Genres:

Cast of Wonders 622: Open Skies and Hellfire (Staff Picks 2024)

First published as Cast of Wonders 582, April 2024

Bombs, terrorism

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:04 — 28.9MB)

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Open Skies and Hellfire

by Olivia B. Chan

I liked to think of myself as a morally sound individual. It was easier to do when I wasn’t smuggling gunpowder to a teenager who may or may not have planned to blow up the caverns with it.

The smudgy teenager asked, “How much?”

I said, “An unreasonable amount. What are you going to do with all this, anyway?”

Caver kids had a certain look, and this one exemplified it. In the dark of the cramped tunnel, our two lanterns converging to cast multifaceted shadows, her skin clung to her bones. “How much do I pay?” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 621: Bodies of Sand and Blood (Staff Picks 2024)

First published in Cast of Wonders 580 in April 2024

Transphobia, abusive parents

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:03 — 41.3MB)

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Bodies of Sand and Blood

by Plangdi Neple

Sneaking into your father’s shrine is one of the most stupid things you have ever done, yet you feel entirely at home among the hanging masks and horsetails. Lanterns beside the doorway and at the opposite end of the shrine cast the faces of the other boys around you in an orange glow. The excitement on their dark, ruddy faces can’t match yours though, and your cheeks hurt from smiling too much.

You are seated on the bench furthest from your father’s big bone chair, hoping to be obscured by the shadowy darkness of the corner. The first three benches are crammed with boys jostling for a better seat yet unwilling to move to the empty benches behind. You scoff at their stupidity but pray they don’t stop clamoring for those seats. In your heart of hearts you belong with them, but you know the further away you are from them, the better. (Continue Reading…)

silhouetted horses against a backdrop of the starry sky

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Cast of Wonders 620: Fording the Milky Way (Staff Picks 2024)

First published as Cast of Wonders 577, February 2024

Abusive relationships, dysfunctional families

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:32 — 32.3MB)

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Fording the Milky Way

by Megan Ng

There’s a festival celebrated in China that’s dedicated to young lovers. It is not one celebrated here, but Ma tells me about it all the same. Storytelling is our way of killing time as she makes supper for the ranch hands or patches Pa’s shirts, and whenever she’s sitting comfortably with her hands full I know I’m about to hear something interesting. Ma’s stories aren’t like the ones in books– hers seem more thrilling and real, even though I know she’s making most of them up.

She tells me a story about a beautiful weaver girl who lives among the stars and falls in love with a human cowherd. She tells me about a vengeful mother goddess who rips the sky in two with a hairpin to keep the lovers apart forevermore.

On the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the Jade Emperor takes pity on them, Ma says. He allows all the magpies of the world to form a bridge between the heavens, so that the weaver and her cowherd can see each other for a single night. (Continue Reading…)

a small gingerbread man in a bowl of gingerbread

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Cast of Wonders 619: A Properly Spiced Gingerbread

This story was originally published in DreamForge Magazine in March 2022 and later won the 2022 Critters Readers Choice Award for “Best Magical Realism Short Story.”

Image by Slava Sidorov from Pixabay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:07 — 18.0MB)

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A Properly Spiced Gingerbread

by David Hankins

Run, run, as fast as you can. You can’t escape the Gingerbread Man. Granny had warned that magic could kill, but Lucy hadn’t expected to die at the hands of a cookie. (Continue Reading…)

stately home garden distorted by a kaleidoscope

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Cast of Wonders 618: Beneath the Unreal Gardens of the Virtual Villa

Cast of Wonders 618: Beneath the Unreal Gardens of the Virtual Villa is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:12 — 63.5MB)

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Beneath the Unreal Gardens of the Virtual Villa

By M.K. Hutchins

Self-defense class in the virtual reality sim is supposed to be safe. My green dummy-partner lumbers toward me like a particularly unthreatening zombie and grabs my throat. I clasp my hands together, crash down on those green elbow joints, then strike up at its nose with everything I have, just like Mrs. Rodriguez showed us.

Green blood sprays all over me.

I cough, splutter, stagger back. Who’d program a dummy that way? Several girls gape in horror. Two guys start laughing. No one else made their dummy gush blood.

Mrs. Rodriguez smells wounded social prey like a great white shark—Carcharodon carcharias. She hurries over with a plastic-fake, angelic smile. “As you can all see, Anne has gotten into the spirit of things! Excellent work, Anne!” (Continue Reading…)

creepy vintage doll

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Cast of Wonders 617: Emily

Cast of Wonders 617: Emily is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:51 — 27.3MB)

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Emily

by Alexander Hewitt

The bell jingled as we left the creepy little doll shop. The store owner smiled from behind the counter, one of those off-putting, ‘I know more than you do,’ kind of smiles. Her old, crackly voice didn’t help.

“Take care of her now, won’t you?”

She was a witch.

She was absolutely a witch. (Continue Reading…)

axe and chopped wood

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Cast of Wonders 616: Worse than a Wolf

Cast of Wonders 616: Worse than a Wolf is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content warning for implied past sexual assault

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:29 — 36.4MB)

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Worse than a Wolf

by Wen Wen Yang

The sound of the metal grinding against the whetstone reverberated up my arms. My father was sharpening his ax, preparing for the day’s work. “I invited Mu to dinner tonight,” he said.

I shuddered.

Mu was a woodsman whose family came from a neighboring village in China and had settled in the same rural town in Oregon a decade before my family. How happy my family was to hear our dialect! It almost made this foreign country feel safe. (Continue Reading…)

2024 at Cast of Wonders

2024 in review

  • Submissions window info: in addition to general submissions windows, we also opened to submissions for Halloween stories, our annual Banned Books Week event, and a limited-demographic window for Young Authors.
  • We published 48 stories over 45 episodes – a total of almost 150,000 words. 28 stories were original, and 20 were reprints.
  • We also produced seven re-issue episodes (6 Staff Pick stories, 1 Encore story)
  • This year we published five (and a half) stories by Young Authors, and were the first publication credit for a number of other authors. Our youngest author is a middle-grader who co-authored a story with her father!

You can access all our 2024 original fiction at this link. At the end of December, we’ll be releasing our Staff Picks from 2024.

We welcomed several new associate editors to the team: Rebecca Ahn and Becca Miles. We also wish Somto Ihezue all the best and a fond farewell as he moves on to bigger and better things.

 

Highlights

  • Award nominations: Cast of Wonders was nominated for the Outstanding Fiction Podcast Ignyte Award and the British Fantasy Award for Best Audio Work
  • Forbidden Voices by E J Delaney was nominated for the  2024 Woollahra Digital Literary Award
  • Park’s All-Night Ramyun and Snack Emporium by Seoung Kim was listed as one of the notable works of 2023 in the 2024 edition of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams
  • Milestones! We reached our 600th Episode in August this year, and celebrated with a story by a Young Author: Double Yellow Lines, by J. M. Bueno
  • Team Kudos: Associate Editor Somto Ihezue was nominated for a Nommo award for his short story Like Stars Daring to Shine. Somto is also involved in an exciting collaboration with Innocent Chizaram Ilo on a short film (“On our Skin”) based on Innocent’s story Our Skin Will Now Bear the Testimonies, which was published by Cast of Wonders during our 2019 Banned Books Week event.
  • Various Cast of Wonders crew represented the team at Worldcon in Glasgow – if you missed Associate Editor Samuel Poots’ academic presentation on Terry Pratchett in the Time of Steam-Engines: What Is Our Role in a Pre-determined Future? then you missed a treat!  Editor Katherine Inskip moderated one of two panels on Book Bans and Moral Fascism, and was a panelist on the topic of The Conventions and Cliches of YA Fiction. Editorial Assistant and Associate Editor Amy Brennan entered the Masquerade with a well crafted Outlander-themed costume.

 

Special Events

Cast of Wonders also ran a number of special events through the year

  • Banned Books Week – 3 stories selected for our annual event celebrating the freedom to read
  • Lodestar and Hugo Spotlight episodes – 6 stories highlighting the short fiction of Lodestar Award nominees and Astounding Award nominees
  • Halloween Special Event – 5 pieces of short fiction co-released with our sister shows
  • Young Author Stories – 5 stories accepted from our limited-demographic submissions windows for Young Authors

We are looking forward to a baking-themed Christmas episode this year. Following that, the team will present their Staff Pick episodes for 2024.

disco dancers

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 615: Optimal Care

Cast of Wonders 615: Optimal Care is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content Warning: Terminal illness of a young person

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:40 — 29.8MB)

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Show Notes

2076 words

Optimal Care

by Matt Tighe

“Hey T! You about?”

James rounds the corner of the kitchen, his dark hair lank, his face pale, his breathing all-too shallow.

Tenderbot is standing at the kitchen island bench. It pushes the sandwich and milk forward. The Home Care Unit has already scanned the boy and computed a 92% chance he will reject the sandwich, but Tenderbot always attempts to optimise care.

James sits down and opts for the glass.

“Your platelet count is down. Eat,” Tenderbot says.

“Oh, come on, T. You think a sandwich is going to save me?” (Continue Reading…)

three happy pumpkins on a woodland path

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 614: T-Rex Tex-Mex

Cast of Wonders 614: T-Rex Tex-Mex is a Cast of Wonders original.

Implied murder

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:01 — 17.9MB)

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Show Notes

Additional audio production by Summer Brooks of EscapePod

Trick-or-treaters: Rebecca Ahn, Amy Brennan, Katherine Inskip, Samuel Poots, Ryn Richmond

531 words

T-Rex Tex-Mex

by Sarina Dorie

“Whoa! Hold on, partner!” the host of the party asked with his fake Texan accent. “What is that costume supposed to be?”.

Of all the insufferable things, he was wearing a cowboy hat on his green, scaley head.

Dinosaurs did not wear hats. (Continue Reading…)