Fantasy Writing

I like to listen to podcasts on the way to and from work. It's a nice way to hear about different things rather than listening to music, and unlike listening to the radio talk shows, with podcasts, I'm pretty much sure I'll be interested in the topic. Most of the podcasts I listen to are gaming related, but there are a few other ones that slip in. A podcast about LOST, one about fantasy football, one about logic puzzles, etc.

I recently heard about three podcasts about short stories, each with a different genre. There's EscapePod for Science Fiction, PseudoPod for Horror, and PodCastle for Fantasy. I started with EscapePod. I've heard three stories off it now and while I liked the first one, the second two were a bit lacking in my opinion. I decided to download the current story for the other two and see what they were like. On the way in to work today, I was listening to "Another End of the Empire" on PodCastle.

I'm not sure if it's representative of the rest of the stories on PodCastle, or if I just happened to be lucky, but this story is fantastic! I haven't finished it yet (I'll finish it up on the way home from work today), but so far I'm enthralled.

It starts with the idea that many fantasy stories currently have three cliches:

1. The farmboy in the village grows up to destroy the evil overlord.
2. Said evil overlord is pretty shortsighted and lacking politically.
3. There is a prophecy that says farmboy will trump evil overlord.

So let's see how the story opens:

Sure enough, the evil overlord who has conquered most of the known world hears a prophecy about how a child in a village will grow up and overthrow the evil overlord. When he asks how long he has, the witch tells him it won't happen for a while. That's good. The witch's prophecy for his father had a little more immediacy: "You have a malignant tumor."

The witch expects the warlord to send his armies to the village and destroy it, but he knows better. It may be what his father would have done, but as he says, he's more "modern." The kid would escape somehow, find that the evil overlord killed his family and friends, and swear vengeance, coming back in years to kill the warlord.

Instead, he sends his people to the village and they rip the central town hall to the ground. The villagers, all keenly aware that they're likely to end up slaves, are surprised to find the overlords architects rebuild a larger, more modern and energy-efficient town hall, complete with a dome and tinted glass. The overlord comes in and renames the village "Progress Village" and sets about building schools and instituting a large quantity of positive social changes.

I won't tell you any more of the story than that, but it's a very funny one. I'd recommend you head over to PodCastle and see if you can download the story (it's episode number 88).