Podcast on Episode 8776 for Tuesday the 28th of January 2025

Nine-Fingered Maria by Hilary Moon Murphy, read by Christopher Raynaga and produced by Eric

Faldes, rated PG. Good morning, good day, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to Podcastle, the flying castle of fantasy fiction.

I'm your host, Matt Dovey, and it is my pleasure to have clambered through the dusty corridors of the underlibrary,

fighting off giant spiders and pallid flesh wounds and that one weird guy called Derek who no one

can remember in fighting in, all to retrieve a story deep from the archives and once again present

for your enjoyment.

Nine-fingered Maria by Hilary Moon Murphy, narrated by Christopher Raynaga.

This tale from the vault's first run as podcast of 58 back in 2009, having first been published

in 2003 in New Voices in Science Fiction, edited by the late Mike Resnick.

Before we get into that, an announcement that excites me hugely.

We are hosting a special submissions call

for disability pride and magic to celebrate disabled authors, characters and themes. And

that's a broad definition of disabled including physical disabilities, neurodivergent, mental

illness, sensory disabilities, chronic illness and invisible and undiagnosed disabilities.

From the announcement that went up on our website earlier this month,

In fiction, disabled people, where we appear at all,

tend to be left on the sidelines or treated as passive sources of inspiration,

or worse, ridicule or disgust.

In fantasy we get our difficulties raised with superpowers or magical cures.

We are looking for stories that defy these trends.

We want to see stories that show the dynamic nature of disability,

...