Horror podcast for Memorial Day: Pseudopod's "The Western Front"

This week's short story on the horror podcast Pseudopod is The Western Front, by Patrick Samphire, and it's something you should really download and give a listen to. This is Pseudopod's Memorial Day story, and, accordingly, it's set in the muddy, bleak, hopeless trenches of WWI, told in a series of letters and diary entries by a fresh, idealistic British lieutenant. The lieutenant's journey from idealism to disillusionment is standard enough, but I did not expect the redemption he finds in the story's brilliant conclusion. Samphire has written a genuinely fresh and moving account of war, and it's haunting without descending into the merely graphic or grotesque. Link, Link to podcast feed

[#1 posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator , November 9, 2007 7:26 AM]

Running true to form. WWI has always tended to inspire good fiction and muddled historiography.

[#2 posted by mikelotus , November 9, 2007 8:23 AM]

Uh don't you mean Veteran's Day not Memorial Day?

[#3 posted by Cory Doctorow , November 9, 2007 8:41 AM]

Not in Canada or the UK.

[#4 posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator , November 9, 2007 9:06 AM]

11-11-11

[#5 posted by jeffguevin , November 9, 2007 11:09 AM]

Hmm, Wikipedia thinks you Canadians should call it "Remembrance Day":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day

But I do know that it's "Veterans Day" in the US, not "Veteran's Day". Then there's "Mother's Day" and "Patriots' Day" to confuse everything.

Neat story, too, by the way.

[#6 posted by Jetse , November 10, 2007 4:18 AM]

Patrick's a very talented writer, a shame that Pseudopod didn't mention that The Western Front has originally been published in The Third Alternative (which is now Black Static).

Oh well.

We have a new story of him, called "Dragonfly Summer" in inventory for Interzone, which is just as good, or possibly even better.