Thing and Sick by Adam Roberts (audio)

Clarkesworld Magazine

Fiction, Science Fiction

4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2017

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode features "Thing and Sick" by Adam Roberts from the April issue of Clarkesworld Magazine. Read by Kate Baker.

Text of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/roberts_04_17_reprint

Originally published in Solaris Rising 3: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ian Whates.

Support Clarkesworld Magazine on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/join/clarkesworld?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You are listening to a Clark's World Magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.
0:10.0	Greetings Clark's World Citizens. I hope this podcast finds you extraordinarily well.
0:15.2	It's our second to the last story of the month for April 2017, issue 127.
0:21.8	And as always, if you like what you hear and you aren't already a
0:27.1	subscriber or a patron on Patreon.com forward slash Clark's world Please consider going there and showing your support.
0:36.4	Our sixth story for the month is Thing and Sick by Adam Roberts. Adam Roberts is the author of 16 novels, many short stories, and various works of academic criticism.
0:49.0	Recent works include The Palgrave History of science fiction, second edition, and his
0:54.8	latest novel The Real Town Murders. He lives a little way west of London with his
1:00.1	wife and two children. You can find him at his website Adam Roberts.com and if you like what
1:06.6	you here July 2015 brought you hair. So I invite you to sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.
1:17.0	It started with the letter.
1:25.0	Roy would probably say it started when he solved the Fermi paradox.
1:31.0	When he achieved, his word, clarity. Not clarity, I think, but sick. Sick in the head. He probably wouldn't disagree. Not with so much professional psychiatric opinion having been brought to bear on the matter.
1:47.0	He can seize as much to me in the many communications he has addressed me from his asylum. He sends various
1:55.0	manifestos and communications to the papers too I understand. In all of them he
2:01.5	claims to have finally solved the Fermi paradox. If he has then I don't expect my nightmares to diminish anytime soon.
2:10.0	I do have bad dreams, yes, intense, visceral nightmares from which I wake sweating and weeping.
2:19.8	If Roy is wrong, then perhaps they'll diminish with time.
2:24.7	But really, it started with the letter.
2:28.2	I was in Antarctica with Roy Curtis, the two of us hundreds of mild inland, far away from the nearest civilization.
2:37.0	It was 1986 and one weeks long evening and one month's long South Polar Night. Our job was to process the raw
2:46.1	astronomical data coming in from Proxima in Alpha Centauri. Which is to say, our
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Clarkesworld Magazine, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Clarkesworld Magazine and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.