PseudoPod 141: Flash on the Borderlands I
Show Notes
Theme music as usual: “Bloodletting on the Kiss” by Anders Manga
Additional music in this episode: rare rendition of “LabRatB” by Harmaline
“Jordan, When Are You Going to Settle Down, Get Married and Have Us Some Children?” first appeared online in The Harrow Vol. 11 No. 6, 2008.
“Thinking About Polar Bears” is a PseudoPod original.
“Exit Exam, Section III: Survival Skills, Question #7” first appeared online at Pindeldyboz, September 25, 2005.
Three flash fiction stories in one gut churning episode.
“Jordan, when are you going to settle down, get married and have us some children?”
By J.R. Hamantaschen
Beth, my most recent girlfriend, said I look like a hanged man when I walk because I always stare down at my feet.
Thinking About Polar Bears
By Mike Battista
I wake up exhausted. I hadn’t slept well. My heart still beats quickly; the aftermath of vaguely remembered dreams.
Exit Exam, Section III: Survival Skills, Question #7
by David Erik Nelson
7a) You are a werewolf. You kill and eat people. You are a vicious animal.
About the Authors
Mike Battista
Mike Battista is a technology analyst and a writer with a PhD in psychology from the University of Western Ontario. His blog contains various things about his life, thoughts, and whatever else he feels like sharing. Maybe He’ll put some useful information there or here someday. Who knows.
J.R. Hamantaschen
In J.R.’s first collection, You Shall Never Know Security, he included a publication history of all the stories contained therein, thinking that was the thing to do. Nowadays, he’s not so sure if anyone cares about that sort of stuff. Instead he’ll just provide a hat tip to some venues where his work has been published or produced, such as the Drabblecast, Pseudopod, Nossa Morte, 19 Nocturne Boulevard, The Harrow, and Revolution Science Fiction. He appreciates them (and the other magazines that have published his work, some now long-departed) for their support.
Writing is not how he supports himself financially, which explains the general delay in his output. He’s sometimes asked if he’ll ever consider writing full-time, to which he’s amassed considerable pithy responses. (One such response: “I have, but I’ve gotten used to eating daily.”) Until the market improves dramatically for depressing, despairing weird fiction that appears exclusively in small press magazines or podcasts and is published by an author with a cookie-inspired nom de plume (google “hamantaschen”), then part-time his writing shall remain.
David Erik Nelson
David Erik Nelson is an award-winning science-fiction author and essayist who has become increasingly aware that he’s “that unsavory character” in other people’s anecdotes. His stories have appeared in Asimov’s, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Pseudopod, The Best Horror of the Year, and elsewhere. In addition to writing stories about time travel, sex robots, haunted dogs, and carnivorous lights, he also writes non-fiction about synthesizers, guns, cyborg cockroaches, and Miss America. More of his writing can be found online—as can he—at davideriknelson.com
Folks who enjoyed this story will almost certainly also dig my latest novella, “There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House” (available in many formats, including a wonderful audiobook produced by a really great fella named David Sadzin). For those on a budget, keep a list of links to stories of mine available free online here: https://www.davideriknelson.com/FreeFiction/
About the Narrators
Ben Phillips
Ben Phillips is a programmer and musician living in New Orleans. He was a chief editor of Pseudopod from 2006-2010.
Alasdair Stuart
Alasdair Stuart is a professional enthusiast, pop culture analyst, writer and voice actor. He co-owns the Escape Artists podcasts and co-hosts both Escape Pod and PseudoPod.
Alasdair is an Audioverse Award winner, a multiple award finalist including the Hugo, the Ignyte, and the BFA, and has won the Karl Edward Wagner award twice. He writes the multiple-award nominated weekly pop culture newsletter THE FULL LID.
Alasdair’s latest non-fiction is Through the Valley of Shadows, a deep-dive into the origins of Star Trek’s Captain Pike from Obverse Books. His game writing includes ENie-nominated work on the Doctor Who RPG and After The War from Genesis of Legend.
A frequent podcast guest, Alasdair also co-hosts Caring Into the Void with Brock Wilbur and Jordan Shiveley. His voice acting credits include the multiple-award winning The Magnus Archives, The Secret of St. Kilda, and many more.
Visit alasdairstuart.com for all the places he blogs, writes, streams, acts, and tweets.
About the Artist
Maui Threv
Maui Threv was born in the swamps of south Georgia where he was orphaned as a child by a pack of wild dawgs. He was adopted by a family of gators who named him Maui Threv which in their language means mechanical frog music. He was taught the ways of swamp music and the moog synthesizer by a razorback and a panther. His own music has been featured over in episodes of Pseudopod. He provided music for the second episode ever released across the PseudoPod feed: Waiting up for Father. He also is responsible for the outro music for the Lavie Tidhar story Set Down This. He has expanded his sonic territory across all 100,000 watts of WREK in Atlanta where you can listen to the Mobius every Wednesday night. It is available to stream via the internet as well, and Threv never stops in the middle of a hoedown.
