Author Topic: PC450: Bonsai  (Read 5232 times)

Ocicat

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on: January 11, 2017, 05:03:42 AM
PodCastle 450: Bonsai

by Shaenon Garrity

read by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali

A PodCastle Original!

Rated PG.

Uterine cancer, the doctor is saying, and the world ends. Stage Four. That means advanced. It means bad. Your arms and legs and throat go numb. All you can hear is his question, looping: when was your last exam? You can’t remember. Not that it matters now.



Shaenon K. Garrity is a cartoonist best known for the webcomics Narbonic and Skin Horse. Her prose fiction has appeared in publications including Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Escape Pod, Drabblecast, and the Unidentified Funny Objects anthologies. She lives in Berkeley with a cat and two men of varying sizes.

You can find Shaenon online at www.shaenon.com, and on Twitter @shaenongarrity. She also has a Patreon site at patreon.com/Shaenon.



Read by your new PodCastle co-Editor, Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali!

Listen to this week’s PodCastle!



ToooooMuchCoffeeMan

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Reply #1 on: January 11, 2017, 09:55:04 AM
This story made people in my neighborhood think I'm a crazy person: bicycling down the boulevard bawling, almost careening into traffic because I was blinded by tears.



Maxilu

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Reply #2 on: January 14, 2017, 07:01:11 AM
I kept waiting for the horror shoe to drop. I had to kep reminding myself that this is PodCastle, not Psudeopod.

I listened to this at a very emotional time. Today is the anniversary of the death of my grandmother, and tomorrow is the anniversary of the death of a beloved cousin. Thinking about them, and the treatment seems like a wonderful way to
go.
 y
My grandmother died of cancer before I was born. From the stories I've heard of her, the idea of turning  a plant upon death would have appealed to her greatly. My cousin was murdered, , and buried under a sagebrush in a rural cemetery​. For the past two years, sagebrush has represented him to me.

I have a few technical quibbles over the Treatment, but they're not worth bringing up. Kudos on a wonderful story, and bringing me light in a very difficult time of year.

Sent from my RCT6303W87M7 using Tapatalk




VranaCat

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Reply #3 on: January 17, 2017, 06:38:25 PM
I enjoyed this one, but I guess I went into it expecting more of a resolution of some kind.  Instead it just kind of felt like the story rose and rose before meandering to an eventual hault, much like the main character herself.  Don't get me wrong, I don't intend that as a critique, because it was a very fitting ending in many ways.  I guess I'm more saying that if anyone else, like me, initially had trouble with the pacing and the way the story just putters out at the end it might be worth a second listen approaching the very style of storytelling as a level of analogy for the life of the protagonist.



Unblinking

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Reply #4 on: January 19, 2017, 02:51:46 PM
This treatment sounded like a much better risk and way to go than contemporary cancer treatments--I mean, as long as it was actually painless as described.  You expect cancer to be fatal, and standard treatments just kill you more slowly but also rob you of any standard of life.  If you could be treated while enjoying a decent standard of life and sometimes you die and turn into a plant, I would certainly sign up for that.

I enjoyed this one, but I guess I went into it expecting more of a resolution of some kind.  Instead it just kind of felt like the story rose and rose before meandering to an eventual hault, much like the main character herself.  Don't get me wrong, I don't intend that as a critique, because it was a very fitting ending in many ways.  I guess I'm more saying that if anyone else, like me, initially had trouble with the pacing and the way the story just putters out at the end it might be worth a second listen approaching the very style of storytelling as a level of analogy for the life of the protagonist.

I get where you're coming from.  I think it might've been more, like, a vignette than a short story, or something?  By the time the story starts all the decisions have been made and we're just kindof seeing the part between the critical decision (to do this treatment) and the final resolution, despite the protagonist having very little agency after their choice to be treated.  Sometimes this would bother me, but in this case I was interested in enough in this fantastical medical treatment that I was engrossed enough in that so that it didn't bother me.



Devoted135

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Reply #5 on: January 25, 2017, 08:00:00 PM
This one somehow managed to be fairly hopeful, and also so sad and poignant at the same time. "Modern" medicine is still so primitive in many respects, especially in the area of cancer treatments. I'm sure that there are many patients every year who would chose this option over those they are currently presented with. Especially since it allowed her to be strong and energetic in her last months!



Fenrix

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Reply #6 on: February 09, 2017, 09:40:17 PM

I kept waiting for the horror shoe to drop. I had to kep reminding myself that this is PodCastle, not Psudeopod.


You rang?

http://pseudopod.org/2007/08/29/flash-brimstone-orange/

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”


Ichneumon

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Reply #7 on: February 11, 2017, 08:15:03 PM
I liked the references to Greek mythology. They had people transforming into all kinds of things.
I wonder if the plants will survive after the host is gone? And what kind of plant it is?