This week on the Drabblecast– three stories about Strange Futures. We bring you Drabblecast originals, “Department of Invention” by R.L. Thull, “The One’s Who Won’t Be” by Martin Munks, and “Cannabilism in the Inhuman Age” by Jaye Viner.
Closing Music by 19 Action News
Saul broke down in an unusual way for a robot. Saul ‘died,’ is the more apt term, but I hate to put a human descriptor to a machine. They already get enough of those…
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We’d tested plenty of missiles before, but Teeny was the only one that convulsed when we cut him open.
Oh, your listeners need more background? OK, I’ll back up a bit. Lemme tell ya, kids today don’t know their history. Even locked up in here for the past ten years, I can tell. No education. Good thing you’re getting the real story out…
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A sadistic tale from a sadistic future on the Drabblecast this week; we bring you a Drabblecast original from People’s Choice Award winning author Robert Reed. Brought to you by the ever-sexy and captivating voice of the internet’s one and only Word Whore.
For Drabblecast Bsides subscribers only!
A work colleague suffers a stroke and gets whisked to Intensive Care, where an experimental neurostimulant is pumped into the blood. The drug can be therapeutic, and he recovers. Sort of…
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In the tiny lifeboat, she and the alien eat bacon endlessly, relentlessly.
They each have their own preference. Hers is the usual, crispy but not too crispy, the creamy fat just firm enough to bite through, the salt making grainy little bumps that she licks off her fingers.
The alien is not humanoid. It is not bipedal. It has cilia. It has no bones, or perhaps it does and she cannot feel them. Its muscles, or what might be muscles, are rings and not strands. It seems to like its bacon softer than she does, almost raw even, though sometimes it eats pieces that were left to fry a little too long.
It eats the bacon a thousand ways. She eats it, too.
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Norm pays tribute and bids farewell to the greatest unsung hero of the podcast for the past two years: editor Sandra Odell. This fantastic story and many others have been brought to your ears through her hard work!
Our story is another original Drabblecast commissioned story for Women & Aliens month, this week by Darcie Little Badger. Solitude is often a time to help reflect on ourselves, and realize just how wonderfully connected we are to the universe around us. But how do we cope with such inevitably connectivity? What are our responsibilities to those fastened to us or colliding with our destinies us? Grab your kayak, hit the beach and find out…
“The prima donna sun has not yet risen to outshine every other star in the Milky Way. Overhead, a flash of light arcs between Orion and Taurus, the hunter firing at the bull. With a grunt, Mathilda lowers her kayak and admires the streak of light across the sky, thinking of her childhood in Los Angeles. There, shooting stars—most stars, really, except for the terrazzo and brass ones on the Hollywood walk of fame —were rare and wondrous. Things are different now. Mathilda still considers the stars to be wondrous…”
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Our first Women & Aliens Month commission for 2020– It’s a goodie, a full-cast production of a Drabblecast original by Rachel K. Jones and Khalida Muhammed-Ali. Wash up, it’s time for dinner!
On this diplomatic mission, I, Scholar, have two objectives: first, to advise Master Feeder TikTik on Earth customs and linguistic differences, and second, to accurately record what transpires so we may determine an exchange of gifts…
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The Drabblecast begins it’s 9th Annual Women & Aliens Month”– a full month of original commissioned stories by women about (you guessed it) aliens. First though, the Drabblecast presents a story by author Margaret Atwood about musicals, fungus, aliens and… well, you’ll see!
The Martians descend to Earth in their spaceship. They intend to go to New York – they want to see something called ‘a musical’ – but they get the directions mixed up, as many before them have done, and end up in Canada instead, as many before them have also done. Specifically, they land on a chunk of rock in the boreal forest somewhere on the Laurentian Shield. There is no one around, or no one you might recognize as ‘one’…
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Sally was coming down the lake road, so I waved to her and called her by name. I always liked to see Sally. I
liked all of them, you understand, but Sally’s the prettiest one of the lot. There just isn’t any question about it.
She moved a little faster when I waved to her. Nothing undignified. She was never that. She moved just enough faster to show that she was glad to see me, too…
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I don’t know where it was—that miniature golf course in the sand—but it had to be the Gulf of Mexico somewhere. We were driving from one coast to the other, like always. “The Great Southern Route,” my dad called it. It had to be Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, or Texas—one of them. I was seven…
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Episode Sponsor- I’m From Nowhere, a novel by Lindsay Lerman.
This week’s Drabblecast explores unrequited love and how relationships, like anything in life, are susceptible to change. We bring you a full cast production of David D. Levine’s space opera story “Love in the Balance,” read to you by Mike Boris, Lauren Synger, Veronica Giguere, Adam Pracht, David Levine and Norm Sherman.
Theo opened his eyes and stared out the window.
Beyond the glass loomed the fog of endless night, and bulbous shapes drifting. Here and there a spotlight picked out the sigil of one or another House on a pennant or tail fin. The red bat of the Unknown Regalia… the silver spoon-and-circle of Theo’s own Guided Musings… and there, the gilded fish of the Pulp Revenants. Angrily, Theo twisted the brass and crystal handle beneath the worn sill, and wooden slats snapped shut over the view.
How dare Kyrie summon the zombies again— on this day of all days, and upon the Musings of all Houses? How dare she?
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In this Drabbleclassics episode, author and Drabblefan Weirdo Abbie Hilton breaks down the hit Drabblecast story Boojum, by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette.
The ship had no name of her own, so her human crew called her the Lavinia Whateley. As far as anyone could tell, she didn’t mind. At least, her long grasping vanes curled—affectionately? — when the chief engineers patted her bulkheads and called her “Vinnie,” and she ceremoniously tracked the footsteps of each crew member with her internal bioluminescence, giving them light to walk and work and live by…
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This week, the Drabblecast presents a full cast production of “1977” by Carrie Vaughn.
“Have another one,” the guy said, and Megan did because she was thirsty, though a martini was probably not what she should be drinking. She was too far gone to question.
She downed the drink in three swallows while the guy laughed. Craig. Conner. Whatever his name was. The music changed, and her eyes got wide. She shoved the glass at the bar, knocking something over, but was already turning to the dance floor.
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This week on the Drabblecast, something a little different! “Wholesale Solution” is a full cast radio play set in a dystopic science fiction universe where nothing is as it seems.
Written and produced by Fred Greenhalgh and Jack Bowman, buckle in for a ride to Europa!
We are inside a holding cell containing CLAY ORTS, a tech programmer, a small cubicle-style structure. He’s with CAMPBELL DOYLE, a man with a salesman voice. There is a momentary piece of ambiance as both sit in silence. Campbell takes a deep breathe. It’s the calm before the storm.
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This week the Drabblecast brings you two new, previously unpublished stories by SF genre luminary Robert Reed.
Reed published his first novel, The Leeshore in 1987. Since then he has received nominations for both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award, as well as numerous other literary awards. In 2007, he won his first Hugo Award for the 2006 novella “A Billion Eves”.
This week we bring you two original stories by Robert Reed:
You never sleep and you cannot be alone. Companions surround you,
extraordinary both in their numbers and the multitude of lost worlds represented. Subjected to minimizations of data and energy, each of you has been compressed into a body no larger than a bacterial spore. The principles of efficient packing mean that your neighbors share your temperament and general outlook. This is the means by which you can exist and feel so very real. Your nature is shared. Ten million like-minded souls make every calculation that much easier.Primarily human. That is what you are.
You begin by insisting that you are a happy person.
“A thin happiness built from predictive software,” your new mentor counters. “And let’s be honest here. The system’s limitations are growing more obvious with every rigorously planned day.”
Then he says nothing, staring at you.
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For this bit of Drabblecast Member Premium Content, we bring you “The Five Hundred Days of Ms. Between” by Joshua Alan Doetsch.
Joshua Alan Doetsch is a “sentient word virus spreading across the collective unconscious through the vector of human language.” His writings include novels, short fiction, and video games (including Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey).
Click here to become a Drabblecast B-Sides Premium Content Member with access to extra stories like this each month!
Warning: story contains violence and references to suicide.
Can’t feel my legs. So I slither along the ground, toward the audient window, humming that song. I hear the wet-velcro rip of the thousand hands rending flesh. I see her through the window. That mocking grin.
The first thing Ms. Between said to me was, “I’m a mad woman with a lab.” The second thing she said was that I could leave at any time with no obligation. The third thing was that there could be no questions—questions would cause her and her offer to evaporate. I believed absolutely in that, so she handed me the murder weapon.
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Today The Drabblecast brings you an original story commissioned by Karen Heuler: “Beauty Tips for the Apocalypse.”
Karen Heuler wrote her first novel when she was eleven, and she’s been worshiping books at the altar ever since.
In times such as these, with the world shaken to its core, it is all too easy to give up on routine cosmetic care. Yet a fresh look in a war zone can do so much to uplift those suffering and dying right in front of your eyes. Consider it a humanitarian obligation that you owe to those around you, no matter the particular effects of the zone of destruction you find yourself in…
Enjoy the show (the full story is printed below the player)!
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This week The Drabblecast presents “Wet Fur” by Jeremiah Tolbert.
From Jeremiah:
“This story came to me wholly formed in a dream one day. I wrote it in a white hot tear, desperate to capture all the details and emotions that had seemed so immediate in the dream. It’s about how our pets live such short lives compared to us. It’s about what happens when someone tries to do something about that…”
You can tell the dog owners when they board the plane. They see the black cloud hovering in the first row and their eyes widen in shock, then narrow in fear. When they see so many occupied seats, they smile. It’s a relieved smile that seems to say: “Not for me. Not for mine.”
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