The Drabblecast

Drabblecast 283 – The Man Who Drew Cats

StalinSays — Thu, 23 May 2013 23:54:13 +0000

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 Head, Ned’. But Tom was just Tom. It was like he was so tall it didn’t bear mentioning even for a joke: be a bit like ragging someone for breathing…

Drabblecast 282 – Liane the Wayfarer

StalinSays — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:55:05 +0000

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 around the root of an ancient yew. Hacking it free, he had seen the characters on the inner surface—rude forceful symbols, doubtless the cast of a powerful antique rune . . . Best take it to a magician and have it tested for sorcery.

Drabblecast 281 – Doubleheader XII

StalinSays — Wed, 01 May 2013 23:39:49 +0000

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, for with Pabstus Tack comes Pabstus Sludge…

Drabblecast 280 – Trifecta XXV

StalinSays — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:41:03 +0000

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 would be and snap back to your face. She forces a smile.

You talk menu.

She likes the braised shank.

Drabblecast 279 – The Country Doctor

StalinSays — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 07:20:39 +0000

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.

Drabblecast 278 – The End of the World as We Know It

StalinSays — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 18:27:08 +0000

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 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…

Drabblecast 277 – The Universe of Things

StalinSays — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:09:00 +0000

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.

Drabblecast 276 – Hullabaloo

StalinSays — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 23:23:07 +0000

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.

Drabblecast 275 – A Riddle in Nine Syllables

StalinSays — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:14:12 +0000

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…

Drabblecast 274 – Amid the Words of War

StalinSays — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 23:45:07 +0000

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.

Drabblecast 273 – The Electric Ant

StalinSays — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 20:07:33 +0000

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…

Drabblecast 272 – Power Armor: A Love Story

StalinSays — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:30:20 +0000

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…

Drabblecast 271 – Trifecta XXIV

StalinSays — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:39:20 +0000

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 as well, not with all the distraction. We use a reliable trick — we have Sheila ask for a story…

Drabblecast 270 – The First Conquest of Earth

StalinSays — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 01:25:51 +0000

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...

Drabblecast 269 – Bright Lights

StalinSays — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 10:30:40 +0000

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.”

Drabblecast 268 – I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee

StalinSays — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 05:05:18 +0000

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…

Drabblecast 267 – Postapocalypsemas

StalinSays — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 14:16:02 +0000

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.

Drabblecast 266 – Little Grace of the House of Death

StalinSays — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:55:45 +0000

The niece of King Death had not yet chosen a name. She was the only daughter and youngest child of Death’s sister, Merciful Grace, and everyone still called her by her baby name, Little Grace…

Drabblecast 265 – Pop Quiz

StalinSays — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 02:53:07 +0000

“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”

Drabblecast 264 – The Belonging Kind

StalinSays — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 19:47:52 +0000

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.

Drabblecast 263 – Betty Flesh and the Meat Man

StalinSays — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:17:34 +0000

“Your suitor’s here!” Ma Flesh hurried into the back room of the butcher’s shop. “Are you presentable?”

Betty waited there amongst the swinging, marbled yellow cow carcasses. The wooden butcher’s table was smooth under her fingertips, and solid as the earth. Knives glinted from the walls, each reflecting a tiny, seated Betty and the thin figure of Ma Flesh standing over her.

“Sit up straight,” Ma snapped. “And don’t scratch. It could lead to tragedy. I mean it.”

“I won’t.” Betty didn’t dare ask why Ma was so against scratching. Her head itched but she didn’t lift her hand. Ma had cut off Betty’s hair to stop her from being so floaty. She hoped the suitor liked short hair. If he was blind, he’d like it, she thought. She could lay her head in his lap and he could tell her mood by the bumps on her skull. He could stroke behind her ears, let his fingers drift up to her crown, slide down her neck–

“It isn’t Saturday.” Ma rapped on Betty’s head with the back of her shining metal hook. “No going floaty today, girl.”

Drabblecast 262 – My True Lovecraft Gave to Me

StalinSays — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 18:15:50 +0000

Dear Mr. Kugelmacher,

This letter is to inform you of my resignation. As you know, I have spent the last fifteen years of my life working in your department store, from the age of twelve when I was hired as a stock boy, to my years spent in the jewellery department, to my time in management. I have loved working here, and I am very sorry to leave, but I fear that if I remain any longer, my health and my sanity will be forfeit. Perhaps if I explain the events of weeks, it will become clearer why I have to quit.

Drabblecast 261 – The People of Sand and Slag

StalinSays — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 05:34:40 +0000

“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.

Drabblecast 260 – Trifecta XXIII

StalinSays — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 17:02:52 +0000

You don’t remember anything, do you? Selective memory loss; what an achievement for a mind as young as yours. Locked in a cupboard of your consciousness, the guilt will eat at you from the inside…

Drabblecast 259 – The Last of the O-Forms

StalinSays — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 21:18:23 +0000

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…

Drabblecast 258 – Brown Dust

StalinSays — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 17:45:16 +0000

“Adao, no.” Teo, the older boy’s second-in-command, lays a staying hand on his master’s arm. “The stories I told you about this one… they’re true.”
“True?” Adao casts a skeptic’s eye over Santos. Can those flimsy ribs cage anything as fugitive as truth?

Drabblecast 257 – Judgement Passed

StalinSays — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 09:17:32 +0000

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….

Drabblecast 256 – Roanoke, Nevada

StalinSays — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 00:58:45 +0000

“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…”

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

StalinSays — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:41:49 +0000

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…”

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

StalinSays — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 22:21:22 +0000

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…

Drabblecast 253 – Maybe the Stars

StalinSays — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 06:05:53 +0000

Presently it rose, and with a shuffling walk it supported itself along the bars until it reached the bucket. With a sigh it plunged its hands inside.

Little Useless inched closer and watched while the creature cupped the salt water and brought it to its face: not to drink, but to moisten its skin…

This episode of the Drabblecast continues H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month with an eye towards Lovecraft’s fascination with and misgivings about the sea. It starts with a quote from Dagon, which kicked off the very first H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month. In the drabble, there is more to a fisherman’s remarkable sea wife than meets the eye. In the feature, a nod to Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a young girl living among humans who act savagely encounters a sympathetic, otherworldly Deep One. She faces hard questions: where does she truly belong, and where should her loyalties lie?

Drabblecast 252 – The Elder Thing and the Puddle People

StalinSays — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 21:20:43 +0000

Upon the coming of the rain and the and the reawakening of the Krr’at race, the Elder Thing returned to us and squealed Its sky-splitting squeal and waded in among us. It came with the green feet that had eyes and mouths, and with the yellow, rubbery outerskin, and with the lace and the glitter — oh, the horrible, horrible glitter…

This episode of the Drabblecast continues H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month, specifically focusing on the frequent appearance of cults in Lovecraft’s work. In the drabble, cult meetings aren’t always all about sacrifices and secret rites. In the feature, what starts out as an innocent encounter between a little girl and her imaginary friends takes an ominous turn when the “puddle people” turn out to be real creatures who worship her as their capricious god. When a rebel revolts against the the cult to save her daughter from being sacrificed, how will their deity react?

Drabblecast 251 – The Music of Erich Zann

StalinSays — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 09:47:29 +0000

My room was on the fifth story; the only inhabited room there, since the house was almost empty. On the night I arrived I heard strange music from the peaked garret overhead, and the next day asked old Blandot about it. He told me it was an old German viol-player, a strange dumb man who signed his name as Erich Zann, and who played evenings in a cheap theater orchestra; adding that Zann’s desire to play in the night after his return from the theater was the reason he had chosen this lofty and isolated garret room, whose single gable window was the only point on the street from which one could look over the terminating wall at the declivity and panorama beyond…

This episode of the Drabblecast kicks of H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month. It begins with a reading from Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth. In the feature, an impoverished student is forced to take an apartment in an almost empty building on the mysterious Rue d’Auseil. One of the other tenants, a viol player named Erich Zann, lives alone on the top floor and plays strange, otherworldly music at night. The student, drawn to his music, eventually gains Zann’s trust and learns catastrophic secrets.

Drabblecast 250 – Trifecta XXII

StalinSays — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 07:14:59 +0000

My name is… John.

I am…

I have a wife and a daughter. They are visiting me today. Their names– Alice. And Anna.

I can see, sort of. Everything is blurry. I am submerged in a coffin, a clear coffin with green water. There’s a tube in my mouth so that I can breathe, machine-like.

My legs are transparent. I see veins and arteries, thin muscles that look like spiderwebs bundled together. The doctors say my memory will be fuzzy. It’s supposed to come back quickly.

I am…

The theme of this Drabblecast Trifecta is “if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” In Faithful Servant, a long-suffering butler’s poorly timed fit of temper is nearly the end of him. In Selfless, a man with an incurable illness goes to great lengths to ensure his wife and daughter enjoy a normal, happy life. In Prophecy Negotiations, a fateful farm boy learns that if you want to rise to a new station, it pays not to accept the first offer.

Drabblecast 249 – Jimmy’s Roadside Cafe

StalinSays — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 22:40:54 +0000

After the world ended, Jimmy set up a roadside cafe in the median of I-95, just north of the Fallston exit, in the grassy depression between the guardrails. His first cafe, nothing more than a plywood shanty, fell to the first thunderstorm that blew through. The second was better: he dug a sort of foundation and built the walls out of heavy plywood he’d harvested from an overturned Home Depot truck, reinforced the corners with steel joints, laid down a sheet of tin for the roof. He used a Hummer’s windshield for the front window, a thick yellow shower curtain for the door. And then he nailed an Open/Closed sign beside the doorway, flipped it to Open, settled down in his lawn chair, and waited…

This episode of the Drabblecast is post-apocalyptic. In the drabble, Santa’s list is put to unusually ominous use one Christmas. In the feature, after the world ends, Jimmy cobbles together a makeshift roadside café where he assists passersbys. Whether they need scavenged supplies, hard truths, or a place to rest and say goodbye, his simple kindness is an oddly uplifting oasis in a ravaged world.

Drabblecast 248 – The Cockroach Hat

StalinSays — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 01:55:21 +0000

“What I don’t like about it,” said Cliffe, “is that is it’s just a metaphor instead of something real.”

“What if it was real?” I (Sam) asked. “What if it was me and I actually turned into a cockroach someday?”

This episode of the Drabblecast is all about crazy relationships. In the drabble, it’s apparent that finding Mr. Right is difficult no matter who (or what) you are. In the feature, Sam wakes up one day to discover he has been transformed into a giant cockroach. He spends the rest of his day on a surreal quest, not only to return to his normal self, but also to save his girlfriend from threats both mundane and extraordinary, with the hope a new start together.

Drabblecast 247 – How I Crippled a World for Just 0.01 Cents

StalinSays — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 09:16:44 +0000

“You are accused of stealing the intellectual property of Einstein, Dirac and Heisenberg.” The middle-aged speaker waved his finger at Professor Hillabin, more in the manner of a prosecutor than a judge.

This episode of the Drabblecast illustrates the folly of bureaucracy. In the drabble, one by one an entire classroom of students are promoted to be their own teachers. In the feature, a lost, dimension-hopping scientist is trapped in a world where scientific theories are considered intellectual property. Unable to perform his calculations without them, he finds himself on trial for failure to pay royalties. When he cannot convince the court to take mercy on him, he pulls looses a devastating strategy.

Drabblecast 246 – The Kidney

StalinSays — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 05:36:59 +0000

The shop bell rang at the front of the St. George Tim Hortons. I didn’t see who came in, but when Shel looked up, his eyes widened.

“Crap.” He whispered. “It’s my kidney.”

“Your kidney?” I asked. I turned in my seat, but Shel jerked me back by the shoulder. He held up his free hand to shield his face.

“Shhh,” he murmured. “Don’t look at it…”

The theme of this episode of the Drabblecast is awkward run-ins. In the Drabble (pulled from the Dribblecast) a man returns home from work and is unable to relate to his wife. In the feature, a stalker ex-kidney illuminates how ending relationships is akin to losing a part of yourself.

Drabblecast 245 – A Nice Jewish Golem

StalinSays — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 09:09:14 +0000

“Mrs. Levine, it is hard enough for someone to find the right person to love in the world, even with all the people in it. For Yeshua, it is almost impossible. Would you have him fall in love with a human girl and pine for her until his heart broke and we would have to erase
the letter that gives him life? Reduce him back to a lifeless thing?”

This episode of the Drabblecast is about adoption. In the drabble, a grieving father performs terrible experiments with the comfort food brought by well-intentioned neighbors. In the feature, a fawning mother grapples with conflicting fears for her son, a golem, when he falls in love with a non-Jewish construct. Despite her distress, she must ask: In a world where options for love are severely limited, what role does faith play?

Drabblecast 244 – Doubleheader XI

StalinSays — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:09:33 +0000

It had rolled and tumbled, whatever it was, gelatinous and tentacled, from lake to canal to stream.

People watched from the shore, following it with opera glasses and sea telescopes. Some thought it was a squid, others an octopus, others still just a glob of fatty flesh from some aquatic animal long torn apart and rotten. It was milky and translucent with tiny red hooks lining the each of its sixteen flacid arms. Deep blue bruises speckled the skin, wrinkling in like spots on a tomato. It had no visible eyes…

This double header features two “postcard stories” by Will Ludwigsen. In Nora’s Thing, sickly Nora’s sister and friends bring her to a mysterious creature they hope has healing powers. In Endless Encore, a sinister puppet show occurs nightly for its audience of one.

Drabblecast 243 – The Other Lila

StalinSays — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:16:57 +0000

I step out of a porter booth in the overheated Los Angeles station and reach up to peel off my winter coat. That’s when I realize something’s wrong with my hand — it feels numb and prickly, and the fingers aren’t quite responding the way they’re supposed to. Weird. I don’t recall circulatory problems being listed among the possible side effects…

This episode of The Drabblecast explores the meaning of identity. In the drabble, two friends swap bodies after being struck by lightning, but is anyone paying attention? In the feature, having an extra finger after a teleporter accident turns out to be the least of Lila’s worries; she now must contend with an entirely additional Lila.

Drabblecast 242 – Transfer of Ownership

StalinSays — Sat, 12 May 2012 06:44:18 +0000

My new occupant is larger than Carson was. I was made for her, within a certain tolerance for the inevitable changes in human specifications that come with age, changes in health, and abundance or scarcity…

This episode of the Drabblecast is all about Mechs, aside from the beat poetry that it begins and ends with. The drabble is a snapshot of a new Mexican-American war. In the feature, after being commandeered by its partner’s murderer, a mech suit ponders the meaning of ownership and freedom, while applying creative problem solving to defy its unwanted occupant.

Drabblecast 241 – The Dead

StalinSays — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 07:45:04 +0000

Three boy zombies in matching red jackets bussed our table, bringing water, lighting candles, brushing away the crumbs between courses. Their eyes were dark, attentive, lifeless…

This episode of The Drabblecast is all about zombies. In the drabble, a post-outbreak actor is almost too talented for his own good. In the feature, a job interview leads Donald to contemplate the horrors of an economic zombie apocalypse: What happens to the living when the dead become a more valuable, more efficient substitute for both industrial and private uses?

Drabblecast 240 – Trifecta XXI

StalinSays — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:45:47 +0000

We bought our first yarn baby at a garage sale. The ends of its arms were frayed and its eye buttons dangled loose on bare threads.

This theme of this episode of the Drabblecast is family unties: Nontraditional homes and family situations. In the drabble, the enterprising resident of a haunted house fools its ghosts into performing everyday domestic tasks. In Divorce in the House of Flies, a young boy has to deal with his parents’ divorce at the same time he has to deal with their transformation into human-shaped masses of tiny insects. In Wendigo Bake Sale, residents of a small town overcome their initial terror of a pair of wendigo participating in the school bake sale, only to be frightened anew when the wendigo reveal they are supporting the school because their child attends. In Knit, after losing their first yarn baby during her rebellious teen years in a tragic unraveling accident, a couple tries vainly to reconstruct her from the scraps of yarn, stuffing, and buttons left behind.

Drabblecast 239 – Killing the Morrow

StalinSays — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 02:01:21 +0000

You know, I’ve heard my share of disembodied voices. I’m accustomed to their fickle, sometimes bizarre demands. But tonight’s voice is different, clear as gin and utterly compelling. I must listen…

This episode of the Drabblecast concerns time and inter-dimensional travel. In the drabble, a being hurriedly fleeing its own dimension accidentally merges with a pizza jockey but still cannot escape its pursuers. In the feature, Killing the Morrow, voices from a ruined future attempt to flee to our present, commandeering a workforce to construct bathtub chambers where they can grow physical bodies and ready cities from which to rule. Is this the end of mankind as we know it, or can a second faction of future-dwellers subvert this implosive invasion?

Drabblecast 238 – From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7

StalinSays — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:42:52 +0000

Translating… Appendix 820 of The Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide. This series of audio files was created by TreeFrog7. It has been automatically translated into text

In this episode of the Drabblecast, heavily pregnant jungle explorer TreeFrog7 keeps a recorded diary of data she and her husband are collecting for the Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide. As they close in on a legendary mature CPU plant (MCPU), a wild version of cultivated CPU plants used as personal computers, they encounter numerous jungle creatures including an enormous flightless moth protecting the plant. Despite its attacks, the explorers do not want to kill the moth in case the MCPU needs it to survive. While treed by the moth in the MCPU, TreeFrog7 gives birth to their daughter while her husband downloads the MCPU’s data. Close enough to see the MCPU’s monitor, they watch a rapidly shifting display of locations and symbols. TreeFrog7 realizes the images are getting closer to their own location and represent another explorer’s collected data. Finally, the scene fades and the monitor shows only two eyes. The diary ends with an entry by an unknown voice that implies the explorers have themselves been collected. In the drabble, a teenage boy fails to convince an uninterested, gum-snapping girl that he understands her feelings of otherness and isolation.

Drabblecast 237 – Test Drive

StalinSays — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:02:42 +0000

It was my turn to wear the mask, but my egg-sister Linney wouldn’t give it up. She’d been wearing the mask all morning, set on Smile, and it was a test day, too. Everyone thought she was so pleased and relaxed and Earthy…

This episode of the Drabblecast opens with the announcement of the 2011 People’s Choice Awards winners: Best Episode Art (Jerel Dye, Hokkaido Green, episode 208), Best Drabble (Lab Rats by Nicholas J Carter, episode 229), and Best Story (The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk by Eugie Foster, episode 214). In the feature, alien egg-sisters Linney and Mirana are competing for an assignment on Earth. On test day, they are evaluated on their abilities to blend into human society. Despite a disappointing start, Mirana pulls ahead of Linney during a trip to the mall where they meet, and she charms, a human teenage boy.

Drabblecast 236 – When You Visit the Magoebaskloof Hotel Be Certain Not to Miss the Samango Monkeys

StalinSays — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 04:06:40 +0000

In the place where I was born, stones had been used to mark boundaries for four hundred years. We harrowed stones up in fields, turned them up in roadcuts. We built the foundations of houses from stones, dug around and between them. We made stone walls, and our greatest poet wrote poems about those walls and their lichen-speckled granite. The gift of glaciers, and the wry joke of farmers. “She’ll grow a ton and a half an acre, between the stones.” The people who lived there before mine made tools of them, made weights and currency.

This episode of the Drabblecast opens with a Drabblenews story about the resurrection of an ancient human vaginal yeast once used to make a fermented drink fittingly dubbed “vag yeast moonshine” by Norm. In the drabble, while Shouting Cloud has correctly read the signs predicting the return of the Sky Father, there isn’t only one – and they are armed and dangerous. The feature explores the need to adapt to new environments. Humans have fled a ruined Earth to find themselves on a planet where they can’t digest the plants or communicate with the oddly amiable natives, and their preserved supplies are dwindling. While reflecting on memories from a visit to Africa on Earth and desperate to discover some clue about how to survive, a xenobiologist risks exhuming the corpse of a juvenile native for dissection even though one of her colleagues was brutally slaughtered for doing so. When she is discovered by a group of natives, she is sure she will be murdered as well, only to find herself forced into nursing from one of them. As she drinks its milk, she realizes that the intelligent natives, after dissecting rather than slaughtering her colleague to learn about human biology and digestion, have likely theorized that the microscopic flora in their milk may allow humans to finally be able to digest the alien crops on their planet.

Drabblecast 235 – Unreliable Witness

StalinSays — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 00:55:17 +0000

I don’t know if this is the same tape as last time, because They keep moving things around and stealing them. I don’t know who does it. It may be the staff here, or my own family when they come to visit, or the aliens, but somebody’s always doing it — taking my glasses, my tapes, my TV remote, anything I put down for a second. I don’t think it’s the other residents. I used to think that, but I don’t think they’re that organized. Some of them are a bit senile, to tell you the truth…

In this episode of the Drabblecast, Catherine is an 89-year-old nursing home resident plagued by someone who keeps taking her things and a son and daughter-in-law who treat her like a child. When she gets a visit from an alien named Tom, they strike a bargain: He will tell her who the thief is if she tells him the secret to longevity. His race does not live to old age, they die after reaching breeding age and having children (the human equivalent of about 40 years old); he is trying to learn how to extend their lifespan. Despite her insistence that there is no secret he doesn’t believe her, but does tell her no one is taking her stuff – she just can’t keep track of it. Catherine thinks he is lying because he didn’t like that she didn’t have an answer for him and becomes convinced that the people who are taking her stuff are actually looking for alien, looking for clues about their existence among her possessions. She makes a tape recording of her experience, hoping that when they inevitably take the tape and listen to it they will realize they have no reason to continue stealing from her since she will freely tell them everything she knows. In the drabble, a young girl wakes up with a new set of stitches and doesn’t stop searching until she finds the quarter the kidney fairy has left her.

Drabblecast 234 – Jagannath

StalinSays — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:46:27 +0000

Another child was born in the great Mother, excreted from the tube protruding from the Nursery ceiling. It landed with a wet thud on the organic bedding underneath. Papa shuffled over to the birthing tube and picked the baby up in his wizened hands. He stuck two fingers in the baby’s mouth to clear the cavity of oil and mucus, and then slapped its bottom. The baby gave a faint cry.

“Ah,” said Papa. “She lives…”

This episode of the Drabblecast is about awakenings and transformations. In the drabble, not all its memories of a man’s life make sense to an undersea creature. In the feature, generations ago the survivors of a ruined world struck a deal with their Mother, an enormous creature merging flesh and technology. They live symbiotically within her, helping her do everything from navigating to digesting food while in return she provides them safety and sustenance. When Mother is injured beyond repair, starved for both food and fresh genetic material, she passes on a dying gift.

Drabblecast 233 – A Blade of Love

StalinSays — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:13:17 +0000

Allan Thermoose’s wife is in love with a blade of grass. It’s the 375th blade directly even with the crack in the third slab of sidewalk east of the mailbox. The blade gets full sun all day, and Allan, a stickler for lawn maintenance, is careful to water it, along with all the others, for approximately thirty minutes per day, moving the sprinkler three times to ensure even water distribution. He occasionally counts the residual droplets left on the tufts of grass fifteen minutes after he shuts off the water. If he’s not happy with the results, he repeats the process until he’s positive his lawn has had enough to drink.

This episode of the Drabblecast is concerned with strange love. In the drabble, a mother’s last thoughts are for her son as the mower’s blades cut her down but pass over him. In the feature, Allan Thermoose’s wife falls in love with a blade of grass. Her behavior increasingly unconventional includes: standing outside staring at the lawn, forbidding Allan to cut that blade, sleeping outside on the lawn, and dressing up for the blade. It soon becomes clear that action must be taken.

Drabblecast 232 – Valentine’s Day with the Gods

StalinSays — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:16:23 +0000

The first ‘Go to Hell!’
The Angels did say
To certain poor bastards
On Valentine’s Day;

‘Go to Hell!
We do our job well!
It ain’t who you are
It’s what you can sell…’

On Valentine’s Day,
The World demands Love
With a milk-chocolate fist
In a red tin-foil glove.

Romance is featured in this episode of the Drabblecast. In the drabble, falling in love with a werewolf causes problems for a vampire. In the feature, on Valentine’s Day a freshly engaged couple stops at a tavern for dinner. They are seated among a collection of deities representing various traditions and religions who lead them to question their relationship, as well as the meaning of love and marriage at all among the horrors of the cosmos.

Drabblecast 231 – Trifecta XX

StalinSays — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:24:42 +0000

The six of them meet for the first time in front of the sagging clapboard house where Everett Montrose was born. All are tired, with hollows under their eyes from driving or riding buses for days. Even so, they greet each other with shy, relieved smiles. Few words are said; most seem unsure of how to speak to each other. There are some handshakes, even a quick hug or two, but these interactions are awkward and all soon turn their attention to their reason for coming here. They all carry with them small pieces of Everett Montrose, and all instinctively touch the fragments as they look to the house.

This episode of the Drabblecast opens with an announcement that the Kickstarter goal for Norm’s new CD has been reached. The theme of the trifecta is Southern justice. In Whit Carlson’s Trespasser, chronic bellyacher Whit Carlson makes a complaint to the sheriff about a clown fishing on his property. In The Six Pieces of Everett Montrose, six strangers meet in front of the house where Everett Montrose was born and where his brother still lives. Each has been compelled to return the bone fragment he or she has found. In Boll Weevil, a man drives home through a plague of boll weevils to face the end of the world. Whether they are a bioweapon, a biblical plague, or aliens, the boll weevils have survived the winter and started breeding wildly, injecting their babies into people with each bite. After containment and quarantine have failed to stop them, a scorched earth policy is about to be enacted. The episode concludes with a bit by Hearty White reading a poetry submission rejection letter.

Drabblecast 230 – Bears Discover Fire

StalinSays — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:42:17 +0000

We stayed on the path. The light seemed to drip down from the canopy of the woods like rain. The going was easy, especially if we didn’t try to look at the path but let our feet find their own way.
Then through the trees I saw their fire…

This episode of the Drabblecast examines humanity through anthropomorphism. In the drabble, peacefully grazing sheep get unexpected visitors who reveal that the sheep are not exactly what they seem. In the feature, when bears discover fire, stop hibernating, and begin populating highway medians in the southern US, their changing behavior highlights how a family’s members react to changes in their own lives with varying degrees of acceptance and grace.

Drabblecast 229 – Singularity Knocks

StalinSays — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:32:22 +0000

“You don’t have to talk like that to us, mister,” I said. “We know town-speak just fine.”

The man with the hat put it back on his head and smiled with a hint of embarrassment. “Sorry, folks. Sometimes it helps, you know, smooth the way.”

That man with the computer was lurking by the corner of our porch, holding it up and aiming some kind of camera at the eaves. He steered a pair of laser beams from one end to the other. I figured I’d let him do what he was doing if I didn’t see any harm.

“Smooth the way for what?” I asked. I knew what was coming next, what was always coming: talk of imminent domain, of making way for progress.

“Something exciting,” he said, lifting up a foot onto the lowest step. “Opportunity of a lifetime…”

This episode of the Drabblecast explores science of the future. In the drabble, a lab rat learns to speak but still cannot talk the scientists studying him out of his eventual dissection despite their similarities. In the feature, government agents try to convince a family of aging farmers to join the rest of humanity by being uploaded into the singularity, a virtual world where everyone can lead any life they can dream up. No one can be left behind..

Drabblecast 228 – A Fairy Tale of Oakland

StalinSays — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:55:20 +0000

In some parts of the world — Austria, Croatia, Hungary — they still remember. They understand. You can’t have something bright without having something dark to balance it. If you’ve got St. Nicholas, you also need the Krampus…

This episode of the Drabblecast opens with Norm’s reflections on the holidays, Santa Claus, and the origins of flying reindeer. In the drabble, the mayhem of a large family’s holiday dinner leads to a darkly humorous tragedy. In the feature, an unsavory petty criminal has a chance encounter with a dying old man who confides that years ago Santa bestowed upon him a miracle, a wish, to teach the true meaning of Christmas. Unfortunately, as they both learn, it comes with a catch..

Drabblecast 227 – The Star

StalinSays — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 20:40:43 +0000

It is three thousand light years to the Vatican. Once, I believed that space could have no power over faith, just as I believed that the heavens declared the glory of God’s handiwork. Now I have seen that handiwork, and my faith is sorely troubled. I stare at the crucifix that hangs on the cabin wall above the Mark VI Computer, and for the first time in my life I wonder if it is no more than an empty symbol.

This episode of the Drabblecast concerns creation and destruction. In the drabble, creation after creation questions its creator’s role in its existence before wandering off into cyberspace. In the feature, a Jesuit priest, also an astrophysicist, aboard a space exploration vessel struggles with a crisis of faith. While investigating the remains of a planetary system destroyed when its sun went supernova, the crew unexpectedly discovers one planet that was distant enough to survive the explosion. There, they find an enormous vault containing the complete records of an advanced civilization that, realizing years ahead of time that their sun was going to explode, hoped to preserve their history and culture for someone to find so that their existence and destruction would not be in vain.

Drabblecast 226 – The Heroics of Interior Design

StalinSays — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 03:22:43 +0000

I can’t fly faster than a speeding bullet. I can’t lift a car. I can’t climb slick surfaces with my bare hands or breath underwater or stop time. All I can do is change blue things to yellow. I didn’t bother to buy a cape or a spandex suit like the others. I just bought a blouse and some slacks and went into interior design…

This episode of the Drabblecast explores the idea of being happy with yourself as a unique individual. In the drabble, the titular imaginary runner is invented as part of a game to pass time in the car, but meets a tragic end. In the feature, a woman with a minor Gift (turning blue things yellow) in a world of high-powered superheroes struggles to find a niche.

Drabblecast 225 – Trifecta XIX

StalinSays — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 06:29:05 +0000

Once, at the beginning, you asked why you were brought here. This is what I told you: your parents made a deal. I would rid them of their plague of rats, and they would pay me. I cleared the town of pests, easily done, and returned for my payment. They laughed at me and tried to send me away with less than they promised. Money is not important. Deals are.

The theme of this episode of the Drabblecast is fairy tale child abduction. In David is Six, David cannot wait to be seven. In his desperation, he strikes a bargain with a fairy that appears to him as a talking toad and is taken to the fairy queen. The Best Boy, The Brightest Boy picks up where the Pied Piper of Hamlin left off, following the children and the Piper into his kingdom under the mountain where after a series of cruel games and tests, only one boy remains alive. He becomes the Piper’s apprentice. In Broken, a father stumbles upon a fairy in the act of exchanging his disabled child for her own enchanted brood. A heart-breaking decision follows.

Drabblecast 224 – Doubleheader X

StalinSays — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 18:23:07 +0000

James Kennedy had stared at his sock drawer for a good ten minutes that first morning, dumbfounded. He’d never seen it so neat, and he didn’t remember doing it. But there they were: threadbare, but tidy and folded…

Another Drabblecast doubleheader special, featuring two stories from from author John P. Murphy.

Help support Norm’s New CD: The Esoteric Order of Sherman. Pre-order the Order.

Episode Sponsor: The Flash Pulp Podcast, thrice weekly pulp stories for the modern age.

Drabblecast 223 – Bearing Fruit

StalinSays — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 01:24:11 +0000

This, of course, is what comes of being overly friendly with strange mangoes. One day you’re a wide-eyed virgin, with nary a care in the world; the next, you find yourself most unexpectedly and all but inexplicably burdened in a manner that afflicts virgins only once every two thousand years or so, to the best of your understanding. It isn’t fair, but folk tales rarely are to young maidens — this is the first thing that you really ought to have known.

This week’s episode of the Drabblecast podcast begins with Norm imploring listeners to chip in for the production of his highly anticipated second CD. The Drabble is Déjà vu, by Ben Parker, concerns old magics and old memories. The feature is a change of pace story, Bearing Fruit by Nikki Alfar, in which a naive lass learns of life and her burgeoning womanhood upon unexpected contact with the supernatural. The show closes with classic bbardle Radioactive Runaways.

Help support Norm’s New CD: The Esoteric Order of Sherman. Agree to contribute, guarantee yourself a copy – Pre-order the Order. Classic Norm Sherman penned and performed “bbardles,” done up proper with the full studio treatment, in a package featuring art work from man of mundane mystery Bo Kaier.

Drabblecast 222 – Rules for Living in a Simulation

Norm — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:57:08 +0000

Now if we, like those characters in recent movies, discovered specific clues in the world around us suggesting that we do in fact live in a simulation, we would of course consider those clues carefully to see what they say about how we should live our lives. — Robin Hanson

Norm begins this episode of the Drabblecast with an introduction to the new and improved Drabblecast.org, and thanks the many contributors who made this possible. The Drabble by John Murphy remembers a simpler time in video games, though a time not free of consequence. The feature by Aubrey Hirsch provides, as described in the title, a didactic set of rules for living in a simulation (a universe constructed especially for us).

Episode Sponsor: You Shall Never Know Security by J.R. Hamantaschen.

Drabblecast 221 – Year of the Rabbit

Norm — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 04:03:40 +0000

It used to be that the sun would go down and the streetlamps would come on and make pools of this wet, yellow light. No matter where you stood, you could see the lights on somewhere. You could run from streetlamp to streetlamp and you could look down the streets and you’d never drown in the dark…

Drabblecast 220 – Trifecta XVIII

Norm — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 04:39:10 +0000

Another of the Drabblecast’s vaunted Trifecta series. Three short stories, each with a unique twist. The episode begins with an interview of author J.R. Hamantaschen, Norm runs fingers through his troubled mind, learning of the seeds from which his horrors spring. The theme of this Trifecta: getting the boot – stories of rejection and alienation. First up, Richard Weems’s Bad Habit, in which a nun and a naked pervert do battle (no, really). Next, author Andrew Gudgel (featured on fellow podcasts such as Escapepod) appears with Tags, as read by Kimi Alexander, a story of teenage dares in a technologically submerged world. Lastly, A Happy Family, by author, novelist Nathaniel Tower, read by Abner Senires, in which a family receives a very unexpected bundle of joy (and puzzlement).

Episode Sponsor: You Shall Never Know Security by J.R. Hamantaschen.

Drabblecast 219 – The Big Splash

Norm — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:56:11 +0000

I passed the sign that read Warning: Shark Zone. The sun was setting,
lighting up the tops of the condos sticking out of the water. They had been
swallowed by the swollen ocean, when it spilled over, like everything else:
the skyscrapers, the cars, the fast food joints, the schools and
supermarkets and liquor stores…

Episode Sponsor: You Shall Never Know Security by J.R. Hamantaschen

Drabblecast 218 – Orange

Norm — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 00:32:11 +0000

I take time-lapse photographs of an orange. The result is always the same.
First I remove the previous orange from the spike in front of the black
velvet backdrop and replace it with a new orange. I set an incandescent
spotlight out of frame as a light source…

Episode Sponsor: You Shall Never Know Security by J.R. Hamantaschen

Drabblecast 217 – Followed

Norm — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:33:52 +0000

She came wandering down the sidewalk like any other corpse, her herky-jerky walk unmistakable among the fluid strides of the living. She was six or seven, Southeast Asian, maybe Indian, her ragged clothes caked in dried mud. Pedestrians cut a wide berth around her without noticing her at all…

On this episode of the Drabblecast, Norm ponders the nature of the undead. He concludes the In Search of the Brain-Eating Nandi Bear serial. Following that is feature story Followed by Will McIntosh, author of Soft Apocalypse and the upcoming Hitchers.

Drabblecast 216 – The Book of Eternity

Norm — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 01:26:21 +0000

His name was Marvin Kasselmeier, though he changed it to Marcus Magnus
because he thought it sounded more impressive. He’d been a bright student,
solitary and humorless, with no friends, and a single obsession: he wanted to live forever…

Is eternal life real worth it? A demonic tale from Mike Resnick explores the question in the final week of Lovecraft months Story features In Search of the Brain-Eating Nandi Bear Part V.

Drabblecast 215 – Dread Unlocks

Norm — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:57:52 +0000

Okay, no one expects eldritch horror in LA. Not that I know what eldritch horror really is. My old boyfriend (about fifteen boyfriends back) called anything that inspired dread “eldritch horror.” I guess that would describe my entire job, really…

Another story from Lovecraft month – elder horror in LA. Dread Unlocks is on the job!

Drabblecast 214 – The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk

Norm — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:47:34 +0000

Achtromagk shuddered, lost in nightmare images: crimson lightning dotting a wasteland, twilight despair and feeble railings, isolation in a mewling throng. It thrashed and twisted but could not escape, could not stop the unwanted vistas in its mind.

It was silent. And soft. And dark…

Next up in Lovecraft month, a heart-warming tale of an extra-dimensional Lovecraftian horror (an ‘oh so huggable’ one) by Drabblecast favorite Eugie Foster.

Drabblecast 213 – The Haunter of the Dark

Norm — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 23:35:34 +0000

I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim—
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge or lustre or name…

To kick of Lovecraft Month Norm once again reads an H.P. Lovecraft classic.

Drabblecast 212 – Ancient Engines

Norm — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:40:56 +0000

“Planning to live forever, Tiktok?”
The words cut through the bar’s chatter and gab and silenced them. The silence reached out to touch infinity and then, “I believe you’re talking to me?” a mech said…

Drabblecast 211 – At the End of the Hall

Norm — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 03:43:20 +0000

My earliest fear, the one I remember anyways, was of great pulp magazine robots with hot water heater bodies and vacuum tube eyes. My brother forbade me to touch his precious magazines, so I wouldn’t. I’d stare and stare at the covers through; hourglassed damsels in diaphanous gowns draped over thick slab altars, and the robots, always the robots with their cylindrical torsos and pincer claws for hands….

In Search of the Brain-Eating Nandi Bear Part III

Drabblecast 210 – Trifecta XVII

Norm — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:23:36 +0000

Another in the Drabblecast trifecta series. This time, we dip in to the Alphabet Quartet collection.

Drabblecast 209 – Babyhead

Norm — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:05:16 +0000

Cynthia couldn’t explain what she’d just seen in the vegetable patch.

She didn’t want to look again. She considered going back into the house, crawling back into bed with Mikey, and putting it down as a beer-inspired dream.

But that pinkish dome with the fuzzy down had felt soft under her fingers, and there had been the smell of manufactured newness, like a dusting of talcum powder wafting up to her nostrils, as she had pulled the coarse outer leaves of the cabbage apart…

Tales of parental love gone awry in this week’s unsettling Drabblecast.

Drabblecast 208 – Hokkaido Green

Norm — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 02:05:34 +0000

The sound of running water came from ahead. The trail emerged from the woods and he looked up at the side of a rocky hill. A narrow waterfall trickled down the side of the rock, splashing into a pool of water.

His father claimed the water here was the most amazing color he’d ever seen – a vivid blue-green he’d dubbed Hokkaido green…

Drabblecast 207 – Pinion

Norm — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 03:44:51 +0000

The witness was beautiful, in a way that was almost hard to look at. His face was abstract and fashionable, all eyes and angles, with a luminous innocence too perfect to be entirely sincere…

Drabblecast 206 – Creature

Norm — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 03:44:25 +0000

And so came Creature out of the wasteland and into the city, bouncing from hilltop to hilltop like a bulbous ballerina skipping across the knuckles of a great hand. He was big as the moon and black as the night, and he came crashing into the city like a silent meteor. The cityfolk watched his approach with wide eyes and open mouths, and then scattered like leaves…

Drabblecast 205 – Trifecta XVI

Norm — Thu, 19 May 2011 03:43:44 +0000

Love means never letting go. And biting..

Drabblecast 204 – Doubleheader IX

Norm — Tue, 10 May 2011 03:14:17 +0000

Here is the first joke of Betty L. Duncan. Why do the three-eyed aliens bank on the moon? Because there is not enough sun to go around. Press the blue button when you have finished laughing…

Drabblecast 203 – Boojum Part II

Norm — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:30:05 +0000

The first sign was the chief engineers frowning and going into huddles at odd moments. And then Black Alice began to feel it herself, the way Vinnie was… she didn’t have a word for it because she’d never felt anything like it before. She
would have said balky, but that couldn’t be right. It couldn’t. But she was more and more sure that Vinnie was less responsive somehow, that when she obeyed the captain’s orders, it was with a delay…

Drabblecast 202 – Boojum: Part I

Norm — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:54:49 +0000

The ship had no name of her own, so her human crew called her the Lavinia Whateley. As far as anyone could tell, she didn’t mind. At least, her long grasping vanes curled—affectionately? — when the chief engineers patted her bulkheads and called her “Vinnie,” and she ceremoniously tracked the footsteps of each crew member with her internal bioluminescence, giving them light to walk and work and live by…

Drabblecast 201 – Trifecta XV

Norm — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:49:10 +0000

“Are these fiddlebacks ferns mommy?” Cindy asked. Fiddlehead honey. Margery said absently. “Fiddlebacks are nasty spiders.” It was only later that she would realize Cindy, for once in her vacuous, Barbie obsessed life, was right.”

The first episode of Women and Alien’s month 2011 featuring three stories, each exploring nasty, insectile alien menaces. Fiddleback Ferns, a space infestation sends a mother to her breaking point. Killipedes, a dark, humorous tale where a doctor breaks down a patient’s nasty parasitical infection. In The Difficulties of Evolution, a mournful parent contemplates her child’s anthropomorphic metamorphosis.

Drabblecast 200 – The Last Question

Norm — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:41:34 +0000

It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was, and it’ll all have an end when all the stars run down. The sun will last twenty billion years and maybe the dwarfs will last a hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that’s all…

On this special episode celebrating the Drabblecast’s 200th episode, we feature sci-fi milestone The Last Question by the ubiquitous genre giant Isaac Asimov. Norm takes listeners along for a thankful, whistful retrospective of the podcast’s history. The episode then moves in to a full cast, sweeping production of the sci-fi epic. The Last Question is an existential piece occurring over a grand timeline in the fullness of outer space, as mankind and artificial intelligence alike consider immortality, the end of all things, and what it means. The episode features chapter illustrations, and announces the 2010 People’s Choice award winners.

Winners of 2010 People’s Choice Awards!
Best Story: Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette
Best Drabble: Chris Munroe
Best Art: Liz

Drabblecast 199 – In the Octopus’s Garden

Norm — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 02:36:36 +0000

I woke to this new darkness, swirling about me. A phrase sticking in my mind — “Lazarus Syndrome.” What happened to people when they had died, but, for some reason, some lack of death’s completion — some unfinished business — had rejoined the living.

In this episode of the Drabblecast, with a theme ‘Control,’ Norm speculates on zombies as dependents. In the drabble, we visit the zombie apocolypse. In the feature story, the consciousness of a slain man forms a being out of his remains, and the sea life around the. What is the nature of this entity, what is its place, and ultimately, what is its sinister purpose?

Drabblecast 198 – Love in the Pneumatic Tube Era

Norm — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 02:52:12 +0000

We discover old scrolls that we wrote to each other in high school, back in the Early Pneumatic Tube Era. That was back when a PT message took five minutes to get across the city.

We shake our heads. Now you can send a living butterfly to Dubai in ten seconds…

This Valentine’s Day episode of the Drabblecast’s theme is centered on odd love. Norm rattles off a staggering set of fart/love puns, and waxes on about the travails of staying together in the digital age. In the drabble, we experience love through a fighter’s eyes. In the feature story, two soul mates seperated by great distance negotiate an alternate, steampunk (tube punk?) future. In addittion the Drabblecast 2010 People’s Choice nominations are announced.

Drabblecast 197 – Death Comes But Twice

Norm — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 02:59:32 +0000

As always, he took delight in my interest in the scientific pursuits. ‘My assistant took the journey yesterday, by way of a shot to the heart. Prior to that, our trials on convicts included strangling, drowning, and beheading. By Jove! That reanimation was a sight to see…

Drabblecast 196 – Moons Like Great White Whales

Norm — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 02:22:10 +0000

The pilot and her companion skimmed through the atmosphere on organic wings. They had completed their survey and the planet sampling, so this flight out from the landing craft and back was purely for their own joy. They’d timed it exactly so they could see all three moons rise together…

Drabblecast 195 – A Matter of Size

Norm — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 02:30:07 +0000

“Wow.” Tiny Tim shakes his head slowly. Peels off his crimson domino mask and slaps it down on the meeting table. “That makes three of us.”

“We’re marked men….” Dust Mite’s voice trembles. He tugs at the hood of his pale gray body suit. “Every costumed avenger with the power to shrink…”

Drabblecast 194 – A Distant Sound of Hammers

Norm — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 23:05:15 +0000

The horn blares and the red light floods down over the Cragmer’s Slaughter House sign and thirty feet below me the gates part wide like a huge and starving mouth. Then pours forth the herd…

Drabblecast 193 – Scales

Norm — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 22:50:40 +0000

One day when a surge of dying summer heat roiled through the waterways, spoiling my fishing, I punted home to find Mama running down the grassy swell towards my docking-place. Hope died in her face when she saw my punt empty and I knew then what had happened…

Drabblecast 192 – Rangifer Volans

Norm — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 02:49:23 +0000

In early December, Brad Miro walked into the office of his partner, Dr. John Estes, and said, “I’ve got our next target. It’s perfect. The public is going to love it.”

John closed his eyes. “I haven’t even finished writing the paper about the Mongolian death worm yet”

This Christmas Special episode of Drabblecast starts with Norm’s Lovecraft inspired take on “The Night Before Christmas”. The theme this week is a creepy yet festive take on Christmas. The feature lets us see the career of a successful crypto-zoologist. As we see Dr John Estes just recovering from discovering the Mongolian death worm when his partner wants to catch a flying reindeer. Norm discusses how it’s better not to believe, like in Santa… or the Mayans.

Drabblecast 191 – Primary Pollinator

Norm — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:01:48 +0000

When Dr. Lopez came for me, I was plunging the geo lab toilet. She carried a red stickle suit in one hand and a spray can of anti-fungal lubricant in the other.

“Great news, Oliver! Big Spike is in season,” Dr. Lopez said. “He finally wants to fertilize Thick Root…”

The theme of this Drabblecast is propogation and legacy for future generations. The feature lets us into the world of Oliver as he imitates a bora monkey-bird and goes to fertilize a massive jerk of a tree. Norm recaps and wonders what we can learn from the story and it relates to state tax.

Drabblecast 190 – The Wheel

Norm — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:56:46 +0000

“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen tomorrow, Davie. In the orning the priest will come here to see your box. It’ll be still there because nobody dares to touch it…”

This episode of Drabblecast deals with fear and rationality. The feature takes us to a world where fear of knowledge and how it can be used for evil prevents humanity from progressing.

Drabblecast 189 – Doubleheader VIII

Norm — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:24:49 +0000

They needed a virgin to make a bargain with the sea monster who hunted the waters off their coast, and they were not willing to sacrifice their daughters…

With the theme this week being about freedom, this episode of Drabblecast sees Norm musing about the irony of song about freedom written by a man name Key… it could be a trap. Mermaids of the Old West centers on the mistreatment of captured Mermaids. In Darkness we learn what makes a sacrifice worthy.

Special thanks to Salim Fahdley and Jan Dennison for lending voices and artistic help.

Drabblecast 188 – The Store of the Worlds

Norm — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 18:00:13 +0000

Tompkins sighed. “What happens is this: You pay me
my fee. I give you an injection which knocks you out. Then, with the aid of certain gadgets which I have in the back of the store, I liberate your mind…”

This episode of Drabblecast starts with Norm recommending and playing an excerpt from Frank Key’s story anthology. In the feature we learn about Mr. Wayne, a man who visits the store of the world in order to discover his deepest desire. Is it simply an escape from a post-apocalyptic world, or is it something more?

Drabblecast 187 – Doubleheader VII

Norm — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 03:08:48 +0000

The episode begins with a DrabbleNews segment on blow-up weaponry (it’s Nerf or Nothing!). Next, a drabble from Kelley Zanfardino. on What follows is a doubleheader from Hugo nominated, cognitive psychologist, author Lawrence M. Schoen (with author’s notes), as read by Phil Rossi. In A Fool’s Death we follow a man as he attempts a mime assisted death, jumping into a volcano. In Pidgin we witness the intense frustration arising from a culture clash as an alien tries to buy fruit from a hardware store.

Drabblecast 186 – Garkain

Norm — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 03:08:34 +0000

His home is in the dense jungle along the banks of the Liverpool River. Should anyone venture into that jungle Garkain, who can fly as well as walk, will wrap himself around the intruder, and smother him with the loose folds of skin which are attached to his arms and legs.

—Charles P. Mountford, The First Sunrise, 1971

In this episode of the Drabblecast podcast, the theme is mythical beasts and creatures, imagined, extinct or otherwise. Norm discuss fantastic animals from down Under (Australia). In the feature we are presented evidence of the existence of the frightful Garkain. The monster’s aspects are recalled in several accounts from eye witnesses and scholars.

Drabblecast 185 – Horror World 2025: Part II

Norm — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 23:58:24 +0000

Kyle lifted another lightsaber. “Want one? They’re not as random or clumsy as a flamethrower.”
“Sh*t. The geek is strong in this one. Sure, Jedi me.”
Kyle tossed it to her with a grin. Hang on Grandpa. We’re coming…

Norm starts this week’s Drabblecast starts with a bbardle about Phantom Claus, to get us in the Halloween spirit. The two part Horror World 2025 is concluded. We rejoin Ben to see if he is any closer to rescuing his grandfather from bedeviled robo-zombies.

Drabblecast 184 – Horror World 2025

Norm — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:04:19 +0000

It started in the cemetery, like these things usually do. Everyone knows being in a cemetery after dark’s a bad idea, which is exactly why Kyle had begged his grandpa to take him…

This episode of Drabblecast is a Halloween Special where our (g)host Norm gives us suggestions on how to simultaneously celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness Month (and Halloween). He also provides information on Phantom Claws, the ghost of a vengeful murdered Santa. The feature story follows Kyle on an escapism holiday to Horror World, an amusement park with violent sentient robot zombies and android wolf men.