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Drabblecast 462 – The Tenant

Cover by bo kaier and midjourney for the tenant

An uncanny episode of original fiction this week on the Drabblecast– we bring you, “The Tenant” by Sarah E. Stevens.

Cover created by Bo Kaier in concert with the midjourney text-to-image AI (and unidentifiable, scraped contributors).

We hope to experience your enjoyment.

 

 

 

Drabblecast 456 – In My Brain in My Body

Cover for In My Brain In My Body Drabblecast by Bo KaierShark week on Drabblecast has never been so unnerving!  Enjoy an original Drabblecast story this week from Evie Mae Barber about what lurks even deeper in the depths…

The great white looked like he was having a good time, swimming upside down, bone-white belly above water, teeth gnashing playfully. Like a puppy dreams of finally catching a squirrel.
Just off the verdant coast, boaters came to see him play. Some reached out as he swam by, trying to stroke his luminous stomach, but he was out of reach.

-get them out-

I warned them to be careful. Something wasn’t quite right; the shark was clearly distressed. Nothing too strange—I’d seen this before—but I had to come out with my crew just to see if it might be research-worthy. Even a byline on a derelict local news site would be nice at this point. Hell, a quote would do fine.

i cant get them out-

Another boat rolled up. One of the boaters said it was tonic immobility—playing dead. “Might think we’re predators. We may want to back off…”

Drabblecast 445 – Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death

Anike Kirsten cover for Drabblecast Love Is The Plan The Plan Is DeathDrabblecast wraps up Women & Aliens month with a gritty and intense story by James Tiptree Jr., aka Alice B. Sheldon.  Hope you’re hungry!

Remembering—

Do you hear, my little red? Hold me softly. The cold grows.

I remember:

—I am hugely black and hopeful, I bounce on six legs along the mountains in the new warm! . . . Sing the changer, Sing the stranger! Will the changes change forever? . . . All my hums have words now. Another change!

Drabblecast 443 – The Day I Didn’t Get A Pet Nebula

Mary Mattice Cover for Drabblecast The Day I Didn't Get A Pet Nebula

Who says Drabblecast doesn’t do Young Adult Fiction?

This week we launch Women & Aliens Month with a fresh, original Drabblecast commission by Effie Seiberg.

We’re grateful to be able to bring you this story this week!

On the day I turned nine I didn’t get a pet nebula.

I’d really really wanted one, just like the one Shelly had. And I’d been talking about it FOR-EVER, so Mom could have the time to save up for the one in the pawn shop. I’m not usually patient, but this was important…

Drabblecast B-sides 83- Spar (Bacon Remix)

Bo Kaier's cover for Spar Bacon RemixIn the tiny lifeboat, she and the alien eat bacon endlessly, relentlessly.

They each have their own preference. Hers is the usual, crispy but not too crispy, the creamy fat just firm enough to bite through, the salt making grainy little bumps that she licks off her fingers.

The alien is not humanoid. It is not bipedal. It has cilia. It has no bones, or perhaps it does and she cannot feel them. Its muscles, or what might be muscles, are rings and not strands. It seems to like its bacon softer than she does, almost raw even, though sometimes it eats pieces that were left to fry a little too long.

It eats the bacon a thousand ways. She eats it, too.

Drabblecast 425 – Unlike Most Tides

Susie Oh's Cover for Unlike Most Tides pt 2 for DrabblecastNorm pays tribute and bids farewell to the greatest unsung hero of the podcast for the past two years: editor Sandra Odell. This fantastic story and many others have been brought to your ears through her hard work!

Our story is another original Drabblecast commissioned story for Women & Aliens month, this week by Darcie Little Badger.  Solitude is often a time to help reflect on ourselves, and realize just how wonderfully connected we are to the universe around us.  But how do we cope with such inevitably connectivity? What are our responsibilities to those fastened to us or colliding with our destinies us? Grab your kayak, hit the beach and find out…

“The prima donna sun has not yet risen to outshine every other star in the Milky Way. Overhead, a flash of light arcs between Orion and Taurus, the hunter firing at the bull. With a grunt, Mathilda lowers her kayak and admires the streak of light across the sky, thinking of her childhood in Los Angeles. There, shooting stars—most stars, really, except for the terrazzo and brass ones on the Hollywood walk of fame —were rare and wondrous. Things are different now. Mathilda still considers the stars to be wondrous…”

 

Drabblecast 424 – On the Feeding Habits of Humans: A Firsthand Account

Lissa Quon's Cover for On the Feeding Habits of Humans for the DrabblecastOur first Women & Aliens Month commission for 2020–  It’s a goodie, a full-cast production of a Drabblecast original by Rachel K. Jones and Khalida Muhammed-Ali. Wash up, it’s time for dinner!

On this diplomatic mission, I, Scholar, have two objectives: first, to advise Master Feeder TikTik on Earth customs and linguistic differences, and second, to accurately record what transpires so we may determine an exchange of gifts…

 

Drabblecast 423 – The Martians Claim Canada

Emily Cannon's Drabblecast cover for The Martians Claim Canada by Margaret AtwoodThe Drabblecast begins it’s 9th Annual Women & Aliens Month”– a full month of original commissioned stories by women about (you guessed it) aliens. First though, the Drabblecast presents a story by author Margaret Atwood about musicals, fungus, aliens and… well, you’ll see!

The Martians descend to Earth in their spaceship. They intend to go to New York – they want to see something called ‘a musical’ – but they get the directions mixed up, as many before them have done, and end up in Canada instead, as many before them have also done. Specifically, they land on a chunk of rock in the boreal forest somewhere on the Laurentian Shield. There is no one around, or no one you might recognize as ‘one’…

Drabblecast B-Sides 80 – The Peoria Plague

Drabblecast Cover Peoria Plague Bo KaierFor Drabblecast Bsides Premium Subscribers this week, we bring you the classic 1972 Full Cast radio production of The Peoria Plague.  Don’t worry, it’s just a fictional audio drama!

…isn’t it?

Drabbleclassics 31 – Boojum

In this Drabbleclassics episode, author and Drabblefan Weirdo Abbie Hilton breaks down the hit Drabblecast story Boojum, by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette.

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 404 – Witches for Mars

Drabblecast cover for Witches for Mars by Shoshana Sumrall FrerkingClosing out Women and Aliens month, The Drabblecast brings you another originally commissioned story: “Witches for Mars” by Eden Royce.

It’s a surreal tale about considering greener pastures…

 

Story Excerpt:

No one expected the government to allow it. To acknowledge it even, but Maira was looking at the advertisement above a webpage she was using to compare prices of agate and selenite healing crystals.

Drabbleclassics 29 – Primary Pollinator (191)

Drabbleclassics 29 cover by Bill Halliar

Drabbleclassics:

A fan-hosted Series that features fan-picked stories from the Drabblecast archives, remastered and brought to you by fans like our host this week, Bart Epstein.  Enjoy!

This week for Drabbleclassics Bart Epstein brings your Primary Pollinator, by Nicole Kimberling.

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.

 

Drabblecast 403 – The Translator

Drabblecast cover for The Translator by Susie OhNext up in Women and Aliens month: a Drabblecast original commissioned from author Eboni J. Dunbar, “The Translator.”

Eboni Dunbar resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner and specializes in queer and black speculative fiction. She is also a VONA Alum, an associate editor for PodCastle and a freelance reviewer.

Story Excerpt:

Corporal Robbie Elms stood at the airlock, waiting for the
arrival of their guests. The rank was as new and as shiny as the toe of her boots, a gift from her mother to congratulate her. The airlock chimed as it depressurized and she stood straighter, trying to make herself look a little taller. This was her first official assignment since the promotion, she wanted to do it right.

Drabblecast 402 – The Moving Stars

Drabblecast The Moving Stars Cover by Samantha BarrettWe’re in the thick of Women and Aliens month, and we’re keeping it going with an original commissioned story— “The Moving Stars” by Premee Mohamed.

Premee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and specfic auhor based out of Canada. Her short fiction has appeared in Analog, Pseudopod, Mythic Delirium, Automata Review, and other venues.  Her debut novel is scheduled for a 2020 release from Solaris Books.  She can be found on Twitter at @premeesaurus.

As a special treat, this episode is being hosted by one of our preeminent editors, Sandra Odell!

Story Excerpt:

They had to knock me out to get her out of me, which was for the best; I was asking be knocked out for quite a while by that point. All that sweating and grunting and gritted teeth (I cracked a molar, for heaven’s sake) and then darkness and then there she was, swimming up through the layers of gray light, a strange little pink fish that someone had placed into my arms.
What happened?

I asked. She got stuck, said one of the nurses, and patted my hand. Backwards and upside down, poor little mite. Sometimes happens with the first. But isn’t she perfect!

Drabblecast Director’s Cut – Sing

Director's Cut Special Sing“A Musical on a Submarine”

Norm and author Kristine Kathryn Rusch discuss her story from way back in 2008 for Drabblecast #53. This is the “Director’s Cut – Sing.”

We also dive into a discussion about unsung women in Science Fiction, like Leigh Bracket and James Tipree Jr. Why use a pen name after all? And how might you use punctuation as sound?

Story Excerpt:

Child, you sing all the time- when you’re walking, when you’re eating, even when you’re laughing.  You people make the most beautiful music in the entire galaxy…

Drabblecast Director’s Cut Specials are special features where we bring back a story from the archives and play them uncut as Part 1. Then in Part 2 we replay the episode with bonus commentary from the author.

Enjoy!

Drabblecast Director’s Cut – Sing

Drabblecast 401 – We Who Stole The Dream Pt. 2

Drabblecast 401 cover by Tristan TollhurstWomen and Aliens Month continues with Part 2 of “We Who Stole The Dream” by James Tiptree Jr., aka Alice Bradley Sheldon.

If you have not heard part one, you can find that here.

Sadism, slavery, power and oppression… are we ever truly innocent? Or is there the potential of cruelty in all of us?

You be the judge.

 Story Excerpt:

An alarm shrieked and cut off, all colors vanished, the very structure of space throbbed wildly—as, by a million-to-one chance, the three most massive nearby moons occulted one another in line with the tiny extra energies of the cruiser and its detonating missile, in such a way that for one micromicrominim the Dream stood at a seminull point with the planetary mass. In that fleeting instant she flung out her tau-field, folded the normal dimensions around her, and shot like a squeezed pip into the discontinuity of being which was tau.

Drabblecast 400 – We Who Stole The Dream Pt. 1

Drabblecast 400 cover by Tristan TollhurstThe Drabblecast launches its 8th Annual Women and Aliens Month with Part 1 of “We Who Stole the Dream” by James Tiptree Jr.

This is a dark, dystopian tale about sadism and slavery, and the potential for cruelty in all of us. Published postmortem in the 1990 compilation “Her Smoke Rose Up Forever,” this story was originally written in 1978. True to the times, Tiptree was wrestling with sexism and feminism in much the same vein as Ursula Le Guin and Margaret Atwood. These issues are all still relevant, and still topical forty years later.

Story Excerpt:

The children could survive only twelve minims in the sealed containers.

Jilshat pushed the heavy cargo loader as fast as she dared through the darkness, praying that she would not attract the attention of the Terran guard under the floodlights ahead. The last time she passed he had roused and looked at her with his frightening pale alien eyes. Then, her truck had carried only fermenting-containers full of amlat fruit.

Now, curled in one of the containers, lay hidden her only-born, her son Jemnal.

Drabblecast Presents: Far Far Away

Drabblecast Presents: Far Far AwayA special throwback episode.  With One week left in the  Drabblecast Reborn Kickstarter, Norm presents one of his favorite surreal stories from deep in the archive by Hootingyard writer and Resonance FM radio personality Frank Key, and gives us a teaser about Frank’s commissioned story for Drabblecast Kickstarter Supporters

The bullet-riddled corpses of our dead crew-mates, all sixteen of them, are coffined up, and the coffins stacked as a makeshift ping pong table…

Drabblecast Fan Picks: The Last Dog

Drabblecast Fan Pick: The Last Dog cover artThe leadup to our Relaunch Kickstarter campaign continues with this Fan Pick: The Last Dog.

This was a favorite of one of our newest team members, Jen Fisher, d(r)abbler of all things and master of none. We’ll be doing more of these with opportunities for fans to record their own introductions to their favorite stories in the future. Hit us up on Facebook and Twitter or give us a shout out in our forums to tell us your favorite stores.

In “The Last Dog,” the titular ultimate canine and his master, the last man on Earth, form a strong bond helping one another to survive on a war-ravaged planet. When they encounter an alien assassin, they are forced to make hard choices.

Story Excerpt:

He was panting now, his breath coming in a never-ending series of short spurts and gasps.  His sides ached, his eyes watered, and every now and then he would trip over the rubble of the decayed and ruined buildings that lined the torturously fragmented street…

Enjoy:

Drabblecast Fan Pick: The Last Dog

Drabblecast B-Sides 68 – The Wanderers

Drabblecast B-Sides 68 The Wanderers cover by Bo KaierWe came to your planet because we knew that you, the peoples of Kill Bill and Saw and Vietnam and Columbine Massacre would understand us. You could not call us monster, as our subjects had done, and you would not call us morally reprehensible, arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct. We had watched your entertainments, our satellites catching your transmissions from so many fog years away, through so much space we marveled at the quality of transmission. The other planets never sent out such good entertainments. Yours we liked to watch most, the four of us, as our subjects screamed from the metal chambers which we had locked them in and which we never strayed from so we could hear them as they cried.

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