Author Topic: PC645: God Damn, How Real Is This?  (Read 1101 times)

Ocicat

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on: September 24, 2020, 08:28:55 PM
PodCastle 645: God Damn, How Real Is This?

Author: Doretta Lau
Narrator: Andrea Bang
Host: Jen R. Albert
Audio Producer: Peter Behravesh

Originally published in How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun? Published by Nightwood Editions in 2014, audiobook version of this produced by ECW Press.

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Content Warning:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)



Show Notes
Thanks to Nightwood Editions for allowing us to reprint the text of this story and to ECW Press for allowing us to run an excerpt from the collection’s audiobook; this audiobook was produced as a part of ECW Press’s Bespeak Audio Imprint. You can purchase the print version of this book here and the audiobook here.



My future self sends me a text message at least once a day.

The latest: Hey, tricho-slut, get your man hands out of our hair. I have a Lake Michigan–shaped bald spot forming on the back of my head. stop plucking. it’s starting to look like a penis.

Last I checked there were no Great Lakes of any sort blooming on my scalp, no Superiors or Hurons or Eries flooding my hair. Of late, these missives from the future have become increasingly more abusive. I wonder, when will I flip my bitch switch and hop on this negative self-talk train? In a week? In a year? I’d like to believe this use of misogynistic language is out of character and that maybe I’m being trolled by a bored identity thief. I file the thought as something for my present self to discuss with my now therapist.

Another message flashes on my phone: That mole on your left arm that you’ve been ignoring? Get thee to a doctor.




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AM Fish

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Reply #1 on: March 15, 2021, 02:00:03 PM
I loved this story and the characters.  The podcast went by so quickly I thought it was much shorter than 20 minutes.  It is probably fair to say that the wry humor in the narrator's voice, more than anything, holds the listener's attention.  It is easy to relate to Franny Siu.

This is story may remind the reader/listener of how Ted Chiang's book presents a few characters interacting with future, past or other versions of themselves in his short story collection Exhalation https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41160292-exhalation.  I'd point to "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" and "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" as two excellent stories with this theme.

More seriously, I was reminded of Tammy Duckworth's Note to Self https://www.cbsnews.com/news/note-to-self-senator-tammy-duckworth/ and I feel a bit motivated to return to keeping a dairy.