Posts Tagged ‘Andrew Jack’

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 707: The Discipline of Small Evil

Image by Henning from Pixabay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:46 — 81.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

The Discipline of Small Evil

by Arthur H. Manners

Big evil is cheap, lazy, unimaginative. Release a deadly plague. Steal a continent. Shoot the moon with a giant laser. Everyone pays attention, everyone screams, and the supers come and there’s a showdown and a monologue and sharks.

Blah blah blah.

Where’s the art in that?

Supervillains always fail. They invite heroes to rise, invoke Newton’s Third Law: action, reaction. The trick is to slip unseen through society, widening cracks in the psyche.

Big evil is just a cry for help. Look at me, validate me, for the love of God someone save me.

Real evil is small. It’s turning all the pictures in someone’s home just a little askew. It’s using show bathrooms at hardware stores. It’s pineapple on pizza. Leaving the seat up. Puns.

Real evil is talking in the cinema. (Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 705: Trade you for the Beans

Cast of Wonders 705: Trade you for the Beans is a Cast of Wonders original.

Bullies, Colonisation

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:40 — 90.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Trade You For the Beans

by Kehkashan Khalid

When Mammy drops me off to school on the hottest day of the year, no one bullies me. I stand there in the schoolyard, letting her I love yous wash over me, and when she drives away, I close my eyes.

It’s okay Asghar, I tell myself. They’ll punch you a few times, and when you don’t react, they’ll get bored. You can handle that.

But nobody comes. I stand there like an idiot with my eyes closed and my sweaty fingers gripping the spine of Grammy’s copy of Lord of the Rings until the bell rings. Nobody reads such old stories anymore, and they especially don’t carry them around like bricks. But I don’t want to download my stories into a cube that’ll summarize them for me. I like the rustle of the pages and their musty scent and holding them impossibly open with a thumb while I eat and read at the same time–Grammy would turn over in her grave, Asghar! Mammy would say. Grammy liked her books to look all perfect even after they’d been read. Too bad she left them all to me, who likes to make notes in the margins and leave big ol’ mango stains on the pages. It’s like they hold a little bit of who I am. And they’ll hold it long after I’m gone. It’s the closest to magic I’ll ever get. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 703: Your Magic School Admittance Letter Never Arrives

Cast of Wonders 703: Your Magic School Admittance Letter Never Arrives is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:59 — 61.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

Your Magic School Admittance Letter Never Arrives

by Maya Prasad

SPRING

The admittance letters to the various magical universities have been rolling in, and your friends are celebrating. But yours never arrives. Your parents are Very Disappointed.

“It’s not about talent,” your mother insists. “You simply don’t apply yourself.”

“Perhaps if you spent less time playing hoverball and goofing off with your friends,” your father says, “you could have taken a harder course load. You could have taken that MTAN practice class. Well, I suppose you can apply again next year.”

Next year, indeed. When your younger sister will probably show you up with scads of acceptances.

You nod meekly, not mentioning the hours you spent alone in your room with your wand after hoverball practice and on weekends. In truth, your purported laziness is less humiliating than admitting you never possessed enough magic in the first place. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 699: Little Wonders 53 – Doomed Relationships

Cast of Wonders 699: Little Wonders 53 – Doomed Relationships is a Cast of Wonders original.

post-apocalypse; prejudice

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:43 — 52.0MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Petrichor

by Eleanor Lennox

The golden hour had begun, that time of honeyed sunshine and veiled shadows. Painted horses raced in perfect circles, their eyes unseeing rubies. Blue ribbons flapped on pies and pigs, jellies and quilts, all those strange, forgotten miracles. Waiting for the Ferris wheel, I saw him: a boy almost a man, looking out to the forest.

I approached.

“You’re not from here,” he said without turning back. (Continue Reading…)

banner art - digital theme

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 693: Twenty-Four Hours

First published in Clarkesworld, June 2024

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:59 — 56.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Twenty-Four Hours

by H H Pak

Six hours left.

“What do you want to eat sweetheart?” She looks at me expectantly, holding out her phone to show me the menu. “It is your special day. I’ll get you anything you want.”

I smile, shake my hands. “Eomma, it’s fine. You don’t have to do this.”

“I know. But this is your favorite restaurant. Why not indulge a bit?” She hums as she scrolls through the options. “It must have been hard to get anything authentic out there. I can’t imagine the cafeteria on the base was giving you anything half edible.”

“It wasn’t bad,” I laugh. “Mostly processed stuff. They couldn’t import very often across the desert.”

She sighs.

“Well, you’re here now and that’s all that matters. You’re here, and I’m going to get you anything you want. How about this set?” (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 688: Forestborn

First published in Gamut in February 2017.

Image by Jerzy from Pixabay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:02 — 27.5MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Forestborn

by Sylvia Heike

“I am forestborn,” the girl with a wild bird’s nest for hair said to me. “I can’t live in houses.”

I thought she meant some houses, large houses, and not all of them. Houses with a room for shoes, houses with keepers in aprons looking after said houses, houses with wings. I didn’t want that kind of home either. That’s the kind of house that ends up owning you, not the other way around.

I found us the perfect cabin built out of weathered logs, hugged by the forest on all sides. The carpenter who built it had quiet, loving hands—I could tell from the craftsmanship alone. The back garden was but a hare’s leap of grass, a humble doorstep between my world and hers.

Though we weren’t wed, I carried her over the threshold. “We are in the forest. I would never try to take you away.” (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 685: Sunset at the Western Front

First published in ZBN Presents & ZBN Presents Year 2 in July 2024

Image by Iris,Helen,silvy from Pixabay

War. Multiple f-words.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:45 — 60.1MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Sunset at the Western Front

by Christine Lucas

Millie craned her neck from behind the rusted bench to scout ahead. The overgrown square before her was what, fifty steps across? Five steps to the demolished kiosk slightly to her left. Then another ten steps to the cluster of the ever-present varnish trees a little to the right. If she kept her head low, she’d make it to the downed battlebot at the other side without being noticed—or followed. Deep in the Dead Zone, this area was patrol-free at this time of night. However, other scavengers had undoubtedly heard about the crashed chopper near the enemy lines. She needed the loot from that chopper; she hadn’t had a decent meal in days.

So Millie ran. And hid. And ran again. And ducked, and crouched in the crook of the battlebot’s armpit, a shadowy little alcove beneath the dented plates of its pauldrons. Humanoid in shape but three times the size of an average man, it now lay spread-eagle on its back, its pincers and stompers limp on the broken pavement. A gutsy spot for a human to seek shelter while other species roamed as they pleased. The battlebot had been left here long enough for flash floods to deposit soil into the crevices of its body. Dandelions sprouted all over, centipedes crawled in and out of bullet-holes, and another varnish tree grew out of the blast hole that had almost severed its torso from its legs. (Continue Reading…)

red headed woman with a camera

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 684: Little Wonders 49 – Aging Memories

Cast of Wonders 684: Little Wonders 49 – Aging Memories is a Cast of Wonders original.

Death, terminal illness, dementia. Some f-words.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:03 — 35.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

The Girl Detective

by Nadia Radovich

You: twelve, uncertain, under-dressed. The Girl Detective: fox-haired, quick-witted, fictional. Always zooming about, passport in one hand, magnifying glass in the other. Congenitally incapable of au-pairing in Madrid, skiing in the Alps, taking a train anywhere, without stumbling into some tantalizing mystery.

Your friend, Zofia: solving puzzles so fast that the Girl Detective never dies, not even in the game’s final level. You sit at her elbow, watching her deft mouse movements search chests, accuse suspects, dodge falling tiles. In the sunlight at recess you see the faint hint of fox color in her hair.

Then, in seventh grade, your friend Zofia: dead. You: at the funeral, the dim church light stealing all the copper from her hair, wondering if you only remembered it that way. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: , , ,

Cast of Wonders 681: Little Wonders 48 – Coping Mechanisms

Cast of Wonders 681: Little Wonders 48 – Coping Mechanisms is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:01 — 31.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Episode art adapted from an image by Hello Cdd20 from Pixabay

A Chest Full of Storm Clouds

by Elisabeth Ring

It’s Philip’s text that finally does it.

“Happy birthday!” it says. Just those two words. Not, “Happy birthday! I miss you!” Not, “Happy birthday! I’m sorry!” Not, “I was wrong. I love you. Please take me back.”

Happy. Birthday. Exclamation mark.

As if the long, emotionally fraught blocks of text above it, mostly from me, and un-responded to by him, don’t exist. As if he hadn’t broken my heart in a million pieces even before he left. As if we’re the kind of friends you remember to text on their birthday but not well enough to come up with anything more creative than just “Happy birthday!”

Reading that text, I feel something break loose deep inside. I maybe haven’t been handling the breakup well to begin with, plus work has been extra tough lately and I’m going to have to juggle credit cards to pay for everything this month. This text just unleashes everything I’ve been keeping locked up and I know I need to get to a storm chamber or I might actually explode. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: , ,

Cast of Wonders 677: Your Hold is Ready (Staff Picks 2025)

First published as Cast of Wonders 658, October 2025

homophobia, censorship, fascist dystopia

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:00 — 19.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Your Hold Is Ready

by Laura Duerr

The news is spreading. We try to keep working through our English tests, but it’s becoming impossible to focus. Laughter and drumming call us to join the crowds on the streets, as irresistible as Odysseus’ sirens. I imagine myself tied to my desk chair, ears plugged up with wax instead of noise-canceling headphones, and chuckle to myself.

Mr. Lanigan leans around his monitor. “Molly, did you just giggle?”

“Possibly?”

Two storeys down, the crowd erupts with cheering. The students nearest the windows peer out wistfully. So does Mr. Lanigan. He ought to be retired by now, but he’s still here, and we’re glad. He’s kept a lot of our secrets and we’ve kept his. At first it was weird to watch out for someone so much older than us, but he stood up for us every chance he got, and somehow, together, our ordinary classroom discussions became outlets for us to be ourselves: to give voice to the dreams and hopes that had miraculously survived not just high school, but high school under all this.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: , ,

Cast of Wonders 675: Habitat (Staff Picks 2025)

Image by Kohji Asakawa from Pixabay

First published as Cast of Wonders 652, September 2025

spider-like creatures

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:55 — 53.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Habitat

by Juliette Beauchamp

The orb appeared on a Friday. Just popped up in the northeast corner of the horse pasture, out where the grass grew thin and the ground was spotted with gopher holes. It was black and not a bit shiny despite the heat shimmers dancing around it. From a distance, as Cole and I rode along the dry creek bed, it looked more like the absence of something. A blank spot in the air.

It wasn’t until we got closer that we realized there was something there after all: a giant, dull marble suspended about three feet off the ground. The horses didn’t like it, rolling their eyes and snorting, but they were ranch-bred and broke and used to doing things they didn’t like.

Cole slid out of his saddle and passed his reins to me. I held his mare as she pawed and swished her tail while Cole walked over to the thing.

“It feels funny,” he said as he got closer. I wasn’t surprised to hear it since the hair on his head had begun to float upwards. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 674: Witches Racing Cars (Staff Picks 2025)

Image adapted from a photo by JAMES OKAJA from Pixabay

First published as Cast of Wonders 650, August 2025

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:08 — 40.0MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Witches Racing Cars

by Nadav Schul-Kutas

A small crew is waiting at the starting line. They’re all buzzing around the car, poking and prodding and talking amongst themselves. It won’t start, which is unsurprising. The car never starts on its own, but the young men with big ideas want to know why and the thrill-seekers are worried their team will get disqualified if this goes on any longer. A woman named after a forgotten god points towards a ruined gas station. A figure draped in feathers and marked with machine grease appears from behind the ARCO’s crumbling walls.

Finally, the witch is here. (Continue Reading…)