Author Topic: CoW Ep. 200: Running on Two Legs  (Read 4005 times)

danooli

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on: March 08, 2016, 12:32:12 PM
Episode 200: Running on Two Legs by Eugie Foster

• Narrated by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
• Audio production by Jeremy Carter
• Originally published in The 3rd Alternative, Issue #40 (2004)

Eugie Foster was an American short story writer, columnist, and editor. Her stories have been published in a number of magazines and book anthologies, including Fantasy Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, InterGalactic Medicine Show, and Interzone. Her collections of short stories include Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, published in 2009.

After receiving her master’s degree in psychology, she retired from academia to pen flights of fancy. She also edited legislation for the Georgia General Assembly, which from time to time she suspected were another venture into flights of fancy. She was also a director for Dragon*Con and edited their onsite newsletter, the Daily Dragon.

Eugie won the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novelette for Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast. She’s also been a finalist for the Hugo, Washington Science Fiction Association Small Press, and British Science Fiction Association awards.

Eugie died at Emory University Hospital on September 27, 2014 from respiratory failure, a complication of treatments for Large B-Cell Lymphoma. The day Foster died, Daily Science Fiction published her last short story, nominated for the Nebula award, When it Ends, He Catches Her. The story ran on PseudoPod, and includes the Escape Artists’ tribute to this prolific and diverse author, and personal friend of many EA staff.

Eugie is another proud member of the Hat Trick club – she both narrated and published stories in all three Escape Artists’ podcasts. I’d like to think that running her story here, as our 200th episode, helps her maintain that record.

Her website and wiki pages detail the full range of her work.

‘Running on Two Legs’ is narrated by Podcastle’s assistant editor Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali. Khaalidah lives in Houston, Texas with her husband of twenty-five years and three children. By day she works as a breast oncology nurse. At all other times she juggles, none too successfully, writing, reading, gaming and gardening.

She has a self-published novel entitled An Unproductive Woman, has published at EscapePod and has a story upcoming in the An Alphabet of Embers anthology, STRAEON 3, and Diabolical Plots.

As Assistant Editor at PodCastle, she’s on a mission to encourage more women to submit SFF stories. Of her alter ego, K from the planet Vega, it is rumored that she owns a time machine and knows the secret to immortality. You can catch her posts at her website and you can follow her on Twitter.

My mother used to tell stories of how I talked to animals when I was a little girl. And then she’d laugh when she described how indignant I got because no one believed they talked back.
I don’t remember much of that period of my life. There were a lot of hospitals—white rooms, other pale children next to me, all of us with clear IV tubes taped to our parchment paper skin—and doctors, smiling men with haunted eyes that they tried so hard to keep us from seeing. That’s mostly what I remember.


Click here to listen to Episode 200
Click here to read the text pf the story

Tags: acceptance, cancer, Cast of Wonders, death, empathy, Eugie Foster, family, Fantasy, grief, illness, Jeremy Carter, Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali, loss, Modern Fantasy, talking animals, treatment, Young Adult fiction



Fenrix

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Reply #1 on: March 08, 2016, 01:57:19 PM
So many feels

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


danooli

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Reply #2 on: March 08, 2016, 02:43:25 PM
I am sitting at my desk at work, sobbing. That was beautiful, sad, hopeful, fantastic yet realistic in a strange way...

Absolutely fitting for a landmark episode.

I loved it, and...I am so mad at cancer. :-(





Kaa

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Reply #3 on: March 09, 2016, 05:53:24 PM
Ever tried to drive in rush-hour Atlanta traffic through a haze of tears?

Yeah, well. Dammit.

If this story were a painting, I would frame it and hang it in a place of honor over my fireplace.

I invent imaginary people and make them have conversations in my head. I also write.

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Devoted135

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Reply #4 on: March 11, 2016, 09:06:47 PM
I got halfway through while cooking one evening and had to turn it off until the next morning due to a fundamental incompatibility between tears and knives. I love Eugie Foster's writing, and this was a piece of perfection. Thank you for running it here.



Fenrix

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Reply #5 on: March 11, 2016, 09:19:07 PM
I went to a memorial at Dragon*Con last year for Eugie and her widower said this was her favorite story.

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


Tango Alpha Delta

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Reply #6 on: March 12, 2016, 06:25:17 PM
Echo on tears in (Baltimore) traffic. (Probably just the first of the pollen, right?)

But, wow - Khaalidah nailed those little critter voices!

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grumpywitch

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Reply #7 on: March 16, 2016, 08:08:53 PM
I followed Eugie's blog and enjoyed her stories.  I am listening to podcasts at work. Just running through my list. I was not expecting to get run over by the feels truck.

Thank you for this beautiful story.



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Reply #8 on: March 18, 2016, 05:24:48 PM
Oof.  This one was both lovely and painful.  Damn.  So good.  I don't even have my usual ramble about things because the story did everything so perfectly I just gesture at it instead.

One thing to note that I don't think was mentioned in the episode is that Eugie herself had a pet skunk (presumably the name mentioned in the footnote of the story?).  Norm Sherman had mentioned this in a Drabblecast episode a while back (in part because they were friends and a point in common was that he too has had a pet skunk).