Podcast sf doyenne Mur Lafferty has recently launched her latest novel/podcast serial: "Marco and the Red Granny." It's part of a larger cycle of stories about Mollywood that I had the real pleasure of workshopping with Mur at the Viable Paradise workshop some years ago. Here's Mur's synopsis:
By bringing back the patronage system, a new alien species has transformed the moon into the new artistic center of the universe, and Sally Ride Lunar Base soon gains the nickname "Mollywood." These aliens can do amazing things with art and the senses, allowing a painting, for example, to stimulate other senses than simply sight. When someone asks a starlet, "Who are you wearing?" she could as easily say "J.K. Rowling" as she could "Gucci."
Every creative person in the world wishes for a patronage. It's quite competitive.
Marco wanted one, once. But then his girlfriend got one and shuttled off to Mollywood for fame and fortune, and Marco stayed home, waiting for his own patron. After several years, he gave up entirely. His career faltered. His agent dumped him. It's only in despair, when he's hit bottom, he gets the call. At last he has a patron; at last the aliens want him. But he's about to find out that an artistic patronage isn't what it was in the good old days, and that the only friend he's made, a tiny old woman who's the star of a blood sports reality series called The Most Dangerous Game, has secrets of her own.
Marco and the Red Granny, Part 1
(podcast)
(Thanks, Mur!)
