You are listening to a Clarks World magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.

Greetings Clarksville Citizens. I hope this podcast finds you very well.

It is the last podcast for the month of July 2014. There's not that much

news to report, seeing as we're going to be releasing another podcast in just a few days. So I'm just going to jump

right into our last story. The piece is titled Gold Mountain and is by Chris Roberson.

Chris is probably best known for his alternate history, Celestial Empire Series,

which in addition to a large number of short pieces, including Gold Mountain,

consists of the novels The Dragons Nine Sons, Iron Jaw, and

Hummingbird, The Voyage of Night Shining White, and Three Unbroken.

In addition to his writing, Roberson is one of the publishers of the lively small press Monkey

Brain Books and edited the Retro Pulp anthology Adventure Volume 1.

He won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History in 2004 with his story, Oh One.

Roberson lives with his family in Austin, Texas and can be found at his website

Chris Roberson. net.

So I invite you to sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

Johnston Lean stood at the open door of the tram. One elbow crooked around a guardrail, her blue eyes squinting in the morning glare at the sky-piercing needle

of the orbital elevator to the south.

The sun was in the cold due position, early in the dog month when the temperature began to soar and the sunlight burned brighter in the southern sky.

Summer was not long off and Lean hoped to be far from here before it came.

As the tram rumbled across the city of Nine Dragons, she turned

her tension back to her notes, checking the address of her last interviewee and reviewing

the pertinent bits of data from their brief earlier meeting.

...