2011 Finalist: the Locus Award for Best Short Story
Our first piece of audio fiction for August is "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time" written by Catherynne M. Valente and read by Kate Baker.
Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 47 - Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time by Catherynne M. Valente [44:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (9574)
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Born in the Pacific Northwest in 1979, Catherynne M. Valente is the author of Palimpsest and the Orphan's Tales series, as well as The Labyrinth, Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams, The Grass-Cutting Sword, and five books of poetry. She is the winner of the Tiptree Award, the Mythopoeic Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Million Writers Award. She has been nominated nine times for the Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for the Spectrum Award was a World Fantasy Award finalist in 2007. She currently lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner and two dogs. Her crowdfunded novel, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, can be found at http://catherynnemvalente.com/fairyland
Website:
www.catherynnemvalente.com
Kate, you deserve a huge cupcake for pronouncing all those words perfectly! This was a GORGEOUS reading. Your voice is so evocative. Thank you for doing it!
This is AWESOME! One of Cat Valente's best (if not the best). Definitely one of the best I've read. And what a beautiful reading by Kate! <3
thats beautifull, how the mythology, science and peotry all curl round each other... and the constant refrence to the author(?), and her story & creativity brings to mind ideas of fractal naratives I've never managed to really articulate...
Beautifully read as always...
Excellent story, and a great reading. Kate's interpretive approach really solidified this one!
I've started this comment twice. In fact I've listened to the story twice and that's a bit of a first. I'm not sure if Kate could hold me mesmerised with a reading of the phone book but it's a close thing. She finds and exposes every nuance with a voice that is almost not an auditory thing at all, and weaves the story right there in my head rather than leaving it somewhere I have to go and fetch it from. The reading almost distracts from the quality of the story. Would I have liked it so much if someone else had read it? Would they have made the complex terms sound less fluent and so a little ridiculous? Would I have stumbled over it and given up if I had read it to myself? I doubt it because there is an inherent depth that is the vehicle for the tale and that doesn't present itself as arch and self important. I hope I would have had the sense to see that, given the text alone.
Wow. Just wow.
Usually, I get lost in stories that have long, unprounceable scientific terms. I'm not a hard science fiction person, so stuff like that is very hard for me to read, much less listen to.
With that said, I understood perfectly what was going on in the story, big words and all. And not only did I understand it, but I *appreciated* it. And the fact that I'm a SF writer myself made the story much more meaningful to me. That part about her talking the writer part of herself signing in semaphore--that's so bloody brilliant it made me cry with jealousy and absolute happiness.
And of course, Kate's reading was *awesome*!
Stunning.
The heart of the story, under the labyrinthine words and names, beat with such truth and humanity, that letting the words in my own heart happened without me even knowing it. And that's the whole reason I read short stories, to feel that, the connection.
The mythic experience/narrative is an extremely personal one, I believe, and this story shows us just that.
Kate: best reading I've come across yet. Your subtle inflections and voices, your dramatic rise matching the narratives climax sent a chill down my back. You've always been a great narrator, but your getting even better.