Author Topic: PseudoPod 532: Flash On The Borderlands XXXVI: Artemis Rising Showcase  (Read 4393 times)

Bdoomed

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PseudoPod 532: Flash On The Borderlands XXXVI: Artemis Rising Showcase



“Nothin’ ever seems to turn out right/I don’t wanna grow up”
Tom Waits


When First He Laid Eyes by Rachael K. Jones

“When First He Laid Eyes” first appeared in Fireside, February 2016. Sometimes what is scariest in the world is what we normalize. This story is for the women who have lived this reality.

RACHAEL K. JONES
is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Athens, GA. Her work has appeared in dozens of venues, including Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Crossed Genres, Daily Science Fiction, and PodCastle. She is a SFWA member, an editor, and a secret android. Follow her on Twitter @RachaelKJones.

Your narrator – Tatiana Grey is a New York City based actress of stage, screen, and of course, the audio booth. She adores traveling and counts her lucky stars that acting and dancing have taken her all over the United States, to Montreal, Vancouver, Ireland, and Holland… but she loves coming home to New York where it all started. Equally at home speaking heightened language in a corset, in a leather jacket spouting obscenities, and as a dancer she has been compared to such dark, vivacious heroines as Helena Bonham Carter, a young Winona Ryder and Ellen Page. This depth and facility with multiple genres garnered her a New York Innovative Theatre Award Best Featured Actress nomination for her work in The Night of Nosferatu. Her facility with accents has landed her quite a few audiobooks and numerous on-camera roles including the role of Evgenya in the award winning I am A Fat Cat. Tatiana is a proud member of Actor’s Equity Association.

A girl’s first stalker is always a cause for celebration. She will phone her mother with the big news and spill the story in a tangle of words, voice raw with emotion.



“Eyes That See Everything” by Karen Bovenmyer

“Eyes That See Everything” is a Pseudopod original.

Karen Bovenmyer earned an MFA in Popular Fiction from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Program in 2013, and she was awarded the 2016 Mary Shelley Scholarship by the Horror Writers Association.

She spent many hours as a kid among beaten earth and bare roots avoiding predators and whispering to imaginary people of various moralities. She never had a pet rabbit, but she did have a hamster named Chucky Cheeks who wanted to be an astronaut. This story is dedicated to everyone who found animals and inanimate objects easier to communicate with than fellow homo sapiens. Karen is the Nonfiction Assistant Editor for Mothership Zeta, Escape Artists’ new e-zine and has been having a spectacular time helping set up the first issue. Check out book, short story, and movie reviews, a “Story Doctor” article from award-winning science fiction author James Patrick Kelly, and a science column from a real astronomer—as well as plenty of fabulous fresh stories from amazing authors both new and experienced.

Your narrator – Jen R. Albert is an entomologist, writer of science fiction and fantasy, gamer, and all-around geek. She is co-editor at PodCastle and submissions editor at Uncanny Magazine. Her first story appeared in Mad Scientist Journal in June of 2015

“’Back off, retard.’ Jeanne and Stacey block the hallway to the bathroom, arms outstretched, hands knotted together so they make a human chain. ‘This toilet’s for normal kids.’
“Max is angry. I feel him heavy in my pocket, but I don’t want to get in a fight and pee my pants, so I pick Luke instead. I pull him out and his feet get caught so I have to untangle him while they taunt me.”




Standard Procedure by Dagny Paul

“Standard Procedure” first appeared in the anthology For Mortal Things Unsung.

DAGNY PAUL is a teacher, writer, failed artist, and comic book geek living in the middle of nowhere, Louisiana. Follow her for no good reason on Twitter @dagnypaul.

Your narrator – Laurice White – is a recent theater graduate and long time theater student, and has read stories for Podcastle, Pseudopod, and most recently for John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey on The End is Nigh and The End is Now, the first two volumes of The Apocalypse Triptych.

”When you turn twelve, they take out your teeth. Before that they’re bendy and kind of see-through and can’t do much damage, but after they get hard and brittle. And sharp.
“Today is my twelfth birthday.”




Us, Here by Victoria Winnick

“Us, Here” is a PseudoPod original. “A while ago I ran a roleplaying event, tabletop style, that explored a character’s dysphoria and body-anxiety through this kind of “meatscape” environment, basically exaggerating and inflating all of the points of greatest unease, making the internal external. I’d been thinking of incorporating that idea into a more discrete story for a while, and this seemed like a great time to do that”.

VICTORIA WINNICK is a writer, editor, and chef, living in Calgary, Alberta. When she’s not doing one of those things, she’s usually making plans about the next time she can. In the past, she’s written educational books for children, and magazine articles on sex, culture, and music, and she’s also an associate editor here at Pseudopod. In lieu of a personal plug, she asks that if you’re enjoying what you’re hearing in this, or any other episode of Pseudopod, that you please consider subscribing and helping to keep these excellent stories from diverse authors coming, week after week.

Your narrator – Jen Roper – lives in Atlanta, GA. She works as a software engineer. Some day she will probably embed SETI on your thermostat and in your car assuming someone else doesn’t beat her to the punch. In the meantime, her hobbies include drinking and knowing things and making pop culture references. She also enjoys long walks after dark and seeking out Eldritch abominations in an alternate reality known as “pocket monsters”.

“We are crawling. The space around us is tight and hot, and beads of muggy condensation run down our face – positive feedback ramping up the heat and the wet until the difference between breath and sweat is lost. Finally we’re out, gulping air and lying sweatslick on flesh that heaves beneath us, skin sticking on skin and apart as we breathe, and the ground breathes beneath us.”




Listen to this week's Pseudopod.
« Last Edit: March 11, 2017, 08:50:37 AM by Bdoomed »

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


archaevist

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Us, here

First story I've read where the cybernetic psychic mindbeast from outside time represents love



Metalsludge

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I enjoyed the hint of satirical tumor in When First He Laid Eyes. A bit of humor in one's horror is often healthy and fun, I think, but can also help define a real problem in all its ugly clarity.

As the story notes, it's about fear at some point, though I'm not as confident as the narrator that the stalker intends fear, at least not at first. But that always seems to be the end result as it goes on. Also, I recall reading an essay in which someone who was stalked and later researched the issue, discovered that the stalking, perhaps especially Internet based stalking, doesn't always so clearly have to do with desirability. To some stalkers, one is beautiful, while others angrily claim you are ugly and need to be told as much, for years. And it's not always about anything sexual per se. Anyway, I'm sure this story hit close to home for many.

The weird thing is that I still feel this distance when hearing stories like this, despite having been stalked, despite several of my friends having been assaulted, despite... everything. I catch myself telling myself it's not that big a problem. But then I think of how many people I know who have been assaulted, and as I get past my first hand while counting fingers and move onto the fingers on the next hand, I begin to realize that I'm just in denial. Is society in denial in general for some reason?

It's not that I ever thought "Oh, that sort of thing doesn't happen here, not in this town." or anything like that. I was never that presumptuous. But perhaps part of the mind defends itself through disassociation. If none of those friends were quite actually raped or killed, you can tell yourself it was just a close call, a passing issue. And then there's the matter of pride. It can be hard to admit how easily you were gotten to, that you were indeed afraid at some point in your own experience.

The layers of denial can be hard to peel away, which is where stories can sometimes come in and help one see things more clearly, perhaps starting a more honest consideration.



Sandra M. Odell

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Particularly nice selection, in particular "Standard Procedure".  I liked how each of the pieces evokes another emotion that compliments fear.  Well done.



velocity

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Reply #4 on: March 31, 2017, 02:04:30 AM
the first story, When First He Laid Eyes, scares me because this is an aspect of the world that my daughter is growing up in. 

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Ichneumon

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Nice selection, all the stories were frightening and each brought up timely issues. Some of the introductions of the readers and authors felt long, but it was probably just because we had to listen to four instead of one for this episode.