What SFF podcast are you listening to?!

[Ropie]

There seem to be hardly any podcast recommendations around here, which is a shame given how many truly great podcasts with a SFF-bent there seem to be available these days. Here, I'm referring to fiction but of course there are many non-fiction discussion podcasts about SFF books, films and series too.

Tanis (mystery/horror)
Rabbits (mystery)
Ostium (SF)
Limetown (mystery)
The Message (SF)
The Left Right Game (horror)

I've listened to all those over the past few months, of which only Tanis is still being made at the time of writing. The quality of recording and presentation varies (I suppose with budget), with Tanis and The Left Right Game being examples of how to make a podcast sound incredible, but what none of them lacked was a great story.

Any more to share?

 

[Prairie_Dog]

Since you mentioned “The Message” I thought I should mention the other production by GE Podcast Theatre / Panoply. LifeAfter is pretty gripping, and I enjoyed it a lot. It’s a scripted full cast audio production.

The Escape Artists have three different podcasts, I listen to their SF show, Escape Pod. This is an narrated audio fiction podcast that now includes good quality original fiction. There is also Pod Castle for Fantasy and Pseudo Pod for Horror.

 

[Ropie]

Yep, listened to life after too, also really enjoyed it.

 

[Ropie]

I've been listening to 3 or 4 episodes per day of The Magnus Archives for at least the past month. It really is incredibly well written, considering the scale of it and the fact that it's all written by one person!

For the first season it is one guy, called the Archivist (played very effectively by the writer, Jonathan Sims), reading out paranormal reports that have been catalogued in the archives of a paranormal-research institute. As the seasons progress, the back story of the archive itself starts to blend in with the reports themselves.

I have to admit, it has so far been for me at its most effective around the season 2 and 3 point where the production and stories had improved and were basically the focus of the podcast. As the backstory of the institute takes over it changes, becoming extremely convoluted with a multitude of returning characters. It's still enjoyable and well written, just not quite as effective as the stand alone tales had been.

Highly recommended, though, and pretty scary in places too!

 

[Prairie_Dog]

I would also like to recommend the Clarkesworld Magazine Podcast, which is a audio version of their on-line print stories read by Kate Baker. They have a wide variety of contemporary short fiction.

 

[Ropie]

I have listened to a number of those readings too. She does a very good job of narrating them.

 

[Ropie]

Just listened to one of the best stand alone podcast stories I've ever heard - it's called The Narrow and is part of the Liberty: Tales from the Tower collection of stories written by Kaitlin Statz. It's a SF exploration tale in the vein of Annihilation by Jeff VDM. Totally compelling and very well made.

Here's the Google podcasts link for those of you who use it:

Google Podcasts is no longer available

podcasts.google.com

 

[Ropie]

Another fine podcast that in terms of ideas and characters rivals pretty much anything I've read in a published SF novel. Mirrors, written by Jamie Killen (who also voices one of the characters), is a story of a group of women from different times who seem to be connected by what they can see that others can't. The build up is slow and steady and to begin with this feels very much like a horror story (so it is, I suppose) although it becomes something totally different. Only the pacing didn't quite work for me: there were too many episodes of theorising and speculation that didn't move the story on, although the acting and the script just about kept things going, especially the character of Helen from the 1960s who was just brilliant. Highly recommended!!

Mirrors

www.mirrorspodcast.com

 

[Grognardsw]

This is a nice thread. I've listened to some of these but also have gone back to earlier SF/F content via old time radio. Lots of great shows like X Minus One, Dimension X, SF 68, Mindwebs that adapt short stories by classic SF authors. These are full cast productions with sound effects. They're all available on places like radioechoes.com.

 

[Windshadow]

Ep 1: The Rain and The One with Laura Lexx and Ben Crompton

Podcast Episode · The Stranger Times · November 10, 2020 · 37m

podcasts.apple.com

extra shorts connected to an excelent book

The Stranger Times: (The Stranger Times 1) - Kindle edition by C.K.McDonnell. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

The Stranger Times: (The Stranger Times 1) - Kindle edition by C.K.McDonnell. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Stranger Times: (The Stranger Times 1).

smile.amazon.com

 

[Ropie]

Not SF, but I really enjoyed S-Town. Very well made and very moving.

 

[jamesandreson216]

I listen to a lot of audiobooks but the couple of audio dramas I tried hadn't held my interest. But I recently started listening to The Magnus Archives podcast. More horror than fantasy but so good! Highly recommended.

 

[Hobbit]

But I recently started listening to The Magnus Archives podcast

Someone in my family got me to try these. They're good, but I'm told they get better as they go along. The writer of the series published a novel last year called 13 Storeys, which I liked a lot too and seems similar.

 

[Ropie]

Currently I'm really into Eaten By A Grue - two guys who are playing all the old Infocom text adventures from the 1980s and talking about them. It's much better than it sounds, if you have at least a passing interest in old adventure games anyway! They started in 2017 and finished the last Infocom text game in August 2020. Now they're moving on to the winners of the annual IF (Interactive Fiction) awards going back to the mid 1990s.

 

[Ropie]

Back with this old thread

Recently listening to The Black Tapes again. Horror rather than SF, but an absolute classic of podcast fiction.

 

[oberon55]

I can recommend Lightspeed Magazine & Nightmare Magazine for horror & sci-fi short stories. These are read by mostly professional narrators. They have a pretty extensive library of stories to browse through.

 

[Ropie]

Since I've been moping around all week with Lost withdrawal symptoms, I've taken solace in some podcasts that discuss the show. The one I've settled on is The Hatch: A Lost Podcast which ran from 2017 - 2024. It's surprisingly professional in content if not recording quality (although maybe this improves as the episodes continue) and as well as general discussion between the two hosts, they have very well executed interviews with writers, producers and major actors from the show. Although each episode is fairly short it's well worth listening to.

 

[Ropie]

I re-listened to The Left Right Game. A fantastically strange and spooky podcast, that is supposed to be being made into a tv show (if it ever happens...)