Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Russell Nash on December 25, 2008, 11:24:36 AM
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EP184: As Dry Leaves That Before the Wild Hurricane Fly (http://escapepod.org/2008/12/25/ep184-as-dry-leaves-that-before-the-wild-hurricane-fly/)
By Mur Lafferty (http://murverse.com/).
Read by Christiana Ellis (of Christiana’s Shallow Thoughts, et al. (http://christianaellis.com/)).
Special Closing Music: “Chiron Beta Prime,” by Jonathan Coulton (http://jonathancoulton.com/).
Comet and Cupid were fifteen, and took after their father, both spending the most time in the workshop tinkering with Father’s tools. Christmas was coming soon and they were preparing their yearly trip to the same orphanage that had cared for them. With nine children to raise on his own, Claus could no longer adopt, but he still found it very important to care for the children in any way he could. So he took a load of toys to the children every year, with his children helping him distribute.
Their siblings sat around their great sitting room, some crowding on sofas, some sitting on chair cushions or arms, and Rudolph, the baby at eleven, sat at his father’s feet. He was an imposing man with a barrel chest and wild white hair and beard. When he would get excited about a project, his blue eyes would twinkle and he’d look like a madman.
Rated G. Contains Santa revisionism and aerial combat.
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://media.rawvoice.com/escapepod/media.libsyn.com/media/escapepod/EP184_AsDryLeaves.mp3)
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Merry Christmas Everyone
from the Moderators of the EA Forums.
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Steve's back! Escape Pod is back! Mur Lafferty's Christmas story tradition is back!
This is my first post, so you know, I really am very happy about all of the above. I almost couldn't tear myself away from the story to open presents with my husband and daughter and get my stuffing made and the bird into the oven (I know my priorities, and I did, but then I got right back to the 'cast.)
Did I say how happy I am? Great Christmas present to have EP back, and back with a great new Christmas story.
Steve -- on a personal note, Escape Pod was the first podcast that intrigued me enough to download and listen to it. Now I subscribe to 13 different ones (including Podcastle because I enjoy fantasy, but not Pseudopod because I don't like horror)! I get a great deal of enjoyment out of every one that I listen to during my commute. I get through most of them every week, and play catchup on weekend mornings while I drink my coffee. That's thanks to you! I'm really glad you're back with us.
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Great idea! My daughters were listening with me, but it was a little slow for a 7 year old and a 5 year old. It seemed a little slow, to me, too, but I still enjoyed it.
Great to see Escape Pod back in gear.
I hope everyone's day was as good as mine!
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Let's see here. Mur Lafferty, Steampunk Santa, Jetpacks, Zeppelins, and an (evil) Nikola Tesla.
I'm pretty sure that it's impossible NOT to like this.
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Like a Hickory Farms Beef Stick, A Mur Lafferty holiday story on Escape Pod has become an integral part of the holidays for me. We listened to this one on the way to my wife's parent's house for presents and dinner. I really enjoyed Mur's re-imagining of Santa. Orphans in jetpacks are so much cooler than reindeer that I think this story should supplant the currently accepted legend.
I hope this is not our last visit with Steampunk Santa.
Steve -- on a personal note, Escape Pod was the first podcast that intrigued me enough to download and listen to it. Now I subscribe to 13 different ones (including Podcastle because I enjoy fantasy, but not Pseudopod because I don't like horror)!
My story is similar; I had just finally replaced dial-up with broadband, and was playing around with free MMOs, and wanted something to play in the background to listen to. Escape Pod was one of the first to come up. Probably half of the podcasts I listen to (or listened to) are as a direct result of this one. Pseudopod, and Podcastle of course, but also Scott Sigler's novels, Metamor City, Playing for Keeps, The Takeover, 7th Son, Air Out My Shorts, and there are more that I listen to that I found through those shows all of which I might never have found without Escape Pod.
Another effect that Escape Pod has had on my life is that it played a part in inspiring me to start writing again, and put some of my writing out there on the web under CC for all to see. It has helped inspire me to start my own podcast next year.
When you said that Escape Pod was back, my wife actually replied verbally with "Thank goodness". She missed hearing you in the car every week, and so did I. Welcome back, and thank you for all the hard work you do for all of us, and for inspiring me to get off my ass (so to speak) and get back to writing.
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Great to have Escape Pod back. Woo-hoo!
The story didn't do much for me. Can't beat zeppelins and jetpacks but the story felt slow and didn't hold my attention. Meh. Delete.
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I feel guilty for saying it... but although I really enjoy Mur Lafferty's podcasts I'm just not a big fan of her writing. strange, eh?
still, I fully support the Mur Christmas Story Tradition and it was great to hear Steve Ely's voice again. come back soon man!
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^
shun the nonbeliever!
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Great to have some EP in the Xmas stocking!
I did not understand why Tesla started shooting at Claus. A "sneak attack" by a rival Royal armourer didn't quite seem enough of reason to shoot first and ask questions later.
Mrs. Claus dying in child birth was an unfortunate revision. Even if her addition to the "traditional" Santa Claus story was itself a revision. Father is such a terrible parent in this story. Four sets of twins and the baby.
I found the presence of alcohol jarring (Father smelling of beer after losing the Royal warrant; Ruddy getting a swig to calm his nerves after his near-death experience).
I wanted to like this story, and it does sort of stick to your ribs, but this particular story did not wind my clock (or charge my batteries).
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As happy as I am that EP is back at xmas, unfortunately I still cannot say that I've heard a Mur Lafferty story that I like. Sure, I used to enjoy I should Be Writing, and I think she has a good voice for Podcasting, but that still doesn't change the fact that, in my opinion, her stories aren't up to scratch.
Still, great to have Escape Pod back!
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I just wanted to say that I reaaly liked this one. I think it is Mur's best Escape Pod Christmas story yet. With the craze of reboots lately (a la Batman, Bond, Star Trek, and Klaatu), why not Santa. This story was very imaginitive and fun.
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Let's see here. Mur Lafferty, Steampunk Santa, Jetpacks, Zeppelins, and an (evil) Nikola Tesla.
I'm pretty sure that it's impossible NOT to like this.
Was Tesla truly evil? I mean, just because the Queen changed her patronage, that's not his fault. Sending his crew after the Claus family was warranted, in that it looked like they were stealing stuff from the Queen and it was Tesla's job to make sure that didn't happen.
I'm just sayin'...
Anyway, I really liked the story and I got a little nose-tingly at the end.
If there was anything I would've liked to see differently, it would've been some reference to a red light on Rudolph leading someone somewhere. The guttering flame of his jetpack didn't really do it; maybe a plot coupon earlier about a red warning light on the jetpack vest about there not being enough fuel...
Christiana Ellis did a good enough job reading but I think we needed someone a little less alto to really pull this off.
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There's needs to be a sequel. I can see it now...
Christmas Wars: The British Empire Strikes Back.
It be perfect: You got twins, a fast if temperamental ship, plenty of aerospace combat, even an evil Emperor... I mean Empress and her henchman who is in command of a mysterious energy or Force. You can even start the story with a massive battle on the snowy plains of Hoth... I mean the North Pole.
It writes itself.
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YAY! Jet packs!
Mur, EP, and steam punk. This was third favorite Christmas present. I'm so glad that EP is back, that Steve is back (we heart you Steve!) and that the tradition of Mur stories continues. I really really LIKE Mighty Madam Mur's writing style. My hubby doesn't get it, but he listens with me anyway. My elder daughter once again bemoaned not getting either a Zeppelin OR a jet pack for Christmas, and promptly stormed off to her room to wear her goggles, striped tights and surly expression for a wile after listening to this. Ah, the drama of the young!
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By the way, I totally didn't understand the title.
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By the way, I totally didn't understand the title.
It's a line from A Visit From Saint Nicholas by Clement C. Moore.
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I've heard many stories on Escape Pod and its sister podcasts that made me want to leave a comment, but I was never pushed over the obstacle of action until listening to this one. I normally ignore anything having to do with the 'Holidays' since I'm a bitter miserly human being and all this talk of joy, peace, love, and light makes me indignant. Yet, I was captivated by this wonderful reimagination of the Santa Claus myth. I'm a sucker for anachronistic stories so 'As Dry Leaves...' at least had that hook with which to reel me in.
Can I have a Rankin and Bass version of this in time for next Christmas?
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I liked this story much more than last year's "Citytalkers" (doubleplus meh) but not nearly as much as 2006's "Merry Christmas from the Heartbreakers".
And I very much disliked Tesla being set up as the antagonist.
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It's a line from A Visit From Saint Nicholas by Clement C. Moore.
as read by Peter Frampton (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEz_YsZeRA8#t=1m18s)
it's fantastic having escapepod back and i enjoyed listening but there was a small error and i can't stop myself from pointing it out. i do it because i care, i wouldn't bother for most podcasts. =)
the link between ring around the rosie (http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.asp) and the black death (mentioned in the outro) is disproved.
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I'm always a little pessimistic going into a story when the inclusion of jet-packs and zeppelins has been proudly announced up-front, I guess because it often seems like we're supposed to be impressed and entertained simply by the fact that they're there. I really liked this story though; telling a familiar legend through an entirely new paradigm can be great if you can pull it off. I've been overdosing on Mur lately (having recently found back episodes of her podcasts) but I'm not nearly sick of her yet.
I did also wonder about Tesla getting a fairly harsh deal, but for all I know he really did hate Christmas. I've never read any contemporary accounts claiming that the guy didn't ever try to shoot down Santa Claus's zeppelin.
Great to have you back, Steve, hope things are well with you and the rest of your family.
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Jet packs and zeppelins make ANYTHING awesome. ANYTHING! :p
Another great Mur story. I didn't exactly get why Tesla was out to kill them, either, but I liked the rest of it enough I didn't care. And, jetpacks! and zeppelins! hehe.
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Jet packs and zeppelins make ANYTHING awesome. ANYTHING! :p
Too true. If you doubt this think about your least favourite EP, the one you barely made it all the way through, the one you did not turn off just on principles. Now give the characters jetpacks and a zeppelin, and tell me truly that the story is not at least a bit more awesome.
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Mur Lafferty strikes another home run. This is a fun Christmas story I'd read to the little kids in my life.
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Wow, what can I say that has not been said before me?
Orphans!!!
Without the kidding, this was again a wonderful X-mas story by Mur! Love it! And I loved the combination of Mur's story with Christiana's voice and Steve's comeback and steampunk and orphans!
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Santa. Jet Packs. Nuff Said
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Tesla Versus The Big Guy and the Big Guy hands him his asterisk.
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I really loved this one - it was light, and full of delightful imagery and fun characters.
Two minor nitpicks:
- I think that Dancer started out younger than Dasher, and later it was stated that they are twins (yes, I know that the two aren't strictly contradictory, but it seemed like a slip)
- At the final confrontation between Tesla and Santa, it is said that Tesla fired something "between a laser and a rocket". But the technology up to that point has been described entirely from the POV of Santa and his kids - and if they don't know about electricty, I can't believe that they know what a laser is. This broke the narrative at that point for me, and needlessly so, as the problem could go away if it just said "raygun" instead of "laser".
Also, I agree with the person who commented earlier and said that the conflict seemed a bit arbitrary. Why did Tesla come early? Was there a spy in the household that made him aware of the Claus's plans?
And one thing that just occured to me - if Santa trusts Comet enough to have her build his zeppelin, why did he never think to tell her how much helium they have? Cupid seems to manage his own resources as far as jetpack fuel goes. It didn't bother me while I heard this story, but now this seems like a plot hole.
Oh well. These are all minor issues compared to how outright fun the story was.
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I listened to this story as I was undecorating my Christmas tree. I really wish I had listened to it BEFORE Christmas. It was a wonderful story and it made me smile while listening. I needed the upper. Thanks!
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Steampunk Santa Claus. This has got to be the quintessential Mur Lafferty Christmas story. Much fun.
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Unusually for a Mur Lafferty story -- particulary a Mur Christmas story -- I found myself warming to this one. Although there were too many orphans to get to know properly (even with the very long time the story took to get going), it was impossible not to be on their side when they were making their break for the pole. But
Two minor nitpicks:
- At the final confrontation between Tesla and Santa, it is said that Tesla fired something "between a laser and a rocket". But the technology up to that point has been described entirely from the POV of Santa and his kids - and if they don't know about electricty, I can't believe that they know what a laser is. This broke the narrative at that point for me, and needlessly so, as the problem could go away if it just said "raygun" instead of "laser".
This was one of several little details that kept jarring me out of the story. The biggest was that I just couldn't quite get a feel for what the steampunk tech level was meant to be (clockwork devices vs helium Zeppelins vs personal helicopters vs rocket-fuel jetpacks vs lasers). This is my fault for trying to read it as alternative-history steampunk, when clearly the deciding principle for what tech was appropriate was whatever Mur thought was cool for the story. I know it's wrong to expect rigour from a fantasy Christmas myth, but the arbitrariness seemed to sit uncomfortably with the steampunk, and the gadgets were never quite cool enough to make it work. (Contrast with the Christmas episode of Dr Who, where the steampunk was similarly implausible but simply awesome.)
Then there were some really small niggles: Queen Victoria should have been Her Majesty, not Her Royal Highness; how high did their prototype airship manage to fly such that Comet could unstrap herself, jump over the side, fly around a bit, manoeuvre herself over to Rudolph, catch him and slow their combined descent before he hit the ground?; was I right to get the impression that Claus had invented the airship, and if so why was it named after Ferdinand von Zeppelin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_von_Zeppelin)?; etc.
They're all things that could be explained away with additional infodumps, but would probably have been better smoothed over in a final redraft. I wonder if Escape Artists would benefit from a more interventionist editor for original stories.
Oh well. These are all minor issues compared to how outright fun the story was.
Kind of. But I'd have preferred to be able to enjoy it without constantly going "wait a minute..."
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Jet packs and zeppelins make ANYTHING awesome. ANYTHING! :p
Too true. If you doubt this think about your least favourite EP, the one you barely made it all the way through, the one you did not turn off just on principles. Now give the characters jetpacks and a zeppelin, and tell me truly that the story is not at least a bit more awesome.
Hmm...now that you mention it--Lenin with a jet-pack would have been pretty funny.
Yeah, this was pretty damn keen--making a Steampunk Santa was genius. I think the sheer amount of children made it somewhat difficult to keep track of who is who, but it was otherwise awesome. :D
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Then there were some really small niggles: Queen Victoria should have been Her Majesty, not Her Royal Highness;
Good catch.
how high did their prototype airship manage to fly such that Comet could unstrap herself, jump over the side, fly around a bit, manoeuvre herself over to Rudolph, catch him and slow their combined descent before he hit the ground?;
That one occured to me, but then I decided that Rudolph wasn't actually in freefall or anything like that; he lost control of his jetpack, but he was stil being held aloft by it; if I get the events right, then the jetpack stalled for a second or two (enough to drop him below the airship, but not long enoug for him to reach the ground), then restarted, but presumably moving up or down in a controlled fashion takes more fuel than just maintaining altitude, so he was forced to do the latter and wait while the fuel ran out. Or something like that.
was I right to get the impression that Claus had invented the airship, and if so why was it named after Ferdinand von Zeppelin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_von_Zeppelin)?
It never said he invented it, just that Claus and Comet wanted to build one. Perhaps he had merely improved on the design.
They're all things that could be explained away with additional infodumps, but would probably have been better smoothed over in a final redraft. I wonder if Escape Artists would benefit from a more interventionist editor for original stories.
I don't believe I've ever listened to anything by Mur Lafferty and didn't think "this could be improved on a redraft". Tight writing, where every detail is paid attention to, is simply not her style - she's all about the "Gee whiz!" effect of taking really cool concepts and implementing them in novel ways. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work quite as well - for me, this time it worked.
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Catcthing up on a holiday-travel-induced podcast backlog, so most of my thoughts on this one have already been expressed. But, I do want to add my "Welcome back, Steve!!" to the chorus.
I also agree with those who felt the conflict with Tesla was a little arbitrary -- more of an excuse for an (admittedly cool) steampunk air battle than something that reasonably emerged from the logic of the plot or characters. The story would have worked just fine for me without it, but I'm not a big fan of action scenes in general.
Eytanz, I think you've articulated what bothers me about Mur's writing. She's great with the big, brilliant idea but like a lot of big idea people, a little loose and sloppy about follow-up and details. She needs somebody to play Pepper Potts to her Tony Stark.... :D
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I like the re-imagining of myths as much as the next guy, but this one did not sit well with me. It seemed like a plot device that Santa didn't give a reason for not allowing the kids to test the zepplin. And as a Tesla buff, I was annoyed that he was painted as the bad guy. It felt like Alexander Graham Bell or Marconi being evil. And while Tesla was the villain, if you look at the story objectively instead of through the kid's eyes, Santa doesn't exactly come out smelling like a rose. I'm sorry that your patronage got swiped, but that's the risk you take. It doesn't give you the right to steal, kill someone making your getaway, and then risk the lives of ORPHANS by giving them the secret plans. What are they going to do later? Steal the toys back? If they are just a pack of geniuses, why couldn't they sell inventions? Like the real Tesla did.
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And as a Tesla buff, I was annoyed that he was painted as the bad guy.
Thank you! I was wondering if I was alone in this.
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Cool idea, but this as a whole didn't do much for me. I think it's part of my general tendency to resist things that everyone insists are irrevocably cool. Yes, jetpacks are cool. Yes, I'm going to buy one when they become commercially available. But a story with jetpacks has to be BETTER than just a regular story to overcome its own hype and this one didn't reach that higher threshold.
Like others, I didn't like Tesla being painted as a villain. I didn't like that, just because Santa got canned, he was willing to steal, kill, and endanger his children. I didn't like that a major plot point was Santa withholding information from his kids about how much helium they had when he'd shared every important detail with them up to that point. And, though I suppose it was necessary to include all 9 kids, with 10 characters onscreen almost all the time I tended to forget which was which.
Also, it was quite a while before I figured out that the kids weren't reindeer. Santa with jetpacks, why not reindeer with jetpacks.
On a sidenote I was surprised that they didn't use the jetpacks to propel the zeppelin, much like the reindeer propel the sleigh.
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Random sidenote about Tesla:
Before I was really familiar with Tesla as historical figure, I knew his name from a war sim from the previous decade: Command & Conquer: Red Alert. It's an alternate history SF WWII. Hitler's been removed from the equation before the war starts, so it's the Soviets vs. the Allies. By far the best structure in the game is the Tesla Coil, a defensive tower that can shoot bolts of electricity over an extremely long range and is pinpoint accurate. It doesn't do much against vehicles, but it's an instant kill against any kind of human unit.
Once, for fan, I fiddled around with the mission.ini file which, among other things, defines all the attributes of each unit in the game. I replaced the Grenadier's standard grenade weapon with a Tesla zap for a while, and it kept all of the Tesla zap's attributes including pinpoint accuracy and long range. He's still perform the same motions when he attacked, so he'd mime pulling out a grenade and throwing it, but a lightning bolt would fire out instead, and zap whatever he was targeting. That was one nasty unit, mobile lightning requiring no power station, one shot kill against humans. So much fun!