{credit}Nicholas Yochum courtesy of Dead Signals, LLC{/credit}

Posted on behalf of Liesbeth Venema

Imagine that you and your friends find yourselves in a post-apocalyptic world, fleeing the double threat posed by gas storms and lawless factions striving for dominance. How likely is it that you will find safety in a mysterious underground bunker abandoned by a previous government that had dubious intentions?

Not very, but it is a perfect premise for a horror/science-fiction adventure.

Deep Vault is unlike any thriller you may have encountered before, and its originality lies in the format. Deep Vault is an audio drama produced by Dead Signals, an audio production company made up of Mark Sollinger and Dan Powell. They are among a wave of writers and producers who have rediscovered the power of radio dramas, and who are pushing the limits of the format, doing away, for example, with the traditional narrator voice.

“We wanted to demonstrate to ourselves we could do this,” Sollinger says.

In this era of Game Of Thrones video streaming, it is remarkably refreshing to get immersed in a story just by listening to it. Of course, it takes considerable skill to make an action-packed thriller like Deep Vault — with its fair share of chases and unspeakable dangers — compelling using only sound. Dead Signals pull this off admirably.

“We want listeners to create their own images, which can be more powerful than video,” Sollinger says.

When asked what they find particularly challenging about making the series, Sollinger points to dialogue writing. “We can’t see the actors faces, so there needs to be a lot of personality in the dialogue, yet it can’t be over the top.”

The story’s characters do seem, unavoidably, slightly exaggerated. There is Carson, whose main ambition is to be a ‘badass’; his much more sensible cousin Alex, who has mysterious headaches and hears voices; their geeky friend Jeremy, with a degree in digital archaeology that comes in handy; and then there is Josie, who really does kick ass and hijacks more than a few situations to blame the apocalypse, and much else, on capitalism.

The voice actors are excellent and as the adventure unfolds it feels natural to empathize with the company of unlucky friends facing an array of dangers in the underground bunker. One problem are robots that are programmed to serve, but, in a twist of Asimov’s laws, need to be persuaded that it is a net benefit to keep the group alive.

But there is something truly horrific lurking at the heart of the bunker, a mysterious entity with evil intentions, and I am not so sure this will end well (5 of the 7 episodes are currently out). Although I highly recommend trying this original podcast series, it is not for the squeamish, so be careful not to alarm other passengers with your horrified expressions when listening to this on your morning commute. 

The last two episodes will become available over the next few weeks and the team is releasing a second series of Archive 81, their first podcast thriller, later this year.

As the US election looms, Futures this week sees Marissa Lingen wonder about what kind of event really makes a mark on a given year in her story The most important thing. Marissa is no stranger to Futures, having introduced us to Maxwell’s Demon and time-travel problems, among other things (a full list of her Futures stories can be found at the foot of this post). You can catch up with Marissa on her website or by following her on Twitter. Here she looks how the US election catalysed her latest tale — as ever it pays to read the story first.

Writing The most important thing

It will be news to precisely zero people reading this blog that the United States is having a presidential election this year. If you have access to the Internet, you can’t avoid election coverage — I hesitate to call most of it ‘news’ — even if you’ve already made up your mind whom to vote for, even if you live somewhere else and would really prefer not to think about another country’s politics all the time.

In the middle of the N-ring circus that was the US electoral primary, some of my dearest friends had babies. And as I was smiling through the Internet at the pictures they were sending, I thought, if you asked my mom and dad what the most important thing that happened in 1978 was, they would say me. Absolutely they would say me. They wouldn’t hesitate for a moment. And because I’m a science-fiction writer, I started thinking about all the other things that can be someone’s biggest moment — one person’s happy diversion or silly entertainment or mildly sad post to scroll past on their social media is the centre of another person’s life.

That’s how this story grew. Everyone’s world has a centre, but they’re not the same from person to person.

More Futures stories by Marissa Lingen

Alloy | Search strings | Quality control | Entanglement | Unsolved logistical problems in time travel: spring semester | The stuff we don’t do | Maxwell’s Demon went down to Georgia | Boundary waters | The many media hypothesis

This week Futures has been visited by management consultants. Specifically, a team of consultants who, under the guidance of Aidan Doyle, have come to help us sort out the Galactic Empire. Running an empire isn’t easy, and you really do need all the help — and input from stakeholders — that you can get. When Aidan isn’t plotting the empire’s new business strategy,  he can be found on Twitter or at his website. Here, he reveals the nuances of empire building — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Galactic Empire Management Consulting: lessons learnt

In the years I’ve spent working as a computer programmer, I have encountered managers who believe in the Darth Vader style of project management: making dire threats while being reluctant to learn from past mistakes. I’ve also seen projects where a seemingly endless parade of consultants have come, asked the same questions, produced the same documents that no one read, and then left before anything was implemented. There is an episode of the comedy series Peep Show in which Mark protests that he doesn’t know anything about management consulting and Johnson tells him: “In, fire 30% of the workforce, new logo, boom! Out. You are now a fully trained management consultant.”

I love the Project Management Tree Swing cartoons, which show how wide the gap between perception and reality can sometimes be in IT project management. When Star Wars tried to move towards more realism and complexity it resulted in messes like the prequels’ Trade Federation discussions and midi-chlorian pseudoscience, but I thought it would be fun to think about some of the real world issues a project the size and complexity of building a Death Star would encounter.

After the first Death Star was destroyed, I can imagine a manager suggesting that what the Empire really needed to do was build another one but make it bigger this time. I’m sure there were lots of project post-implementation evaluation committees, but no one paid attention to their reports either.

At one of my workplaces we received instructions (with recommendations from the manufacturer) on how to properly use the building’s revolving-door main entrance. I like to think that bored stormtroopers would manage to think of some creative and not-safe-for-work ways to have fun with a tractor beam.

This week, Futures is pleased to welcome back Rebecca Birch with her story Simple things. Rebecca first appeared in Futures with her tale Are you receiving? and later with Ice and white roses. You can find out more about her work and keep up to date with her activities on her website. Here, she reveals what inspired her latest piece — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Simple things

Simple Things was inspired by a visual writing prompt — a tree standing alone on a cliff looking out over a vast forest.  It was clear that the tree would have to play a major role in the story, but I wasn’t at all sure what sort of role it would be until I decided that such a striking tree would probably be important to any folks who happened to be in its vicinity.

As I delved into the story, I found I wanted to explore how people, who had been marooned by science-fictional technology gone wrong, dealt with their solitude.  How the tree became a beacon for one man, the physical manifestation of his hope and optimism.  How the other man, who had lost his hope, managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other, his survival dependent on those simple things, and how he would face his life when he was finally, truly alone.

I hope that through writing this story, I’ve reminded myself of the importance of having an Old Lookout of my own, so that when things get hard, I’ll remember that tenacity and old-fashioned stubbornness can see a person through a great deal — even if that stubbornness is as basic as one step following the next.

Never discount the importance of the simple things.