Podcast of “The Rule of Three” by Lawrence M. Schoen
Narrated by Wulf Moon
Music track sampled from “Wrapped in Dreams” by Frankum and Frankumjay, used under a Creative Commons license.
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© Copyright 2018 Lawrence M. Schoen, Wulf Moon
December 2018 issue of FUTURE SF, featuring 65,000 words of original fiction and articles.
Table of contents
Welcome to the first issue of the Future Science Fiction Digest, brought to you by the Future Affairs Administration and UFO Publishing. Our shared vision is to showcase great science fiction stories from across the globe. In this issue alone we’ve got fiction from China, the Ukraine, Nigeria, and Italy, as well as the United States....
Popular culture failed to prepare me for first contact. Countless starships bristling with canon and rail gun turrets did not fill the skies. The aliens didn’t flood our television and radio bands with messages of conquest or world peace or miracle cures....
Podcast of “The Rule of Three” by Lawrence M. Schoen
Narrated by Wulf Moon
Music track sampled from “Wrapped in Dreams” by Frankum and Frankumjay, used under a Creative Commons license....
“What are we doing here?”
That was the question I asked my late wife, Onyinye, the evening she flew us to the surface for our honeymoon.
Being an evolved, she earned much more than I did and had promised me a grand post-wedding vacation....
“I assume we’re talking about the boy from The Emperor?”
“That’s right. Dennis Dontzov, according to his documents. Obviously, he never had any documents, it’s only now that . . .”
“I understand.”
“He is now thirteen years old. He was conceived and born during the expedition....
On the evening of April 19, 2012, Marina and Sergey Dyachenko walked into The Harvard Coop for a presentation of their novel, The Scar, that had been recently published by Tor. The audience was perhaps a tenth the size they had gathered back home—not entirely unexpected for a husband-and-wife writing team virtually unknown in the States—but, if anything, more enthusiastic....
The company keeps a tight leash on us whenever possible. This party is no exception. They shuttle us to a big hotel, escort us to the ballroom, and shut the doors. Guards with impressive shoulders and amber glasses stand in front of each exit....
Here’s a fun fact: viruses leave pieces of themselves behind. Every once in a while, bits of the DNA code they inject into captured cells to transform them into virus factories stick around after the virus itself is fought off, and sometimes that abandoned code proves beneficial to the organism it’s left in....
I’m a fraud.
That said, you know half of what you need to know about me. I’ll tell you the rest now, and it’ll be the truth. I’m an honest fraud.
Damkina came up with the idea.
We’d known each other as kids, me and Damkina, we grew up in the same House....
Owner 14 rests his wavering hand, covered with paper-thin skin, on my own and looks up at me with jaundiced eyes. “Turn the heat up, will you, Pal?”
Once—thirty-five years ago, back before he turned eighty-five—he complained of the rooms never being cool enough....
Originally from the island of Puerto Rico, Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Jose Molina are amongst the most experienced writers working in genre television. Both have scribed, executive produced and served as showrunners for some of the most acclaimed genre TV series, such as: Lost, Firefly, Grimm, SeaQuest, Vampire Diaries, Terra Nova, Agent Carter, Helix, The Tick and many more....
His name was Zephaniah, but everyone just called him Zeph.
He stood six feet two inches tall, was perfectly proportioned, could read small print from one hundred feet away, had lifted four hundred pounds in his time and could probably lift more if asked, retained just about everything he learned or read, and was fluent in eleven human and fourteen computer languages....
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Lawrence M. Schoen has been a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award, the Hugo Award, and the Nebula Award, and won the Coyotl Award for Best Novel. He holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology, spent ten years as a college professor, served as the director of research for a medical center for the better part of two decades, is a world authority on the Klingon language, operates the small press Paper Golem, and is a practicing hypnotherapist specializing in authors’ issues.
His most notable fiction ranges from light, humorous tales of a stage hypnotist entrancing aliens on interstellar cruise ships and getting into trouble with his alien companion animal that eats anything and farts oxygen, to more literary explorations of how we think about death, race, and friendship via a metaphor of anthropomorphic animals. At the end of the day he considers all of his writing to be about the human condition, whether he manages it with extraterrestrials or talking elephants.
You can find him on Twitter: @klingonguy and support his work on Patreon.
Also by Lawrence M. Schoen
Wulf Moon is an Olympic Peninsula writer, artist, and narrator. Moon wrote his first hard SF story when he was fifteen. It won the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards–the same contest that first discovered Stephen King, Peter S. Beagle, John Updike, and a host of iconic names in the Arts. It became his first pro sale in Science World.
His story “Seventh Heaven” was published in Pocket Books’ Star Trek: Strange New Worlds II. A Borg love story. What could be sweeter? His conquistador fantasy story “War Dog” was published by Third Flatiron. It won the Critters Annual Readers’ Poll award for Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story of 2018. Moon recently won the international Writers of the Future Contest. His story “Super-Duper Moon Girl and the Amazing Moon Dawdler” first appeared in Writers of the Future, Volume 35.
Moon is an approved narrator for Apex Publications, PodCastle, and Escape Pod, and has narrated numerous episodes for Gallery of Curiosities and Third Flatiron. He is podcast director for Future Science Fiction Digest. Enjoy more of his work by visiting www.driftweave.com.
Also by Wulf Moon
Comments on “The Rule of Three Podcast”
December 19, 2018 at 2:02 pm
Pure magic! Schoen weaves a powerful tale that left me wondering at the way I make, use and consume. Moon gives a compelling voice to the story. The creepy innocence and matter-of-fact nature of the alien came alive, giving me chills. Don't want to give away the ending -- but well done.
March 17, 2019 at 5:12 pm
Loved the reading. Wulf has a great voice and his interpretation of the funny man matches my imagination almost perfectly. Bravo.
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