MakeShift Stories is a monthly podcast of original SF stories. The series explores, space, time, alternate realities, and the near future in an ever expanding fantasy and sci fi universe. In each story we bring to life a somewhat random collection of characters in adventures for all ages.
Episode 52 – “coming before March 20, 2012″
An accident forces the crew of the interstellar ship Destiny to go in to hibernation while the robotic maintenance systems diagnose and fix the problems. During the emergency crucial instructions are lost causing the ship to go into orbit around around a star for 50 thousand years.
During a period of intense solar flare activity Marianne and her family take a holiday at a remove wilderness cabin. This brings them close to a place called, the top of the sky, that some people think has mystical significance. What Marianne and her parents don’t realize, is that the top of the sky is also the destination for a group of aliens who live in the corona of the sun.
In an attempt to regain its reputation as a leader in space research and exploration, the ancient Institute of Solar Studies in Babylon puts all its resources into a mission to the newly discovered comet Hale Bopp to study the object’s unusual behaviour.
The mission is a success but the outcome is not what Fath Shah, the institute’s director, had planned on.
(more…)
In 1884 a school master named Edwin Abbott Abbott wrote the novella “Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions.” The book explored what it would be like to live in a two dimensional universe, and speculated that there might be other dimensions. The Abott’s story lay in obscurity until it was rediscovered in the early 20th century after Einstein wrote “The Theory of General Relativity” which discussed the possibility of a fourth dimension. Since then several films and animations have been made based on Abbott’s novella.
This month’s story revisits Abbott’s flat universe from the point of view of a down and out private detective in search of his first big case.
