In my walks around Green Lake last week, I caught up on all the podcasts from Tor.com. So here’s my thoughts.

The Final Now by Gregory Benford

Episode 12 contains Gregory Benford‘s The Final Now. All I can say is ugh. Hate this kind of meta-story.

Eros, Philia, Agape by Rachel Swirsky

Episode 13 has Eros, Philia, Agape by Rachel Swirsky, narrated by the author. Pretty good story about loving a robot. It’s not so much the love thing that made this interesting, though that’s the bulk of the story. It’s that the robot has truly strange motivations that regular people just won’t get. It made the Hugo final ballot, and deservedly so I think.

The Next Invasion by Robert Reed

Episode 14 has The Next Invasion from Robert Reed, narrated by the author (I believe). A decent but average story that kind of explores the idea of but what if the aliens are already here!

Errata by Jeff VanderMeer

Episode 15 contains Errata from Jeff VanderMeer, again narrated by the author I think. I don’t really remember exactly what VanderMeer sounds like, so I could be wrong. I do not get this story at all. I listened to it twice even. Self-referential slipstream like stuff. Alternate reality Jeff VanderMeer goes to Lake Baikal to write a story. Also contains a penguin and an assassin. Sometimes I love experimental. Normally though, including this time, I just don’t get it.

Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction by Jo Walton

Episode 16 had Jo Walton‘s Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction, narrated by Charles Stross. Walton’s created an alternate history for her Small Change series where the Nazis did significantly better than they did in real life. I forget what the point was where that history diverged from ours. I’ve only read Farthing and I have to say I don’t remember it too well. This short story is set in the United States instead of Britain, in the same universe. The United States is somewhat fascist too, from what I can tell. A woman faces a temptation to denounce her employers as closet Jews. Other events happen to show that it could have happened here. And it could have. Interspersed with news headlines, from which the story gets its title. Liked the story. Won’t re-read it.

The Film-makers of Mars by Geoff Ryman

On to Episode 17 with Geoff Ryman’s The Film-makers of Mars. Vampires meet Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series. Very well written, but pretty gimmicky.

First Flight by Mary Robinette Kowal

Episode 18 has the first story I’ve ever read by Mary Robinette Kowal, First Flight. Time travel story that doesn’t add much to the time travel trope, but it is quite well written from the character perspective. Louise is a time traveler because she’s old; time travel only works as far back as a person has been alive. Louise is old enough to have been alive before the Wright brothers first flew. And the time travel company’s investors want to get footage of that historic event. One of the few stories I’ve read with a particularly aged heroine. Recommended.

Four Horsemen, at Their Leisure by Richard Parks

Episode 19 contains Richard Parks‘ Four Horsemen, at Their Leisure, narrated by Mur Lafferty. Definitely not my kind of story. Much like Gregory Benford’s The Final Now, this is also an end-times philosophic bent story. In other words, navel gazing thoughts about the nature of reality. Bleah.

Firstborn by Brandon Sanderson

Episode 20 appears to be the last Tor.com Story Podcast, for the moment at least, and it contains Firstborn by Brandon Sanderson. This is a fairly long old-school style space opera short story. Dennison Crestmar is the son of a high-ranking naval guy, and the 20 years younger brother of Varion Crestmar. Varion’s been off subduing the provinces for decades as a military commander that never loses. Dennison is expected to be like his brother, but doesn’t have the skill. He loses all the time. The ending is absolute crap though.

Obviously, I didn’t have a lot to say about most of these. I thought most of the podcasts were pretty uninspiring. Having listened to a few Mur Lafferty-produced Escape Pod episodes, I think they are much better work than these done for Tor.com. The story selection was limited to ones that had already appeared on Tor.com, so I can’t really fault her for that. But her chit-chat on Escape Pod is much more engaging than anything she did on Tor.com. And the audio quality of the narration for this podcast was generally sub-par. Authors aren’t always the best choices for reading their own work. Plus, in more than a few cases, someone should have edited the flubs out. If the Tor.com Story Podcast comes back from hiatus, I will probably only check it out to see if the production has improved.

Reunions

Richard Ford reads John Cheever’s Reunion. Charlie, a young man, seeks out his father, divorced from his mother for three years, and who he doesn’t know very well. It’s a little bit of idolization. He wants a photograph to remember the meeting. They meet for lunch. But why his parents are divorced becomes apparent, and Charlie becomes disillusioned with he father. It’s a very poignant story, but not in a maudlin make you cry kind of way. More in a made me irritable way. On behalf of Charlie. I get the impression that Charlie isn’t irritated though. That’s okay, I’ll do it on his behalf.

Download (link is to New Yorker hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)

The Dating Game

Junot Díaz reads his own story, How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie), though the selection was picked and discussed by Edwidge Danticat. The reading comes from an older C.D. of New Yorker fiction. I’m not quite sure what I think of this story. The style doesn’t bother me; it’s told as instructions from one person to another about how to date girls. As Danticat notes in their discussion, it’s a boy story (as opposed to a girl story), and it’s reflective more of a young man’s hopes rather than reality. The race, class, and sexual politics in it are very different than what I grew up with. I never even considered inviting someone over when my parents were gone in order to hopefully get some. But I was shyer and less bold than the narrator of this story. Interesting, but inconclusive.

Download (link is to New Yorker hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)

Note: These were distributed as podcasts during March. It appears that the show airs on the radio somewhat differently.

An Hour with Sherman Alexie

I don’t often get emotional over my reading. I’m just not that kind of guy. But listening last year to Sherman Alexie read his book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian got me sniffling pretty damn good. As short as it is, it’s still a long investment in time and money. Selected Shorts gives you something free, and requires less than an hour of listening. Click on it now. Download. Listen. This is amazing! What is it? Well, it has an interview with Sherman, and he reads a few of his poems. Those parts are good. But what’s great is a reading of Alexie’s story Breaking and Entering by actor B.D. Wong. I only know Wong as the psychologist on Law & Order: S.V.U., but he’s got a number of awards for acting on Broadway. And his reading here is incredible! A Chinese American reading a story written by a Native American about a Native American mistaken for a white man who kills a black teenager. Kid breaks into a house he thinks is empty. In a scuffle, the owner kills him. The story is from his book War Dances. Did I mention it’s amazing?

Download (link is to NPR-hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)

Mysterious Circumstances

The first story in this episode is Thomas Walsh’s Double Check. It’s an old pulp story from Black Mask in 1933. Detective investigates threats against a bank executive. The banks is on the rocks, and so there are lots of people who stand to lose money because of the guy. Lots of people with reason to threaten or off him. Gangsters get involved. Explosions! A complicit woman! Wisecracks! And a really good reading by gravelly voiced James Naughton.

The second piece is Dave Barry‘s False Alarm from his book Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up, read by Larry Keith. Some typical Dave Barry bits about how he can mess up his home alarm system repeatedly. I’m not really sure why, but Dave Barry humor doesn’t really do a lot for me. Including this story.

Download (link is to NPR-hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)

Creatures of the Night

Vampire stories!

The first story is Stephen King’s Popsy published in Nightmares and Dreamscapes and read by Michael Imperioli. Sheridan is a gambler who got in too deep. Now he grabs little kids for a pedophile who pays off Sheridan’s marker to the mob. In this case, he tells a crying kid in the mall that he can help find the kid’s Popsy. Only Popsy finds him. This one didn’t really do a whole lot for me. It’s obvious where it’s going. It isn’t really scary. It isn’t really that creepy. Maybe I’m just desensitized.

Second story is a spoof written by host Isaiah Sheffer called Hotel Transylvania, read by the author. Here’s the thing. Spoofs written by outsiders have to be really good. Sheffer’s piece just comes off as condescension toward the horror genre.

Third story is Night Calls written and read by Lisa Fugard. Not a vampire story. A man cares for a rare heron in the bird sanctuary where he works. His daughter visits. The heron gets out. The father searches for the heron. Very melancholy tale.

Download (link is to NPR-hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)

The Things They Carried

A replay of an earlier performance of Tim O’Brien‘s The Things They Carried from the collection of the same title, read by Dylan Baker. This is a Viet Nam war story. I’d never heard of it before, but it sure shows up as important in my Google searches. It’s less a war is hell story than a war is soul sucking story. At the beginning, O’Brien describes a platoon of soldiers by what they carry. At the beginning it’s stuff like P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs. Gradually, the things he describes them carrying become more and more immaterial, poise, and dignity. Really amazing story, and you really do get to know the men by the things they carry. Baker’s reading is superb.

Download (link is to NPR-hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)

Lost and Found

Four stories this episode.

First up is Etgar Keret‘s Good Intentions read by Leonard Nimoy. I believe the story was written originally in Hebrew and translated to English by Miriam Schlesinger. It can be found in his book The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God & Other Stories. A hit man who thinks he has no feeling anymore finds out he can’t kill a man he admires. This felt very trite and unoriginal.

The second story is actually an essay by Colson Whitehead called Lost and Found from The Colossus of New York. It’s read by Alec Baldwin. I really liked this essay. Both Sag Harbor and this essay center on the place of memory and nostalgia in our lives. From saying that there are eight million New Yorks (or more), one for each person who experiences the city, to nailing down the experience where a place becomes fixed to a viewer at first view, Whitehead nail some really common experiences of place. Mix that in with some personal attachment to New York makes for something special. I think having a native New Yorker read this helps.

Third story: My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid from At the Bottom of the River, read by Laurine Towler. Unfortunately, I didn’t get this at all. It’s a mother and daughter story, but I only get that because Isaiah Sheffer says it is and the narrator keeps referring to her mother. This story is above my pay grade.

And last story is Charles Johnson‘s A Soldier for the Crown performed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. The story appears in Johnson’s collection Soulcatcher and Other Stories. First off, I had no idea about the history of the Black Loyalists during the American Revolution. This is something my history classes never covered, and I’m kind of pissed and kind of ashamed I haven’t learned about it before. Johnson’s story is about a fifteen year old slave who adopts the name Alexander Freeman after abandoning an American master to fight for the British along with a brother and a cousin, neither of whom survive the war. Alexander Freeman does though. It’s second person, which would be tougher to read in print, but works well in audio format. The story is good, though possibly that’s partly my thrill at learning something interesting about American history that I should have known.

Download (link is to NPR-hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)

February’s podcast stories, all read by Kate Baker, consist of:

Torquing Vacuum by Jay Lake

I have very mixed reactions to Jay Lake‘s stories. When they haven’t worked, they really haven’t worked. But sometimes he gets really inventive and I’m just suckered right in. You know, like a tentacle just grabbed me.

But oddly, while Torquing Vacuum wasn’t particularly inventive, I still liked it. A starship mechanic working on a job for a V.I.P. is forced to take a rest after zoning out on the job. During his break, he gets a little nooky from a hot young pretty but not too bright boy toy on the station. But on waking up in the morning, he’s got a call from high mucky mucks and is in trouble for reasons he doesn’t know but suspects have to do with his late night dalliance.

I won’t spoil the cause of the trouble, but you’ve probably seen it told before. I didn’t actually figure it out until the revelation, but at that point I thought Ah! This all fits! It’s a comforting plot because it’s so familiar.

Audio version of Torquing Vacuum

The Language of the Whirlwind by Lavie Tidhar

One nice thing about listening to fiction podcasts is that I can learn how to pronounce authors names correctly. I own Lavie Tidhar‘s anthology The Apex Book of World S.F. and read the Tidhar co-edited World S.F. News Blog because I’m trying to read more diversely (though I haven’t yet gotten to the anthology, a curse of owning 900+ unread books). His name is one of the more buzzed about names in the last year or two, but it isn’t Anglo-Saxon enough for me to intuitively know how to pronounce it. Kate Baker saves me from putting my foot in my mouth (in one way at least) if I ever meet the man.

The Language of the Whirlwind is set in a post-apocalyptic Tel Aviv, cut off from the rest of the world by black mountains or a wall of some sort. A volcano of some sort has arisen in the center of the the city, and people are killed when they try to ascend. Possibly sentient giant dust devils periodically sweep in from the Mediterranean and carry people away. People scrabble by on rats and scavenged food and goods, while some assemble into gangs that enslave anyone unfortunate enough to be unable to fight back. Among the ruins, one man copes by becoming a priest of a new religion revealed to him alone. This is his story and the story of a boy who follows him with a whistle.

I liked this story more than I did Tidhar’s story in Interfictions 2, but it was still out there enough that I was really confused as to what was going on. There’s so many moving parts, and most of them have little explanation. I was constantly trying to figure out in my head what each of these things really was. Is that a volcano that appeared? possibly not. Who is this fireman that the priest keeps talking about? What are these whirlwinds? What’s happened to the rest of the world? The questions might not even really be that important, but I couldn’t stop wondering about them. Sometimes I like stuff that has unanswered questions, but in this case they seemed to pull me in so many different directions that I never really got a point from the story.

Audio version of The Language of the Whirlwind

Non-Zero Probabilities by N.K. Jemisin

Ms. Jemisin has received a lot of buzz recently as well. Orbit Books just released her debut novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. And Non-Zero Probabilities made the final ballot for the Nebula Awards in the short story category. It’s the first time I’ve read Jemisin, and I love the story. I have a copy of her novel and am looking forward to reading it after hearing this.

Adele lives in New York City. It’s a New York City almost exactly like our current New York City, except that sometime in the recent past probability was altered so that unlikely events became much more likely. Basically, the bell curve has been flattened somewhat. Just in New York City.

One of my fascinations is how people respond to statistics, numbers and risk. Bruce Schneier, for instance, constantly harps on how people overvalue the risks involved with unlikely but specific events. For instance, we (as an American society) are much more scared of a terrorist attack like at the World Trade Center than we are of car accidents. Yet Americans living in the U.S. are at least 12 times more likely to die in a car accident than they are of dying in an incident of terrorism.

So here we have a New York City where dice roll double ones repeatedly, trains derail, and people win the lottery out of proportion. Some people can’t handle it; they leave. Others flock to the city hoping for a one in a million miracle cure. Others, like Adele, adjust. She carries lucky items with her for protection, and avoids one in a million events. But unlikely things aren’t all bad (such as the miracle cures), so she stays in the city. Also, it’s New York City.

Audio version of Non-Zero Probabilities

I’ve come across Selected Shorts on occasion when I turn on the car radio in the evening. Unfortunately, I invariably flip on the radio in the middle of a story. That’s just no good, so I usually turn the radio back off.

I’ve been looking for fiction podcasts, particularly general fiction. PRI has made Selected Shorts available as a podcast, so I subscribed when I ran across it in January. I’m not always amazed by the stories, but Selected Shorts certainly gets some talented readers. They have some truly amazing readings. The readers are generally actors, so they have some dramatic chops. And it’s clear that Selected Shorts actually plans and directs the shows before the readers step on stage for the performance. Most are done before a live audience. So far, this is my gold standard for how to do a fiction podcast right.

Note: These were distributed as podcasts during February. It appears that the show airs on the radio somewhat differently.

Vantage Points

An excerpt from Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann, performed by Brian Stokes Mitchell. I believe this is the opening section of the novel. It’s a description of New Yorkers as they watch Philippe Petit on the edge of the Word Trade Center just before he did his high-wire walk between the towers. Some poetic license with the facts, and the text bored me.

Salt (from War Dances), by Sherman Alexie, performed by David Strathairn. Sherman Alexie can do no wrong in my book. I was first introduced to his work through his movie Smoke Signals, but I think my memory about the movie is wrong. I could have sworn I first saw the movie when I was living in north Idaho where the movie is set. But it came out in June 1998, which is the month I moved to Boise. Anyway, Alexie’s trademark style is to handle sadness and pain with tenderness and humor. Salt is no different. A young Indian intern working the obituary desk at the Spokane Spokesman-Review confronts his own mortality. The piece didn’t affect me as strongly as some other Alexie pieces have, but it’s still awesome. And Strathairn, a pretty old guy, does a wonderful job reading the part of a young guy.

Download (link is to NPR-hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)

Inspired by the photography of Robert Frank

This episode is composed of works related to the photography of Robert Frank: an Allen Ginsberg poem because he was friends with Frank, two short shorts by young authors who wrote stories inspired by Frank photos at he Metropolitan Museum of Art, and two stories about immigrants because they are the quintessential Americans in Frank’s photography. Or so the podcast claims; I know nothing about Robert Frank.

The poem is Sunflower Sutra by Allan Ginsberg, read by Isaiah Sheffer (the host of the show). Well read, but as I rarely get poetry, including this, I’m demurring on any kind of commentary.

The Death of Jim Taylor was the first of two short shorts. Written by Elissa Hutson, Broadway actor Boyd Gaines performs the reading. Hutson imagines a white man’s reaction to the death of a black man in an industrial accident in the South in the 1950s. Decent story, but I wasn’t particularly moved.

Barbara Stanwyck, It’s Your Time to Shine was written by Bianca Galvez, and performed by Condola Rashad. Rashad, a budding stage actress, really makes this story shine. A quick elevator ride length exposition by a woman about her boyfriend Frank, done classic 1950s style.

Good Living by Aleksandar Hemon from Love and Obstacles, performed by Boyd Gaines. A Bosnian immigrant sells magazines door to door in the U.S. At one of the places lives a priest, and the immigrant deals a bit with the priest’s preconceived ideas about Bosnians, which our protagonist is willing to exploit. I love the unstated relationship and interaction between the priest and his gay stud houseboy.

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, performed by Condola Rashad, from The Thing Around Your Neck. Rashad’s reading for this story is good, but not as amazing as for the Galvez story earlier. I didn’t like this story too much either. I think it’s because it’s told in second person. A woman from Nigeria comes to America and deals with (as in Hemon’s story) some typical American reactions to foreigners. In this case, someone who fetishizes foreigners. In addition to the second person telling, the story had it’s moral a little too much on the surface for me. That sometimes works, but in this case it didn’t grab me.

Download (link is to NPR-hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)

Tales of Terror

Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker, performed by Aasif Mandvi. Yes, the guy who is the Muslim correspondent for The Daily Show. I didn’t know he did anything except comedy, but he’s good reading this story. Really good. The story isn’t particularly inspiring, but I’m not a huge horror fan. Seems to use a lot of horror movie cliches. Unseen creatures. Sudden drops in temperature. Characters who decide to enter abandoned towns despite warning of ghostly dangers. Granted, Stoker wrote this well before these were cliches, much less horror movie cliches. But I’ve seen and read them too much. Mandvi makes the story interesting though.

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe, performed by Fionnula Flanagan. Really didn’t get this story. So there’s a disease plaguing a kingdom, and the prince holes up in a castle and throws wild parties while secluded from the dying populace. The the plague personified makes it into the palace, and things go wrong, as they do when the plague enters your home. I must be totally missing something here.

Download (link is to NPR-hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)

Forbidden Fruit

This episode has a couple of stories about stuff we’re not supposed to do.

Yurt by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum (from Ms. Hempel Chronicles), performed by Joanna Gleason. Superbly performed by Gleason. I particularly loved her voice for Mrs. Willoughby. A teacher leaves school for an extended trip to Yemen, and now comes by for a social visit after her return to the U.S. She’s pregnant, and appears to be abandoning her teaching career. You’d think the forbidden fruit would be the wild exotic sex life Ms. Duffy is having that’s got her pregnant, but I don’t think that’s really it. Solid story about people whose lives are in a rut.

Wild Plums by Grace Stone Coates (from Best American Short Stories of the Century, performed by Mia Dillon. A girl’s parents see picking and eating wild plums as something low class people would do, and forbid their daughter from picking or eating them. The neighbors quite enjoy their plums though, and invite the girl to go along with them. Not a particularly moving story, even with the humorous twit ending.

Download (link is to NPR-hosted MP3 and was valid as of the time of posting)

Vilcabamba by Harry Turtledove

Episode 8 contains Harry Turtledove’s story, Vilcabamba. This was a longish story, but fairly interestingly told. However, as the story progressed, it became more and more dismal. As it neared the end, it was obvious where it was going and where it was going would be depressing as hell. In one way it’s a refreshing take on the indomitability of the human spirit. I’m not so sure the payoff was worth the length though. You’ll have to read/listen to it for yourself.

The City Quiet as Death by Steven Utley and Michael Bishop

Episode 9 contains Utley and Bishop’s story The City Quiet as Death. Not really my kind of story, though it’s a kind that lots of people will appreciate. A maid carries around a locket containing, she says, a giant squid. Kind of dark fantasy of the Cthulhu variety. I’m not very Lovecraftian.

Tourists by Sean Craven

Episode 10 has Sean Craven’s Tourists. Tourists is more my kind of story. I love new and interesting takes on first contact. Guy lives with his grandmother and they watch as aliens make an appearance on earth, visiting various parts and tourist destinations. Grandma is a Christian Science devotee, but for all I know it’s a twisted version of the real Christian Science belief. The aliens visit their local church, and Grandma makes an impression on them. So they ask Grandma to go with them to their home world. Of course, being alien it’s not going to be quite what anyone expects. Kind of sick and twisted, and I like it.

Down on the Farm by Charles Stross

Episode 11 retells Down on the Farm by Charles Stross in audio format. I’m finding I’m not really a Charles Stross fan. I’ve now listened to two Laundry stories from the podcast, and am 30 installments into Accelerando via DailyLit.com. He writes intelligent, but overly-detailed stories from what I can tell so far. Too much detail. And filled with inside jokes that I just didn’t find funny. In the case of the previous Laundry story and Down on the Farm, the joke is that the job of fighting demons from other dimensions falls to a British bureaucracy. So it’s full of references that will be familiar to anyone who has had to deal with a bureaucracy or who has worked in one. Did I say this before? It’s like listening to someone tell you their dream. I’m sure the dream is interesting to them, but not as much to anyone else. Same here. It just felt like an excuse to fill in as much of that as possible, at the expense of a real story.

Also, though this is by no means Stross’ fault, the editing on this episode sucked. On several occasions Stross (who does his own reading for the story) flubbed his words. Each time he’d go back and re-read the messed up bit. But Tor.com didn’t see fit to edit out the flubbed utterings, so you hear his re-dos in all their glory.

The podcasts I’ve previously written about consisted mostly of an introduction, possibly some ads, and then the story. The New Yorker constructs their format a bit differently. First, in who the magazine has select the stories: other writers. Each episode has a writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker select another story from the archives. Second, each podcast begins and ends with a discussion of the story between the editor and writer performing the reading. So you get something that amounts to literary criticism light along with the narrative. And I have to say that in the case of these stories, I’m glad this has been included. Otherwise I think I’d find many of these pretty boring. Gives me both an education as well as a guide.

Also, all four of the stories are well narrated. The readers are good verbal performers. In Orhan Pamuk’s case, an outstanding performer.

My Russian Education by Vladimir Nabokov

For October 2009, Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk selected and read the Nabokov story My Russian Education. It’s an odd piece of fiction, because Nabokov later included a version in a memoir (Speak, Memory). But he sold it to the New Yorker as fiction. It reads much more like memoir than fiction, for there is little plot.

Basically, it’s Nabokov describing some of his school-related life during his formative years. However, it’s less about his actual schooling and more about his life, St. Petersburg, and especially his relationship with his father. School isn’t absent, but it’s just a part of the life described. It’s full of detailed, precise (sometimes down to street addresses) descriptions of what his life was like.

This is one piece that I think works better as audio than in print. I’d have stopped reading this, but Pamuk’s narration imparts feeling to the work that I would have missed in black and white. Nevertheless, still not my kind of story. When the editor and Pamuk talk about how lively the story is, I thought really, that was extremely staid, not lively. Or how the ending is so shocking after the description of a beautiful scene just prior, a scene I found not particularly beautiful and a turn of events that wasn’t so shocking.

The Wine Breath by John McGahern

Chinese author Yiyun Li reads a story by Irish author John McGahern from November 2009. This one is all about a priest who reminisces, at length, about a period of time 30 years before. Particularly his relationship with Micheal Bruen and the man’s funeral. The entire thing is a reminisce. If there was a point, I’ve forgotten it because it took too long for the story to get to it.

Water Child by Edwidge Danticat

December’s podcast had Junot Díaz read this story from 2000. I liked this story. Nadine Osnac is a Haitian immigrant working as a nurse in New York City. She sends half of each paycheck home to her parents in Haiti; they’d sacrificed greatly to pay for her school so she could become the family’s success. They write every week and hope for phone calls. But Nadine is not able to interact normally with other people. She lets her parents’ phone calls go to the answering machine, as well as that of her former lover. She doesn’t chat with other nurses at lunch.

It’s a portrait of a deeply scarred woman. She’s undergone a tragedy and doesn’t feel able to talk to anyone about it, instead setting up shrine in her condominium which she maintains faithfully. One particular patient has just undergone a laryngectomy and is unable to talk. The emotionally unable to talk and physically unable to talk find a bond of a sort in their lack.

The Jockey by Carson McCullers

I also really liked this story selected and read by Karen Russell from January’s episode. It appeals to the pissed off person in me. A short scene where a table full of horse-racing figures in a restaurant deal with a drunk pissed off jockey who used to ride for them. The jockey’s buddy was injured in a race and months later he’s still pissed off about it. Whether anyone is responsible for the injury is left unsaid. None of the characters get an actual name. The focus is entirely on the palpable resentment the jockey feels toward these people. Every attempt they make to mollify the jockey fails. He wants to be pissed. It makes him feel better than being reasonable would.

Every picked a fight just because you are in a pissy mood and want to get into it with someone, anyone? It’s not so much that you think the person deserves the fight, but goddammit it feels good and your antagonist did do something even if your reaction is out of proportion. Everything is raw, emotions magnified. The littlest thing serves as a pretext to get the release from a good drag-out argument.

That’s this story. And frankly, I’m impressed that the author is a woman. I know women who do this fight-picking just as I have. But it doesn’t seem like something that a woman would use at the core of a story. Maybe because I expect women to stick to reasonable anger, while the actions described are pretty unreasonable. One prejudice of mine chipped away just a little bit. I kind of wonder if the story would resonate with me as much if the protagonist were a woman. How strong is my prejudice? Would I think of her as shrill instead of identify with her anger, as I did with the jockey’s?

It’s the end of the world, or nearly so. We have fought the aliens, and lost. One lowly street performer gives a farewell performance, perhaps for all of humanity. He entertains with lots of dark humor, keeping an audience of decrepit specimens enthralled.

I think technically this is horror, but I don’t know exactly what qualifies it in that genre or into which sub-genres the story goes (I don’t know my horror very well). Perhaps the morbid dystopian humor. Befitting Tor.com calling December 2008 Cthulu month, Farewell Performance includes some references to cephalopods. I had to listen to it a large number of times for a few reasons. First, just to figure out what was going on at first. Second, I was predisposed to tiredness because didn’t get a lot of sleep for a couple of weeks and voices in headphones zonk me out, which I did a couple of times just before the last five minutes or so. And then after getting through it a couple of times for those reasons, I re-queued it just because I liked it. In real life, I generally stop to watch street performers, unless they are preachers or jugglers. Imagining the scene is a lot of what I liked about the story.

Oddly, since I’ve never read anything by the author before, the next podcast in my playlist was another Nick Mamatas story from Escape Pod. As with Farewell Performance, I’ve had to re-start that episode a few times to get my head around it too. But in that case I’ve had to put the story aside for a bit to focus on other things, so there won’t be a post on it for a while.

Title: Farewell Performance (podcast)
Author: Nick Mamatas
Narrator: Geoffrey H. Goodwin
Publisher: Tor.com
Format: MP3 podcast download
Length: 22 minutes

I think I might have enjoyed this medium length horror story more if I were an avid horror reader. It strikes me as the kind of story that has lots of inside references and plays off genre tropes. I’m looking at it from a different perspective because I am not familiar with all these common spots.

Eddie Carroll is a horror anthology editor. He gets a submission for the next year’s Best New Horror anthology from an obscure literary journal. Joe Hill’s story then becomes two stories: the submitted story and a related story where Carroll attempts to find the submission’s author to get him to sign off on the rights. Of course, the obscure writer isn’t exactly well-balanced, so that could be a horror story too.

Best New Horror is filled with all sorts of inside-writer kinds of situations. Fan conventions. Zine editors who have inflated senses of their own importance and under used interpersonal skills. Disdain for the work of an anthologist. Etc. It was too inside the sausage factory for me to enjoy. Writers should write about writers for a general audience only in the most extraordinary of circumstances. That’s my general rule of thumb. Then again, perhaps other people really enjoy that. I bet a lot of budding writers like it.

The other thing that didn’t work for me is that this just wasn’t that full of dread. Oh, it’s scary all right. I just didn’t care whether or not Eddie Carroll got killed or mutilated or sucked off into the nether worlds inhabited by ghost or demons. Or whatever it was that was gonna happen or not happen. (No spoilers here.)

I did like David Ledoux’s narration though. I really need to figure out what the elements of narration are that I should look for so I can make some intelligent commentary. He has a kind of crackly low voice, speaks in a measured pace and measured tones. I can name a few things I haven’t liked about previously listened to narrators, but I hate to tell folks I like this narrator because he/she doesn’t do the things I hated. Anyhow, the slightly gravelly voice of Ledoux is good for a horror piece.

Title: Best New Horror
Author: Joe Hill (Joseph Hillstrom King)
Narrator: David Ledoux
Publisher: Harper Audio
Publication Date: 2007
Format: MP3 download
Length: 57 minutes

Here’s the gist of the story: underpaid low-level government clerk takes night duty post over the holidays because he didn’t request his days off in time. As he complains about the office where he works and stalks the halls, he works in bits that make it clear this isn’t a normal government office. Its job is the MI6 to demons. And it’s Christmas, and there’s a chimney. Is that Santa coming down the flue or is it a demon infiltration?

It’s light and it’s fluffy in the way that David Bledin’s Bank was. In other words, not very satisfying. Because it’s mostly office politics dressed up in otherworldly cloaking. If you’ve worked a government or big corporate office, you’ll recognize the standard budgetary cutback issues worked into the griping about the office Christmas party, and you’ll recognize how the grunts never get cut a break on scheduling vacation time when they are away. This is just filled with office absurdities. And then the last ten minutes or so is all about the demons. After 40 minutes or so of working preliminaries.

In a way it’s like Dilbert and most of XKCD. It’s more about the pain of of a shared experience. When a person works in an office, it’s nice to have someone else in a public fashion point out the annoyances so we can point to that and say See, I’m not the only one who thinks that! These are more funny because they are public. I can laugh at my boss while showing him Dilbert while he doesn’t know it’s at and not with. We can gather in a group in the hallway, in a bar, or online, and commiserate over these strips that have a large amount of truth.

But what works in a comic strip got tiring for me in a long story. Caricatures are shallow by their nature. To make them long they need added depth. And this caricature of office life didn’t get that depth. It could have used more demons, and earlier. That would have changed the whole thing from an office politics/Christmas spoof to something more interesting.

Title: Overtime
Author: Charles Stross
Narrator: Charles Stross
Publisher: Tor.com
Format: MP3 podcast download
Length: 56 minutes