Recent Posts

Good theory. When the new contest board was created, it was getting all the spam, and probably lots of recent views. But recently it seems like the spam is pretty spread out.

I've tried it a few years ago and it didn't work for me either. My guess is that some of the spambots that log in and don't post are actually collecting usage data, and they are used to direct the other spambots to the most viewed forums.

There's a lot about this that maps really effectively onto some of the more insidious aspects of abusive religion (particularly cults), or addiction. I don't want to reduce it to just an allegory, but that's what I thought of listening to it.

Jon Padgett knocks it out of the park as per usual.

I found the audiobook version of The Mad Scientist's Guide To World Domination by chance at Goodwill a couple years back and loved it. This was a story I was happy to see again in a different format.

Hearing this story, I think about Terry Pratchett's Silver Horde, that group of geriatric barbarians who were just a bit too good at being heroes to die properly. And I get why some people would wonder why this was run here and not Escape Pod, but I think behind the sci-fi hijinx, or overshadowing them, is an almost Ligottian kind of horror of the mundane, of knowing that nothing Steve or Mofongo did mattered, or was remembered, and now it's just a matter of waiting for an inglorious, anonymous death devoid of drama or meaning. There's no enemies waiting in the shadows because nobody cares if they still exist. Every world-shattering battle is a best a footnote for trivia collectors, a piece of garbage kicked under a chair in a trailer. How can a villain brilliant and powerful enough to bend reality to his whims be defeated by a Yale lock for 30 years? The same cocktail of apathy, habit and refusal to change that grinds us all under if we don't pay attention and catch it. That's the horror here. And oof.... man.

This is my first post! Hi, all! 

That's a much more organized system than what I tend to do. Thanks!

I couldn't really listen to the story, and I wanted to give it a chance. The narrator sounded like she was 20 feet from her mic and pointed in the wrong direction. As I listen on my commute it makes it quite difficult to understand the reader. This should have been sent back to the narrator.
Sorry, just my feelings and the way I heard what I could hear of it.

I loved narrating this story. The themes and characters are so beautifully designed and the acceptance of the inevitable is explored in a profound but delicate way. Mofongo is/was the most heartbreaking megalomaniac ape I've encountered for some time 

I hope everyone enjoys the episode!

Ant

I'll be disappointed if none of the Padgett work makes it on the list.

You filled out the form, right? :-)

Of course I did

I keep a folder with "best podcasts" in them, and I just checked the Pseudopod ones after the highest number on the current list.

Re-listening to this one, I got a new perspective. Call it age, wisdom, whatever.

The first time, I found it hopeful - aliens show up and make the world a better place.

Now, I find it sadder and more cynical. Aliens show up and really, humans keep being humans. Nothing ever changes.