Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge

I’ve managed to avoid reading anything close to horror lately, but there are a few ghosts and monsters floating through a nice long reading at Podcastle of “Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge,” by Richard Parks. Lord Yamada is drawn back into Heian imperial court at the request of an old friend, Princess Teiko. Even before [...]

Clad in Gossamer

One thing I’m finding in Nancy Kress stories is really good portrayals of jerks. In “Clad in Gossamer”, her take on The Emperor’s New Clothes, you know everyone’s a jerk, so it works well.

Do you like your cookies sweet or crispy?

Here’s a twofer Tuesday. Why not?

Ancestor Money

It’s a real pity that a copy of China Mountain Zhang has been languishing on my bookshelf,  because what little I’ve read of Maureen McHugh I really like. Take “Ancestor Money,” (collected in Mothers & Other Monsters) which was read on Podcastle a few months ago. Rachel is spending her afterlife in Swan Pond Kentucky, [...]

The Fable of the Octopus

Still working my way through the Podcastle archives, I enjoyed a series of four fables by Peter S. Beagle that were podcast last fall.  My favorite was “The Fable of the Octopus,” about an octopus who wanted to see god. His ideas about god are about as good as your typical human New Age book. [...]

All Flee The Vocab Quiz

So, let’s see. “Shoggoths in Bloom” cast an admiring eye on squamous creatures. “Dark Heaven” offered mystical squamous creatures. Well, actually, neither of them were really squamous even if they were creatures. No, for real squamous horror, you need to go back to a Podcastle miniature form last fall called “All Flee the Vocab Quiz,” [...]

The Grand Cheat

“The Grand Cheat,”  by Hilary Moon Murphy is a charming deal with the deva story, where not only do we find a loophole, the god is forced to enforce it.  If there’s a contract, that’s even better.  As the narrator observes in the first line:
A contract is only two people, each doing his damnedest to [...]

Fear of Rain

While listening to a reading of “Fear of Rain,” by Robert T. Jeschoneck, I was immediately drawn in by  Aphrodite, a girl raised by Mr. Flood to drown Johnstown yet again. I liked that crazy old coot, Mr. Flood. The story is told with wonderful description, vivid magic, and a building tension. And it was [...]

The Ant King

I seem to be a Benjamin Rosenbaum fan. I enjoyed listening to the silly, dotcom picaresque of “The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale” from the absurd beginning.
Sheila split open and the air was filled with gumballs. Yellow gumballs. This was awful for Stan, just awful. He had loved Sheila for a long time, fought [...]

The Tooth Fairy

Telling us a variant on Pratchett’s multiple tooth fairies, “The Tooth Fairy,” by Jeffrey Valka sounds exactly like the absurd thing a father tells his kids just to mess with them. Like Calvin’s Dad. You might feel like you’ve heard this sort of thing before, and then the last line of the story turns the [...]