Author Topic: Pseudopod 485: Softly into the Morning  (Read 2911 times)

Bdoomed

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on: April 10, 2016, 05:24:11 PM
Pseudopod 485: Softly into the Morning

by Liz Colter.

Your guest host this week is S. B. Divya the new Assistant Editor of Escape Pod.

Softly into the Morning is a Pseudopod Original. The title and the story were inspired by Sarah McLachlan’s song “Answer.” The line “Cast me gently into morning, for the night has been unkind” struck her as especially powerful. Being a speculative fiction writer, it inspired thoughts of what might constitute a truly “unkind” night and what the morning might bring. From there, the story took its own twists and turns as she wrote it.

Liz Colter lives in rural Colorado and spends her time off with her husband, dogs, horses and writing. She is a winner of the Writers of the Future contest and has also had stories published in places like Galaxy’s Edge Magazine, Urban Fantasy Magazine, as well as a story “Penance” here in Pseudopod. In longer works she has three completed fantasy novels. A full list of her publications and news of her writing can be found at lizcolter.com and you can check out some of her other stories as well as ones by S. B. Divya in the free ebook Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors.

Your narrator is Devin McLaughlin. Devin is a man from South-western Ontario who has a harder-than-normal time of writing about himself from the third-person perspective. This seemingly simple task utterly baffles him. Also, he sometimes narrates things. Devin has a few narrations upcoming on the podcast Tales to Terrify. Should you be interested, you can follow his narration work by carefully peering into his bedroom window at night. Devin just asks that you please keep it down, as people inside are trying to sleep.



The shimmering glow of Sol appeared at the edge of Mercury. Jack watched the growing crescent of fiery gold from the best seat in the house, the center console of the large forward window. The privilege had been coincidental, the consequence of a flight engineer needing less space for screens than the captain or navigator.

The window tinting wasn’t keeping pace with the increasing light and Jack’s eyes watered from the intensely focused brightness. Still, he couldn’t turn away from that life-giving light amidst all this vast darkness. Dawn had always affected Jack. Even at home in the Florida Keys he never failed to be up in time to see the sunrise. And today he was closer to the sun than any human in history.

“Time to earn our pay,” Wainwright said. The captain had been standing at Jack’s left to watch the spectacle, but tugged himself now into his chair and snapped his harness into place. A muscle twitching below one eye was the only telltale that the unflappable Edward Wainwright was as tense as his crew.

Earning their pay was the least of their worries, Jack knew; if the sails didn’t deploy, it was doubtful any of them would live to see Earth again.





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?


Unblinking

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Reply #1 on: April 12, 2016, 01:30:17 PM
Quite good.  I'm not sure I have a solid opinion about what actually happened, well played ambiguity.  Psychosis is probably the most likely explanation, but at least for part of the story the convergence of all the freak accidental deaths, not only on the ship but in their personal associations, made me wonder if something sinister was at play.



Frank Evans

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Reply #2 on: April 13, 2016, 01:12:20 PM
Full disclosure, two of my favourite movies of all time are Event Horizon and Sunshine. Anything that touches on similar settings/ideas is probably something I'm going to love. Softly into the Morning definitely qualifies. I really enjoyed the story and the narration.



lcolt1

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Reply #3 on: April 14, 2016, 06:35:40 PM
Thanks for the comments and glad you both enjoyed the story!

Unblinking - The ambiguity was intentional and it's nice to hear it was "well played." I have my own theories about what was occurring out there, but once it goes out into the world, it becomes the reader's story to interpret and decipher their own conclusions.

Frank - I, too, loved the movie Sunshine, and picked up the technical detail there of making sure Karen rolled the ship away from the sun for repairs.  :)



TrishEM

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Reply #4 on: April 19, 2016, 06:00:48 AM
This story worked really well at building and maintaining a high level of tension. I also appreciated the ambiguity; works especially well in this SF setting.



Moritz

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Reply #5 on: April 24, 2016, 03:33:18 PM
Full disclosure, two of my favourite movies of all time are Event Horizon and Sunshine. Anything that touches on similar settings/ideas is probably something I'm going to love. Softly into the Morning definitely qualifies. I really enjoyed the story and the narration.

Same here. In some points, the story was almost too close to these two movies, but never mind, I love me some space horror. There's just too little of it out there.



Fenrix

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Reply #6 on: April 28, 2016, 01:31:26 AM
One of the things I really enjoyed about this story was how I could imagine everyone here as the B-Cast on an episode of Doctor Who - the ones who horrific things happen to in order to make an episode. My favorite Who episodes have always been the horror stories.

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