Author Topic: EP306: Radio Nowhere  (Read 34431 times)

NomadicScribe

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Reply #50 on: August 30, 2011, 08:13:08 PM
The 15 years comments: The guy was a fool for hanging on to his dead wife's memory while this other girl was right there for a decade and a half. We all get that. Ziggy was a fool for hanging around for 15 years for him. We all get that too.

What I don't get is, if this story is set 15 years after they were all in graduate school together, this would put them in their late 30's. And they're in their late 30's, smoking weed and stumbling around a college campus on a Saturday night? It just seemed implausibly immature behavior for professionals.

Other than that, this was perhaps the most obvious and predictable of all EP stories, but probably not the worst. It gets a solid and enthusiastic two thumbs "meh".



Listener

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Reply #51 on: August 30, 2011, 08:25:46 PM
What I don't get is, if this story is set 15 years after they were all in graduate school together, this would put them in their late 30's. And they're in their late 30's, smoking weed and stumbling around a college campus on a Saturday night? It just seemed implausibly immature behavior for professionals.

You don't know the professionals I know.  ::)

Actually, if Ziggy works at a radio station, it's highly likely she gets high (too lazy to make a good pun). Most of the radio people I know do so on a regular basis.

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InfiniteMonkey

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Reply #52 on: August 31, 2011, 04:09:42 AM
Don't tell me I'm the only one who got the Springsteen reference??

("Radio Nowhere" is a song with the lyric "Is there anybody alive out there?")

And I have NO problem believing our boy has no idea what's right in front of his face, what with the tortured grief and being a particle physicist.  Glad the clue-by-four finally connected with his head.



icegirl

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Reply #53 on: August 31, 2011, 06:51:27 AM
Can I say first I thought the story was well read, but I agree with numerous other posters - there were a number of flaws in the storyline - not the least of which the guy is stuck in the same rut for 15 years without anyone he knows giving him a kick in the pants. I can't really believe that any woman would want to carry a torch for a guy who doesn't notice her for all those years either - in real life, real people move on after a while... It seemed like there were so many more interesting things that could have happened in the story than the syrupy happy ending - a guy like that could be the posterboy for a cautionary tale about playing with timelines.




ElectricPaladin

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Reply #54 on: August 31, 2011, 01:15:47 PM
It seems as though the author put in the "Is anybody out there?" as a red herring and everyone has bought into it. It was a distraction that worked.



Red Herring!

Why did I never notice how creepy that art is? Where is Freddie's nose? Where in God's name is his nose!?

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Lionman

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Reply #55 on: August 31, 2011, 01:46:27 PM
Moon over Morocco is great stuff.  As are the rest of ZBS's audio dramas - especially the quirky humor/SF Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe.  Definatly check them out!  I loved that they got a shout out in this story.

Sadly, I found very little else to love here.

I think our mother's taught us, "When you don't have anything nice to say..."

I'm fond of saying that TV shows, Movies and stories have one job at their core: To evoke emotion.  I think this story only really evoked the emotion of confusion.

Failure is an event, not a person.


Gamercow

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Reply #56 on: September 01, 2011, 07:06:20 PM
I'm in the vast minority with this one.  I loved it, but that's probably because like the poster on page 1, it resonated strongly with me.  Some similarities between my life and this story:
  • I went to college in the mid 1990s
  • I was strongly involved with the college radio
  • I was good friends with potheads(I was not, it does nothing to or for me), and we all hung around a lot
  • We used to hang out/explore the tunnels beneath campus
  • One of my best friends lost his girlfriend/fiancee to a drunk driver
  • Another friend had a HUGE crush on friend 1, and doted on him endlessly, though he did not notice.
  • To that same end, he did not have and did not want any relationship lasting more than 2 weeks for the 5 years after that.
  • Friend 2 often dyed her hair green, among other colors.
Eventually, friend 1 went off to Japan to start his life fresh, and has since gotten married to a woman over there, and come back to the US.  Friend 2 was in contact with both of us for the first 5 years, then less so after Friend 1 went to Japan, and when he announced he was getting married, she fell off both of our radar screens almost immediately.   So yes, you could say I found this story interesting and engaging, and put my 2 friends faces immediately on Ziggy and Liam. 

Anyway, 15 years does seem a bit long, I would have bought 5 much more readily.  To those who were wondering why Ziggy was still smoking pot and hosting a college radio show, and still wearing her jacket from 15 years ago, it is because she was running around in circles, not getting anywhere just as much as Liam was getting nowhere.  They were a star system in human microcosm.  Ziggy was tidally locked moon, orbiting around the planet Liam, only seeing him, while he was tidally locked himself to the dead star named Jackie, aware of Ziggy's presence, but only when she related to the relationship between himself and Jackie. 

The cow says "Mooooooooo"


sombody_else

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Reply #57 on: September 02, 2011, 07:26:32 PM
I thought the duck walking on water was going to be some foreshadowing of the "you can't change the past" trope. But the story never went there...



NomadicScribe

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Reply #58 on: September 03, 2011, 09:10:44 PM
I thought the duck walking on water was going to be some foreshadowing of the "you can't change the past" trope. But the story never went there...

Sometimes a duck is just a duck.



iamafish

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Reply #59 on: September 03, 2011, 09:39:03 PM
and sometimes, it's a rabbit.


Dave

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Reply #60 on: September 04, 2011, 07:36:55 AM
The story was going along swimmingly until the idiot mad scientist guy didn't lose both women in a horrible parallel reality collapse. Or he saved Girl #1 only to discover they didn't get along anymore. Or he saved Girl #2 only to resent her forever for cheating him of his chance to save Girl #1. Or that, and then he tries again and makes everything worse.

Basically, everyone in this story got off way too easy.

But up until then I was enjoying it.

Could have done with more variety of dialogue from the Post-Event-Disembodied-Radio-Voice, though. And why the heck did nobody else on campus notice all the weird stuff going on?

-Dave (aka Nev the Deranged)


childoftyranny

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Reply #61 on: September 04, 2011, 10:50:31 AM
And why the heck did nobody else on campus notice all the weird stuff going on?

Well, those were confusing times man, you didn't want to admit that you couldn't hold your weed...



Biscuit

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Reply #62 on: September 06, 2011, 06:09:20 AM
Emotionally Stunted Nice Guy (TM) mourning his Refridgerated Wife gets shown the True Meaning of Life by Impossibly Patient Manic Dream Pixie Girl, with added bonus Hipster Pop Culture References and College Nostalgia (aka Things Were Much Better When..., or Being A Grown Up Sux).

PS: What scientist isn't actually present in the laboratory at their experiments? I'd be rather concerned if particle accelerators were being run off Blackberry. Need some pretty hefty security on THAT WiFi.


Unblinking

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Reply #63 on: September 06, 2011, 01:54:57 PM
I thought the duck walking on water was going to be some foreshadowing of the "you can't change the past" trope. But the story never went there...

Sometimes a duck is just a duck.

and sometimes it's a Jesus Duck.



Devoted135

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Reply #64 on: September 06, 2011, 02:05:32 PM
I thought the duck walking on water was going to be some foreshadowing of the "you can't change the past" trope. But the story never went there...

Sometimes a duck is just a duck.

and sometimes it's a Jesus Duck.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/224128/april-09-2009/bart-ehrman

I'm sorry, I just had to. You can thank me later ;)




birdless

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Reply #65 on: September 07, 2011, 04:40:32 PM
I was only half paying attention to the beginning of the story, so I missed the reference that his wife died FIFTEEN years ago until near the end. I had these guys pegged as being in their mid twenties by dialog and personality. As for the SOS radio broadcast, my feeling was that it was just giving us a hint of what would have happened if he saved his wife, plus I agree with Scattercat's post that it gave it an air of eeriness. It's possible, though, that that could have been given to us in a different way so that we don't feel cheated for not having seen the denouement of that plot line. But yeah, I'm with I think my favorite listener summation was NomadicScribe's "enthusiastic two thumbs meh." I couldn't find who posted it, but, yeah, even though I didn't hate this one, it could have used a few more re-writes.



DKT

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Reply #66 on: September 07, 2011, 09:42:05 PM
Don't tell me I'm the only one who got the Springsteen reference??

("Radio Nowhere" is a song with the lyric "Is there anybody alive out there?")

Nah, I got it too - Big fan of The Boss here  :D

I look forward to reading/listening to The Ghost of Tom Joad over at Pseudopod and Magic (too easy) Devil's Arcade at PodCastle ;D


eytanz

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Reply #67 on: September 07, 2011, 09:49:10 PM
The Leonard Cohen reference in the latest PC title (haven't listened to the story yet, so I don't know if there are more) is good enough for me.



El Barto

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Reply #68 on: September 08, 2011, 03:35:09 AM
This story had such potential but turned out to be a glass of lumpy milk.   I was quite disappointed at how the story advanced and with the many plot weaknesses that others have pointed out.   

The chances of the girl pining for the guy for 15 years are slim -- especially since they continued to be friends.   The main character was a scientist running a particle accelerator but has no apparent scientific curiosity about what is happening?  He doesn't discuss it with his colleagues?   Nobody notices the entire experiment turning on and off in the middle of the night and causing all of the lights on campus to go out and in?  Nobody else notices the past flickering in and out?   No resolution on the disembodied voice or exploration of other universes?  No efforts to send a message to himself "through the past" by scratching something on a cave wall and then seeing if it remained when the past flickered away?   

Oh well.



kibitzer

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Reply #69 on: September 09, 2011, 03:45:33 AM
This story had such potential but turned out to be a glass of lumpy milk. 

Eew. Eeeeeeew. Thanks. I've just had lunch (...runs to the nearest bucket)


Thomas

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Reply #70 on: September 09, 2011, 04:45:03 AM
This story had such potential but turned out to be a glass of lumpy milk. 

Eew. Eeeeeeew. Thanks. I've just had lunch (...runs to the nearest bucket)

Goof ...

lol

Enjoy and be nice to each other, because "WE" is all we got.


eagle37

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Reply #71 on: September 09, 2011, 08:37:28 AM
Truly disappointing story. Liam is a total failure as a person and as a character. His obsession doesn't come over ass enuine or heartrending, only as weak, and his inability to notice his friend Ziggy's attentions was almost laughable. Ziggy was equally weak as a person, if she was happy to doormat around this dweeb for fifteen year, loving him from afar and being ignored.

You can get away with 'weak' characters, but there has to be something that makes us care about them. I couldn't find anything about either of these I gave a fig about.

The so-called twist at the end was crudely telegraphed, and the voice in the static was a classic example of a writing mistake called 'the gun on the mantlepiece'. To paraphrase "if there's a gun on the mantlepeice in act one, it dsmn well better be fired by act three" - meaning dont tease with irrelevent plots. The desolate voice was never developed, and ended up ass a red herring



LaShawn

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Reply #72 on: September 09, 2011, 10:06:52 PM
Ughh...and I just finished a rant over at the Podcastle over weak-willed characters who are idiots, too. Everyone else has pretty much said what was wrong with the story, so I'm not going to rehash it--only gonna say "meh." Wilson's reading was awesome, though.

And I thought manmade ponds only went in a few feet deep or so. Maybe today is a good day to start up listening to PsuedoPod.

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kibitzer

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Reply #73 on: September 10, 2011, 12:20:25 AM
Maybe today is a good day to start up listening to PsuedoPod.

Any day is a good day to start listening to Pseudopod ;-)


Unblinking

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Reply #74 on: September 13, 2011, 02:00:03 PM
And I thought manmade ponds only went in a few feet deep or so.

I expect you could make them as deep as you wanted.  It would probably depend on what functions you wanted the pond to serve, just decoration, or for fish or boating, or whatever.