Short Story Read-Aloud, Week 24 and 25

After my recent trip home, I'm far behind in my listening: without walking the dog or washing the dishes, my listening time drops very low. (By contrast, with all her time walking the dog while I was away, my girlfriend is all caught up in her listening.)

Escape Artists (Escape Pod, Podcastle, Pseudopod) 

David Tallerman, "Prisoner of Peace": No recollection.

Kenneth Schneyer, "Selected Program Notes From the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer": What it says on the tin: notes from an art exhibit that slowly build up this character and her conflict. An interesting idea, but rather dry.

Jeffrey Wikstrom, "Nutshell": An AI on a colonization ship tries to solve a problem--all the people it unfreezes are insane except for one guy who tries to help in his own way. Cute.

Philip M. Roberts, "The Easily Forgotten": I think I might take a break from the short fiction podcasts--most of them aren't moving me much. Like this one, the story of a monster in an orphanage, I think... and the rest just rolled off me.

Lightspeed and Nightmare 

Sarah Langan, "Family Teeth (Part 6) St. Polycarp's Home for Happy Wanderers": A were-coyote sent to foster care eventually comes to realize her difference

Matthew Kressel, "The Sounds of Old Earth": Earth is being dismantled and an old man feels bad about it.

Jeffrey Ford, "Daltharee": Bottle cities and shrinking rays and people covering their tracks with murder.

Cast of Wonders (Protecting Project Pulp, Tales to Terrify, Starship Sofa)

Harry Turtledove, "Lure," "Gladly Wolde He Learne," "Clash of Arms," "Not All Wolves," "The Barbecue, The Movie, and Other Unfortunately Not So Relevant Material": This episode of Starship Sofa presented several Turtledove stories: a time traveler captures pre-humans using Oreos; a school administrator studies very hard to reach the top of his profession--becoming a teacher; a man engages in a trivia test about heraldry with--the Devil!; a Jew protects a werewolf; a time traveling researcher finds the wrong Genghis in LA. These are all on a range of cute-to-clever; and the writing is competent--I was never thrown out of the story. But I never really got a big emotional charge.

George G. Toudouze, "Three Skeleton Key": Rats! A ship full of rats crashes into a lighthouse island. What makes this interesting is the various reactions of the three lighthouse keepers; particularly the narrator, who just shrugs off this horrible attack.

Steven Savile, "The Horned Man": Man on vacation accidentally runs over and kills mythical horned man--a spirit of the forest--and has to take his place to save his wife. Mmm, okay.

Tom Thursday, "Ten Dollars--No Sense": Two comic characters have a bet about whether people are good or not, as to be tested by a stray ten dollar bill. Episodic and semi-structure-less, but carried along by its really fun language. Tom Thursday is turning out to be an unexpected discovery from Protecting Project Pulp.

Mark Rigney, "Called on Account": After the suspicious death of his little league star son, game announcer dad's spirit sticks around to tell everyone's dirt, which destroys the town. Interesting.