Author Topic: Pseudopod 431: Twitcher  (Read 5219 times)

Bdoomed

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on: March 28, 2015, 05:11:55 PM
Pseudopod 431: Twitcher

by David Tallerman

“Twitcher” is previously unpublished: “twitcher” is a slang term for a bird watcher – something I only discovered, serendipitously, straight after I’d finished the story under a different title.

DAVID TALLERMAN is the author of the comic fantasy novels Giant Thief, Crown Thief and Prince Thief, as well as the absurdist Steampunk graphic novel Endangered Weapon B: Mechanimal Science. David’s short science fiction, fantasy and horror has appeared in over sixty markets, including Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. He can be found online at Writing On The Moon and the Writing On The Moon blog.

Your reader – Roberto Suarez — is a proud supporter and periodic narrator for all Escape Artists productions and co-hosts “A Pod of Casts: The Game of Thrones Podcast.”. Learn more at robertosuarez.me.



“Lester turned the focus dial the barest fraction, looked wistfully at the nest one last time and lay the binoculars down. The Plummers would wait. They’d have to. The parents were healthy, the eggs
undamaged. They had plenty of food nearby, and that was more than he could say himself. They could manage on their own for a few hours.

No one knew they were there; he hadn’t told, not Margie, not anyone.
It was him and them and God, no other players at this table. So they could get by for a few hours while he sorted himself out with the few things he’d need to last the crucial coming days.”




Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

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


bounceswoosh

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Reply #1 on: March 30, 2015, 04:25:35 AM
Poor dog =/



haylien

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Reply #2 on: March 30, 2015, 07:16:00 PM
I really enjoyed this episode but I really wish there hadn't been a Walking Dead spoiler in the commentary at the end...  :( [from a UK fan who doesn't have American cable so has to wait for the DVD release!]



ediblepenguin

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Reply #3 on: April 01, 2015, 06:32:51 PM
I have a love hate relationship with stories about the zombie apocalypse. I love them, because I'm a contrarian curmudgeon who loves a dystopian world in which everything is our own damn fault for being morons. I hate them because sometimes the twelve year old level of gross stuff is just way too adolescent to be fun. This story had neither, but I still enjoyed it. There was no explanation of why everything had gone south, apart from a few subtle hints at it being our own damn fault. The "gore in the store" was particularly well written - not too much to be eye rolling, but bad enough to convey the seriousness of the end times. I had a brief episode of "oh come on!" at our main character being the last healthy creature on earth, but then I guess somebody has to be last or it isn't a zombie trope.

The ending left me a little flat, but maybe that's because I was secretly hoping he'd caught the virus from all that skull smashing and was going to pop those three little eggs right into his giggling mouth.



Rhio2k

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Reply #4 on: April 03, 2015, 10:27:44 PM
FINALLY, good, old-fashioned non-psychological horror. All these months I've been saying "just give me something with actual monsters!" We need more american horror writers. The ending was...well, odd, but this is what pseudopod USED to be in the good old days. It's seemed to me that we yanbks have different ideas of what's interesting in horror. We like to have actual monsters, killer illnesses, and horrific creatures that shouldn't exist, but do, and the protagonist has to deal with it. Stuff we'[d go to the movies to see, but in audio format. Most UK horror I've heard over the last 2-3 years is more akin to mundane stuff like the protagonist seeing a man on the stair that isn't there, and does nothing all day but stare and stare...and then one day finding that he's become that man. I welcome this episode and hope we get a whole helluva lot more like it. No offense intended to uk writers.
« Last Edit: April 03, 2015, 10:30:10 PM by Rhio2k »



Sgarre1

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Reply #5 on: April 04, 2015, 04:51:17 AM
Ahhh, the good old days....

David Tallerman is British. I'm pretty sure that "Thing In The Bucket" and "Godsmaid Clara" had monsters.

You miiiight want to skip the next couple of weeks, though...

I'm a Yank (hell, I have an ancestor buried at Gettysburg) and I guess it's true to say I do have different (many different) ideas of what's interesting in horror...



Rhio2k

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Reply #6 on: April 04, 2015, 05:21:38 PM
Ahhh, the good old days....

David Tallerman is British. I'm pretty sure that "Thing In The Bucket" and "Godsmaid Clara" had monsters.

You miiiight want to skip the next couple of weeks, though...

I'm a Yank (hell, I have an ancestor buried at Gettysburg) and I guess it's true to say I do have different (many different) ideas of what's interesting in horror...

Both of those stories were a marked shift in taste from the stories that preceded them, especially Godsmaid Clara. David is great at monster horror. LOVE that guy. Had no idea he was from the UK.



Sgarre1

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Reply #7 on: April 04, 2015, 07:13:44 PM
Quote
Both of those stories were a marked shift in taste from the stories that preceded them, especially Godsmaid Clara. David is great at monster horror. LOVE that guy. Had no idea he was from the UK.

I wasn't the one who said...
Quote
All these months I've been saying "just give me something with actual monsters!"
, "marked shifts" or not...

But to each his own. Seriously, though, no monster stories for a couple of weeks.



Chairman Goodchild

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Reply #8 on: April 13, 2015, 12:53:01 PM
In case of the zombie apocalypse, just let those endangered species go, man.  Just let'em go.

I enjoyed the story, I thought it was well-written.



Unblinking

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Reply #9 on: April 13, 2015, 09:26:59 PM
I appreciated that this story went with a different focus than other zombie stories, because I'm generally pretty tired of zombie stories--hard to find new ground to cover.  But his myopic focus didn't feel... important to me.  I didn't understand what the point of focusing on these little endangered birdies was at the end of the world.  The species is going to have to live or not without human assistance in the future.  I understand that it's important to him but I had trouble relating to that goal that the focus was lost on me, I guess.



Unblinking

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Reply #10 on: April 13, 2015, 09:32:29 PM
Also, how interesting that the title was chosen without being aware of the slang!

The same thing has actually happened to me.  I wrote a story that had a "deal with the devil" structure to it, but the "devil" character was a mad scientist rather than a fallen angel.  I named the mad scientist character Scratch who gave himself the name as slang for money, without ever realizing that "Old Scratch" is a nickname for the devil in some regions.  That blew my mind.  I'm not sure if I was subtly aware of it, or if it was just a crazy coincidence.