Far Fetched Fables

First Story: “A Night in the Tropics” by Jeffrey Ford The first bar I ever went to was The Tropics. It was and still is situated between the grocery store and the bank along Higbee Lane in West Islip. I was around five or six, and my old man would take me with him when he went there to watch the Giant games on Sunday afternoon. While the men were all at the bar, drinking, talking, giving Y.A. Tittle a piece of their minds, I’d roll the balls on the pool table or sit in one of the booths in the back and color. The juke box always seemed to be playing “Somewhere, Beyond the Sea” by Bobby Darin while I searched for figures, the way people do with clouds, in the swirling cigar and cigarette smoke. Jeffrey Ford is an American writer in the fantastic genre tradition, although his works have spanned genres including fantasy, science fiction and mystery. His work is characterized by a sweeping imaginative power, humour, literary allusion, and a fascination with tales...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy a

First Story: “The New Deal” by Trent Jamieson “You hear about the new Deal?” Jacobi asked, crouching down by the nearest body on the flat corrugated iron roof.  Ulmer shrugged. “Just rumours, nothing definite. Last one wasn’t so good. These two aren’t going to benefit.”  He took a step back from the bodies, careful to stay on the line of nails marking the beam beneath, the roof was rusty; it creaked with his movement.  Jacobi grinned and brushed flies from his cracked lips. “These blokes been dead a while.” SF writer and Silent Motion Picture Actor, Trent Jamieson should be 111 years old, but is only 41 on account of TEMPORAL RADIATION. He lives in Brisbane with his wife, Diana, where he wrote the Death Works Trilogy published by Orbit Books. He is the author of the Death Works Series. They’re about Death – you know, the Grim...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

First Story: “Lost Arts” by Stephen Dedman Tao’s was the only office on Hathor. It was a conventional flexiroom bisected by a temporary wall; the smaller chamber served as an ante-room, mainly in case the mayor was asleep when unexpected visitors arrived. Many of her neighbors had chambers that were similar, but they called them studios or studies or libraries or galleries. Being mayor of Hathor wasn’t normally a demanding job, as the more routine details were handled by her Turing-tested secretary Aidan. Tao’s role was mostly oversight, and dealing with those inhabitants who wanted to speak to a fellow human. Stephen Dedman is the author of the novels The Art of Arrow Cutting, Shadows Bite, Foreign Bodies, and Shadowrun: A Fistful of Data, and more than 120 short stories published in an eclectic range of magazines and anthologies and reprinted in his collections The Lady of Situations and Never Seen by Waking Eyes. For a full bibliography, go to his...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-ou

First Story: “A Ring of Green Fire” by Sean McMullen “As I was travelling through Westbury forest, I met with a man with a ring of green fire around his penis,” Avenzoar’s visitor said casually.             The poet-physician looked up at his friend and stroked his beard, then gazed wistfully across to the partially built minaret of Caliph al-Mansur’s huge mosque.             “Such a wonder,” sighed Avenzoar, then turned to his visitor and raised an eyebrow. “I suppose you did not bring him here for this poor physician and poet turned bureaucrat to examine?”             His friend glanced away, and seemed troubled. “Alas, it was not possible.” Sean McMullen lives in Melbourne, Australia, but has been published mostly in the USA and Europe. He has had twenty books and eighty stories published, has won fifteen awards, and was runner up for Best Novelette in the 2011 Hugo Awards. His writing is often steampunk in theme and his...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

WARNING: This week’s story, “Snowball’s Chance”, contains graphic language and a strong Scottish accent. First Story:  “An Accounting” by Brian Evenson I have been ordered to write an honest accounting of how I became a Midwestern Jesus and the subsequent disastrous events thereby accruing, events for which I am, I am willing to admit, at least partly to blame. I know of no simpler way than to simply begin. Brian Evenson is the author of twelve books of fiction, most recently the novel Immobility and the story collection Windeye (2012). His novel Last Days (2009) won the American Library Association’s Award for Best Horror Novel. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. His short story collection The Wavering Knife won the IHG Award. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. For more info, see http://www.brianevenson.com/. Second story: “Snowball’s Chance” by...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

First Story:  “The Teashop” by Zoran Zivkovic Miss Greta was delighted to see a teashop across the street from the entrance to the railway station. The train she’d arrived on had been a quarter of an hour late, but the train she was meant to take for the rest of her trip had left on time. The next possible train wouldn’t leave for around two-and-a-half hours. She could have spent that time reading in the waiting room, but that didn’t seem very appealing.   Zoran Živković was born in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, in 1948. In 1973 he graduated from the Department of General Literature with the theory of literature, Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade; he received his master’s degree in 1979 and his doctorate in 1982 from the same school. In 2007, Živković was made a professor in the Faculty of Philology at his alma mater, the University of Belgrade, where he now teaches Creative Writing. The author of twenty books of fiction and eight...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out i

First Story:  “Commando Bats” by Sherwood Smith When I was young, aging women were interchangeable. Ugly, slow, annoying with their unwanted opinions. It seemed impossible that I’d ever be one. The first proof that the universe has a sense of humor? I’m half of one. Sherwood Smith began writing novels about another world when she was eight, and began sending laboriously typed novels out to publishers when she was thirteen. When nothing had sold by the time she was twenty, she figured she needed to learn something about writing, and so went to college, lived in Europe, came back to get a double BA in German and History, did graduate work in history, worked in Hollywood, got married, started a family and became a teacher. When she tried again to sell in her mid-thirties, her first project was one of those old teenage books, Wren to the Rescue, which sold to Jane Yolen Books and came out in 1990. She lives in Southern California with her family. She is an active...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy a

First Story:  “Demons Hide Their Faces” by A.A. Attanasio Winterset in Egypt beside the rotting canal at Sidi Bishr, with the little, ceramic hashish pipe in her freckled hand, a thin thread of palpitant smoke twisting in the air before her, the professor faced her student and informed him seriously and with hollow impersonality, “The most avid collectors of books are demons. But they want only the old texts. The oldest texts.” The author of twenty-two novels and two story collections, A. A. Attanasio lives in Hawai’i and writes his fiction inside a volcano: Koko Crater, a botanical garden near his Honolulu home.  Visit http://www.aaattanasio.com/ for more details.   Second story: “The Pirate’s True Love” by Seana Graham It was a fine spring morning as the pirate sat with his true love before sailing out to sea.  She was wearing a long, purple...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

First Story:  “To Measure the Earth” by Jedediah Berry Spring 1890 Roel got out of bed before the fireflies had quit their nighttime signaling. He took his hat from the bedpost, strapped on his wooden right leg, and went downstairs to stoke the fire. Netta had never been able to sleep through the thudding of her husband’s leg on the steps, and the steps creaked, each one. She threw the covers aside and went to the kitchen to make their breakfast of blood sausage and buckwheat cake. Jedediah Berry is the award-winning author of The Manual of Detection. His short stories have appeared in Conjunctions, Ninth Letter, Tor.com and Chicago Review, and in anthologies including Best New American Voices and Best American Fantasy. He teaches in the Written Arts Program at Bard College.  Visit http://thirdarchive.net/ for more details. Second story: “For the Love of Paul Bunyan”...  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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