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Cast of Wonders 362: Hare’s Breath

Originally published in Shimmer, Issue 39 (2017)

Content Warning: discussion of medical procedures and suicide

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Show Notes

This episode is part of our 2019 Summer Spotlight, showcasing the work of the year’s major award finalists.

Shimmer is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.

Many thanks to Shimmer for the use of their issue cover art for this episode.

Sweden Admit to Racial Purification (from The Independent)

“The so-called sterilization laws were instituted by the Swedish parliament in 1934 and 1941. Both allowed sterilization without consent under certain conditions. The reasons (indications) to perform sterilizations were threefold: eugenics (race/genetic hygiene), social and medical. Of the total number of sterilized individuals, 93 percent were women.”

From the report “Steriliseringsfrågan i Sverige 1935 – 1975” / “The issue of sterilization in Sweden 1935–1975,” issued by Socialdepartementet / Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, Sweden, March 2000.

Hare’s Breath

by Maria Haskins

1947, Västerbotten, Sweden

It’s Midsummer’s Eve and even this close to midnight there’s no darkness, only a long, translucent dusk that will eventually slip into dawn.

Britt and I are fifteen, and she has just come back from That Place, the one the adults won’t talk about even when they think I’m not listening. Something’s happened to her there, but I don’t understand what it is, and she can’t find the words to tell me.

We’re sitting on the wooden fence near my family’s potato patch, looking down the slope at the red-painted barn and stable, watching the hare. He sits upright on his haunches by the forest’s edge, ever watchful, bending now and then to nibble grass and clover, grey-brown fur all sleek and trim, long ears turning.

The hare reminds me of Britt: dark eyes watching to see if you’ve come to kill it; long legs always ready to run.

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Cast of Wonders 361: Heartless

Originally published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #84 (December 2011)

Content Warning: body horror; some violent elements right at the start

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:44 — 30.4MB)

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Show Notes

This episode is part of our 2019 Summer Spotlight, showcasing the work of the year’s major award finalists.

Peadar’s YA novel The Invasion is a finalist for the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book.

Heartless

by Peadar Ó Guilín

“No one asks for death.” This was the proud boast of the city of Kalegwyn. “No one ever asks for it.” Until Malern did. A bad move for her, as it turned out. She awoke on Castellan Garvinger’s operating table with his favourite surgeon elbow-deep in her chest.

“This is going to hurt,” said Garvinger from somewhere in the background. “Scream all you want.”

And she did. She couldn’t help herself, although she knew her cries were being conveyed magically to the people in the plaza beyond. She screamed until something seemed to snap in her throat, and after that the best she could manage was a wheezing, bubbling sound that carried no hint of her former insolence.

The surgeon kept working, ripping and tearing. He made sure she could see everything. They had pointed a mirror at her chest and had pinned her eyes open.

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Cast of Wonders 360: Kulturkampf (Encore!)

Originally published in the Immersion Book of Steampunk from Immersion Press, UK, in 2011.

Previously aired as Cast of Wonders Episode 24 in February 2012, and selected as a Staff Pick by Barry J. Northern in 2013.

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Kulturkampf

by Anatoly Belilovsky

September 1, 1870

Most respected Feldmarschall von Moltke,

I wish to thank you for giving me the opportunity to put my theories to the test in the taking of Sedan. They were, of course, entirely correct, and our clear tactical victory I am happy to be reporting.

Die Grosse Bertha worked to perfection; we were able to play Bruckner’s Zero Symphony at half steam while the technicians adjusted all their valves and levers. Steamwinds worked perfectly on the first try, and though of course strings needed to be tuned, of the steam tympani there was never any doubt. I have perhaps been harsh on occasion in my estimation of Herr Bruckner’s work, but for making the listeners run away screaming I should say his symphonies are without rival.

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Cast of Wonders 359: Tiger, Tiger

Cast of Wonders 359: Tiger, Tiger is a Cast of Wonders original.

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Tiger, Tiger

By Drea Silvertooth

Echo had always thought that when the world ended, she’d either be running with a motley band of survivors or instantly vaporized. Not a single book, show or movie had prepared her for being apocalypse adjacent.

In the Tropical Asia building, protected by thick glass walls and a ventilation system designed to keep air warm in the winter and sticky in the summer, she hid with her animals. Warty pigs snuffled through the decorative undergrowth, a siamang family sung like sirens in the canopy overhead, and the Malayan tapir and small-clawed otters had taken residence around the cement-bottomed stream that wound through the exhibit. There was still no sign of the sloth bear or the orangutans. Echo wondered if, while she’d been lying face down in the public restroom fighting for consciousness, they might have been evacuated.

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Cast of Wonders 358: A Singular Event in the Fourth Dimension

Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction (March / April 2017)

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A Singular Event in the Fourth Dimension

by Andrea M. Pawley

Olive touched the tiny carbon fiber legs. They folded under her fingertip. The drone was dead. Its accumulator nodes held enough copper to get Olive through the next three days. Papa had always provided Olive with the inorganics she needed, but Papa hadn’t been home much since Mama stopped going to work and the second grandma arrived five days ago.

With her hand curled around the drone, Olive wiggled backward through the sinewy filament holding each living quarters trailer like a barnacle to the side of the elevator. The filament slowed Olive. So did a shortage of metals in her system. None of today’s dead drones carried the gold she needed most.

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Cast of Wonders 357: Little Wonders 21: 2018 Flash Fiction Contest Runners-Up

Cast of Wonders 357: Little Wonders 21: 2018 Flash Fiction Contest Runners-Up is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:37 — 19.4MB)

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Grounded

by J. T. Nilson

“I can’t,” Sophie sulked. “I stayed out past curfew last week and I’m not allowed to go out.”

“But the gnome army marches onward!” cried Aithne, flitting in circles within Sophie’s window frame, her glowing wings a hummingbird-like blur. “The pixie tribes need our human champion to bring forth the magic. We must triumph!”

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Cast of Wonders 356: Little Wonders 20: 2018 Flash Fiction Contest Winners

Cast of Wonders 356: Little Wonders 20: 2018 Flash Fiction Contest Winners is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:23 — 21.9MB)

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Show Notes

Dream Foundry is a new organization helping all professionals, especially beginners, working in the speculative arts. Back their Kickstarter to make sure they last and grow, and to get yourself some nifty rewards.

 

Website: www.dreamfoundry.org
Twitter: @dream_foundry
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dreamfoundryorg/
Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dreamfoundry/dream-foundry-2019-hatching

An Economy of Words

by Wendy Nikel

Growing up so far from the wordfields, I’ve learned to appreciate the few words I have, so as the fitting for Baron Kensington’s festival garments drag on, I cringe at each wasted remark.

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Cast of Wonders 355: Why I Spared the One Brave Soul Between Me and My Undead Army (Artemis Rising 5)

Cast of Wonders 355: Why I Spared the One Brave Soul Between Me and My Undead Army (Artemis Rising 5) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:38 — 30.4MB)

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Why I Spared the One Brave Soul Between Me and My Undead Army

by Setsu Uzume

I am loathe to admit that the ambush was masterful. Not only had the bounty hunters slain my contacts, but they had done so in the right order — dispatching the Ritualist before she had any corpses to animate. Had I come on horseback, they would have had me, too.

In addition to my dead allies and their hobbled wagon, I counted four hunters lumbering through the dark. Big lads, experienced and well-equipped, but given the style of their breastplates they had come from the west — tracking the cultists and not me. It made them slow and ill-prepared to face me in my glory. I whirled, my shadow splitting off to pierce kidneys and slice the backs of their knees while I led them a merry dance through dead leaves and bracken. One of them even turned, his blade slashing a wide arc, but shadows have no heads to remove. Him, I killed the quickest.

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Cast of Wonders 354: Wordslinger, Wordwreaker (Artemis Rising 5)

Cast of Wonders 354: Wordslinger, Wordwreaker (Artemis Rising 5) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:22 — 35.6MB)

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Wordslinger, Wordwreaker

by Amanda Helms

The wordslinger first came into Lasthope on the back of a scarab the size of a large pony, during the worst flaying-wind storm in a generation.

Mind, we didn’t know then that she was a wordslinger, or even that she was a she. I didn’t witness it direct, but later one of our regulars told me of her, all bundled up in hat and gloves and too-big cloak, on account of them winds, you see. She climbed off her scarab with the stiffness of someone too long in the saddle. But like any rider worth her salt, she saw to her mount afore she came into the saloon, which is where I first saw her myself.

Me and Ruby were on a break, letting my babe Arlie grab at and occasionally suck on the tassels of our gowns. Spurs jangling, the wordslinger ambled to the bar as she pulled back her cloak–she had two canteens slung on her belt, one on each side–then, slowly removed her hat and, slower yet, peeled off her gloves. Waiting to see if anyone’d comment on her color, I reckon, for the raggedy leather of her attire was just a few shades lighter than her own skin.

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Cast of Wonders 353: With Cardamom I’ll Bind Their Lips (Artemis Rising 5)

First published in Uncanny Magazine (April 2017)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:33 — 34.1MB)

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With Cardamom I’ll Bind Their Lips

by Beth Cato

In the spring after the war’s end, the soldiers’ spirits began to wander home, and Lady Magdalena bound their lips with cardamom so that they could not speak.

“These souls walked for months, their only thought to return home. You must remember, little of their personality remains at this point. They are solid enough to nudge furniture and not sink through the floor, but they’re not fully here.”

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