Author Topic: PseudoPod 556: Evitative  (Read 3661 times)

Bdoomed

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on: August 20, 2017, 03:35:09 AM
PseudoPod 556: Evitative

by B.C. Edwards.

“Evitative” is the titular and ultimate story of The Aversive Clause, the collection of stories that also included, ‘Sweetness,’ which ran as Pseudopod episode 445.

B.C. EDWARDS is the author of two books,The Aversive Clause and From The Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes. He has written for Mathematics Magazine, Hobart, The New York Times, and others. His debut story collection, which this is the titular story of, was awarded the Hudson Prize for fiction and received a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation of the Arts. He attended the graduate writing program at The New School in New York and lives in Brooklyn with his husband.

His website bce.nyc totally exists, but that’s really all that should be said about it. It’s in desperate need of a redo.

Says Edwards: “I’ve been listening to audial fiction for longer than I’ve been listening to
music. I ‘read’ Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island, the works of Issac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, and countless others in this form starting around four and continuing onto today. My work is always written with the intention of being read aloud. So it’s really something to have a pair of stories in your archive. Thanks for keeping both horror and the spoken word going strong at the same time.”

This week’s reader – Dani Daly – is one of the assistant editors of Cast of Wonders, and narrating is just one of the things she loves to do. She’s a retired roller derby player and current hobbyist soap maker, for instance. She rants on twitter as @danooli_dani, if that’s your thing. Or you can visit the EA forums. She loves it there.



Shawn Garrett composed the soundbed for this episode, which he dedicates to master avant-garde musicians/field recorders Annea Lockwood & Chris Watson. A list of links to sounds used from Freesound.org appears at the bottom of this post.



Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, gamers, and storytellers of all kinds!



Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.



Once the oceans came up and covered the streets over it was like they weren’t ever there. No streets or dead Camaros or boys that abandon you when things get flooded and break down. There were just the tall trees with the high branches and water everywhere and the smudge of mountains I can see off on the horizon if I climb all the way to the top of the tree we use for looking at things. The water filled in all the gaps and erased our telemarketing jobs and our high-heels and the clubs we wore them to. But we’re safe up here, on the little platform Jo-Jo built in the trees. He found me wandering in the muck, cold and alone and his was the first face that I’d seen in forever that didn’t look scared or desperate or tired. The first one since the water and the bombs and all who didn’t try to take one more thing from me, didn’t try to steal me away or trick me into anything. Jo-Jo just smiled and his eyes smiled too and even though he’d lost his words already I knew he meant well. And he showed me how to climb the trees and get up to his platform where there’s nothing to do but climb around, eat the berries and the appleish things that dangle off the branches like Christmas ornaments and screw all afternoon long and laze about watching the world disappear. Jo-Jo catches the birds that build their nests and try to eat our fruit, and then we eat the birds too. That’s about all we do.

That’s about all the kid in my belly will do, too. But the kid won’t know any different. It won’t think there was ever something other than the trees and the muck and the water and the men who come by every now and again in their canoes and their ugly paddles and their terrible broken whispers.

You can’t go down there; those men will eat you.




SOUNDBED SOURCES
48558__crk365__birds-23dec07-spesh
278213__fundamental-harmonics__ban-doi-insects-night-time-02
320173__arnaud-coutancier__night-insects
65288__acclivity__cicadasplus



Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

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John smith

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Reply #1 on: August 30, 2017, 01:39:39 PM
This post has been found in violation of our One Rule and has been removed.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2017, 09:55:38 PM by Bdoomed »



Katzentatzen

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Reply #2 on: August 30, 2017, 06:02:48 PM
I really liked this story, utter hopelessness of being caught between a rock and a hard place is good existential horror. Or in this case, caught between cannibals and insanity.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2017, 08:31:12 PM by Katzentatzen »

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Bdoomed

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Reply #3 on: August 30, 2017, 10:00:26 PM
John smith, feel free to try that comment again. This time, please follow our One Rule. You do not have to like the story, you do not have to be "nice", as you put it, but you DO have to be civil and respectful towards the author and towards fellow forumites.

Your comment has critical merit and you are welcome to express it. You are not, however, welcome to berate and disrespect the author.

You are also free to write your own story that pushes back against the themes you disagree with in this story and submit it for our consideration.

Thank you. Tune in next week for different words in a different order.

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Ichneumon

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Reply #4 on: December 06, 2017, 05:54:04 PM
Wow, this one really fit in the horror category. Not scary, not gory, straight up horror. After hearing the explanation of the title, it fit very well. Things, which out of context would be good, were given a spin of fear in this story. Cute guy in a boat, having a baby with a partner who loves you, being saved from the cannibals: those things all sound good, but in the story they were actually horrible.