PseudoPod

by Aaron Fox-Lerner

 

“Unsent Letter From An Unnamed Student” is a Pseudopod original.

AARON FOX-LERNER is from Los Angeles and currently lives in Beijing. His fiction has appeared in Grimdark magazine, Akashic Books, Thuglit, The Puritan, and other publications. His portfolio can be found here.

This week’s reader – Kenny Kinlund – is a musician from Lincoln, NE. His band Warbonnet has a self-titled album out on iTunes with Tremulant Records, but he would rather you send your money to the ACLU or the Electronic Frontier Foundation right now. His twitter handle is @svenskjaevel.

Pseudopod wants to direct your attention to a project by one of our Authors, Greg Stolze. This is a good time to go back and relisten to episode 317, Enzymes.

YOU is a novel, set in the universe of the democratic horror game Unknown Armies, which pits readers against a book that hates them while situating them in the person of a middle-aged businessman named Leo Evans.

Leo is divorced, a fan of racquet sports, and a cultist of the Necessary Servant—a quasi-religion he freely admits seems silly, except for the way it grants him extra senses and paranormal abilities. The chief cultist, however, is his ex-wife, and the two of them clash over a key question of what it means to truly “serve” with integrity.

In the process of hashing all this out, Leo must survive a couple attempts on his life, come to grips with an enchantment that makes him hate the person he previously loved most, and deal with lingering issues between himself and his son.

This novel is Kickstarting in February, check the trailer at www.gregstolze.com/you

Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.

“The first time you killed me was the scariest. Those large hands, holding me down until I breathed water and then nothing at all. Those hands that had previously stroked me and caressed me and ranged all over my body now shoving my head under the light ice on the pond, steadying me as my thrashing grew gradually more feeble.”

Author : A.C. Wise Narrator : Siobhan Gallichan Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Discuss on Forums “We Are Not These Bodies, Strung Between the Stars” originally appeared in WHISPERS FROM ABYSS 2. This story is set in the same universe as Venice Burning, which was podcast on Pseudopod in 2013 Pseudopod […]

by A.C. Wise

 

“We Are Not These Bodies, Strung Between the Stars” originally appeared in WHISPERS FROM ABYSS 2. This story is set in the same universe as Venice Burning, which was podcast on Pseudopod in 2013

A.C. WISE‘s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, Shimmer, and the Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2015, among other places. The podcast version of her story Final Girl Theory, which appeared at Pseudopod, was a finalist for the 2013 Parsec Awards. Her debut collection, THE ULTRA FABULOUS GLITTER SQUADRON SAVES THE WORLD AGAIN was published by Lethe Press in October 2015. Her second short fiction collection THE KISSING BOOTH GIRL AND OTHER STORIES was published by Lethe Press in the October, 2016. In addition to her fiction, she co-edits Unlikely Story, and contributed a monthly Women to Read Column to SF Signal. Find her online at A.C. Wise.com.

Voice artist and premier William Hartnell voice actor – Siobhan Gallichan – is one of those people who actually loves Marmite. Give. Her. Work! The Gearnobz show will be starting in a month or so… keep an eye on social media for it… And coming in 2017, Doctor Who – The First Doctor Missing Stories!

Pseudopod wants to direct your attention to a project by one of our Authors, Greg Stolze. This is a good time to go back and relisten to episode 317, Enzymes.

YOU is a novel, set in the universe of the democratic horror game Unknown Armies, which pits readers against a book that hates them while situating them in the person of a middle-aged businessman named Leo Evans.

Leo is divorced, a fan of racquet sports, and a cultist of the Necessary Servant—a quasi-religion he freely admits seems silly, except for the way it grants him extra senses and paranormal abilities. The chief cultist, however, is his ex-wife, and the two of them clash over a key question of what it means to truly “serve” with integrity.

In the process of hashing all this out, Leo must survive a couple attempts on his life, come to grips with an enchantment that makes him hate the person he previously loved most, and deal with lingering issues between himself and his son.

This novel is Kickstarting in February, check the trailer at www.gregstolze.com/you

Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.

“I’m one of the ones who remembers what it was like before R’lyeh rose. Before New Orleans sank. Before Venice burned. When Mi Go first screamed through the space between the stars, and when Shoggoths last in the dooryard bloomed. For the record, it doesn’t make me one of the lucky ones.”

In our first 2017 metacast, for your consideration we present the Escape Artists stories that ran in 2016 which are eligible in the upcoming award nomination season. A quick plug. For us. All four EA shows – PodCastle, Pseudopod, Escape Pod and Cast of Wonders – are themselves eligible in the SEMIPROZINE Hugo category. So is our […]

In our first 2017 metacast, for your consideration we present the Escape Artists stories that ran in 2016 which are eligible in the upcoming award nomination season.

A quick plug. For us. All four EA shows – PodCastle, Pseudopod, Escape Pod and Cast of Wonders – are themselves eligible in the SEMIPROZINE Hugo category. So is our eZine, Mothership Zeta.

Not Fancast. Not Fanzine. SEMIPROZINE. Yes, the categories are confusing and often overlap. “Fancast” is traditionally dominated by commentary shows and sketch-based audio programs.

There’s an argument that we could split the shows and compete in multiple categories to increase our chances. We don’t think that benefits anyone. The division is artificial at best, and extremely difficult (at worst) to explain, given all four of our shows have harmonised pay rates and submissions policies. It would smack of gamesmanship, which doesn’t interest us. This is what we did last year, and like our commitment to paying creatives, we stick to our commitments and are always pushing to expand.

Don’t get us wrong, we LOVED seeing PodCastle and Escape Pod on the Hugo long lists for the last two years, and we’d be honoured for any one of our shows to be a finalist.

But that’s a decision that rests solely in the hands of YOU, our fans and supporters.

Below are links to some aggregation projects, where fans are building lists of those eligible in the various categories. They’re great tools, and we’d like to thank David Steffen for his efforts. We’ll also link to our Wikia page, containing links to all the eligible Escape Artists stories.

Escape Artists Stories eligible for Hugo Nomnations (2016)

Hugo Nominees for Best Semi-prozine (2016)

Please listen to this MetaCast for all the Escape Artists entries!

Author : Moaner T. Lawrence Narrator : John Bell Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 526: The Great American Nightmare is a PseudoPod original. “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” – Plato “They who […]

by Moaner T. Lawrence

“The Great American Nightmare” is a PSEUDOPOD original.

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” – Plato

“They who can give up essential liberty for temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

In addition to being a regular contributor to the world’s largest horror publication, Rue Morgue: Horror In Culture & Entertainment (and a member of their Rue Crew) MOANER T. LAWRENCE is also a regular contributor to Germany’s largest horror publication, VIRUS. He last appeared on Pseudopod with “Bad Newes From New England” and can be followed on Twitter, Facebook, Wattpad, and a new wordpress called The Horror In Blog.

Your narrator – John Bell – is an Award winning writer/producer of radio commercials as well as all-around go-to voice talent. Has written/produced 160 episodes of the comedy podcast, “Bell’s in the Batfry”. Catch Bell’s in the Batfry at the usual subscription locations (iTunes, et al) and/or at the link.

Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.

“The sky over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was clear and blue at 12:00PM EST on Friday, January 20th, 2017. At 12:01, a fleet of Secret Service byakhee swarmed over the abstract visage of what was once The White House. Faster and faster, they beat their jet black wings, until the unholy force tore a hole in the sky. It became a swirling vortex, and the composer Erich Zann, considered missing for over 120 years, began conducting a chorus of six-foot albino penguins, alongside the United States Marine Band to a discordant rendition of Hail, Columbia. Opposite the band, a crowd of three million attendants held fast to a double-reinforced security railing, or anything else they could grab onto, so as to bear witness to the spectacle before them without being sucked into the portal forming above.”

Author : Ramsey Campbell Narrator : Paul S. Jenkins Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Discuss on Forums “Cold Print” first appeared in TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS in 1969. by Ramsey Campbell “GOOD BOOKS ON THE HIGHWAY provided shelter; he closed out the lashing sleet and stood taking stock. On the […]

by Ramsey Campbell

“Cold Print” first appeared in TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS in 1969.

RAMSEY CAMPBELL is a British writer considered by a number of critics to be one of the great masters of horror fiction. T. E. D. Klein has written that “Campbell reigns supreme in the field today,” while S. T. Joshi has said that “future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood.”

Says Campbell: “It can be argued that my timidity or at least my restraint is why I remain. I’ve never gone for broke and tried to write the most horrifying tale I can concoct, because I don’t quite see the point. To quote the critic David Aylward, as I very often do: ‘writers [of horror fiction], who used to strive for awe and achieve fear, now strive for fear and achieve only disgust’ – and it seems to me that too much straining for terror is wont to produce nothing more than a disgusting dump. If I can’t approach awe, I’d rather try for the other quality I value most in dark fiction, not exclusively in generic horror – a lingering disquiet. I may have felt that way ever since I first encountered Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby’ in the 1957 anthology BEST HORROR STORIES and didn’t feel cheated out of any of the pocket money I’d saved up to buy the book. Soon I found the quality in work such as the novels of Thomas Hinde and Samuel Beckett, not to mention films such as Last Year in Marienbad and Los Olvidados. I see no reason why fiction packaged as horror can’t achieve these effects of disturbance and dislocation. One definition of good art is that it makes you look again at things you’ve taken for granted, and that can certainly be true of horror.” Ramsey blogs at Ramsey Campbell.com.

Your narrator – Paul S. Jenkins – runs a skeptical podcast – “Skepticule”

Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.

“GOOD BOOKS ON THE HIGHWAY provided shelter; he closed out the lashing sleet and stood taking stock. On the shelves the current titles showed their faces while the others turned their backs. Girls were giggling over comic Christmas cards; an unshaven man was swept in on a flake-edged blast and halted, staring around uneasily. Strutt clucked his tongue; tramps shouldn’t be allowed in bookshops to soil the books. Glancing sideways to observe whether the man would bend back the covers or break the spines, Strutt moved among the shelves, but could not find what he sought. Chatting with the cashier, however, was an assistant who had praised Last Exit to Brooklyn to him when he had bought it last week, and had listened patiently to a list of Strutt’s recent reading, though he had not seemed to recognize the titles. Strutt approached him and inquired ‘Hello—any more exciting books this week?’

The man faced him, puzzled. ‘Any more—?’

‘You know, books like this?’ Strutt held up his polythene bag to show the grey Ultimate Press cover of THE CANING-MASTER by Hector Q.

‘Ah, no. I don’t think we have.’ He tapped his lip. ‘Except — Jean Genet?’

‘Who? Oh, you mean Jennet. No, thanks, he’s dull as ditch-water.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, sir, I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

‘Oh.’ Strutt felt rebuffed. The man seemed not to recognize him, or perhaps he was pretending. Strutt had met his kind before and had them mutely patronize his reading. He scanned the shelves again, but no cover caught his eye. At the door he furtively unbuttoned his shirt to protect his book still further, and a hand fell on his arm. Lined with grime, the hand slid down to his and touched his bag. Strutt shook it off angrily and confronted the tramp.

‘Wait a minute!’ the man hissed. ‘Are you after more books like that? I know where we can get some.’ ”[...]

Authors : Jarod K. Anderson, Karen Bovenmyer and Michael M. Rader Narrators : Jeremy Moran, Heather Simmons and Troy Volin Host : Dagny Paul Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop Discuss on Forums PseudoPod 524: Flash on The Borderlands XXXV: The Kids Are All Wrong is a PseudoPod original. Bells chime, I know I gotta get […]