Author Topic: EP375: Marley and Cratchit  (Read 18812 times)

RestlessWonderer

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Reply #25 on: January 05, 2013, 09:31:42 PM
This was such a fun story.  Hopeful, caring, and familiar.  All the things one needs in a Christmas story.



CryptoMe

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Reply #26 on: January 18, 2013, 06:36:26 AM
I must add my congratulations to Unblinking. Very impressive, especially considering how tired and over-done the whole Christmas Carol thing is.

Now, would you consider giving "It's a Wonderful Life" a try? I would love to see what you could do with that.... ;)



jwbjerk

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Reply #27 on: January 21, 2013, 04:38:42 PM
Two thumbs up! only because i have only two hands.

I like a story that takes a well known story, and reinterprets it so that the original story makes sense as a garbled, incomplete version of the new stories "true" events.  This pulled that off excellently: remaining generally true to the original, but adding in enough plausible differences that it is much more than a re-hash.  It had plenty of surprizes for me.

Top notch reading, great accent: it enhanced the story.



El Barto

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Reply #28 on: January 26, 2013, 11:24:21 PM
As glad as I am to see one of our own write a very nice story, I will go right ahead and express frustration with hearing it on Escape Pod, as I found it to be not even close to the line of what I consider to be science fiction.  It was magic / fantasy with power crystals, devoid of any scientific basis.  The quality of the writing was excellent and the reworking of a classic tale was impressive but I hoped to hear a science fiction story today and not something more akin to Harry Potter.  Sorry to be an outlier on this one.



Thunderscreech

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Reply #29 on: January 26, 2013, 11:28:23 PM
Oh man, wait'll you watch Star Wars.  You are gonna be pissed...



El Barto

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Reply #30 on: January 27, 2013, 12:17:22 AM
That's a fair point, what with the Force and all, but there was plenty of science fiction in star wars from the laser blasters to aliens to spaceflight to the world-changing impact of a beam that could destroy planets. 

Which, I suppose, is my way of saying that had this Marley and Cratchit story taken place in a world that was full of other science fiction concepts, I would have been less bothered by it really being a magic/fantasy story.  But there was really no science to speak of here.  (But at least there was no Jar-Jar.)



Scattercat

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Reply #31 on: January 27, 2013, 12:29:35 AM
Laser blasters, aliens, and planet-busting "beams" are all functionally magical, since what we know of science tells us they are all wildly impractical or deeply unlikely at best.  Even spaceflight is a lot more restricted and difficult than what Star Wars shows, and I'm not even getting into "hyperspace."

Alchemical crystals are just as "scientific" as anything in Star Wars, or even most SF, outside of the hardest of the hard science fiction.  If you don't enjoy the story, that's fine, but don't say this isn't science fiction but, say, a time-loop "save point" machine or an alien being able to tamper with human thoughts is.  Say that what you like is aliens and blasters and spaceships, and you don't like Victoriana or crystals, and leave it at that.



El Barto

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Reply #32 on: January 27, 2013, 12:37:43 AM
I'm pretty sure that my original comment was "I found it to be not even close to the line of what I consider to be science fiction."   I specifically referenced my own perspective because I knew that some folks would likely feel different about this story.

As for the point about laser blasters, aliens, and planet-busting "beams" -- I would say they all purport to operate on yet-unmastered science principles.  by contrast, magic crystals created (by hand) in 1843 don't even pretend to have any science behind them.  And that is what I don't like.

For what it is worth, I could see liking (and considering to be SF) an alchemy story set in the future where technology and the ability to manipulate atoms is so far advanced that tinkerers in their London offices can in fact make breakthroughs in their laboratories.



Scattercat

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Reply #33 on: January 27, 2013, 03:38:34 AM
So call it an alternate history.  *shrugs*

Point is, saying it's not science fiction is silly, particularly if you cite scientific principles and aren't, say, Alistair Reynolds or whoever.  Saying you don't like it isn't silly at all.



Unblinking

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Reply #34 on: February 05, 2013, 03:41:51 PM
Now, would you consider giving "It's a Wonderful Life" a try? I would love to see what you could do with that.... ;)

I've never seen it!  All I've done is listen to the radio version on Journey Into...
:)



Fenrix

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Reply #35 on: February 05, 2013, 10:58:26 PM
Now, would you consider giving "It's a Wonderful Life" a try? I would love to see what you could do with that.... ;)

I've never seen it!  All I've done is listen to the radio version on Journey Into...
:)

That's a correctable problem. It's a classic for a reason.

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


Unblinking

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Reply #36 on: February 06, 2013, 06:47:24 PM
Now, would you consider giving "It's a Wonderful Life" a try? I would love to see what you could do with that.... ;)

I've never seen it!  All I've done is listen to the radio version on Journey Into...
:)

That's a correctable problem. It's a classic for a reason.

By what I can find the Film It's a Wonderful Life does not have a current copyright due to a clerical error when the owners were trying to renew it.  But the story it's based on "The Greatest Gift" is still current for a couple more decades.  There was a big legal battle in 1993 (which I was unaware of until right now) where someone decided to try to cash in on TV stations constantly playing the movie, and because it's a derivative of a copyrighted work, they earned the right to royalties.



Jim Shorts

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Reply #37 on: February 27, 2013, 10:07:45 PM
Ok, I realize I’m a little late to the party, and that no one has been eagerly watching the posts to find out what some random guy thinks of Marley and Cratchit, but I just can’t help but comment. I thought this was one of the best stories I’ve heard on EP. And I was DREADING listening to it. I work for a professional theatre company, and we have staged A Christmas Carol every single year for 35 years. When this episode came out, I had just experienced Dickens’s story about 16 times in 20 days. That’s why I had to wait until February before I could contemplate listening to it without wanting to defenestrate myself [just when I thought I’d never have an excuse to work that word into a conversation!]. Plus, though I love Christmas, I’m not really a big fan of Christmas stories. They’re just too hokey for me.

But I was blown away by how well this story worked (and it had nothing to do with Christmas, other than its association with Dickens’s tale). At first I was getting hung up on the inconsistencies with the original story, but I just had to put myself in the mindset of listening to an alternate version of the lives of these characters, not something that could actually fit with the original. So I enjoyed it. But then lo and behold, every single one of the seeming inconsistencies began to merge and fit with the original, until by the end they all tied in perfectly! And the narration was spot on too! This was about as flawless as an episode gets, if you ask me.



childoftyranny

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Reply #38 on: April 11, 2013, 10:56:28 PM
I quite enjoyed this re-imagining, I'd say lets call is psuedoscience fiction, but I wouldn't want to get the Pseduopod castle jealous again, I mean with what happened last time...



hardware

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Reply #39 on: June 03, 2013, 01:38:08 PM
Yeah, this was pretty good for being a spin of a classic tale, it still had a mind and soul of it's own, was well written/read and expands on the themes in interesting directions. 



schizoTypal

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Reply #40 on: June 03, 2013, 04:23:13 PM
Ok, I realize I’m a little late to the party, and that no one has been eagerly watching the posts to find out what some random guy thinks of Marley and Cratchit, but I just can’t help but comment. I thought this was one of the best stories I’ve heard on EP. And I was DREADING listening to it. I work for a professional theatre company, and we have staged A Christmas Carol every single year for 35 years. When this episode came out, I had just experienced Dickens’s story about 16 times in 20 days. That’s why I had to wait until February before I could contemplate listening to it without wanting to defenestrate myself [just when I thought I’d never have an excuse to work that word into a conversation!]. Plus, though I love Christmas, I’m not really a big fan of Christmas stories. They’re just too hokey for me.

But I was blown away by how well this story worked (and it had nothing to do with Christmas, other than its association with Dickens’s tale). At first I was getting hung up on the inconsistencies with the original story, but I just had to put myself in the mindset of listening to an alternate version of the lives of these characters, not something that could actually fit with the original. So I enjoyed it. But then lo and behold, every single one of the seeming inconsistencies began to merge and fit with the original, until by the end they all tied in perfectly! And the narration was spot on too! This was about as flawless as an episode gets, if you ask me.

I actually thought that it would fit in with the original story just fine! But that's probably a benefit of not knowing the original inside and out.



Unblinking

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Reply #41 on: December 28, 2015, 04:30:38 PM
I don't usually post links to reprints after a story goes up, but I was super excited to see that the reprinting of "Marley and Cratchit" at Cast of Wonders is voiced by the excellent Ian Stuart:
http://www.castofwonders.org/2015/12/episode-185-marley-and-cratchit-by-david-steffen/

I have long wanted to have one of my stories narrated by Ian Stuart, I love his voice, and if I had to pick any one of my stories that he might be especially well suited for this would be the one I'd pick.



Devoted135

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Reply #42 on: December 29, 2015, 04:24:59 AM
I don't usually post links to reprints after a story goes up, but I was super excited to see that the reprinting of "Marley and Cratchit" at Cast of Wonders is voiced by the excellent Ian Stuart:
http://www.castofwonders.org/2015/12/episode-185-marley-and-cratchit-by-david-steffen/

I have long wanted to have one of my stories narrated by Ian Stuart, I love his voice, and if I had to pick any one of my stories that he might be especially well suited for this would be the one I'd pick.


Nice! It's getting very close to the top of my listening queue :)