Author Topic: PseudoPod 663: Birds of Passage  (Read 2363 times)

Bdoomed

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on: September 02, 2019, 03:33:05 AM
PseudoPod 663: Birds of Passage

Author: Gordon B. White
Narrator: Steve Anderson 
Host: Alasdair Stuart

“Birds of Passage” first appeared in Twice-Told: A Collection of Doubles (ed. C.M. Muller)



Show Notes
Spoiler (click to show/hide)





If I didn’t inherit my father’s natural instinct for adventure, it was drummed into me steadily enough by the time I was a young man that you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.  If you don’t go looking for adventure, he would say, adventure will come looking for you.  Over the years, I got so used to the counter-programming against my inborn tendency towards the comfort of safety that I wonder – if left to my own natural limits – would I have turned out differently?  Are there other dimensions with less driven, but perhaps more content, versions of me?  I’ve thought about that a lot since my father died.

My father and I had plenty of what he would call “adventures,” even though we sometimes disagreed on what qualified. Road trip to the mountains and across state lines?  Sure, that counted.  Pushing his broken car to the dealership and walking home?  Not in my book.  Nowadays, although I would not trade any of them for the world, the years have smudged away most of our individual adventures.  However, I will never forget Cotner’s Creek.




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seraphimblade

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Reply #1 on: September 04, 2019, 04:25:58 PM
You did truly brilliantly here.

I don't know how else to say it. This is one of the best stories you've run. That juxtaposition of hope and horror is absolutely one of the best stories you have ever selected. It very literally brought tears to my eyes, that perfect encapsulation of the relationship between father and son. (It's one I've experienced from only one direction; while I have children myself, they've only been daughters, but I of course still recall things with my own father.)

But you really nailed it here. This is exactly what I listen to Pseudopod for.



Sgarre1

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Reply #2 on: September 04, 2019, 10:15:05 PM
Many thanks! Comments like this help us through dark times...



JDuckworth

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Reply #3 on: November 04, 2019, 08:55:24 PM
This is one of my favorites--I love that it slips between horror, adventure, and coming of age like a canoe traversing different bends of the same river.



Marlboro

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Reply #4 on: November 06, 2019, 02:44:26 PM
Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wonder Years"

A different kind of horror story. And that's a good thing.



Fenrix

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Reply #5 on: January 20, 2020, 06:33:20 PM
This story has made it to the preliminary ballot for the Stoker Award.

http://www.thebramstokerawards.com/front-page/the-2019-bram-stoker-awards-preliminary-ballot/

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