In every life there are choices. In every choice there is risk. Not in every risk is there reward. Archive of the Odd presents its findings on 14 choices. Dearest researcher, it is up to you to decide what to do with them.
Always a good day when there’s a new issue of Archive of the Odd to read. This one contains a spectacular standout story by Ash Egan, ‘Alice is Missing’, which fleshes out the story of a missing girl in the form of an oral history (Ash Egan please write a novel in this format!!). I also loved ‘A Gradient Descent’ by David Worn, the juicy, entertaining story of a programmer's futile battle with an evil AI, and the simple-but-creepy approach of Martin Taulbut’s ‘The Ogilvie Transcript’. As for the visual aspect, the found documents in Biscuit Starberry’s ‘You Are Going to Die’ take the prize for best presentation, and with ‘Making a Claim’, Louise Hughes delivers an actually original twist on climate change satire. Great fun as ever, I loved the creativity of every approach here.
My humorous SFF piece "A Necromancer's Official Guide to Resurrecting a Loved One," as well as other wonderful pieces, is in this! Please give it a read! :)
I Love this series. They're a bunch of found-footage-style creepy fun. Favorites from this volume include:
Phone Call with Genetrix, Friday, 3 .m. by Ari Burton - Told as an automated message machine for a cloning facility. Amusing and the caller's frustration is highly relatable.
Alice is Missing by Ash Egan - Legitimately creepy descriptions in this one of a man/beast who lives on the moors. There are parts of this one that are proper chilling.
A Gradiant Descent by David Worn - This one is told via chat logs between a reporter and an informant who shows the reporter a conversation between a programmer and a chat bot who has been privy to some serious cosmic horrors.
Making a Claim by Louise Hughes - A satisfying and occasionally very funny transcription between an extraterrestrial insurance agency representative and a man trying to file an insurance claim on Earth during a global apocalypse.
Necromancy is an MLM by Rose Ciesla - Amusing twitter threat of a quite frankly awful woman who gets sucked into a MLM built around raising the dead. One of the funniest in the collection.
This is a great series and anyone with a love of found footage or epistolary storytelling should check these out.