Pseudopod 498: The Only Ending We Haveby
Kim Newman.
“The Only Ending We Have” was first printed in
Psycho-Mania! in October 2013, edited by Stephen Jones, then in a
Year’s Best edited by Ellen Datlow. Have a biscuit (US: cookie) every time you clock a reference to an Alfred Hitchcock title.
Kim Newman is a novelist, critic and broadcaster. His fiction includes the
Anno Dracula series,
Life’s Lottery, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles and
An English Ghost Story; his non-fiction includes
Nightmare Movies and BFI Classics studies of
Cat People, Doctor Who and
Quatermass and the Pit. He co-wrote the comic miniseries
Witchfinder: Mysteries of Unland and the plays
The Hallowe’en Sessions and
The Ghost Train Doesn’t Stop Here Any More. He is a contributing editor to
Sight & Sound and
Empire magazines. His latest novel is
The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School. He is on Twitter as
@AnnoDracula.
Your narrator –
Christiana Ellis is an award-winning writer and podcaster, currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her podcast novel,
Nina Kimberly the Merciless was both an inaugural nominee for the 2006
Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction: Long Form, as well as a finalist for a 2006
Podcast Peer Award.
Nina Kimberly the Merciless is available in print from
Dragon Moon Press. Christiana is also the writer, producer and star of
Space Casey, a 10-part audiodrama miniseries which won the
Gold Mark Time Award for Best Science Fiction Audio Production by the American Society for Science Fiction Audio and the 2008
Parsec Award for Best Science Fiction Audio Drama. In between major projects, Christiana is also the creator and talent of many other podcast productions including
Talking About Survivor;
Hey, Want to Watch a Movie? and
Christiana’s Shallow Thoughts.
“The windshield wipers squeaked … like shrilling fiddles, scraped nerves, the ring of an unanswered phone. Another reason to trade in her ‘57 Ford Custom. For 1960, she’d like something with fins. Not that she could afford next year’s showroom model.
Unless Hitch coughed up the ransom.
For the thing it was all about. The mcguffin.
The thing the audience doesn’t care about, but the characters do.
‘Good eeeev-ning,’ Hitch said, every goddamn morning … like in his TV show with that nursery/graveyard tune burbling in the background. ‘Funeral March of the Marionettes’. Dump-da- dumpity-dump- da-dump…”
Listen to this week's Pseudopod.