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Auditory Anthology
Home Is The Spaceman by George O. Smith
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After becoming the first human to travel faster than light and vanishing for eighteen months on what was supposed to be a twelve-hour mission, test pilot Billy Enright finally returns to Earth — only to find himself hauled before a Board of Inquiry demanding to know exactly what took him so long. His explanation is one of the great punchlines in classic pulp sci-fi, and it turns a “missing persons” story into something far funnier and stranger.
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Curator: Keith Conrad linktr.ee/keithrconrad
Narrator: Darren Marlar https://darrenmarlar.com/
Other shows hosted by Darren:
Weird Darkness: https://weirddarkness.com/
Paranormality Magazine: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/paranormalitymag
Micro Terrors: Scary Stories for Kids: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/microterrors
Retro Radio – Old Time Radio In The Dark: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/retroradio
Church of the Undead: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/churchoftheundead
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Pulling the Plug by Tony Tidwell
08:28|When aliens who secretly engineered human evolution announce they’re shutting the whole experiment down, world leaders and scientists gather at the UN with nothing left to offer but excuses. Tony Tidwell delivers a sharp, darkly funny fable about squandered potential — and what happens when the universe finally decides humanity has run out of chances.
X Minus One: Early Model
22:16|Unfortunately we were not able to put together our normal Sunday episode with Chapter Five of Maiden Voyage, our audiobook for paid subscribers on Substack. We’ll have that for you next week, but in the meantime to tide you over, here’s one of my favorite episodes of X Minus One, the series that inspired our podcast. It’s “Early Model,” an episode that originally aired July 11, 1957, based on the short story of the same name by Robert Sheckley
Welcome to Paradise by Allyn Donnelson
25:51|A spot welder’s late-night mistake at a Chicago factory sends him somewhere no one could have expected — and pulls him into a top-secret discovery so significant, the government isn’t sure it should ever come to light. Told through a series of increasingly earnest letters to the President, “Welcome to Paradise” is a warm, funny slice of 1950s pulp with real heart underneath the gags.Allyn Donnelson is known today for a single published science fiction story, “Welcome to Paradise,” which appeared in the September 1954 issue of Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy. Beyond that, virtually nothing is known about the author — but it’s a story that’s stuck around and found new fans for a reason.
The Luddite Contingency by J.T. Shannon
17:00|Long after humanity has vanished, an automated global manufacturing system keeps grinding on — building, shipping, and consuming with no one left to use any of it. But when a single broken machine exposes a gap nobody programmed for, the system’s last-resort protocol sets off a chain reaction with nothing left to stop it. J.T. Shannon delivers a darkly funny, quietly devastating post-human parable about automation, purpose, and what happens when a machine keeps doing its job long after the reason for it is gone.We love bringing you stories from listeners just like J.T. — if you’ve got a tale of your own itching to be told (sci-fi, horror, supernatural, or anything in between), we’d love to hear it. Submit your story at submissions.soundconceptmedia.com and you could be featured right here on Auditory Anthology.
Wake Up & Maiden Voyage – Chapter Four: The Opportunity
11:42|On the maiden voyage of the MV Atlas, the world’s largest cruise ship, a ghost operative team attempts a silent extraction of a high-value defector carrying an impossible secret: an ancient, non-human artifact. Hidden amongst twenty-two thousand passengers and stalked by an elite foreign intelligence network, the team must execute a precise, high-stakes tradecraft operation in international waters — one wrong move could blow their cover and trigger a confrontation that could break the global order.Become a paid subscriber at https://auditoryanthology.substack.com/ to hear Maiden VoyageOur companion short story, “Wake Up,” follows nine-year-old Elena as a warning arrives in the middle of the night from someone who shouldn’t be able to reach her at all. It’s a quiet, personal story — and the earliest thread yet in the strange, unexplained current running underneath this world.
The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft
18:53|Raised alone in an ancient, decaying castle with no memory of family or the outside world, a lonely figure finally attempts what seems impossible: climbing the one ruined tower tall enough to reach the sky above the trees. What waits at the top — and in the strange, moonlit world beyond — builds toward one of Lovecraft’s most haunting and often-cited revelations.H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) was an American writer whose atmospheric horror and cosmic dread reshaped the genre, influencing generations of writers who followed. “The Outsider,” first published in Weird Tales in 1926, remains one of his most anthologized and beloved stories.
Coffee Grinder Love by Siobhan Gallahger
16:23|After a disastrous divorce sparked by her fatally toxic coffee, a desperate woman navigates interspecies dating and Martian travel to prove her domestic worth—and finally stumbles upon an insectoid suitor who appreciates a decent cup of tea.Siobhan Gallagher is a turnip queen, currently residing on the side of a mountain in Colorado. Her fiction has appeared in over thirty publications, including On Spec, PodCastle, Abyss & Apex, and Cosmic Horror Monthly.This story was inspired by an early 1960’s Folgers commercial (it can be found on Youtube), where the husband declares his wife ‘s coffee to be “criminal” and “murder”. Coffee Grinder Love was originally published in Cosmic Horror Monthly, May 2025.
The Man at the Table & Maiden Voyage - Chapter Three: No Way In
13:00|On the maiden voyage of the MV Atlas, the world’s largest cruise ship, a ghost operative team attempts a silent extraction of a high-value defector carrying an impossible secret: an ancient, non-human artifact. Hidden amongst twenty-two thousand passengers and stalked by an elite foreign intelligence network, the team must execute a precise, high-stakes tradecraft operation in international waters — one wrong move could blow their cover and trigger a confrontation that could break the global order.Our companion short story, “The Man at the Table,” follows a different operative entirely as he breaks into an empty house chasing a routine surveillance lead — and finds something waiting for him that no training could have prepared him for. It’s a quieter, stranger thread in this world, and one that’s far from finished.