Cast of Wonders

Read by Hans Fenstermacher. Listen above or download here. Show Notes Today, we’ve something a little out of the ordinary for you: Kulturkampf, a story of music, warfare and battling composers. It was first published in the Immersion Book of Steampunk from Immersion Press, UK, in 2011. The author is Anatoly Belilovsky who was born in what is now Ukraine in time to watch the tanks roll into Czechoslovakia in 1968. He came to the US in 1976, learned English from watching Star Trek reruns, and is now a paediatrician in Brooklyn, NY, in an area where English is the 4th most commonly spoken language. He finds it fascinating that most of his SF sales so far have been to British and Commonwealth publications such as Nature Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways, Immersion Book of Steampunk, Ideomancer and Kasma. He believes this may be due to the influence on his work of great classic British writers of the past century, such as John Cleese, Graham Chapman, and Eric Idle. Your narrator is Hans Fenstermacher who was born in front of the Iron Curtain in Munich, Germany. He grew up in the crosshairs of the Cold War in Berlin. With that kind of […]

Read by Barry J Northern. Listen above or download here. Show Notes Happy 2012! How’s your year going? Kept up with your New Year’s resolutions — or didn’t you make any? I rarely do, myself, but one of mine was to keep Cast of Wonders bringing you great stories. And we’re off to a great start with today’s presentation, Ruby Hearts by Jodi MacArthur. Jodi MacArthur loved to troll the forests with her brother for salamanders, fossils, and buried treasure. Mostly, they just got wet and jumped out of trees. This story was written for Thor and Xavier. Jodi’s fiction has won several contests and recently was nominated for a Derringer’s and a Spinetingler’s award. Discover more at www.jodimacarthur.blogspot.com. Your narrator today is the Cast of Wonders Editor, Barry J Northern. So far he’s played a very behind-the-scenes role but we’re hoping to coax him further into the spotlight with more narrations! Read along Click here to read the text of the story Discuss Click here to discuss in the forums

Read by Graeme Dunlop. Listen above or download here. Show Notes Welcome to the final episode for 2011! Cast of Wonders is taking a break over the Festive Season but don’t worry, we’ll be back in 2012!! Watch the website for details. Today we present Rust by Brian Griggs. He’s taught junior high for ten years, five as an English teacher and five as a teacher-librarian. Of this story, he says, “I had a great chemistry teacher when I was in high school that greatly influenced my writing of ‘Rust’.” You can find out more about Brian at briangriggs.com. While we’re taking a break, you might like some podcasty goodness until we return! I highly recommend “The Brothers Grimm Lunch” hosted by Eric Wagoner. A few times a week, over his lunch break, Eric records, edits, and publishes one of the original 250 fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm and translated to English by Dr. Jack Zipes. They’re usually quite short. These are classic fairy tales but be warned — this is the Brothers Grimm we’re talking about so they don’t always end happily. These are not your Disney fairy tales but they are entertaining. You can find “The […]

Read by Graeme Dunlop. Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today we present Part 2 of Peanut Butter and Jellyfish by Guy Stewart. If you missed Part 1, it’s Episode 20 — the last one back! We gave Guy’s bio last episode so check the shownotes for Episode 20 if you want to know more. Or, you can find out more about Guy at www.sfwa.org/members/gstewart.. Read along Click here to read the text of the story Discuss Click here to discuss in the forums

Read by Graeme Dunlop. Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today we present Part 1 of Peanut Butter and Jellyfish by Guy Stewart. Guy is a writer and science teacher who’s been writing since he was 13. His main focus is science fiction and writing for children. His passion is to someday create science fiction books that would do for today’s young people what Robert A. Heinlein did for him. His work has appeared in ANALOG and CRICKET, a Hadley Rille anthology called AETHER AGE: HELIOS; the emagazine STUPEFYING STORIES; science experiments in TURTLE and HOPSCOTCH FOR GIRLS, historical and contemporary fiction, and the curriculum for two PBS science programs, to name just a few. You can find out more about him at sfwa.org/members/gstewart. Of this story he says, “My first hard SF novel grew out of my fascination with the North American carnivorous plant called a ‘pitcher plant’ and wondering what would have happened if it had evolved intelligence. That story is INVADER’S GUILT and it’s still looking for a home, but I realized that among the young adults in the novel, there were stories about OTHER young adults — Human and WheetAh — that could be […]

Read by Alasdair Stuart and Marguerite Kenner. Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today we present Part 2 of Cockatrice Girl Meets Statue Boy by Willow Fagan. If you didn’t catch Part 1, please go back and listen to Episode 18. We gave Willow’s bio last episode so check the notes for Episode 18 if you want to know more. Or, you can find out more about Willow at willowfagan.livejournal.com. Read along Click here to read the text of the story Discuss Click here to discuss in the forums

Read by Alasdair Stuart and Marguerite Kenner. Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today we present Part 1 of Cockatrice Girl Meets Statue Boy by Willow Fagan. Willow lives in Portland, Oregon. They’re genderqueer, which for them means that they feel more like a pirate princess than like a man or a woman. Their fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Behind the Wainscot, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2011. To read more about their writing and adventures, go to willowfagan.livejournal.com. Your narrators are Mr Alasdair Stuart and Ms Marguerite Kenner who should, by now, be familiar names to listeners of this podcast! Read along Click here to read the text of the story Discuss Click here to discuss in the forums

Read by Alasdair Stuart. Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today we present Part 2 of Saved by Arin Greenwood, read by Alisdair Stuart. If you didn’t catch Part 1, please go back and listen to Episode 16. We gave Arin’s bio last episode but, at that time, I implied Arin is a boy. And here, I again display my fabulous research skills! Arin is a girl! My very humble apologies to Arin for getting it wrong. So it’s worth saying again, with the correct gender: Arin Greenwood is a second-year undergraduate at the University of Washington, studying chemical engineering with a focus in nanotechnology. Apart from writing and reading, she is a dedicated musician, and a member of the Husky Marching Band at the UW. She attended the prestigious Alpha Young Writer’s Workshop in Pittsburgh for two consecutive summers, which features lectures taught by professional fantasy and science fiction authors, and the opportunity to meet writers of all ages. Read along Click here to read the text of the story Discuss Click here to discuss in the forums

Read by Alasdair Stuart. Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today we present Part 1 of Saved by Arin Greenwood. Arin is a second-year undergraduate at the University of Washington, studying chemical engineering with a focus in nanotechnology. Apart from writing and reading, she is a dedicated musician, and a member of the Husky Marching Band at the UW. She attended the prestigious Alpha Young Writer’s Workshop in Pittsburgh for two consecutive summers, which features lectures taught by professional fantasy and science fiction authors, and the opportunity to meet writers of all ages. The first draft of Saved was written at Alpha, and there have been many revisions since then. Arin says the inspiration for the story came from the song “Savin’ Me” by Nickelback; it is about controlling one’s own fate, and recognizing when life must be left to chance. If you go searching for Arin on the ‘net, you’ll find an Arin Greenwood on Tumblr who is not this Arin Greenwood! (And coincidentally, the “other” Arin is also a writer.) Your narrator is the ever-impressive Alasdair Stuart, the writer and journalist from a small island in the middle of the Irish Sea. Read along Click here […]

Read by Graeme Dunlop. Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today we present Same-Day Delivery by Desmond Warzel. The story first appeared in issue #11 of On the Premises. Desmond lives in northwestern Pennsylvania, and his most recent short story publications have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, the anthology Candle in the Attic Window from Innsmouth Free Press, and at Tor.com. Read along Click here to read the text of the story Discuss Click here to discuss in the forums

Read by Marguerite Kenner and Alasdair Stuart. Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today we present Bad Kitty by Jason Dextraduer. He lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia. If, like me, you know little about the US, Virginia Beach is the largest city in the state of Virginia; Virginia is on the West Coast. He works as a courier to pay the bills, and writes to keep the stories in his head from driving him crazy. Should he happen to have free time, he likes to spend it with friends, or outdoors letting the wind blow through him, or with a good story. Some of his other stories have appeared in The Hogglepot Online Fantasy Journal, The Absent Willow Review, and 5923 Quarterly. Your narrators this week are the “Girl Friday Extraordinaire” Marguerite Kenner, who is becoming a welcome regular ’round these here parts, and The Dark King of podcasting, Alasdair Stuart. Alasdair is a writer and journalist from a small island in the middle of the Irish Sea protected, the legends say, by a wizard who rolled wheels of fire down the central hill to dissuade invaders. Also it rained a lot, and he’s pretty sure that helped […]

Read by Graeme Dunlop. Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today I wanted to present The Loot of Bombasharna by Lord Dunsany. However, I didn’t check the copyrights well enough. Lord Dunsany’s works are only in the Public Domain in the US, and certainly not in the UK and Australia. My apologies. However, another very well-known writer was Hector Hugh Munro who used the pen-name “Saki”. Today we present his story The Name-Day. Saki’s works frequently satirised Edwardian society and culture and often had a mischievous twist, sometimes leaning toward the bizarre. An example of the mischievous is Down Pens, a story about the trials of responding to gift-givers with notes of gratitude, for politeness’ sake. You can find out more about Saki at the ultimate arbiter of absolute truth, Wikipedia. Discuss Click here to discuss in the forums

Read by Graeme Dunlop Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today we present Part 2 of To Be True by Jess Hyslop. If you didn’t catch Part 1, please go back and listen to Episode 11. We gave Jess’s bio last episode so check the notes for Episode 11 if you want to know more. Or, you can find out more about Jess at http://lightningtreelive.wordpress.com/, and read more of her sci-fi and fantasy stories at www.elfwood.com. Read along Click here to read the text of the story Discuss Click here to discuss in the forums

Read by Graeme Dunlop Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today we present Part 1 of To Be True by Jess Hyslop. Jess lives in London has recently been ejected from the cosy realm of academia into the perils of ‘the real world’, where she is trying to survive the life of an aspiring writer. She studied English at the University of Cambridge and three years later, emerged with her passion for sci-fi and fantasy still fully intact. Extraordinary! In 2010 she was awarded the University’s Quiller-Couch prize for creative writing, for “Augury,” a short story set during the Nazi occupation of Guernsey in WWII. You will soon be able to purchase “Augury” from Shortfire Press, at www.shortfirepress.com. You can find out more about Jess at http://lightningtreelive.wordpress.com/, and read more of her sci-fi and fantasy stories at www.elfwood.com. Read along Click here to read the text of the story Discuss Click here to discuss in the forums

Read by Marguerite Kenner, Danielle Daly and Graeme Dunlop. Listen above or download the MP3 Show Notes Today we present “Mrs. Jai” by Wendy Bradley. Wendy was the TV critic for Interzone magazine for a time. She edited and published Farthing magazine, described by Ursula le Guin as “cooler than Asimov’s.” She went to the Clarion West writers’ workshop in 2003. She has been a hotel receptionist, bookseller, drama teacher, secretary and Civil Servant. Wendy lives in Yorkshire and works in London. She can be found on Twitter as wendybradley where apparently she is “influential about football, business and drugs”. And she’s not sure what drugs they mean! Your narrators this week include Marguerite Kenner, who narrated The Unicorn Tree in Episode 2, and Danielle Daly who narrated A Proof of Unicorns in Episode 6. Read along Click here to read the text of the story Discuss Click here to discuss in the forums