With the presentation, you have someone with… to put it kindly, a tin ear reading the story. Even if you can’t afford actual actors to read the story you should be able to find better than this. (But perhaps I’m influenced by the fact that I’m an unemployed actor who can’t get work doing voice-overs or reading, at all, at all…)

As to the writing: it took me a while to realise that there’s not a bit of direct speech in it. Peoples’ remarks are reported not quoted. There is no dialogue. It’s the very essence of ‘tell not show’. And that may work on the page but when read out it becomes very tedious.

Where was the denouement in this story? Where is the great reward for the searching hero? The last sentences of the story became a sermon, and I was left unsatisfied with the result.

A shame. It had been an excellent story, until that point.

“Then of course is the striking image that in order to love god unconditionally…. we must be made blind. It’s as if the only possible way to love this god is to be incapable of seeing how things work.”

Point! To you, sir! My thoughts precisely.

The reading was fine, but it’s cute how peeps try to blame that for ceasing to finish a potentially enlightening story. From what I gathered, the author told us exactly what he thought.

If hell is the absence of god
and hell is supposed to be terrible
then one must be aware of what it cannot have

Wandering around hell without constant suffering wouldn’t make sense. If heaven is personal (what makes you happy), why wouldn’t hell be the same (what makes you sad)?

It is a rather accurate description of what I was taught about god. He is totally wrathful. It wasn’t enough for Neil to be separated from his wife for eternity; god had to up the agony by showing him what he will never have. It is him loving his wife/finding a loop hole/loving god/rejection that makes this scenario so torturous. If he had just offed himself (selfish) and not attempted to *sneak* in to be with his wife (love) he would have been fine and a whole person in hell. The “what if” makes this so cruel.

I interpreted this as god was jealous of the love Neil had for his wife. Why is that so far-fetched?

Here’s my take on the story, as an atheist. The world in this story depicts the sort of world that theists believe in, though perhaps without realizing it. The reason they may not realize it is that our world has a veneer of “faith” over all of the divine activity, but in the story, that curtain is removed. God’s activity is transparent, and it becomes obvious at just how random and senseless he is.

We pray for help, but for every miracle there are a dozen prayers who go unanswered. Some who never ask for help get it anyway. Divine activity is completely random. It is the people who keep searching for explanations, who keep guessing at what the plan is, who keep trying to find the deeper reasons. But in the end, it may as well be just random, unguided, natural events.

What kind of world is this when angels help a handful, but hurt dozens, even hundreds more while they’re at it? That’s OUR world, if you truly believe that prayers work. One commenter noticed the constant references to statistics, and I think this is why. For every case of cured cancer, there may be a hundred more that pray and still die.

We give god credit for saving the one, but if god really answered prayers the deaths of the others may as well be attributed to him as well. Because he didn’t answer those. Which is what the story illustrates, as angels burn through cities and destroy buildings on their way to cure a single amputee.

We don’t see any of gods work directly in the real world, so we can use faith as a way to soften the blow. But if we really did see, directly, that this is how god works, we could only conclude that he’s completely unreliable and has given us no reason at all to love him.

Then of course is the striking image that in order to love god unconditionally…. we must be made blind. It’s as if the only possible way to love this god is to be incapable of seeing how things work.

Hey who knows perhaps the world in the story mentioned exists and we are all living in Hell without God now (damn I see others pointed that out hehe).

I don’t think the audio quality was that bad and I although it clashes with the audiophile in me I don’t believe it impacted on the story, it is the words not how they are said that is important.

Anyway good work on choosing a different sort of story, ignore the crap about the audio quality and keep up the good work!

Craybe

The idea of God here and how He was endlessly interfering in people’s lives and randomly saving and damning people was absolute bullshit. God does not play with dice. I am Catholic (but not really) and I don’t think of myself as particularly religious, but this story just pissed me off.This story didn’t make me uncomfortable, it just pissed me off ! (Did I say that already?) That somehow, the Ultimate Being of God does not give a rat’s ass about us is a bullshit concept and I’m surprised anyone out there actually believed it even for a second.

To Benjamin:
I think you were hitting the nail on the head. You said everything exactly right.

Sincerely,
The Blaine Boy

The story itself… I think if I had read it, it would have flown by faster (I read quickly), and therefore not have been as disappointing when I got to the end and had to wonder if I had somehow missed the point of the whole thing. I mean, I get the subtexts, I think… I just don’t know what the story was really meant to say.

Now, I will admit that I am not much for stories where the author presents some stuff to think about and expects the audience to draw their own conclusions. I can do that on my own, and I already have a head full of ideas to muse and ponder. If I pick up your story to read or listen to, I want to know what YOU think. Rest assured that I will take your message and mull it over in my head- but if you don’t give me anything to react to, it just sort of falls flat.

And, unfortunately, this one kinda did for me. I was really hoping for something dramatic and powerful to justify the somewhat overwrought narrative, and I just didn’t get it.

Also, I’ll grant that the audio quality and the lackluster reading didn’t help. The narrator didn’t seem that interested in the story, so it was hard for me to be.

I found the idea of ( what appears to be ) an uncaring jerk of a God though quite disturbing. I guess that bugs me a bit from the narrative view too. A serial rapist and murderer ascends via the light of heaven – but a guy who WANTED to be devout, whose only ‘sin’ was his selfish desire to be with the woman he loved gets the whole ‘ACCESS DENIED’ thing ? With the strong implication that his suffering in Hell was considerably worse than most of the souls there ?

It seemed a bit of a literary sucker-punch to me – a bit of a cheap shot to yank the carpet out from under the reader. I don’t like the inconsistency with the apparent rules of the world ( see light of Heaven = instant salvation, do not pass go – do not collect $200 ). But that’s not to say I didn’t like the story. I was shocked at the end – but I guess that was the authors intent. And we ARE dealing with an omnipotent being here, one who can do whatever the heck he wants in his universe and no-one can do a damn thing about it.

Kinda worrying thought though, huh ?

At first I was thinking, maybe hoping, the monotone was an interpretive choice to reflect Neal’s ambivalence toward God. Whatever the case, it didn’t work.

I also love the theme of this story. The fact that you can live in a world where not only is the existence of god proven but still don’t go to heaven is fascinating. The only thing I don’t understand is why Neil went to hell. He never did anything to derserve that except not love god. Maybe that’s just another theme of the story that is, that god is not loving, but rather harsh and uncaring.

I thoroughly enjoyed this podcast despite the fact that Neil got sent to hell when he didn’t deserve it.

And I’m pretty sure I didn’t read it in print…

Anyone?

No God, here. Move along.

:Eric

being a long time listener to escape artists pod casting I am not pleased to say that this was by far the worse story ever to be included in your archives.

I am not sensitive to the religious matter at all, but felt the story was some freshmen running thought experiment in philosophy and Christian religion, and I thought its contents did not make for an enjoyable story at any level.

Just plain awful pod castle PLEASE lift your shocks up this is shameful !!

oh, hey i didn’t even think of that! but now that you point it out, i totally agree with you on that one.

One commenter compared the story to the “Left Behind” series, which I think is oddly appropriate. Except where the Left Behind books unintentionally create an image of a callous, uncaring god and are therefore bad books, this story does a fairly excellent job of creating that image deliberately and creating interesting question s from it.

The story would really have been helped by a dose of “show, don’t tell.” The narration was presented at such a distance from the characters that it was hard to identify with any of them. It felt like a long dull record of characters’ thoughts and decisions, with little action and no dialogue.

The ending was creepy in a way that I don’t know if the author intended, and unsatisfying.

When the story is bad a good reader can still make it interesting. But the poor quality of the audio combined with the poor reading made the words slide off my brain. This episode failed to hold my attention for more than a few minutes. I’m a die hard listener and contributer to Podcastle. I hope you can keep this from happening again.

There are tons of good readers out there with good audio setups would would love a chance to read for Podcastle, including myself and my wife. We and our friends have read for Escape Pod and Pseudopod. Podcastle seems to have tapped a completely different social circle for readers, which is great. It widens the entire base for all of Escape Artists. But in the future, I think you should consider kicking the story to a new reader if you detect problems with the quality of the sound or the reading.

I really wish I could have stayed with it long enough to comment on the story. I’ve loved the Podcastle Giants you’ve released so far. I’ll be here next week, and the week after, and the week after that. One bad episode out of 39 good ones it still a huge success rate.

-Paul

The characters actions reminded me of a quote from Dr. Gregory House “Interesting that religious devotion and insanity are so similar we can’t tell the difference.”

Jacob

It’s a really interesting story that brings to mind wisdom literature. It bears a lot of the elements of the Job story, and the goal of this type of literature is understanding. However, the point that gets reached (G-d is impossible to understand) invokes a sense of humility in some, anger in others, and apathy in what appears to be a good percentage of responders.

Probably the most interesting thing I found in the story was the use of statistics. The people that inhabit this world are constantly trying to figure out the odds, the chances, and the historical precedent, but no such thing exists. It’s really fascinating: the search for purpose when the purpose can be deemed unknowable.

The reading didn’t bother me, and this story engaged me fully. Keep ‘em coming.

I am not particularly religious so I could not relate to the blind devotion bit. I agree with Benjamin’s assessment that it does make the case for having one’s deity FAR removed from day to day life.

- AdventureMom

The impersonal nature of the divine in the story was interesting to me and seemed to balance well with the clinical way the world seemed to accept the ‘visitations.’ The ending was ambiguous and left a lot of things which seem to be intended to make the reader think, but I found it falling flat. A long road to get to a painting made by a dadaist who has had too much nihilism.

Is he?

I am, personally. The story made me uncomfortable in parts — particularly the ending. But I showed it to several people with various religious beliefs, both atheistic and theistic. It made us all uncomfortable (I think the story is profoundly uncomfortable, which is one of the things I like about it), but we couldn’t come up with a consistent reading on the story’s opinions about religion. I, personally, find it the opposite of preachy — it presents events (very uncomfortable ones) and draws conclusions in the voice of an unreliable narrator whose conclusions are, at best, biased. There’s an enormous space of strangeness, ambiguity, and discomfort in the narrative.

In any case, I don’t know whether Chiang is an atheist or a theist. I’d find that information interesting, but I think the story works well in an ambiguous space without it.

I’d also like to point out at this point that Chiang is in fact an atheist himself.

Secondly, the story itself seemed as a rehashed version of some young evangelical’s upbringing. The author seemed to have taken every bible thumbing sermon from his own preacher and regurgitated them.

The quality of plot and emotional depth rivals that of the “Left Behind Series” of Christian novels. That’s where this poorly written piece belongs.

Perhaps this is one of the worse podcasts that Podcastle has issued.