From the Podosphere: August 2008

The August batch of Escape Pod stories begins with “How I Mounted Goldie, Saved My Partner Lori, and Sniffed Out The People’s Justice” by Jonathon Sullivan (whose story “Imperial” was the very first in Escape Pod). Told by an enhanced canine police officer during debriefing, this story is a narrative of events from the viewpoint of Officer Bull, a dog engineered to be sentient for the sake of his highly developed sense of smell and his ability to control suspects. His preoccupation with sex and food (mostly sex) bring light comedy to the story, though there is a more serious message concerning the supremacy of the law. Stephen Eley’s side of the two-handed narration (with Jennifer Bowie) seems curiously excitable at first, until it becomes clear who exactly the viewpoint character is.

“Pervert” by Charles Coleman Finlay (read by Stephen Eley) is a tale of alternative sexual and reproductive conventions, and takes a while to set out its premise. This is partly due to the first person narrator, who considers himself not like other men. He lives in a world of homosexuals and “hydrasexuals,” but he is neither. The idea is a typical SF reversal, and though it’s well written, its linear plot has too few moments of dramatic variation, and the concluding revelation is less than satisfying.

The setting of “Fenneman’s Mouth” by Andy Duncan is some kind of TV editing studio where they recreate classic howlers that people remember but which never actually occurred. It’s a plausible account of the relationship between work colleagues, with an engaging reading by Jared Axelrod. Not much substance, but effective as a slice of mundane futuristic life.

In “Union Dues—Tabula Rasa” by Jeffrey R. DeRego (read by Stephen Eley), a superhero loses his memory. As he finds out who and what he is, perhaps he doesn’t like it. In common with some other Union Dues stories, this one has underlying bleakness suggesting that being a superhero isn’t all comic-book magnificence.

Mike Resnick’s “Robots Don’t Cry” is a story within a narration within a frame story, which gives it structure and a point of reference. Salvagers find a deactivated robot which, after reactivation, tells how it was charged with the long-term care of a young girl afflicted with disease and disability. It sounds mawkish but isn’t, and Stephen Eley’s skillful reading brings out the subtle emotional shifts.

Pseudopod begins August with “Homecoming” by B. J. West. Here we have a story about the white man’s efforts to benefit from Indian traditions—in this case from burial in holy ground, which promises temporary resurrection. This makes the story more of a fantasy than traditional horror, and the matter-of-fact writing style, emphasized by Leann Mabry’s passionless reading, further downplays the horror.

“Dear Killer” by Vinnie Hansen (read by Ben Phillips) has the makings of a visceral revenge-for-sexual-betrayal story, convincing and involving, and yet completely subversive. Difficult to say more without spoilers, except: recommended.

“Geist” by Chandler Kaiden (read by Richard Dansky) is a ghost story told from the ghost’s viewpoint. Our protagonist is watching his widow from his ghostly state somewhere in the plughole of the bathtub, from which initially he can’t escape. It’s a surreal take on progress towards an afterlife—although reality is up for grabs in any fantasy horror. With its focus on the inevitable end of the main characters’ relationship, this is certainly bleak, but the story offers some eventual resolution.

Michele Lee’s flash piece, “Scarecrow” (read by Ben Phillips), is a gruesome first-person narrative of a beating, torture, and burning alive—which sounds medieval, though this is a present-day story. The overblown style is not helped by the earnest bed music throughout. Though it’s well written and produced, the substance verges on the pretentious, with its almost obligatory inconclusive, arbitrary ending.

Strange goings-on at a London bookshop feature in Lavie Tidhar’s “The Book in the Earth”—though the bookshop, it seems, is a front for something else, something to do with a very particular book. Spooky, atmospheric, and not a little confusing with its changing time-lines and unexpected shifts. Well read by Ralph Walters and engaging, but odd.

Jeff Carlson’s “Pattern Masters” (read by David Moore) is an unclassifiable story—ostensibly horror, with a pinch of the surreal. An impecunious sculptor finds someone sympathetic to his artistic vision, but the burgeoning relationship turns sour—or is it made to fail for the sake of media hype? Clever, conclusive, and not a little weird.

“Galatea” by Vylar Kaftan (read by Rachel Swirsky) begins PodCastle’s August offerings. It’s a surreal fantasy about a young woman trying to settle in a new city, when she and all around her are losing body parts. She strikes up a tentative relationship with a neighbor who promises to tell her why this is happening. Though the intro before the story informs us that the tale is based on a traditional fantasy, this doesn’t excuse the heavy-handed symbolism with which the story concludes. It’s competent but thin, and the plot goes nowhere other than to point up an obvious moral.

“Believe” by Katherine Sparrow is a PodCastle Miniature read by Ann Leckie. Schoolkids are doing magic—or is it just conjuring? What do you believe? This slight tale is given greater depth by a counterpoint with the main character’s disadvantaged home-life.

With elements of time travel “Cup and Table” by Tim Pratt (read by Stephen Eley) might be considered SF as well as fantasy. It draws on Arthurian legend, so its place in PodCastle is appropriate. Complex and epic, it concerns, as might be expected, the search for the Grail, though the religious aspects of such a quest seem glossed over. Add a helping of superhero fiction and you have a multi-referential story that crosses genres with alacrity.

Billed as an example of “chain-mail bikini fantasy” K. D. Wentworth’s “Hallah Iron-Thighs and the Change of Life” is a fun romp involving sharp-talking protagonists, antagonists, and others—plenty of ludicrous improbability and atrocious singing. Enjoyable and light.

Neat and short, “What Dragons Prefer” by Dayle A. Dermatis (read by Loupe Savich) is a PodCastle Miniature telling of a dragon-searcher who knows her stuff, unlike the lecherous mayor who engages her to rid the town of the winged, fire-breathing threat.

As a fantasy about a girl who receives a marriage proposal from a rat, Cat Rambo’s “Dead Girl’s Wedding March” (read by Rachel Swirsky) works well. But the fact that she is some kind of zombie did not seem to add to the narrative. Despite that quibble, it was a good listen.

August saw the launch of the TTA Press podcast, Transmissions From Beyond, initially releasing three stories, one each from Interzone, Black Static, and Crimewave, then a fourth story from Interzone.

“The Algorithm” by Tim Akers was the first Transmission, from Interzone #212. A mechanistic religious sect spends its time attempting to assemble a machine from various parts its priesthood finds in containers afloat on a river. One day a container is found to contain a young woman, who seems to know more about the machine than she should. With echoes of Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz this is a disturbingly constrained story that grips, expertly read by John Berlyne.

For the second story, Tim Casson’s “Lady of the Crows” from issue #1 of Black Static, I was invited to narrate it myself, so I’ll move on to “A Handful of Dust” by Ian R. Faulkner, from Crimewave 9: Transgressions. Crimewave isn’t conventional crime fiction, and this story would have been at home in a horror anthology. It begins as a tale of a man so obsessed with his dead wife that he does odd things with her ashes, but it develops into something far more disturbing. Well written, and another fine reading by John Berlyne.

I reviewed Mercurio D. Rivera’s “Longing for Langalana” on The Rev Up Review when it appeared in Interzone #204. Then, as now, I found it a fascinating and satisfying story exploring the nature of love. Is love something deeply spiritual or simply the result of chemical reactions in the brain? The story is an example of how science fiction can deal with issues that matter greatly to us in the here-and-now, despite being set in the future and involving alien species. It’s told from an alien perspective, mostly in flashback, and concerns a young alien female who becomes a language tutor for a young human male. Over time, a relationship develops, which we see entirely from the alien’s viewpoint. As with many such stories, the aliens are depicted as possessing human qualities, which can be a legitimate criticism, though in this case it’s the whole point, enhanced here by Heather Welliver’s expressive reading.

[Disclosure notice: The Fix is brought to you by TTA Press, publisher of Transmissions from Beyond.]