Escape Artists

PseudoPod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Bdoomed on July 29, 2017, 07:34:51 PM

Title: PseudoPod 553: Fade to Gold
Post by: Bdoomed on July 29, 2017, 07:34:51 PM
PseudoPod 553: Fade to Gold (http://pseudopod.org/2017/07/28/pseudopod-553-fade-to-gold/)

by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (http://beekian.wordpress.com/).

“Fade to Gold” was first published in End of the Road, edited by Jonathan Oliver (Solaris Books, 2013).

BENJANUN SRIDUANGKAEW (http://beekian.wordpress.com/) writes love letters to the future and beautiful bugs. Her fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Clarkesworld and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others. She blogs at beekian.wordpress.com (http://beekian.wordpress.com/) and edits fiction for Harlot Media (http://harlot.media/).

This week’s reader – Jen Zink is a stay at home mom and podcaster with a love of all things science fiction and fantasy. You can find her on twitter @loopdilou or on The Skiffy and Fanty Show (http://www.skiffyandfanty.com (http://www.skiffyandfanty.com) or on twitter @skiffyandfanty (https://twitter.com/SkiffyandFanty)), which she produces and co-hosts. The Skiffy and Fanty Show is a weekly podcast and active blog featuring anything and everything related to the science fiction and fantasy genres, with commentary on controversial topics and news in literature, film, and interviews with authors, scientists, and filmmakers.They say the afterlife is a wheel and that is true, but I am between and so for me the way is a line. It unspools interminably into a horizon that shows the soft gold of dawn, always just a little out of reach.

Before the war this was only packed earth and grass and dirt to me; before the war I trod this path from home to capital thinking of the sweetness of rare fruits. Now that my back is to Ayutthaya the ground is sometimes baked salt where nothing grows and sometimes wet mud bubbling with the voices of the dead. Inside my arteries there is blood which throbs and pumps, and my belly growls at emptiness as might a bad-tempered dog. But it is difficult to be sure, after so much soldiering, that one is still alive. It is difficult to be certain this is not all a fever dream.[/i]


(http://pseudopod.org/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/audio_mp3_button.png)
Listen to this week's Pseudopod. (http://traffic.libsyn.com/pseudopod/Pseudo553_FadeToGold.mp3)
Title: Re: PseudoPod 553: Fade to Gold
Post by: JohnCombo on August 08, 2017, 06:16:05 PM
I want to read more about the monster / demon depicted in this story. Can someone spell it for me?
Title: Re: PseudoPod 553: Fade to Gold
Post by: Metrophor on August 09, 2017, 01:42:44 AM
She's a krasue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasue)!
I have to say it was a real treat to hear about a relatively little-known monster in the west. (I have more to say about the story in general, but it'll take me a while to gather my thoughts.)
Title: Re: PseudoPod 553: Fade to Gold
Post by: JohnCombo on August 09, 2017, 11:20:57 AM
Much appreciated, Metrophor.
Title: Re: PseudoPod 553: Fade to Gold
Post by: Katzentatzen on August 10, 2017, 04:34:12 AM
This was unexpectedly tragic. I definitely felt the gender role horror.
Title: Re: PseudoPod 553: Fade to Gold
Post by: Ichneumon on November 25, 2017, 10:15:26 PM
This was a very interesting and well written story, in my opinion. Both the soldier and the "widow" were the victim and the monster, and both at the hands of society and each other. It was complicated, with many perspectives to consider. It was a love story and a ghost story, in a tragic but richly imagined world.