•  Feature:  Turning Point  by  Poul Anderson
  •  Drabble:  The First Wish  by  Phineas QB
  •  Genre:  Drama  Sci-Fi

Saturday, June 1st, 2013

Cover for Drabblecast episode 284, Turning Point, by Neil GoogePlease, 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 these truths to be self-evident; The Italian navigator has landed in the New World; Dear God, the thing works!–no man with any imagination can recall those, or others like them, and not have a coldness run along his spine. But as for what little Mierna first said to us, on that island half a thousand light-years from home . . .

Play

Episode Art:  Neil Googe

Twabble:  “A mugger stops 2 guys for money. As they both take out cash, one guy hands the other a bill & says, "Here's that 20 I owe you!" ”  by  Algernon Sydney is Dead

Tagged ,


  •  Feature:  The Country Doctor  by  Steve Utley
  •  Genre:  Drama  Mystery  Strange

Thursday, April 11th, 2013

Cover for Drabblecast episode 279, The Country Doctor, by Roo VandegriftGardner 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.

Play
Ghost Seas by Steven Utley
Episode Art:  Roo Vandegrift
Poem:  Taunting the Sea  by  Steven Utley

Twabble:  “We stood outside the news station in protest against miscommunication. I still don't think our message got through... ”  by  Scarecrow

Tagged , ,



Sunday, April 7th, 2013

Cover for Drabblecast episode 278, The End of the World as We Know It, by Adam S. DoyleBetween 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 disease vectors, attributed their misfortune to an angry God. Flagellants roamed the land, hoping to appease His wrath. “They died by the hundreds, both day and night,” Agnolo di Tura tells us. “I buried my five children with my own hands . . . so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.”

Today, the population of Europe is about 729 million…

Play
Alex Rudy/DJ Al-X's radio station
Episode Art:  Adam S. Doyle
Read by:  Alex Rudy

Twabble:  “The End of the World wasn't all bad… I elected myself President yesterday & will be the 1st Pope to win an Academy Award. ”  by  Astroguyz

Tagged , ,


  •  Feature:  Amid the Words of War  by  Cat Rambo
  •  Drabble:  Take Me To Your Leader  by  Eric Marsh
  •  Genre:  Drama  Sci-Fi

Friday, March 8th, 2013
Warning:  Some references to sex

Cover for Drabblecast episode 274, Amid the Words of War, by Alyssa SuzumuraEvery 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, rotting fruit and acid. “Betrayer. Turncoat. One who eats their own young.” Others are simply soaked in emotion: hate and anger, and underneath the odor of fear. It lets the thoughts, the smells, the tastes fill it, set its own thoughts in motion. Then it goes downstairs and sits with the other whores, who make room uneasily for it.

Play

Episode Art:  Alyssa Suzumura

Twabble:  “She prayed, "On Earth as it is in Heaven." Sure enough, the Earth was soon a cold, airless void, full of lethal radiation. ”  by  Algernon Sydney is Dead

Tagged , , , ,


  •  Feature:  I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee  by  Christopher Reynaga
  •  Drabble:  The Sea Gods  by  Lawrence Simon
  •  Genre:  Drama  Horror

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Cover for Drabblecast episode 268, I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee, by Steve Santiago Whatever you do, don’t call me Ishmael.

Don’t call me anything at all. Give me my pint of piss-poor ale and leave me be in this yellowed corner where men relieve themselves when they are too lazy to make three extra stumbling steps to the streets of Nantucket. I am done. Finished. Come to this hole to die—and if you insist on speaking to me, I’ll find a deeper hole than this dying excuse of a whaling town can offer…

Play
Escapepod, The Dribblecast, Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Norm's CD
Episode Art:  Steve Santiago
Read by:  Graeme Dunlop

Twabble:  “The cabin attendant said that Infant Buoyancy Devices Were Available. In the water, four babies kept me nicely afloat. ”  by  HR Duff and Stuff

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,



Sunday, December 30th, 2012

Cover for Drabblecast B-Sides episode 19, How the Moon Got Its Cousin, by Brian WalkerOnce upon a time, O my Best Beloved, when the world was one world with one moon and the stars did scintillate and sparkle in the sky, astronomers discovered a Beast of a Meteor flying through the vast black toward the Sun.

The scientists of the world realized that the Beast, in a veraciously voracious manner, would devour the hot yellow sun, and they did talk and squawk and look through long telescopes to watchwhat that Beast was doing. They crunched their magic numbers and they scribbled their special notes, and they filled their study rooms with piles of scritch-scratch paper…

Originally appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine
Episode Art:  Brian Walker

Tagged ,


  •  Feature:  Pop Quiz  by  Curtis James McConnell
  •  Drabble:  A Good Magician  by  Lawrence Simon
  •  Genre:  Drama  Sci-Fi

Thursday, December 6th, 2012
Warning:  Explicit Language

Cover for Drabblecast episode 265, Pop Quiz, by David Flett

“By the Earth-Stypei Treaty of The Twenty-third Local Year of Our Interaction, as amended, suspected Stypean sympathizers may be detained by duly empowered authorities only so long as the unbreachable sovereignty of the Stypean body-host is not violated, and only for the purpose of deportation upon confirmation of Stypean inhabitance. Tests to determine inhabitance are only permissible if they do not breach body-host sovereignty in any fashion. The breaching of a body-host as well as the deportation of a non-Stypean body host to Stypean space shall constitute an act of war and a resumption of hostilities between the two worlds”

Play
Episode Sponsor-- Frank Key's New Short Fiction Anthology "Brute Beauty And Valour And Act, Oh, Air, Pride, Plume, Here Buckle!" Buy it HERE
Episode Art:  David Flett
Read by:  Jacob Dahlke

Twabble:  “There is NO LIFE on any other planet. We are unique. Surely We are made in God's glorious image. Feathered upon hatching. ”  by  GreatNorthernTroll

Tagged , , , , , , , ,