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Category: Sci-Fi Page 6 of 11

Cover for Drabblecast episode 284, Turning Point, by Neil Googe

Drabblecast 284 – Turning Point

On June 1, 2013

In Drabblecast, Sci-Fi

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 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 . . .

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 277, Things, by Liz Pennies

Drabblecast 277 – The Universe of Things

On March 28, 2013

In Drabblecast, Sci-Fi

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 in and day out, especially Joe car-owning Punter, are prone to such allergies. He saw her start of concealed surprise, looked up, and there was the alien.

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 276, Hullabaloo, by Kelly MacAvaney

Drabblecast 276 – Hullabaloo

On March 19, 2013

In Drabblecast, Sci-Fi

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 polished verbal skills. In the discordant discussion that followed, Jerram studied her serious face. She was magnificent, but hopelessness coursed through him. She didn’t have a chance of winning anyone over to her side. And he did not have a chance of winning her.

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 275, A Riddle in Nine Syllables, by Jan Dennison

Drabblecast 275 – A Riddle in Nine Syllables

On March 13, 2013

In Drabblecast, Sci-Fi

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…

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 274, Amid the Words of War, by Alyssa Suzumura

Drabblecast 274 – Amid the Words of War

On March 8, 2013

In Drabblecast, Drama, Sci-Fi

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, 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.

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Drabblecast 273 – The Electric Ant

On February 19, 2013

In Drabblecast, Sci-Fi

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 out that what he believes is his subjective reality is being fed to him from a micro-punched tape in his chest cavity.

Yeah, it gets weird in perfect Philip K. Dickian fashion!

Story Excerpt:

At four-fifteen in the afternoon, T.S.T., Garson Poole woke up in his hospital bed, knew that he lay in a hospital bed in a three-bed ward and realized in addition two things: that he no longer had a right hand and that he felt no pain.

They had given me a strong analgesic, he said to himself as he stared at the far wall with its window showing downtown New York. Webs in which vehicles and peds darted and wheeled glimmered in the late afternoon sun, and the brilliance of the aging light pleased him. It’s not yet out, he thought. And neither am I…

Without further ado, please enjoy:

Drabblecast # 273 – The Electric Ant

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Drabblecast episode 272, Power Armor: A Love Story, by Mike Dominic

Drabblecast 272 – Power Armor: A Love Story

On February 14, 2013

In Drabblecast, Romance, Sci-Fi

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 advanced exoskeletons were crude affairs, and Blair’s armor seemed decades, if not centuries, ahead of its time…

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 270, The First Conquest of Earth, by Richard K. Green

Drabblecast 270 – The First Conquest of Earth

On January 23, 2013

In Comedy, Drabblecast, Sci-Fi

When the alien fleet was first sighted just beyond the asteroid belt, end-of-the-world riots broke out in cities around the globe. But when astronomers calculated that the huge, silent ships would take nearly three weeks to reach Earth, all but the most committed rioters felt their enthusiasm wilt. By the end of the day they’d all dropped their bricks or bats and slunk home, plundered consumer electronics in hand, muttering about the aliens’ apparent lack of urgency...

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 269, Bright Lights, by Bo Kaier

Drabblecast 269 – Bright Lights

On January 17, 2013

In Drabblecast, Horror, Sci-Fi

The water fountains are low. The lockers are empty. The summer air is warm but there are people in the classrooms. People are talking, are moving. A female emerges from the nearest classroom. She is fully grown. She has dyed hair and competing odors and all of her teeth. Showing her teeth, she asks, “Are you the teacher?”

“YES. YES, I AM.”

She wants to believe those words. What she sees isn’t what she expects, but this woman believes in authority. She wants to get along with others. Showing her teeth, she says, “My son is thrilled to get into your class. He loves the outdoors and doing outdoor things . . . fishing and all that. . . .”

“GOOD.”

“You’ll do the field trip Thursday, right? To the woods?” She waits a moment and then says, “I can take some of the kids, if you need an extra car.”

“I DON’T NEED A CAR.”

“But I’d like to come along. I mean, I’ve heard such good things about you. My friend Rita . . .” She stops talking, trying to find a reason for her nervousness.

“I MUST GO AND TEACH YOUR SON.”

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Drabblecast B-Sides 19 – How the Moon Got Its Cousin

On December 30, 2012

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Drama, Sci-Fi

Once 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…

Drabblecast B-Sides: <a href="http://www.drabblecast.org/donate/">Donate</a>

Cover for Drabblecast episode 267, Postapocalypsemas, by Mary Mattice

Drabblecast 267 – Postapocalypsemas

On December 24, 2012

In Drabblecast, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Sandeer smelled her.

It was just a whiff, a few molecules of something familiar and therefore sweet, wafting on a late afternoon breeze that otherwise carried only the usual: formaldehyde, benzene, dioxin, chromium, and miscellaneous particulate matter both organic and non-. (Once, there had been the smell of roasting chestnuts and crackling logs and simmering spiced cider, but in recent cycles only less pleasant things burned.) There, represented by an air sample just barely statistically significant, was the scent of Sophie.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 18 – On the Vinegar Valves of Venus

On December 19, 2012

In Comedy, Drabblecast B-Sides, Sci-Fi, Strange

Monsignor’s Log, stardate the Millennium Feast of Saints Blot & Cugat…

It was a very special day, so I wore the least tatty of my vestments. The chasuble is only slightly frayed, the stains on the cincture have faded, the alb, granted, is little better than a rag. I cannot get the grease out of the amice, and the stole is in tatters. The less said about the maniple the better. But by adjusting the lighting so it played through the cobwebs I think only the sharpest-eyed of congregants will have noticed. I did my best to disguise the stink by spraying the chapel with an aerosol can of Essence of Blood of the Lamb. It was decocted, of course, not from the real blood of a real lamb, but from chemical compounds manufactured in the lab by boffins. I have seen pictures of so-called “real” lambs in a codex. They look like tinier versions of sheep, if, that is, they were drawn to scale. Who knows?

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

Drabblecast 265 – Pop Quiz

On December 6, 2012

In Drabblecast, Drama, Sci-Fi

“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”

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Cover for Drabblecast Episode 264, The Belonging Kind, by Kathleen Beckett

Drabblecast 264 – The Belonging Kind

On November 22, 2012

In Drabblecast, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi

It might have been in Club Justine, or Jimbo’s, or Sad Jack’s, or the Rafters; Coretti could never be sure where he’d first seen her. At any time, she might have been in any one of those bars. She swam through the submarine half-life of bottles and glassware and the slow swirl of cigarette smoke… she moved through her natural element, one bar after another.

Now, Coretti remembered their first meeting as if he saw it through the wrong end of a powerful telescope, small and clear and very far away.

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Cover for Drabblecast 261, The People of Sand and Slag, by John Deberge

Drabblecast 261 – The People of Sand and Slag

On October 30, 2012

In Drabblecast, Drama, Sci-Fi

“Hostile movement! Well inside the perimeter! Well inside!” I stripped off my Immersive Response goggles as adrenaline surged through me. The virtual cityscape I’d been about to raze disappeared, replaced by our monitoring room’s many views of SesCo’s mining operations. On one screen, the red phosphorescent tracery of an intruder skated across a terrain map, a hot blip like blood spattering its way toward Pit 8.

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 259, The Last of the O-Forms, by Jacob Wayne Bryner

Drabblecast 259 – The Last of the O-Forms

On October 9, 2012

In Drabblecast, Sci-Fi, Strange

At the sack’s bottom, beneath an empty donut box, he found the beef jerky. It tasted mostly of pepper, but underneath it had a tingly, metallic flavor he tried not to think about. Who knew what it might have been made from? He doubted there were any original-form cows, the o-cows, left to slaughter…

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 257, Judgement Passed, by Jerel Dye

Drabblecast 257 – Judgement Passed

On September 23, 2012

In Drabblecast, Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

We stared up at the sunlit peaks, each thinking our own thoughts. I thought about Dessica. We’d waited two months after landing to name it, but the decision was unanimous. Hot, dry, with dust storms that could blow for weeks at a time– if ever there was a Hell, that place had to be it. But eight of us had stayed there for two years, exploring and collecting data; the first interstellar expedition at work. And then we had packed up and come back– at an empty Earth. Not a soul left anywhere….

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 256, Roanoke, Nevada, by Spencer Bingham

Drabblecast 256 – Roanoke, Nevada

On September 14, 2012

In Drabblecast, Mystery, Sci-Fi

“It’s the extra-terrestrials,” the General said, watching for my reaction. “Our extra-terrestrials are falling ill.”

“Really?” I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice. My eyes wandered back to the picture on the general’s wall.

He noticed. “That’s an untouched photo,” he said. “The aliens are real, and they’re here…”

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Drabblecast 255 – The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward pt. 2

On September 6, 2012

In Action, Drabblecast, Horror, Sci-Fi

Looking away from the light that showed the Charles Dexter Ward was no longer entirely dead was as hard as opening a rusted zipper. But Cynthia did it, and didn’t let herself look back She pulled Hester a little further down the corridor and said, “Now we really need to know how she killed him. And whether it’ll work a second time…”

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Drabblecast 254 – The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward pt. 1

On August 31, 2012

In Drabblecast, Horror, Sci-Fi

Six weeks into her involuntary tenure on Faraday Station, Cynthia Feuerwerker needed a job. She could no longer afford to be choosy about it, either; her oxygen tax was due, and you didn’t have to be a medical doctor to understand the difficulties inherent in trying to breathe vacuum.

You didn’t have to be, but Cynthia was one. Or had been, until the allegations of malpractice and unlicensed experimentation began to catch up with her. As they had done, here at Faraday, six weeks ago…

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