Archive for The Best of PodCastle

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PodCastle 516e: 10th Anniversary Special, The Best of PodCastle #1 – The Paper Menagerie

Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:47 — 28.6MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG.

Editors’ note: This episode originally aired as PodCastle 165. We are reissuing it to celebrate PodCastle’s 10th anniversary. This story was in first position in a listener vote that was held to determine PodCastle’s most-loved episodes over the past decade.

 

The Paper Menagerie

by Ken Liu

A little paper tiger stood on the table, the size of two fists placed together. The skin of the tiger was the pattern on the wrapping paper, white background with red candy canes and green Christmas trees.

I reached out to Mom’s creation. Its tail twitched, and it pounced playfully at my finger. “Rawrr-sa,” it growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and rustling newspapers.

I laughed, startled, and stroked its back with an index finger. The paper tiger vibrated under my finger, purring.

“Zhe jiao zhezhi,” Mom said. This is called origami.

I didn’t know this at the time, but Mom’s kind was special. She breathed into them so that they shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.

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PodCastle 516d: 10th Anniversary Special, The Best of PodCastle #2 – Makeisha In Time

Originally published in Crossed Genres, Issue #20, August 2014. Read it here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:58 — 19.8MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R: Contains violence.

Editors’ note: This episode originally aired as PodCastle 345. We are reissuing it to celebrate PodCastle’s 10th anniversary. This story was in second position in a listener vote that was held to determine PodCastle’s most-loved episodes over the past decade.

Makeisha In Time

by Rachael K. Jones

Makeisha has always been able to bend the fourth dimension, though no one believes her. She has been a soldier, a sheriff, a pilot, a prophet, a poet, a ninja, a nun, a conductor (of trains and symphonies), a cordwainer, a comedian, a carpetbagger, a troubadour, a queen, and a receptionist. She has shot arrows, guns, and cannons. She speaks an extinct Ethiopian dialect with a perfect accent. She knows a recipe for mead that is measured in aurochs horns, and with a katana, she is deadly.

Her jumps happen intermittently. She will be yanked from the present without warning, and live a whole lifetime in the past. When she dies, she returns right back to where she left, restored to a younger age. It usually happens when she is deep in conversation with her boss, or arguing with her mother-in-law, or during a book club meeting just when it is her turn to speak. One moment, Makeisha is firmly grounded in the timeline of her birth, and the next, she is elsewhere. Elsewhen.

Makeisha has seen the sun rise over prehistoric shores, where the ocean writhed with soft, slimy things that bore the promise of dung beetles, Archeopteryx, and Edgar Allan Poe. She has seen the sun set upon long-forgotten empires. When Makeisha skims a map of the continents, she sees a fractured Pangaea. She never knows where she will jump next, or how long she will stay, but she is never afraid. Makeisha has been doing this all her life.

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PodCastle 516c: 10th Anniversary Special, The Best of PodCastle #3 – Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters

Originally published in Postscripts.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:30 — 47.6MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R: Contains Language, Violence, and Disturbing Imagery circa Hurricane Katrina.

Editors’ note: This episode originally aired as PodCastle 154. We are reissuing it to celebrate PodCastle’s 10th anniversary. This story was in third place in a listener vote that was held to determine PodCastle’s most-loved episodes over the past decade.

Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters

By N.K. Jemisin

Tookie sat on the porch of his shotgun house, watching the rain fall sideways.  A lizard strolled by on the worn dirt-strip that passed for a sidewalk, easy as you please, as if there wasn’t an inch of water already collected around its paws.  It noticed him and stopped.

“Hey,” it said, inclining its head to him in a neighborly fashion.

“‘Sup,” Tookie replied, jerking his chin up in return.

“You gon’ stay put?” it asked.  “Storm comin’.”

“Yeah,” said Tookie.  “I got food from the grocery.”

“Ain’ gon’ need no food if you drown, man.”

Tookie shrugged.

The lizard sat down on the sidewalk, oblivious to the driving wind, and joined Tookie in watching the rain fall.  Tookie idly reflected that the lizard might be an alligator, in which case he should maybe go get his gun.  He decided against it, though, because the creature had wide batlike wings and he was fairly certain gators didn’t have those.  These wings were the color of rusty, jaundiced clouds, like those he’d seen approaching from the southeast just before the rain began.

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PodCastle 516b: 10th Anniversary Special, The Best of PodCastle #4 – In the Stacks

Originally Published in Swords and Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:36:37 — 69.7MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R: Contains violence, some language, and the coolest, most dangerous library ever!

Editors’ note: This episode originally aired as PodCastle 200. We are reissuing it to celebrate PodCastle’s 10th anniversary. This story was tied for fourth/fifth position in a listener vote that was held to determine PodCastle’s most-loved episodes over the past decade.

The cast:

Norm Sherman as the Narrator
Peter Wood as Lazlo
Dave Thompson as Casimir
Wilson Fowlie as Master Molnar
M.K. Hobson as Astriza
Graeme Dunlop as Lev Bronzeclaw
Anna Schwind as Yvette
Ann Leckie, Alasdair Stuart, Talia, Occicat, and Marshal Latham as the Librarians, Indexers, and Vocubavores
and Rachel Swirsky as the Head Vocabuvore

In The Stacks

by Scott Lynch

On the clock outside the gate to the Manticore Wing of the library, the little blue flame was just floating past the symbol for high noon when Laszlo and Casimir skidded to a halt before a single tall figure.

“I see you two aspirants have chosen to favor us with a dramatic last-minute arrival,” said the man. “I was not aware this was to be a drama exam.”

“Yes, Master Molnar. Apologies, Master Molnar,” said Laszlo and Casimir in unison.

Hargus Molnar, Master Librarian, had a face that would have been at home in a gallery of military statues, among dead conquerors casting their permanent scowls down across the centuries. Lean and sinewy, with close-cropped gray hair and a dozen visible scars, he wore a use-seasoned suit of black leather and silvery mail. Etched on his cuirass was a stylized scroll, symbol of the Living Library, surmounted by the phrase Auvidestes, Gerani, Molokare. The words were Alaurin, the formal language of scholars, and they formed the motto of the Librarians:

RETRIEVE. RETURN. SURVIVE.