My last night of childhood began with a visit home. T’Gatoi’s sister had given us two sterile eggs. T’Gatoi gave one to my mother, brother, and sisters. She insisted that I eat the other one alone. It didn’t matter. There was still enough to leave everyone feeling good. Almost everyone. My mother wouldn’t take any. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It is July 31, your birthday, and I can’t reach you. I’ve been trying all day, but the cell networks are down, the internet is down. I even tried a pay phone–there are two left in town that I know of, and I collected all of my change and walked to the 76 in the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The week we present to you Flying On My Hatred of My Neighbor’s Dog by Shaenon Garrity. Have you ever been so exasperated that you could feel the energy rippling off of you? Just how far could the power of that hate carry you? Could it fuel your car? How about a rocket ship? […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the back of the shop I scrubbed three large cauldrons clean, stripping the seasoning from them because Master Aloz insisted on it once the trade caravans stopped coming at the end of summer. Tallow, he called me, on account of my paleness. I used a brush made of iron bristles instead of horse hair, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Over the years, Tikka’s job as a Minor Propagandist for the planet Porcelain’s Bureau of Tourism had shaped her way of thinking. She dealt primarily in quintets of attractions, lists of five distributed by the Bureau: Five Major China Factories Where the Population of Porcelain Can Be Seen Being Created; Five Views of Porcelain’s Clay […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1. A poisonous snake could bite you, and you could die. 2. You could prick your finger on a previously undiscovered poisonous cactus. 3. The cactus isn’t poisonous, and neither is the snake, but the snake’s venom is a powerful anti-coagulant. You could bleed to death from the place you were bitten and/or pricked. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The air conditioning only worked when the speedometer crept past 70 MPH which the lumbering GMC van (on loan from a friend of a friend who took pity on the family and their situation) rarely did. November in the South is hardly hot, but thirteen hours in any vehicle with nearly a half dozen relatives […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The bar is plenty kitschy: goofy statues made from coconuts everywhere and strings of shell beads hanging from the ceiling. I smile when I see a coconut sporting a pair of mouse ears made from scallop shells. Tourists from all over the world are sitting around, ordering drinks non-stop because the sun is so hot […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
One of the reasons Joshua loved Lydia as much as he did was all the secret rituals they’d devised. Their shared jokes were treasured secrets, never to be shared with the other kids at high school; some days, the way Lydia could send Joshua into high titters with a raise of her pierced eyebrow was […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
There was thunder in the air on the night I went to the deserted mansion atop Tempest Mountain to find the lurking fear. I was not alone, for foolhardiness was not then mixed with that love of the grotesque and the terrible which has made my career a series of quests for strange horrors in […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It has been two hundred days since the door to my study began screaming. I was nodding over a volume of Edwin Corang’s collected prose when I first felt it; a curious ripple that moved through the room, standing my hair on edge, followed by the sensation of coffee spilling into my lap as the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
He was not alone. There was nothing to indicate the fact but the white hand of the tiny gauge on the board before him. The control room was empty but for himself; there was no sound other than the murmur of the drives — but the white hand had moved. It had been on zero […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cat’s tail flicked impatiently back and forth across Elle’s face. She resisted the urge to brush it away. Mud tugged at her feet, and putrid water soaked through her shoes. She ducked beneath a low hanging branch dripping with old man’s beard. It trailed over her shoulders, and evidently Cat, who dug his claws into […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Audiences have so little respect, these days. Admittedly, my little travelling show isn’t what it once was. We’ve been on the road for a long, long time. But I like to think that for the discerning customer, we still provide value for money. An experience you can’t get from the computer screen–the modern freakshow–despite all […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Father Leggett stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the three narrow stories of gray brick that was 207 East Charlton Street. Compared to the other edifices on Lafayette Square—the Colonial Dames fountain, the Low house, the Turner mansion, the cathedral of course—this house was decidedly ordinary, a reminder that even Savannah had buildings […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Samuel sat on the balcony, enjoying the fading light of day. When the ventilator pushed air into his lungs, he savored the salt brine from the sea. He pretended that he had control over breath, but it was much a fantasy as adjusting his wheelchair…. Locked In by Mary Robinette Kowal […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Please, mister, could I have a cracker for my oontatherium?” Not exactly the words you would expect at an instant when history changes course and the universe can never again be what it was. The die is cast; In this sign conquer; It is not fit that you should sit here any longer; We hold […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Old Tom was a very tall man. He was so tall he didn’t even have a nickname for it. Ned Black, who was at least a head shorter, had been ‘Tower Block’ since the sixth grade, and Jack, the owner of the Hog’s Head Bar, had a sign up over the door saying ‘Mind Your […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Through the dim forest came Liane the Wayfarer, passing along the shadowed glades with a prancing light-footed gait. He whistled, he caroled, he was plainly in high spirits. Around his finger he twirled a bit of wrought bronze—a circlet graved with angular crabbed characters, now stained black. By excellent chance he had found it, banded […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Pabstus Tack, Pabstus Sludge, Pabstus! Pabstus! Of him we sing. We sing his praises, it seems to me, for want of anything better to do. Pabstus Tack sits on his great golden throne, belching out light, a blinding light as gorgeous as it is uncanny. And yet it is an impure light, that is certain, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
You’ve been one-legged since the lasso trap. Your personal ad says “Kids: undecided” even though you desperately want two. When the maître d’ shows you to your blind date’s table, you are pleased with her prominent forehead and symmetric face. She has potential. Before you can sit, her eyes drift to where your missing leg […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Gardner was drowning, and strangers were laying hands on the bones of my forebears. I felt obligated to see that liberties weren’t taken with my grandmother, my great-grandmother, and other good, God-fearing ladies, so I put the business on auto pilot and made the drive as if on auto pilot myself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Between 1347 and 1450 AD, bubonic plague overran Europe, killing some 75 million people. The plague, dubbed the Black Death because of the black pustules that erupted on the skin of the afflicted, was caused by a bacterium now known as Yersinia pestis. The Europeans of the day, lacking access to microscopes or knowledge of […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The alien parked its car across the street from the shop and came and sat down in the waiting room. The mechanic must have seen this happen, peripherally. But he was busy settling the bill with a smartly dressed middle-aged woman, to whom he’d taken an irrational dislike. Those who deal with Joe Punter, day […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Town Council meeting was split down the middle — Hullabaloo colonists on the one side and Fenella Elane Tyne on the other. Jerram stood in the back and admired the way Fenella strove to convince the tired farmers. Pacing around the podium, she brought to bear the power of unmatched intelligence, impeccable honesty, and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
After the attack, my team brought me straight to the med lab at base camp. They must have commed ahead, because as soon as the stretcher went through the door seals, Dr. Traynor was yelling orders… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Every few day-cycles, it receives hate-scented lace in anonymous packages. It opens the bland plastic envelope to pull one out, holding the delicate fragment between two forelimbs. Contemplating it before folding it again to put away in a drawer. Four drawers filled so far; the fifth is halfway there. “Traitor,” say some of the smells, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This episode of the Drabblecast brings you a very special presentation of “The Electric Ant” by the one and only Philip K. Dick! Garson Poole wakes up after a flying-car-crash to find that he is missing a hand. He then finds out that he is an ‘electric ant’ – an “organic” robot. He further finds […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It was quite a party. The women wore gowns. The men wore tuxedos. Anthony Blair wore power armor. Armor that was sleek and black and polished, and made not a whisper as Blair paced the lawn behind his mansion, passing a word here or there with one of his guests. In those days the most […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We listen to the spidersong. The spiders are far away, just at the edge of our senses, whispering a haunting and beautiful melody into our minds. The grown-ups are oblivious, as always. They are having several conversations at once around the campfire, laughing and gossiping. It’s a nuisance because we can’t enjoy the spidersong nearly […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
