When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro

PseudoPod is open again for submissions. With the reopening, we’d like to announce a few changes for the better. First, we have new pay rates. For all new submissions, we will pay the pro rate of $.06 per word for original fiction up to a cap of 6,000 words. We will pay $100 flat rate for reprints, and $20 flat rate for flash fiction (stories below 1500 words). This now makes all the organizations in the Escape Artists family pro-paying markets. Second, we have moved to the Submittable platform for all submissions. This gives everyone improved tracking, a cleaner user interface, and a better overall experience. Please check out our Submissions page or the Submittable portal for more details.

We would also like to take a moment to recognize our submissions staff. The submissions staff is the lifeblood of our organization and keep the gears from grinding. Moaner T. Lawrence will be stepping in as new Assistant Editor over submissions. Our Associate Editors include Chelsea, Kat, and Jen as new staff members, as well as the returning Brian, Jesse, Nick, and Nicole. Many thanks are owed to the uncountable hours devoted by Joe, who is moving to new projects. With the new rates, we expect you authors to keep these folks busy reading for the upcoming seasons of PseudoPod.

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PseudoPod 442: The Only Child

PseudoPod 442: The Only Child is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:22 — 16.1MB)

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Show Notes

“While writing this story I was wondering why death sometimes makes people feel special – touching it, escaping it, even causing it. Yet it’s not special. It’s something that happens to all of us eventually and it’s usually terrible.”

The Only Child

by Leslie J. Anderson

Annabell Crowley lay on the dirt floor and looked up at Death. She remembered that a man had cut her throat. It was so hard to hold onto ideas. Her parents were already dead. Death had taken their spirits hours ago. She thought she should be afraid of him, but wasn’t. The human mind has amazing capabilities of adjusting to a new reality. The world was very peaceful. She looked up at Death, who looked back down at her. How funny that everything felt normal now. A man had cut her throat and she was not dead, even though that was impossible. Her arms lay at her sides. She didn’t have the power to raise them.

Death tilted his head. His skin was pulled close over his skull and his eyes were closed and sunken. Maybe he had no eyes at all. After looking at her for a long time he flicked the cigarette away and walked out the door. He was dressed in flannel and jean, with a brown hat. He had taken the hat from a hanged man because he’d liked it and it fit well. He stepped over Anna’s father.

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PseudoPod 441: Deep Deep

“Deep Deep” originally appeared in Electric Spec, May 2012.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:59 — 15.2MB)

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Show Notes

“I once worked as a summer camp counselor, and I love swimming in lakes. (You might not think so, but it’s true!)”

Deep Deep

by Karen Munro

If a kid got lost in the lake, all the counselors had to dive. They were supposed to line up an arm’s length from each other, dive to the bottom, swim a few feet, then come straight up for air. If you dove close to shore it wasn’t bad. You only had to go down a few feet. But out at the end of the dock, beneath the diving board, it was twelve or fifteen or twenty feet to the bottom. That’s what we called deep-deep.

I wasn’t a counselor. I wasn’t counselor material, especially not at Wanderwell Reformatory Boys’ Camp. I wasn’t there to reform anyone, I just wanted to get out of my mom’s basement for the summer. Bagging cream of wheat and counting bowstrings in the quartermaster’s A-frame was better than listening to my mom and Shouty Phil rampage through the house. I didn’t want to be a counselor. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone . . . but they still made me dive.

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PseudoPod 440: Octavius Bound

PseudoPod 440: Octavius Bound is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:58 — 27.5MB)

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Show Notes

“Although the events in this story are fictional, the Octavius itself is somewhat less so. Legends of this ship’s disappearance have existed for centuries, and nothing conclusive about its existence has been documented either way.”

Octavius Bound

by Nathan Ehret

Sept 17, 1762

Five Months now we have been at Sea, tho’ it seems but half a Week since the _Octavius_ embarked from Peking and the Orient. I have decided to eschew the Horn & attempt a Course through the New World for our return Journey. If, by God’s Grace, the Weather is clear & we maintain our current Heading, we should find Passage eastward through the Arctic within the next Fortnight.

June 1, 2014

Saw my first iceberg today. Not sure when we can expect pack ice, but everyone just tells me, ‘relax, we’re on an icebreaker’. Kinda takes the excitement out of sailing into the Great White North to chase down a ghost ship, but hey–at least we’ll be safer than the _Octavius_.

It’s funny–we really don’t know much more about the _HMS Octavius_ than what anyone’s grandma could find on Google. It was last seen in 1775, some thirteen years after its disappearance, by the _Herald_, an English whaling ship. When the whalers went on board, they discovered the entire crew of the _Octavius_ frozen dead at their stations. The captain, William Perington, was still at his desk, pen in hand, along with a woman and small child. I guess the whole ‘freezing-to-death-at-your-post’ business kinda freaked the hell out of the whalers, and they legged it pretty quick. But not before purloining the captain’s log book from right under his stiff, dead hand…

Course it was all basically hearsay until good ol’ Robert came across the log book in an auction for maritime memorabilia. It was vetted by a dozen historians, and it seems to be legit. Turns out the coordinates for the _Octavius’_ last known location were in the book. Also turns out that Yours Truly is Robert’s favourite student of maritime archaeology, hence my place aboard the _Liberator_! Sweet deal.

(OK, cards on the table–Robert knows about what happened with Dylan, and maybe he figures this trip will help me get over things? Yeah, right. But it’ll be a good voyage nevertheless. Right? Of course it will.)

_And why, O Wise and Lovely Amelia Finley, are you writing in a diary?_ My distinguished advisor, Prof Robert Winston, thinks it will actually help organize my thoughts when it comes to writing my thesis. Huzzah.

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PseudoPod 439: Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes

“Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes” was published in RUNNING WITH THE PACK (ed. Ekaterina Sedia), in 2010, and reprinted in MAD SCIENCE CAFE (ed. Deborah J. Ross) in 2013.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:19 — 23.0MB)

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Show Notes

“The story was directly inspired by a set of online essays written by Michael Briggs, husband of the urban fantasy author Patricia Briggs, in which he attempted to make silver bullets and discovered that it’s insanely hard to do.”

Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes

by Marie Brennan

_Abstract_

This study seeks to establish a hierarchy of efficacy for various antipathetic materials and delivery mechanisms thereof as used in the extermination of lycanthropes. Pre-existing data on this issue consists solely of folkloric narratives and unsubstantiated anecdotes on Internet communities, neither of which are based upon suitable experimental trials. It is hoped that this study will be only the beginning of a proper body of scientific literature, which might be expanded to include hyena men, were-jaguars, and other therianthropes.

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PseudoPod 438: Baby Weight

“Baby Weight” was first published on Bogleech.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:52 — 17.9MB)

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Show Notes

“Baby Weight started out as a story about eating and about the way disorders can hide themselves under other names. It turned into something all its own, but the thoughts that gave birth to it are still in there”

Baby Weight

by Sarah Benkin

narrated by Eve

7:00am – Glass of room temperature lemon water with cayenne pepper

8:00am – Steamed, purred carrot, half. Eaten at desk

10:00am – 1/2 cup coconut milk. No added sugar. Four bites porridge.

I watch the women from the phone bank while they eat. One is nibbling on a small, grey puck of a breakfast sandwich. The kind that you buy, store, microwave and eat out of a white paper wrapper. I can’t look away. I watch while she’s pushing bite after bite of the thing through her greasy, lipsticked mouth.

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PseudoPod 437: Fog

PseudoPod 437: Fog is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:56 — 14.5MB)

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Show Notes

“This story didn’t just come out of thin air. It really did come out of the fog. While waiting for fog to clear at the Colorado Springs airport so my plane could take off, I went to the bathroom. There, just walking around, was a woman with no pants. It was one of the oddest, out-of-context sights I had ever seen, and knew I had to create a story around it. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you enjoy ‘Fog.'”

Fog

by Kristin Luna

Outside, there was only gray, diffused light. Hints of airplanes sat lifelessly at their gates. The fog drifted and stroked the windows.

Just as the businessman turned to make conversation with the old man to his left, his gaze caught on a woman walking out of the bathroom. “Will you look at that?”

The security cameras in the terminal jerked into position to watch the woman, except for the one camera trained on the crowd of onlookers. The crowd turned their heads to look.

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PseudoPod 436: Flash On The Borderlands XXV: Simulacra

PseudoPod 436: Flash On The Borderlands XXV: Simulacra is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.3KB)

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Show Notes

“Worm Within” was originally printed in “Clarkesworld” 2008.

“Lullabies For A Clockwork Child” is a PseudoPod Original.

“Used” is a PseudoPod Original and was reprinted in For Mortal Things Unsung.

“The strategic problem is, of course, that simulacra are reassuring only when viewed from outside. They do not provide an existential model for how to be in the world. One can appreciate the brilliance of the embalmer’s work, but one would not want to be its object.”

“Decadent Naturalism” by Charles Bernheimer; introduction to A HAVEN by J.K. Huysmans in THE DECADENT READER.

Sounds in this episodes:

“Ticks” for “Worm Within” can be found here.
“Static” for “Worm Within” can be found here
“Interstitial Clockwork” for “Lullabies For A Clockwork Child” can be found here

Worm Within

by Cat Rambo

The LED bug kicks feebly, trying to push itself away from the wall. Its wings are rounds of mica, and the hole in its carapace where someone has tacked it to the graying boards reveals cogs and gears, almost microscopic in their dimension. The light from its underside is the cobalt of distress. (Continue Reading…)