From the Podosphere: November 2008

First an apology: feeling pleased with myself for catching the Halloween edition of PodCastle, despite its late appearance in my iTunes database, I neglected to check if the same thing had happened with Escape Pod. It had, so my review of “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham” is a month late. This is science-fictional horror from the pen of H. G. Wells, and Alasdair Stuart’s nervous reading (in the voice of the protagonist) effectively captures the mounting concern—eventually horror—of someone who finds his identity has been hijacked by unknown but probably nefarious scientific means. These days, the plot might seem overused, but it was original when it was written.

Escape Pod’s actual first story for November is “Beans and Marbles” by Floris M. Kleijne (read by Stephen Eley). Showing parallels with 2001: A Space Odyssey, this tale of a shipful of frozen colonists features a deranged pilot rather than a psychotic computer, and is told from the point of view of the pilot himself. I can imagine the longueurs of spaceflight might lead to mental dysfunction, but at the same time, I trust that persons with a predisposition for instability will be screened out of applicants for the job. A bit Twilight Zone in tone, but engaging.

Escape Pod began a hiatus of long stories during November, and instead we have a flurry of flash fiction. “Mission to Dover” by Gideon Fostick is a short speculation on time travel during World War II. Though the story is neatly and concisely plotted, Lyle Merithew’s narration, devoid of the accents on which the plot depends, fails to do it justice.

In Rachel Swirsky’s “Skyscrapers” (read by Ann Leckie), some kind of tree spirit lurks atop the urban landscape, minimally interacting with city dwellers. An interesting vignette, as far as it goes.

A strange puzzle-box seems to possess some Tardis-like dimensional qualities in Gideon Fostick’s “Karakuri” (read by Dave Leckie). Though predictable, the narrative ends at exactly the right moment.

The first of PodCastle’s stories for November is Andy Duncan’s “Senator Bilbo.” Within a setting remarkably like Tolkien’s Shire, an overblown, self-aggrandizing local politician receives lessons in racial harmony. Frank Key’s no-nonsense narration gives this salutary fantasy a grounding in reality.

“Okra, Sorghum, Yam” by Bruce Holland Rogers (read by An Owomoyela) is a folk tale of a young woman who goes to learn “wisdom” from a farmer/wise man. She’s skeptical of his intent, as her sister before her learned nothing from him. The story follows a traditional repeating format, until the format itself is unexpectedly—but effectively—undermined.

Ann Leckie’s breathless reading of Jeremiah Tolbert’s “The Girl With The Sun In Her Head” tends to rob it of any variation in pacing the writing might have, so that it comes over as a series of fantastical occurrences without individual significance. A story of loneliness and indifference.

Very short, and suggestive, Marie Brennan’s “The Princess And The…” (read by Ann Leckie) is not really a story, more a ribald innuendo.

“Clad in Gossamer” by Nancy Kress is read by me, so I’ll merely recommend it before passing on to Bruce Boston’s “The Kissing of Frogs” (read by Mur Lafferty), in which our heroine knows that if you kiss enough frogs, you’ll eventually end up with a prince. This short, instructive tale could be a warning to all who tempt the powers of magic.

As a British listener with little experience of American Thanksgiving celebrations, I found Ann Leckie’s “Bury the Dead” (read by Tina Connolly) to be a convincing portrayal of a family gathering, albeit with a surreal twist, but I couldn’t see the point of the zombie/fantasy element.

A cartoonist is obsessed with clocks in the first of Pseudopod’s November stories, Trent Jamieson’s “Clockwork” (read by Ben Phillips). The protagonist does a lot of internal musing on his incomplete relationship with his father, who committed suicide to escape a lingering death from disease. And that’s it. A brief moral tacked onto the end and we’re done. Not so much horror as a bit of mildly threatening shadow.

Next we have “Sick Day” by Michael Chant (read by Elie Hirschmann). One morning instead of going to work, a man pretends to be a victim of a bloody attack and sets out to scare the neighbours—for what purpose it’s hard to say. The tale is well told, but the point of it escapes me. It’s not surreal enough to be fantasy and not scary enough to be horror. It’s more like plain old midlife crisis.

“Deep Red” by Flori M. Kleijne is creepy and claustrophobic psychological horror, in which a man is convinced a psychopath is out to get him. Not original, but executed with flair, and read with gloomy paranoia by Ben Phillips.

“Lala Salama” by Gill Ainsworth (read by Heather Welliver) is a story of primitive magic in a modern world, with a disturbing take on pregnancy. Though the theme isn’t original, the execution is deft and literate. The ending, however, is abrupt, tending to the facile, and therefore a bit disappointing.

Variant Frequencies‘ November story is “Best in Class.” What happens when sentient automation—designed for a civilization of opulence—is called on to cope with a post-apocalyptic world? This light story is given serious depth by Jonathan C. Gillespie’s writing and Chuck Tomasi’s pitch-perfect narration.

A promo on Variant Frequencies directed me to another short-fiction podcast, The Dunesteef, which released two stories in November—the first being “The Seas of Castle Hill Road” by Rick Kennett (read by Cameron Horsburgh and Jacinta Lodge), a ghost story set in Australia, with links to an infamous historical event. Ernie is staying with a friend while he recovers from pneumonia, and though his friend’s house is a long way from the ocean, their nights are troubled by the sound of the sea. The protagonists’ reactions to various odd phenomena seem a mite blasé, given the threatening implications—I would have expected more fear. The two-handed reading is competent, though obviously compiled from separately recorded voice tracks, and there’s some background noise. The sound effects, however, are well done (not overdone as is often the case). A good production, if a little rough around the edges.

The other story from The Dunesteef is “Überman,” a powerful take on superhero fiction set after the end of World War II, as a Nazi “parahuman” is interrogated about his war crimes. This riveting two-hander is expertly performed by Rish Outfield and Big Anklevich, the Dunesteef hosts, who do great justice to John Medaille’s fine drama.