What do Fiction Podcasts have to say about the future?
Whenever you write a story set years from now, how you construct the world around it creates a new way to see the future, a fictional image to a reality we could be headed towards.
Fiction podcasts love to play within the sci-fi genre, and the thousands of audio dramas they have given us new pictures of what our world could look like in the next century (or a few years closer).
In this article I want to analyze the settings in the following shows: Hello from the Hallowoods, Desperado and The Strange Case of Starship Iris.
Hello From the Hallowoods
Hello From the Hallowoods welcomes us to a world ravaged by black rains and capitalism’s greed. After a natural (but man-made) disaster involving acid rain and flooding the world’s successions gave birth to two different types of beings: those who prefer to dream in a company’s “Prime Dream” and those who stay awake to continue living.
Even though the world is post-apocalyptic on paper, it never feels like it. Rather it is enchanted, there are woods where gods, revenants, devils, giants and zombies fall in love with themselves and with each other, places where community is found.
This, I attribute this to the fact that most characters don’t lament a nebulous “end of the world”, since this is the world they have always been living in and they are going to make the best of it: find family, friends, lovers, build homes and destroy bigots.
You leave the world of Hello From the Hallowoods knowing that even a doomed world is worthy of being awake for.
Desperado Podcast
Desperado Podcast also takes us to a world that was looted, but this time mainly by religious colonialism.
Neo-colionalism has made itself tangible through genocides and direct targeting to believers that worship other than the “Old man in the Sky”. In its first episode a community in México which revere La Catrina (a goddess in the show inspired by a popular figure in mexican art) is wiped out by the crusaders.
From there our protagonist Elio is the sole survivor of his people, however all is not lost as he teams up with Talia (the chosen of Baron Samedi) and Shinji (whom I believe is a death kami?).
Elio now literally carries the memories of his community as the vessel for her goddess. Likewise in Desperado, the magic of the characters is the legacy their ancestors gave them, and it is what keeps them alive in the violent world.
Though if we are ever to worry that our protagonist could fall into its clutches, the structure of the world soothes our preoccupations. You see, it is the characters within the story that are narrating their own experiences to the audience so we know that after all the pain, they ended up safe.
What Desperado tells us about the future is that, even with the ongoing genocides, white-washing of our culture, and neo-colonialism in general we will end up victorious in the end, and that our history will be forever within our memory.
The Strange Case of Starship Iris
The Strange Case of Starship Iris, is the most sci-fi audio drama out of the bunch. It follows the crew of the Rumour, a smuggler's ship, as they try to uncover the dark secrets of the Federation and evade persecution.
As with the other two properties, the future is not an easy world, but our characters are making the most of it.
In a post-war galaxy, the crew of the Rumour is smuggling space-ship parts, medicine, and erotic magazines until they find a help alarm coming from the Starship Iris and rescue biologist Violet Liu. From there they are involved in a mystery which, if the truth comes to life, they could be charged with treason against the Intergalactic Republic.
Throughout the two seasons of the podcast, Violet Liu and company heal together the scars that the war and its result: the Intergalactic Republic left them. They fight against the government not only through robberies, infiltration, and coordinated efforts with rebel groups but also by eating latkes, drinking, singing shanties, and getting gay jewish married.
To conclude
if queer podcasts are telling us something about the future, it is that it may be equally messed up as the present but that queer, disabled people of color will exist beyond the end of the world and that even in the bleakest of futures we will continue to love and thrive.
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Hey y'all- we have officially launched World Gone Wrong! It would mean a ton to me if you would go check out this show- we've have been pouring our heart and soul into it over the past six months.
You can listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or you can search "world gone wrong" wherever you listen to podcasts.
MOST IMPORTANTLY- go tell your friends to listen, if you think they'd like the show~
The show is an unapologetic response to the feeling of "every day there is a new disaster"- except in this fictionalized version, the disasters we're dealing with are werewolves, alien body snatchers, time distortions, etc- basically every episode of The X-Files and Supernatural happening at the same time. It's also a celebration of the importance of deep, connected friendships- something we feel doesn't get enough prominence in media.
The show stars Michael Turrentine and Hilary Williams- and the first chapter was written by Jessica Best (@idiopathicsmile), and produced and created by Eleanor Hyde and Jeffrey Nils Gardner (@euripidesredux) ~ We're so ABSURDLY lucky to get to work with these wonderful artists- it's been an absolute joy so far.
ALSO- we're throwing a party to celebrate! Saturday, April 6 at 8pm! Whiskey Girl Tavern in Andersonville- we'll have the band who played our theme song (Olivia and the Lovers) doing a set, and we'd love to see you!
No cover, good times! Link for rsvp/reminders here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/world-gone-wrong-launch-party-tickets-856416874927?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl
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hello! i don't mean to be pushy/place pressure or anything like that, but i was wondering if season 3 of starship iris was still in the works? it's probably my favorite piece of media ever, and i would love to see it get its final season!
hi! no worries at all! it is still indeed in the works; i have drafted out the first seven episodes (of eight or possibly nine) but i got extremely stuck and am waiting on some consultant feedback so I can fix my drafts and hopefully that will springboard me into finishing the season!
so sorry about how long it's taking. i have learned many things making this show and one of them is that i don't have the decision-making skills necessary to showrun a series by myself. i have a tendency to stall out on important big-picture questions, burn myself out, and then put it to the side while my brain recovers. if i ever executive produce an audio drama series again, i will need to budget enough to hire someone else to decide what actually happens in the show.
i'm so glad you've enjoyed what we made so far. it warms my heart to know there's someone out there who will (hopefully!) still be interested when it does eventually come out.
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