PodCastle Flash 23: Bury the Dead

[Heradel]

PodCastle Flash 23: Bury the Dead

By Ann Leckie
Read by Tina Connolly

It’s the first Thanksgiving since Grandpa died.

Rated PG. Contains turkey, cranberry, and a side of zombies.

This week’s PodCastle flash is coming before the PodCastle feature. This week’s feature was unfortunately delayed, and will be coming later this week. In the meantime, please enjoy this savory spoonful celebrating American Thanksgiving.

[stePH]

This week’s PodCastle flash is coming before the PodCastle feature. This week’s feature was unfortunately delayed, and will be coming later this week. In the meantime, please enjoy this savory spoonful celebrating American Thanksgiving.

Didn't these used to be called "miniatures"?  When did they start being designated "flash" like on the other two EAcasts?

[Raving_Lunatic]

This is the first episode where these have been referred to as flash rather than minature.

[Opabinia]

It was probably because I was entering the blog entries for Escape Pod's flash this week before I went in to do Bury the Dead.

[eytanz]

Flash vs. Miniature issue aside, I really enjoyed this story. I thought Ann did a masterful job of conveying character and family background with very little direct exposition.

[Zathras]

Meh.  I'm sure other people enjoyed this, but I had no connection to it.

[Ocicat]

Sorry, didn't work for me.  Just too many characters introduced too fast and since it was a flash piece I knew there wouldn't be time to do anything with them anyway.  And I spent way too much effort trying to figure out who the narrator was (or wait, was it just omniscient?).  So just an okay slice of life with some amusing bits (like the olives) but no characters to hang it on.

Oh ya, and there was a zombie.  But that didn't seem to matter.  And maybe it not mattering was the point... but meh.

[stePH]

So what about this story made it fantasy?  My grandparents have been dead ten years and we still have them over every Thanksgiving.

    

[Hatton]

Wait, I thought we were done with Halloween.

[MacArthurBug]

+1 on hattons comment. Zombies = horror = Psudopod or Halloween. Nothing really magical in the Zombie thing- also I didn't really like the story, not over here.  I expect certain things, even from PC's minis - this didn't fit any of them. But- that's just me, and I'll probably like the next one.

[eytanz]

+1 on hattons comment. Zombies = horror = Psudopod or Halloween. Nothing really magical in the Zombie thing- also I didn't really like the story, not over here.  I expect certain things, even from PC's minis - this didn't fit any of them. But- that's just me, and I'll probably like the next one.

Speaking as someone who hates zombie horror stories, I don't see how you could equate any single story with a walking dead body in it to horror. Yes, it's a reanimated dead guy, and it shambles. But zombie horror is about violent conflict between the living and the dead, not about a battle of wills between the families of a generation.

I'm not saying you have to like this story, but saying "if it has a zombie in it, it's horror" is just as narrow minded as saying "if it's fantasy, it must have elves and dwarves in it". You can't reduce genre to a set of archtypes, nor can you assume that just because an archtype is commonly associated with one genre, it cannot show up in another.

[MacArthurBug]

e- ok you've got me there. I was over simplifying.

I've only seen one truly non-horrific treatment of zombies and even it had it's horrorific moments (Fido). So, narrow minded I may be, zombies get shuffled over into horror for me.Zombies are a reference to our consistant fear of death, and what could happen afterwards in most tellings I've found.  This story seemed WRONG for Podcastle. The idea of grandpa dead in the same room as food (again maybe this applies just to me) is gross and horrific. Nothing magical or fantastic in Thanksgiving with the dead. 

[Listener]

I didn't like it. The reading was fine, but the story was too omniscient. We needed to stay on one viewpoint, not zoom around the room like a fly with a POV. That weakened the story.

The concept was fine. In fact, I think it could've been a strong story about empowerment. But it was too disjointed.

[Hatton]

The idea of grandpa dead in the same room as food (again maybe this applies just to me) is gross and horrific. Nothing magical or fantastic in Thanksgiving with the dead. 

Even if a zombie doesn't eat your brains, it doesn't mean that it doesn't want to!

Seriously though, the reason I said what I did was because of the presence of the zombie and the rather graphic description.

[Anarkey]

I liked this one; it made me laugh then had some thematic stuff to think about underneath.  Though there was a million characters, I thought they were pulled together pretty deftly...just a few telling details and done.  I particularly liked the relationship between the cousins.  It took me forever to figure out that grandpa was her father...I kept wondering whether he was her dead husband or her grandfather or what...maybe that's a POV issue?  Or a late information delivery issue.  Anyway, that aside, I really enjoyed it and I thought it had something meaningful to say about families, which makes it appropriate for Thanksgiving.

I'm agnostic on the zombie/horror issue, as I usually am in issues of genre.  I liked the choice to put the dead man's body physically there instead of making his presence a more traditional haunting.  We can't forget him, he's STANDING right there. 

[LadyIndigo]

I really want to like this one, but I'm not sure I understand it.  The story seemed to touch most on the teenager and young girl, who happened to be my favorites anyway, but why them?  A metaphor about the old replaced by the new?  Is that what takes the grandfather from the house?  The impression I came away with was 'a son brings the father over, but no one else really liked him and everyone else has moved on, the end.'  Which leaves the son being pushed to the sidelines to deal with his grief alone, a big omission for me.

[Unblinking]

This one didn't do much for me.
-too many characters introduced in too little time.  Having dozen characters named in a story that's as many minutes is simply too many.
-The POV character wasn't clear at all
-I don't mind when a story carries a message, but I don't like it when a message carries a story.  If you ignore the message the story makes no sense.  Who reanimated the body?  There's a reference to the men wiring it's mouth shut, but why do they reanimate and why do they wire the mouth shut?  Why is this is not a big deal to anyone other than general annoyance at having Grandpa back at the table?
-In the end NOTHING happened.  It certainly has conflict, considering not everybody wants Gramps there.  But nothing happens, they all just sit around and have a Thanksgiving dinner, the kids play, the grownups have their in-fights, and that's it.  It was nothing different than a regular Thanksgiving except the incidental dead guy who didn't really matter.