Papa Was a Gypsy

Short Story by Shannon Celebi

Another Pseudopod 'cast featuring Ben Phillips' Southern accent!

Text available online at Ideomancer

Elma is a black girl working as a nurse/servant for an old white man in the 1920's (or so) South. Mr. Haggle is bedridden and mute since a stroke, but he still laughs and pees on Elma. Mrs. Haggle beats her, and their son regularly rapes her. To top it all off, Elma is haunted by the ghost of her mother. This is the story of how she finally has had enough and snaps. Also how she uncovers a whole bunch of family secrets.

You're never really sure how in-control Elma really is, until the end, but you can vaguely feel her slipping, especially any of her thoughts involving power. I like all the ghosts, and the seeming ghostly chain-reaction, set off by Mama at the beginning, where Elma is increasingly more and more haunted. You really get a feel for everything spiraling out of control. Which is why I'm so disappointed by the supernatural ending. Don't get me wrong, Celebi has created a great (if hard to understand motivationally) villain by the end of the story, and the smaller ghost and charm level supernatural elements were entirely necessary. But why not leave it at that, with the possibility of interpreting the whole things as psychosis + superstition, rather than firmly committing to the supernatural?

That said, the ending is actually pretty good, Elma's emotions are perfectly described, you really feel for her, and the final line about love is great. Overall, Elma is an extremely well-drawn character, and the Southern Gothic setting is pretty well done too. I just wish we'd learned a bit more about Regina. 4 jars of blood-preserves out of 5.

About 77 Degrees, West of Nassau

By Don Norum

Read for Pseudopod by Cayenne Chris Conroy

Modern-day pirates throw a man overboard from his yacht and he tries to survive. It takes him a bit longer to come to the obvious conclusion, but he eventually does, and the writing is gristly and dark. Sort of a modern nautical-noir. Nothing too exciting about the plot, characters, setting, or writing, but it is all done well enough. 3 out of 5.

Wearing the Dead

Short Story by Alan Smale

Read for Pseudopod by Kris Johnson

Trevor is a kid taking care of the ghost of his dog while befriending a former gang, Robbie, member hiding out with his emotionally distant mother. Neither mother nor son has coped well with the death of the father, or the subsequent death of the family dog, Trixie. Trixie haunts them, but only Trevor can see her. This is really a story about Trevor's attempts to grow up and have some agency in his life, and his partial failure to do so. A sort of failed-coming-of-age tale.

Robbie in a good replacement father-figure, seemingly a better parent than Trevor's Mom by a long shot. He tries to teach Trevor to stand up for himself against the bullies and understand and atone for his part in Trixie's death. Tragically, Trevor can only act by hoping for the help of others, he doesn't seem to get the concept of doing things for himself. His mom doesn't help things any, but Trevor's cluelessness makes things worse for everyone. Particularly in the conclusion to the story, where whether Trevor is delusional about the dog or not, he certainly makes things worse for himself and his mother's relationship either way. I like to think he is crazy though, it makes for a more tragic and interesting reading.

3.5 ghost dogs out of 5.

Set Down This

Short Story by Lavie Tidhar
Read for PseudoPod by Elan Ressel

A man watches Youtube videos of war on his brother's computer. His brother seems to enjoy watching a lot of explosions and people dying and some bits of toilet humor. As he watches, he makes up little stories about two of the random people in the videos. A poor Iraqi man who gets killed, and an American soldier who says "Dude," in the background. The more he thinks about the fictional people he imagines these two to be, the more they sort of haunt him.

This is a modern, almost entirely plotless story. There isn't much narrative beyond watching of the videos, it is all in the internal dialog and how our point-of-view character thinks about the war and violence. An interesting aspect is that our main character seems to see what big balls of shit we create for ourselves (to steal his dung beetle metaphor), while his non-present brother just enjoys watching violence as much as funny videos.

The story here is essentially all social commentary about enjoyment of watching violence, not just how we're desensitized, but how we don't connect with the human beings in these sorts of videos. I think the narrator is sort of snapping towards the end, and the implication is that that might be the correct response to witnessing these sorts of things. The horror of the story lies in why we don't. This will only fit some people's loose definitions of horror, but I'm okay with it, and quite glad PseudoPod took this risk. That said, the dung beetle doesn't do enough for me, and there just really isn't enough to this, despite how much it makes you think, it isn't really more than some other, more interesting stories might. 3.5 out of 5.

Gretel

Short Story by Camille Alexa
Read for PseudoPod by Claudia Smith

Hansel and Gretel are drug-addicted teenagers in a rehab clinic. They fall in love over a couple hits of acid, save up pills for a bribe, and make their escape. Of course, then they become lost in the woods and stumble on a strange cottage with an old woman in it. The rest of the story is pretty much the same as you'd expect.

There are two main changes from the fairy tale: Hansel and Gretel as teenagers in love rather than siblings, and the running theme of drug addiction. Other than that, the kids are actually starving, rather than greedy, and the witch is a lot more sinister and obvious, daily eating little strips of skin and body parts, rather than being just implied to want to eat them. I'm not sure that the love adds much, just that Gretel tends to be self-sacrificing to save Hansel because he thinks she is beautiful. The teenage love is intense and irrational and maybe sweet for some readers, but I don't believe it improves the story over the original.

The drug theme, on the other hand, is the only important innovation over the traditional story. It does change things, and as the only change besides description, I think the success of the story hangs on this. Being lost in the woods is a metaphor for addiction, made all the more clear by the witch deliberately getting the kids addicted to a strange, powerful opium-like drug. The orderlies watching TV all day, taking bribes, and tacitly encouraging the kids not to take their medication (so they can sell it back to the orderlies as bribes) is an interesting replacement for the trail of breadcrumbs. What should have been a way out of addiction disappears without the kids even realizing it, by self-interested orderlies rather than forest creatures. The kids are finally able to find their way back to the road when they throw away the witch's opium pipes during their escape, completing the metaphor.

The witch herself is an interesting creation in this version. She apparently feeds on escaped kids from the rehab clinic, but laments how much harder she has it compared to the good old days when it was a hospital for morphine-addicted civil war soldiers. She's definitely a supernatural entity, I suppose the door is left open for most of the witchy details being part of some kind of drug trip, but I prefer a more literal reading. It is surprising that more isn't done with the effects of her magic drug though, and how that alters the perceptions of the kids.

Gretel makes a nice journey, overcoming both her various addictions (better when fighting a witch than with a bunch of uncaring, corrupt orderlies) and her fear and lack of action. She starts off compliantly going along with the witch, then subtly defying her for the sake of Hansel, and eventually taking action to save both of them. A real bit of personal growth there, with self-sacrifice and inner-beauty and all that. I think Hansel might be brain damaged though, he just repeats "You're beautiful," over and over for the whole story.

To summarize: Gretel is a good character who changes over the course of the story, the witch is a terrifying supernatural creature who also facilitates drug addiction to keep her victims in line, and the whole story is one big modern addiction metaphor. Some descriptions are a bit overkill, and I'd like to have seen a bit more than the basic simplicity of the original, but I liked this one well enough. 3.5 opium witches out of 5.

The Dark Level

Short Story by John F.D. Taff

Read for Pseudopod by Ian Stuart

A very effective horror story about man's search for a parking space. And once he gets there, his search for the elevator. A parking garage is one of the few remaining dark and creepy places we encounter in everyday modern life, and it is nice to have a story set in one. I had a few problems with this story in retrospect, but I want to emphasize how effective it was. This was one of the more scary and suspenseful PseudoPods and it kept me up listening to it late at night when I was fully expecting to fall asleep and listen again in the morning. And it actually had me nervous and jumpy while listening to it.

On a second listen, however, it loses some of this. The scream Jim doesn't hear, but we are informed of by narration when he first sees the garage is right out of an 80's campy horror film, gives away that it is bad a bit too early (we know we're reading a horror story, but I like to not be so sure about it), but it also just seems like we get some vital hint the character doesn't. It was kind of obnoxious and the whole story would be better to just cut that line.

Once Jim is in a garage, he hears noises which creeped me out on first listen, but remain unexplained, and now that I know what the horror was, don't make any damn sense. I like some element of the unexplained in my horror, rather than explaining everything away, but when you have a very clear definition by the end of what was going on in the parking garage, I would like the completely unexplained non-sensical but scary noises to get some explanation. Because the one we have not only doesn't account for them, but seems to preclude my default assumption.

Third, the metaphors chosen to describe things spell it all out a little too well, a little too early. Dark, creepy metaphors are good, but not ones that give away the whole story by choice of idioms. That said, the central concept is good, if not totally unique, and the ending is just great. This one has style and atmosphere, but I'd advise against thinking too hard about it, or you might find the story crumbling away like a partially digested business suit.

2.5 unsafe parking spaces out of 5.

Ankor Sabat

Short Story by C. Deskin Rink

Read for PseudoPod by Ben Phillips

This is Rink's first published story, and a PseudoPod Original. By my count, two more stories have since been published, both horror. This one is technically a Cthulhu mythos story centered on Tsathoggua, and in the style of his creator: Clark Ashton Smith. But honestly the only Tsathoggua we get is by way of a high priest and what a particular cyclopean temple was built in honor of. So you could sub in any dark god you want, really.

I saw a lot of hate for this story over on the PseudoPod forums, but I quite liked it. It was a bit slow getting started, and a tad confusing at first, but once we have our hero on his quest, it moves along pretty well. The meat of the story is Lord Galen's attempt to rescue his TrueLove™ from the evil priest, and to play the game the priest challenges him to. And this is absolutely the best thing about this story.

Although I've seen some criticizing this as generic horrific heroic fantasy, I beg to differ. There is an actual point, with themes and all that, rather than just some sap running off and having terrifying but meaningless adventures before dying or whatever the standard is. My favorite bit of resonance, is how we tend to put our loved ones "up on a pedestal" and imagine they are perfect. This story addresses that in two ways: both the tendency to remember the past fondly and forget all negatives of past romances, and in the present tense, to put a love up on a pedestal where they could never achieve that level of perfection if you were to look at them with unbiased eyes. Either way we can be sorely disappointed if we examine our past or present loves too closely while remembering only our ideal image, not what attracted us in the first place.

That said, although I liked the story at heart, want to defend it from attackers, and will certainly be looking out for more stories from Rink, I know I'm looking at my idealized version that ended about two minutes earlier. When I take this story down off the pedestal and inspect her, I remember that the end completely ruined it for me. A nice, thoughtful ending was all set up, and then we had to flash back to a long speech explaining everything to the point where it not only feels disrespectful to the intelligence of the reader, but actively detracts from the thematic internal dialogue I was having. It isn't just a case of Bondvillianitis, but the author going in to pound one last nail into the poor horse's coffin, missing, and smashing a hammer right through the rather pretty looking box. The story is shallower, and oddly less sinister, for the sinister, explanatory ending. (To be fair, Lovecraft and pals were often guilty of this, so it nailed the writing style...)

2.5 out of 5 of my carnal and gastronomical desires have been satisfied by this story.

Wolves Till the World Goes Down

Short Story by Greg van Eekhout

Read by Dave Thompson for PodCastle

This story inspired van Eekhout's Norse Code, where he expands on some of the ideas from this story at novel length. I'm hoping to actually buy it soon, and I will then try to review it here. It looks like everything I wished American Gods had been, and I've been impressed with van Eekhout a few times this year.

Munin and Hugin fly over Southern California, preparing a pre-Ragnarok report for Odin (including windchill statistics from CNN). As the end of the world approaches, they meet Baldr and Hod, who ask the ravens to tell them a story. They tell about Vidar and Vali's plot to free Fenrir, so as to bring about Ragnarok sooner (Vidar and Vali are prophesied to survive Ragnarok, while most of the other gods die, leaving some of the younger ones to pick up the pieces.)

While this story-within-the-story gets us started with the themes of predestination, free will, and whether or not the gods are really puppets to destiny, or if they can effect their own change, the story takes off in a much more serious and emotional direction. Hugin's decision at the end is what absolutely makes this one for me, and I did love it. Possibly my favorite PodCastle of the year, this is funny, thoughtful, moving, and oddly hopeful for a story about the end-of-days. 4.5 ravens out of 5.

Free online at Ideomancer

Originally published in Starlight 3

Anthologized in Fantasy: The Best of 2001

And the Blood of Dead Gods Shall Mark the Score

Short Story by Gary Kloster

Read for Podcastle by Christiana Ellis

From Fantasy Magazine, free online

Woody is a transsexual ex-thief turned tattoo artist who can't afford to biologically become a man, but wants to. When former controlling lover, Huck, comes back to L.A. and his life, Woody is dragged back to the criminal world she'd escaped. Woody has a special ability to sniff out the blood of gods, and the new score is the blood of Ungud, the aboriginal god of snakes and rainbows and desire, a god who could be male or female, depending on its want. Woody wants to become male, Huck wants to get revenge on their old partner Nikolai.

They plan and execute their heist and then everything goes completely to hell, as expected. There is a neat dynamic of both Nikolai and Huck using Woody and trying to control him as part of their rivalry, while Woody just wants to be left alone and not used as part of a scoring system. Eventually Woody is forced to choose which ex-partner-in-crime hurt him worse, and they both seem such asshole, I really don't know how he chose. I think I might have gone the other way, but then again, it would have been nice to just off both of them. I don't really like the ending, but it is open enough not to really kill things for me.

Woody is a great character, grabbing freedom by creating chaos that others can't deal with as well. My problem with the end is that I think Huck doesn't deserve that kind of redemption, but it could just be that Woody is such a strong point of view character, and Ms. Ellis has such appropriate voices for the characters, that all my sympathy goes to Woody and none to Huck, whom he resents. Or maybe Woody still has dependency issues to get over. Either way, the plot is nothing special, and all the characters besides Woody are generic assholes, but Woody is a great character, the setting is interesting, and the concept of making tattoos out of god blood which varies by which god it came from is interesting. Oh, and it was pretty well written too. 3.5 frat-boy tribal tattoos out of 5.

The Alchemist's Feather

Short Story by Erin Cashier

Podcastle reading by Dave Thompson

Originally published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, free online.

Alrun is a wooden puppet, brought to life and used as a familiar by a sinister alchemist. Under pressure from the King, the Alchemist has been experimenting on Alrun and various little girls like poor half-starved Maria. He routinely makes Alrun forget awful things he has him do, but as the little puppet falls in love with the girl, Alrun decides he needs to help save her from death-by-experiment and help himself remember. If only he could muster the willpower to disobey his master.

A heart-breaking/warming tale of child abuse and the necessity of ignoring orders and setting yourself free from your own psychological torment. Although it was successfully tear-jerking, this story was a bit too obvious and you could pretty much see where it was going from page one. It was well written, but not enough depth, and hardly original ground.

3.5 ornithology based STD cures out of 5.

California King

Short Story by Michael Jasper and Greg van Eekhout

Read for Podcastle by Dave Thompson

Originally published in Asimov's April/May 2005

The people of California watch their king confront his magical nemesis: his father. It's hard to tell how far apart this world is from modern day California. The king rides a Greyhound bus, fights mutants with his magical tattoos, and California is a desolate wasteland. So 2 out of 3 true to life.

The King is basically a superhero who tries to help the people of California in small ways, helping immigrants and abused women and whatnot. He mostly fails to ever change anything, but makes a valiant effort at it, and does do some good. But then his father wants to take back power and see The King deposed, so he sets an elaborate trap which has very little actual trap-ness to it, as is the way of super villains. And then shit gets interesting and magical. You get the impression his father did a whole lot less ripping out tongues of rapists and whatnot.

This is a weird, sort of surreal story where you're never really sure who has what sort or amount of power or what is really going on with all the machinations about things we don't understand. But the point is that the King wants to protect his people, and that the people need to stand up and take action for themselves too, rather than relying entirely on some superpowered regent. 3.5 out of 5 royals would like to trade themesongs with the California King.

The Behold of the Eye

Novelette by Hal Duncan
Read for PodCastle by MarBelle
Originally published in Lone Star Stories, free online

Flashjack is a fairy, and like all fairies, lives inside the magical part of the eye/brain that holds onto significant memories. Through his eyes, we see a young, gay kid grow up, from infancy to being picked on at school, to more traumatic events later in life. Young Toby starts out as a happily imaginative, bookish nerd but his life takes some turns for the worse, and behind the melodrama of general teenage angst, we get a poignant depiction of suicidal depression and self-loathing in a vivid fantasy whose telling grows increasingly darker, angrier, and sadder.

It is a brilliant concept, wording, and story that evokes some very raw emotions, but the 1700 word epilogue kills a bit of my enjoyment. Not that coming-to-terms-with-one's-sexuality wasn't a minor theme of the story anyway, but it really could have been left as a loose end. The epilogue ends with a mostly but not entirely happy resolution, which is far less moving than it would have been if Duncan had just ended it earlier. Especially since an entirely new (undeveloped) character was added to help resolve this.

The real climax of the story, and to me, the real point of the story, was Toby's depression, self-loathing, and inability to see anything worth living for. The climax wraps this primary thread up in an extremely poignant fashion. It makes a lot of sense, is exceptionally relatable, and ties up the whole theme of the story. A "semi-happily ever after" wouldn't have added anything on the end, but I could see it being okay. But instead we have another short story worth of epilogue dealing with a whole different issue that was at best a root-cause and sub-theme of the earlier story. A tad more of the world is built up here, but I honestly wasn't looking for that, and I don't know that the questions left after the real ending are anything but weaker versions of the questions that would have been left with the pre-epilogue ending.

Still the last part isn't awful, it just drags things out to expand on and tie up threads better left untied. But the majority of the story is great, focused, and just plain neat to read for something so emotional.
4.5 monstrous teddy bears out of 5.

Creature

Short Story by Ramsey Shehadeh
Read for PodCastle by Norm Sherman
Originally published in Weird Tales (Text Online)

An amusing and dark post-apocalyptic story about a girl and her amorphous blob monster told in a sort of children's-book style. There is a dry humor to the whole thing, some amusingly named fantasy animals, and a dystopian police force. The plot and world are much darker than the narration style would indicate, and this difference makes for a much better story. Still, not all that much happens, imagery and humorous description only go so far, although the story is nicely dark.

3.5 bulbous ballerinas out of 5.

Biographical Notes to “A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-planes” by Benjamin Rosenbaum

Novelette by Benjamin Rosenbaum.
Read for PodCastle by Graeme Dunlop

Originally published in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories
2005 Hugo Nominee

The Goats are Going Places

Short Story by Tina Connolly

Read for Podcastle by Melissa Bugaj

A teenage girl moves in with her aunt and starts at a new junior high school. She quickly integrates into a social group, and pursues a boy for social advantage. She does such a good impression of Mean Girls that her witch of an aunt decides to teach her a lesson and gain a little respect. Unfortunately for our protagonist, I didn't mean "witch" idiomatically.

A story about teenage girls, for teenage girls, the lesson learned at the end was a bit heavy-handed although it was believable. There is plenty to enjoy here even if you aren't a teenage girl, but it isn't subtle, and there really isn't that much plot to work through. This isn't nearly as good as Connolly's Turning the Apples in Pseudopod, but I may well be nominating that for best of the year over there, so it's sort of a high standard to set. 3 out of 5 goat costumes are more real than you'd think.