PodDisc shutting down
After years of great service, Arri and Kimi – who run Poddisc for us – have decided to step away. So PodDisc, our CD fulfilment site, will be shutting down in early February. (Continue Reading…)
PseudoPod 472: Self Portrait With Embellishments
Self Portrait With Embellishments
by Ryan Dull
These are the things you need to make art: Discipline, Opportunity, Inspiration.
Discipline begets Craft, Output, and Dispassionate Self-Criticism. I’ve had Discipline since I was eight years old.
Opportunity means that you can afford the time and the food and the ink required to make art. I’ve had Opportunity since I was a pair of star-crossed gametes.
I have never had Inspiration.
PseudoPod 471: Flash On The Borderlands XXX: Flash Fiction Contest IV
Show Notes
These are the winners of the fourth round of the Pseudopod Flash Fiction Contest. All are Pseudopod Originals.
The next phase of the Flash Fiction Contest will be run by Escape Pod. Get your science fiction flash prepared.
Cold Spots
by Lena Coakley
narrated by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
Lena says about this story, “To me, ‘Cold Spots’ is a very New England story. All the imagery is pinched from childhood memories of my grandmother’s summerhouse on the Connecticut shore. I see it as being about the disappointment that comes when we realize adulthood is not what we thought it would be when we were children, and the desire to get back to a self that may never have existed. This will be my first podcasted story so I’m beyond excited to hear it.”
Salt on my lips. Sun on the sea. My body slides through the water easily as if it had never aged. I have to swim farther and farther out to find you, but you are always there. In the cold spots.
On land the past is vague and distant, but something about the sudden gooseflesh, the delicious shock between my legs, brings you back, and I remember.
Down
by Nathaniel Lee
narrated by Graeme Dunlop
It started with the basement. The steps descended into darkness. The light was on, I could see the light, the light was glowing its little heart out, but about three steps from the bottom, it just stopped. The shadows thickened and there was a hint of concrete floor, then nothing. I didn’t want to go down there, even though I’d just heard the dryer buzz.
Linny went to investigate. She made it five steps down. Then she was gone, too. And the darkness was closer.
The Mindfulness of Horror Practice
written and narrated by Jon Padgett
Jon says about this story, “After my family and I returned home to a devastated New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, a friend of mine suggested I start meditating to help deal with acute depression and anxiety. I did so after finding a mindfulness of breathing practice which I favored, and it was transformative. Some time back, it struck me that the flip side of such a practice might be interesting to explore, and—thus— ‘The Mindfulness of Horror’ was born.”
In this recording I’m going to be leading you through all four stages of the mindfulness of horror practice. Closing your eyes. Become aware of the air on your skin, the temperature in the room. Any noises or smells. Accept them all, good or bad and let go. Not clinging to anything or pushing anything away, but embracing every sensation.
PseudoPod 470: The Santa Claus Parade
The Santa Claus Parade
by Helen Marshall
Some people think the Santas are smiling.
The Company tries to weed out that kind of thinking pretty early on with videos from the eighties, people with big hair, shoulder pads, smiling in bleached out, crackling colours. There are diagrams about brain function. A specialist gave a talk on the subject but I slept all the way through it. Sweet dreams.
PseudoPod 469: Hunger
Show Notes
“I’m Canadian and winters can be long and rough up here, and that was sort of the inspiration for this story. It wasn’t uncommon for people in rural areas not all that long ago to get horribly lost during a whiteout (a heavy and unrelenting snowstorm). People would leave their home to get something in their barn, and they’d be found a few days later in a pile of snow because they couldn’t find their way back. I always thought it was a terrifying idea, and I really hope the listeners at home think so too!”
Hunger
by Caitlin Marceau
Jean pulls a pine needle from inside his coat pocket and slowly begins to gnaw on it. “It’s better than dying lost in a forest, or being eaten by starving wolves.”
“I’d welcome the wolves, Jean. At least then I’d have a chance to bite some meat off one of them, and die with a full stomach. Besides, the dogs had enough brains to get out of here a long while ago.”
“There’s still some. How else do you account for the howling outside our cabin all night?”
“The wind,” he shoots back dismissively.
“Or a wendigo,” Jean says quietly, in a voice a whisper. (Continue Reading…)
PseudoPod 468: The Angel In The Marble
Show Notes
‘The Angel In The Marble’ is an example of a kind of story that has haunted and fascinated me since early childhood and which, until writing this, I had never quite expressed in words. It’s one of those ‘stormy night’ stories we find in the darker corners of books of fairytales in which someone is lost in a deep wood and so follows the single light shining from a nearby cabin; wandering, unknowingly, even further from the road. It’s a story about two strangers, not desiring company and having their own personal reasons for solitude, who nevertheless meet on common ground and must reveal and complete one another’s stories. I see this as a trope very near to the heart of horror and dark literature and I’ve witnessed it play out time and again in such places as Pinter’s The Caretaker and No Man’s Land, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night and, more recently, the 2008 Marek Losey film The Hide, which is probably the best contemporary example I can name.
The Angel In The Marble
by B.T. Joy
It’s always been the consensus that symmetry is synonymous with beauty.
But Adrian Speer disagreed.
What was more symmetrical than that block of rough, square-edged marble; fresh from the quarry? If symmetry was all we were looking for we’d be exhibiting a slab of raw, unchiseled stone on that glass-surrounded plinth in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence.
They do say the great artist went personally to Carrara; to choose just the right marble for his masterworks. And so the raw resources were important. No one’s saying different. But, in the angles of the white stone, Michelangelo saw angels; and he chiseled until he released them into the air. Breaking symmetry for beauty’s sake.
PseudoPod 467: Doc
Doc
by V.N. Winnick
It’s the first time they’re making me do it, and I’m giving the man a speech. One I’ve practiced in my head from the moment they told me what needed to be done.
“I’m not a doctor. I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in zoology. That’s the study of animals. I was pretty good with animal anatomy.
“I’ve never operated on a person, or anything living. You’re my first patient, and this is my first amputation. My hands are probably gonna shake. This is gonna be slow, and it’s gonna hurt a lot, because I’ll have to learn as I go. Other than that, no promises.
“You’re really, really sure you want me to do this?”
My head swivels about, looking at the rest of the group as I ask the question. I guess I want it to be a waiver; something to absolve me of responsibility when this whole, lunatic notion eventually goes pear-shaped, as I have no doubt that it will. To my complete astonishment, my “patient” nods, and says between shallow breaths, “Go for it, Doc.”
PseudoPod 466: Bad Newes from New England
Show Notes
the story payment will be donated to RUNNING STRONG, a Native American charity.
Bad Newes from New England
by Moaner T. Lawrence
This act of goodwill stirred great cheer in the people of New Plimouth and, with freshly raised spirits, they bade the Wampanoag enter; opened home and hearth in the spirit of God, and offered to share their modest bounty; whereupon the Wampanoag made entrance, each savage family pairing off with one of our own. I, Chief Massasoit, the chief’s bodyguards, Hobomok, Captain Standish, and Pastor Brewster removed to Mr. Allteron’s house in front of the corn fields. Two of the chief’s children also joined us: His eldest son Wamsutta, a man of twenty years who was often short of patience, and suspicious of all Europeans, and his gentle daughter Amie, a girl of sixteen years who was ever amicable toward everyone. (Continue Reading…)