The Best of Toasted Cake

written by David Steffen

Toasted Cake is a podcast launched in 2012 by writer Tina Connolly. She labels it as an “idiosyncratic flash fiction podcast”, and has managed to maintain a pace of a story a week for all of 2012. Her original aim was to do the podcast for all of 2012, but at the turn of 2013 she has decided to keep on with it, perhaps encouraged by her Parsec Award for “Best New Podcast”.

The stories are generally pretty quick listens, good for filling a few minutes of idle time. They also work well strung together on a road trip as I listened to them–the change of story every 5-10 minutes kept it easier to stay awake and alert.

Apparently I’m a fan of Caroline M. Yoachim–her story “Pageant Girls” was on my Best of Pseudopod 2011 list and appeared here as Toasted Cake #1–it may very well have ended up on the list as well, to make a Yoachim hat trick, except that I have set a rule for myself to not consider any story for more than one list so that each list has a unique set.

1. Deathbed by Caroline M. Yoachim
A man who remembers life in reverse order is on his deathbed. This is the story of his end from the point of view of his wife (who remembers things in the usual order)

2. On Writing “How an Autobot sunk the Titanic” by J. Bradley
A “behind the scenes” kind of look at a book that doesn’t exist. It’s a ridiculous idea, as you can guess by the title. Ridiculous enough that I would buy it.

3. The Occupation of the Architect by Jason Heller
Sentient buildings rise up and put an architect on trial for his crimes against buildingkind.

4. The Choir Invisible by Anatoly Belilovsky
A sentient vacuum cleaner tries to make the most of the time that it has.

5. Dear Ms. Moon by Liz Argall
A series of letters written to the moon, pleading for it to help the protagonist’s younger brother not fall so hard.

6. Zing Zou Zou by C.S.E. Cooney
The machine uprising, focused on a children’s schoolteacher bot.

Honorable Mentions

Golden Years in the Paleozoic by Ken Liu
Cute, written as a pitch for retirement homes in the ancient past.

Vermilion Dreams by Claude Lalumià ¨re
Written as a series of book reviews of fictional books, entertaining, only part of the original list of books in the original publication.

Mothership by Caroline M. Yoachim
A ship who is literally a mother tries to do what is best for her child.