, and evading revulsion for its natural form, Faceless is never far from detection and death. Ethics are a luxury it can ill afford.

But as the stories of this sharp, twisty cyberpunk collection prove, a gutter scavenger’s justice may still beat an empire’s.

About Auston Habershaw: On the day Auston Habershaw was born, Skylab fell from the heavens. This foretold two possible fates: supervillain or scifi/fantasy author. Fortunately he chose the latter, and spends his time imagining the could-be and the never-was rather than disintegrating the moon with his volcano laser. He lives and works in Boston, MA.

Auston is a winner of the Writers of the Future Contest (2nd place in quarter 1, 2014) and has published stories in Analog, Galaxy’s Edge, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Escape Pod, among other places. His fantasy series, The Saga of the Redeemed is available through Harper Voyager Impulse.

This week’s picks:

• Auston: UFO 50 (Game)
• Tracy: A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
• Patrick #1: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Deathwatch (Netflix)
• Patrick #2: Who Killed The Montreal Expos? (Netflix)

Links:

• Auston Habershaw on BluSky
• Tracy Townsend on BluSky
• Patrick Hester on Instagram
• The Functional Nerds Patreon Page

© 2025 Patrick Hester

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