Author Topic: CoW Ep. 194: Staff Pick 2015 – Take A Good Look  (Read 2402 times)

danooli

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on: January 31, 2016, 07:23:24 PM
Episode 194: Staff Pick 2015 – Take A Good Look by Holly Schofield

Narrated by Stephanie Morris
Audio production by Rikki LaCoste
Originally published in Perihelion, October 2013

Every year in January, Cast of Wonders takes the month off to recharge our batteries, plan the year ahead, and highlight some of our favourite episodes. As part of joining the Escape Artists family, this year we’re pulling out all the stops. We’re running 10 staff pick episodes over the month, each one hosted by a different member of the Cast of Wonders crew.

We hope you enjoy slush reader Sally Gill’s favorite story from 2015, Take A Good Look by Holly Schofield and narrated by Stephanie Morris. The story originally aired August 16, 2015 as Episode 174.

Megan watched with dull eyes as Alan’s tendrils undulated above his head, making odd silhouettes on the garage wall. He grew more excited, his beige skin turned mauve as he finished his breakfast beer.

Click here to listen to Episode 194
Click here to read the text of the story

Original Episode 174 notes:
Holly Schofield’s stories have appeared in dozens of publications including Lightspeed, Crossed Genres, Tesseracts and here at Cast of Wonders. She travels through time at the rate of one second per second, oscillating between the alternate realities of a prairie farmhouse and her remote writing cabin in the wilds of North America. For more of her work (including free stories!) and a list of forthcoming publications, see her website.

Your narrator for the story is Stephanie Morris. Stephanie is a professional student, a librarian-in-training, a voracious biblio- and audiophile, and an occasional writer of short stories. She has narrated fiction for Pseudopod, Podcastle, and Cast of Wonders.

Tags:  aliens, biomorphs, Cast of Wonders, disease, geoglyphs, grief, Holly Schofield, parents, Rikki LaCoste, Science Fiction, Staff Pick, Stephanie Morris, wilderness, Young Adult fiction



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Reply #1 on: February 01, 2016, 04:09:01 PM
Good story.  I'm glad the father got to have the knowledge he had sought so long in the end, and had someone to hold his hand as he left this world behind.



Devoted135

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Reply #2 on: February 22, 2016, 03:54:37 AM
Very poignant ending, I actually wonder if her father actually realized he had finally met an alien. The story definitely went out of its way to make the point that aliens (if they were to exist) would not necessarily live up to the lofty ideals that her father expected of them. It's an interesting thought, but I was left wanting a bit more to hang my hat on when it came to Alan's character.