{"id":985,"date":"2010-01-02T13:59:53","date_gmt":"2010-01-02T21:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=985"},"modified":"2010-01-04T07:34:59","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T15:34:59","slug":"one-damn-thing-after-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=985","title":{"rendered":"One Damn Thing After Another."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-996\" style=\"margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" title=\"cw_40_600\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/cw_40_600-194x300.jpg\" alt=\"cw_40_600\" width=\"194\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/cw_40_600-194x300.jpg 194w, https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/cw_40_600.jpg 388w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px\" \/>So, &#8220;The Things&#8221; \u2014 conceived <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=84\"><em>here<\/em><\/a>, given the ol&#8217; prenatal ultrasound <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=481\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=435\">here<\/a>, fostered lovingly by Jonathan Strahan until <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/2010\/01\/02\/clarkesworld-and-peter-watts-the-things\/\">reluctantly put back up for adoption<\/a> \u2014 went live yesterday over at <a href=\"http:\/\/clarkesworldmagazine.com\/issue_40\/\">Clarkesworld<\/a>, in their first edition of 2010.  I&#8217;m chuffed to discover that they didn&#8217;t just <a href=\"http:\/\/clarkesworldmagazine.com\/watts_01_10\/\">post<\/a> the story; they <em><a href=\"http:\/\/clarkesworldmagazine.com\/audio_01_10\/\">podcast<\/a> <\/em>it as well, set it to the voice of one <a href=\"http:\/\/anaedream.com\/\">Kate Baker<\/a>, who I actually got to meet at Worldcon last year. Kate struck me as intensely cool in the few minutes we got to chat before previous commitments dragged me away; and while I knew she was one of the folks behind <a href=\"http:\/\/www.starshipsofa.com\/\">Starship Sofa<\/a>, I hadn&#8217;t realized  that she&#8217;s also affiliated with Clarkesworld.  She runs their podcasts \u2014 and damned if she didn&#8217;t do a bang-up job on &#8220;The Things&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I consider myself a pretty good live narrator, but Kate imbues my words with an undercurrent of regret and desperation that I would never have even considered.  I&#8217;d have settled for just making my alien protagonist understandable:  anthropologically, biologically.\u00a0   Kate makes it sympathetic, Kate makes it downright <em>tragic<\/em>.  Kate takes those exact same words and inflects them somehow to make them hers.  Really, the only nitpick I can find  (and you know me \u2014 I <em>love<\/em> nitpicking) is that she could have paused a bit more between section breaks.<\/p>\n<p>These Clarkesworld guys really know how to make you feel welcome.<\/p>\n<p>This is the world premiere. I&#8217;ve only posted first-trimester snippets here on the &#8216;crawl.  Even those Worldcon attendees at the Grimwood\/Scalzi\/Watts DownerFest only got to hear about half the story.  So, yeah: &#8220;The Things&#8221; is as newborn as the year itself, and the first actual fanfic I&#8217;ve written since 1976<sup>1<\/sup>.  Hope you like it.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and while we&#8217;re on the subject of audio performances:  that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=981\">fourth Best-of-Year<\/a> collection that &#8220;The Island&#8221; is headed for would be Allan Kaster&#8217;s <em>The Year&#8217;s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 2<\/em>, upcoming from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.audiotexttapes.net\/\">AudioText<\/a>.  I just signed the contract today.<\/p>\n<p>(Illo by Sergio Rebolledo.)<\/p>\n<p>\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p><sup>1<\/sup>Don&#8217;t ask.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, &#8220;The Things&#8221; \u2014 conceived here, given the ol&#8217; prenatal ultrasound here and here, fostered lovingly by Jonathan Strahan until reluctantly put back up for adoption \u2014 went live yesterday over at Clarkesworld, in their first edition of 2010. I&#8217;m chuffed to discover that they didn&#8217;t just post the story; they podcast it as well, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":994,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions\/994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}