This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Thomas Pierce read his story, Chairman, Spaceman, from the January 16th, 2017 issue of the magazine.

Pierce's story collection, Hall of Small Mammals, came out in 2015.

His novel, The After Lives, will be published later this year.

Now here's Thomas Pierce.

Chairman Space Man. Chairman Spaceman

After tonight, he'd never see any of these people again.

Dom Whipple, the notorious corporate raider, the scourge of boardrooms near and far, the layoff king,

had traded his entire fortune

for a one-way ticket to a distant planet. And even guys like Lenny Westerfeld, a man he

had once blackmailed into an early retirement, had come to bid Dom farewell.

"'Every cent,' Lenny asked him. "'You mean to tell me you really gave that church every single cent?

"'It's liberating, Lenny. It really is.

"'I've never felt so free in all my life.

"'Be honest, though. No secret investments scrolled away, no offshore accounts.'

Tom shook his head. Not a one. "'Well I think it's lovely. Sheila Park chimed in.

I do it myself, only I'm probably not religious enough. What's this church of yours called?

God's plan for space, GPS. Oh my, she said, and I get nervous telling people I'm an Episcopalian anymore.

God's plan had a simple mission, to establish a more egalitarian society on another planet

and to spread the message of God's love to unexplored solar systems, but Dom's best

efforts to explain it had mostly been met with blank stares and polite jokes.

...