Barn owl at night

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Cast of Wonders 453: Langsuir

Cast of Wonders 453: Langsuir is a Cast of Wonders original.

This story features stillbirth, death, murder, abuse, rape, slavery and misogyny.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:50 — 21.3MB)

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Langsuir

by Nadia Mikail

The langsuir is a woman who has died giving birth. Malay folktales have a multitude of women featured as wrathful, devious spirits: the hantu kum-kum thrives on the blood of virgin girls, desperate to maintain her youth even in death; the hantu kopek lures men to cheat on their wives, jealous that their afterlife contains no husband of their own; the pontianak goes after the people who have wronged her, tearing out their organs.

People usually shake their heads, they think: oh, well, that is the envious, terrible nature of Eve. Personally I think it is more how humans are treated in life that influences how they behave in death, and in this culture the women are angrier than most. (Continue Reading…)

magic butterflies

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Cast of Wonders 452: Little Wonders 29 – Flash Fiction Contest Winners

Cast of Wonders 452: Little Wonders 29 – Flash Fiction Contest Winners is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:04 — 20.6MB)

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Porch Light for the Lonely

by Alyson Grauer

When the wide western sky is black, embroidered with thousands of silver stars, and crickets sing unseen in the dry grass, critters come to the porch of the old house. The rug has long since lost its color from years of harsh sun. The wrought-iron bench is rusted, enamel flaking away like tree bark. The mailbox is crooked, and the torn curtains blow gently in the wind. Though it’s the sturdiest house left on the block, it sits unlived in, untrespassed. Only the flies and spiders know how empty it truly is inside.

Many cats come: strays, abandoned pets, and feral. They drape themselves about the empty porch, meowing with quiet yearning. (Continue Reading…)

Banned Books Week 2021

Banned Books Week 2021

Books Unite Us; Censorship Divides Us

This year, CoW takes its theme for Banned Books Week from the American Library Association:

 https://bannedbooksweek.org/banned-books-week-2021-books-unite-us/

Have you ever made friends with someone who loved the same book you did? You started the conversation as strangers, but you feel so passionately about the ideas expressed in this book that you end as comrades in arms?

It’s a book that speaks to shared experience, shared pain—and therefore lights the way to shared learning, shared hope, and shared healing. Perhaps it’s powerful enough to make former enemies into allies, and you would defy an empire to protect this book.

It could be a history that’s been silenced, a book that propounds an outlawed ideal. It’s a book you teach your own children or anyone else you love, and they love it because you loved it.

It’s so dangerous a text that intergalactic armadas are launched to destroy it, or at least keep the book from spreading its readership, and mages would craft elaborate castles to safeguard.

Send us your stories of books that unite the geekiest con-goer, the most curmudgeonly asteroid-pirate, the steampunk bot that’s been asleep for a hundred years. Send us your stories of books that swordmasters would talk over with dragons. Send us tales of books that turn the unlikeliest beings into friends in speculative worlds. Send us tales of books that transcend time and space to gather the disparate into families.

We’re not quite looking for books as “macguffin” stories, but a demonstration into how a book could forge bonds with others. Therefore, the book should feature prominently in the story rather than be a prop, and we love yarns that hit us in the feels. A tale that makes us ugly cry while meaningfully addressing this theme of uniting is very likely to get accepted.

As an example, consider the Saga comic, how a novel featuring a wreather and a landfallian getting along peacefully inspires Alana and Marko to fall in love. Or if a lowly treach-bat teaches an eldritch terror how to read… would that not inspire a friendship? We would love to see how you, author, interpret this theme!

We do see how the dual nature of the theme “unite” and “divide” could be hard to do in one story. Feel free to focus on one of these two aspects.

Our sweet spot this sub window is under 5,000 words, with the absolute limit being 6,000 words.

Submissions will be accepted from June 13th to June 26th, through our Moksha portal.

We anticipate making final decisions on stories by the end of July.

If you’re still looking to submit, we are looking for HOLIDAY STORIES! Submissions for Holiday themed stories will open on June 27, 2021 and will close on July 3, 2021 (Do Not Send Holiday Stories During Banned Books Week Submissions!!!).

We already have our Halloween story picked out and can’t wait to show it to you!

But we are looking for

ONE WINTER STORY

And

ONE VALENTINE’S STORY

With respect to both these BBW and Holiday Stories calls:

Yes to LGBTQ+ stories. Yes to Ace/Aro stories. Yes to non-binary stories. Yes to BIPOC stories. Yes to stories featuring disability, neurodiversity, and all the previously mentioned groups in nuanced, sensitive, and authentic ways. We must be missing some groups, but please know WE WANT AND WELCOME ALL FACETS OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

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Cast of Wonders 451: Unnamed

Cast of Wonders 451: Unnamed is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:28 — 32.9MB)

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Unnamed

by Monte Lin

Huìhuì Gāo’s homeroom teacher squinted at his roll call. He wore a slight smile that conveyed no joy. After a few seconds, he said, “Ms…?”

Her hand hovered over her desk, hesitant, ready to catch her name. Her teacher squinted and furrowed his brow and looked about the classroom, finally settling his gaze on her. “Here,” she said, her voice cracking a little. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 450: Little Wonders 28 – Metaphors & Allegories

Cast of Wonders 450: Little Wonders 28 – Metaphors & Allegories is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:39 — 24.8MB)

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Show Notes

“This is not my adventure”, by Karlo Yeager Rodríguez, was originally published in Uncanny Magazine #30, Disabled People Destroy Fantasy, 2019

Three monsters that are not metaphors

by Dani Atkinson

1. The kelpie is not a metaphor for depression.

“You’re kind of like a metaphor for depression, though,” I tell her, and she snorts angrily. Her hide twitches, dark and sticky as tar pits.

Just because she’s deceptively appealing, and wants to trap me and drag me down into cold grey waters, means nothing. Just because I am already drowning does not make it a metaphor. (Continue Reading…)

Cats Cast

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CatsCast 341: Bargain

“Bargain” first appeared in Mothership Zeta (Dec 2015)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:48 — 35.6MB)

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Bargain

by Sarah Gailey

Malachai loved his work. He loved wandering among the trappings of enormous wealth and influence, seeing the baubles that humans excreted to express their status. He especially loved watching those wealthy, influential mortals tremble before the might of his inescapable superiority.

Malachai worked exclusively with those humans who had found themselves at the limit of how much power they could possess. They called him to bend the rules of time and space around their whims, so that they might be even more feared and loved by the other mortals. Their desires were predictable—money, knowledge, talent, authority. These were the kinds of people who hunted down ancient parchments with the Words of Invocation inscribed upon them. These were the kinds of people who did not concern their consciences with the compensation Malachai required for his services.

They appreciated a bit of theatrical flair.
(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 449: This is How You Remember (Staff Picks 2020)

Originally published in Cast of Wonders episode 438.

profanity, war, PTSD

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:19 — 48.4MB)

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This is How You Remember

by Phong Quan

I see the crowds before I see you, before I see even the flickering white of your flame. Your culture’s everywhere now—your music, your art, your words—but not your people, and not you, not in this tiny airport in this little place between San Diego and LA. So I hear the whispers—A Torch! A Speaker’s on the flight. Why here? There’s nothing here—and prepare myself to see you for the first time since the War. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 448: The Oak Knowers (Staff Picks 2020)

Previously published as Cast of Wonders episodes 403 & 404.

Content warning for language/profanity. This story contains in-character usage of the N-word and the F-word.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:30 — 50.4MB)

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The Oak Knowers

by Wesley Jenkins

When the moon sits high, and our parents have passed out for sure, we gather in the grove to do our business.

We never call it magic. Magic is something magicians do, pulling rabbits out of hats. I guess witches turn princes into toads and sorcerers cruise from kingdom to kingdom, toppling regimes and screwing everything in sight, but we have never been so outrageous. For one thing, we believe in rules.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 447: Candy Wrappers (Staff Picks 2020)

First published in Cast of Wonders episode 437 in November 2020

colonialism, death

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:41 — 32.2MB)

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Candy Wrappers

by Kaitlyn Zivanovich

The island is a circle. A magmic glow radiates from the lips of the volcano crater at one end—hot, and alive. On the other end the Visitor compound is white and cold, lit by the new false light. But it is darkness the island child seeks as she sprints through the garden of the dead, cradling her brother’s soul in her hands.

Mikmik dashes from night-shadow to night-shadow. She skirts around overgrown patches of soulseeds, left uncollected by their living. There is no singing in the garden. Jyn chatters and laughs in Mikmik’s palm, completely unchanged for all that he no longer has a body. “Faster!” he cries. The wind rushes over his soulseed. “Run, Mikmik, run!” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 446: The Half-Life of a Broken Heart (Staff Picks 2020)

“The Half-Life of a Broken Heart” by N. R. Lambert previously appeared in Factor Four Magazine, Issue 2 (June 2018), and as Cast of Wonders episode 413 in May 2020

Death of a child

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:10 — 15.2MB)

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The Half-Life of a Broken Heart
by N. R. Lambert

We hear the nursery long before we see it. Feel it too, despite the heavily insulated walls. Deep metronomic concussions roll down the corridor and crash through us. When we reach the entry, marked simply, “Hearts,” the door slides open and a technician ushers us through. The nursery is aggressively antiseptic–shrill LED lighting, a gleaming steel tile floor, and between them, bed after bed of hearts. A chamber of chambers, bumping and pulsing in sync.

“They do that on their own.” The tech says, smiling, glasses glaring back at us.

“We’ve even tried to offset them intentionally, quite drastically, but still…they always sync up somehow. It’s rather uncanny, don’t you think?” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 445: The Pop-up Artisan of Drink Me Café (Staff Picks 2020)

Previously published as Cast of Wonders episode 434

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:14 — 25.4MB)

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The Pop-up Artisan of Drink Me Café

by Marie Croke

I came to her coffee shop, but never bought anything–things like that the owner’s bound to notice. Figured my days were numbered as soon as she took note, but my mom ran me off and the cold drove me in and there’s only so many stores one can pretend to be shopping at before people start looking at you all suspicious-like.

Took a coffee cup out of the trash and did the mime thing actors did, pretending to sip while I turned pages in my library book. Whenever the owner came near–wiping down a table, picking up dirty napkins, delivering a latte–I got all stiff, shoulders tense, waiting for her tap on them.

“Excuse me.”

Like I said…

“What are you reading?”

“A book,” I muttered, hugging the book awkwardly with my arm. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 444: From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review (Staff Picks 2020)

Originally published at Tor.com in April 2016, and as Cast of Wonders Episode 405

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:32 — 19.2MB)

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From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review

by Marie Brennan

Dear Sirs–

I was fascinated by Mr. Benjamin Talbot’s brief notice, published in the 28 Seminis issue of your magazine, detailing his acquisition of a preserved specimen from a heretofore undocumented draconic species. As we all know, legends of the cockatrice date back many centuries, but I am unaware of any reputable examples collected before now, either dead or alive. This is a thrilling event for the field of dragon naturalism, and I heartily encourage Mr. Talbot to publish his discovery at greater length, including details such as the manner of its acquisition, the island or archipelago in the Broken Sea where such beasts may be found, and a thorough description of its anatomy. An engraving to accompany this article would not go amiss–though naturally a public presentation of his find would be even more desirable. I may dare hope that Mr. Talbot is even now preparing such an article for publication, whether in your magazine or elsewhere, for I have awaited further information with bated breath, and fear I will soon turn blue for lack of oxygen.
(Continue Reading…)