miss when we were all heavily into fiction podcasts and reading Matt Fraction's Hawkeye and endlessly quoting the McElroy's
#phm#ryland grace#rocky the eridian#project hail mary spoilers





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miss when we were all heavily into fiction podcasts and reading Matt Fraction's Hawkeye and endlessly quoting the McElroy's
Doctor's Orbit: A Review of The Vesta Clinic
And we're back!
The sci-fi audio drama exploration continues well into late March, the welcoming warmth of spring slowly encroaching upon the world a better time than any to consider my own health, the physical and the mental, as I buckle down for my future fiction podcast endeavors.
When pollen is jamming up my nose, and the air is changing from hot to cold in an instant, I find myself stuck between wanting to slip my way indoors and wanting to embrace the world renewing itself.
I love the spring, even if spring doesn't like me, and as my seasonal depression wears off and my sundresses look upon me with rapt enthusiasm, it's no better time for me to...go back inside, put on my headphones, and listen to another podcast.
I've got a schedule to follow, and frankly, nature can wait.
For anyone in the know, I like to do themes for my bi-monthly reviews, to varying success, but this time around, I've definitely hit the nail on the head. This time around, it's two shows that encompass the niche subgenre of medical science fiction, and, much to my luck, there's a whole two of them ready and waiting for me by sheer circumstance. They both also debuted in the 2020's just to keep my catalog fresh and relevant.
I'm finally getting good at this. It only took a whole decade.
Today's topic is The Vesta Clinic, which comes to us from...well, The Vesta Clinic Podcast, premiering in 2022, which technically still makes it an audio drama newcomer by my standards.
This show follows Dr. Faye Underwood, a newbie to the medical world and doctor at the titular Vesta Clinic, with the show mostly consisting of Faye's retellings of her patients and their medical treatments, a sizeable portion of which are aliens with unique anatomy requiring precise procedures.
Almost every episode consists of Faye recounting the events that transpired during her time with a patient, making an audio log of it for future reference and for the listener's benefit.
And I'm just going to come out and say it, I really like the writing.
The Vesta Clinic is undeniably carried by its silky prose: it's the descriptions that give the narration so much life, and I seriously ate up all the complex and layered, though never excessive, monologues.
Each one is just glowing with this sense of discovery and an unbiased appreciation for the sheer variety of a bustling environment, celebrating the diversity of life, be it human or alien, though mostly alien, that steps through those hospital doors.
And while it does wonders for the worldbuilding and paints this deeply layered, exceptionally developed universe with each nook and cranny taken into account, saying The Vesta Clinic completely won me over wouldn't be entirely true.
accounts like @haveyoulistenedtothispodcast and @haveyouheardthispodcast really opens my eyes to how long i've been in the audio drama space
the shows mentioned on here were such major parts of my life back in the 2010's, and it's not like they're completely under wraps now, but it's insane to be someone who grew up listening to "our fair city" and "ars paradoxica" and "eos 10" and "greater boston" and it's like "dude! these are the ancient texts! we must retrace our history to understand our present!"
but that just goes to show how much our community has evolved. but please, give a show back during the 2010's a listen sometime, i wanna say around 2014-2016, it was an absolute goldmine.
Headspace: A Review of Clinical Space
I am making a conscious effort to break out of my science fiction podcast fatigue. While I definitely made progress with StarTripper!! and The Never Rad Miscellany had its highlights, that highlight being A Gentlemen About Space, I can't say I've gotten comfortable yet with embracing the genre to its fullest again.
Which is a shame because I seriously want to buckle down and get serious this year and churn out some quality content for you all, and shrugging off the existence of sci-fi audio drama altogether leaves me awfully limited as far as options go. I may as well be hacking off a limb while I'm at it.
I really do think it's that New Year's buzz still in my system, as if my stomach hasn't stopped digesting that cheap champagne. I gotta stick to those resolutions or I won't get any of those sweet blessings guaranteed during the year of our lord and savior, Umamusume.
We're only three months in, and I still have yet to recover from that reeling sensation of existential dread. I'm starting to doubt my career choices, everyone, and it's not pretty.
I'm willing to say I've made my mistakes in my time as a podcast journalist, some opinions I'd take back, articles I'd rewrite, messages I wouldn't have sent; it comes with the territory of starting this venture of mine at such a young age.
Even now, at the ripe age of twenty-eight, I'm starting to second-guess myself: maybe I've had too many knee-jerk reactions in the past. Maybe all those solitary spaceship shows I dismissed had some merit, and I was too quick to judge them.
Maybe I need to stop comparing shows to goliaths like Wolf 359 and SAYER and EOS 10 and just be able to say, with full honesty, that I am the problem. It's not you, sci-fi audio drama, it's me, and I'm more than willing to work through this.
Horror, you'll get your chance someday. I'll listen to Unwell, sooner than later, I promise.
But back to the topic at hand: I did another one of my podcast roulettes with some blind, though undeniably themed, audio drama selections for these month’s reviews.
My daring venture to rectify this genre stupor has been taking a look at two shows in relatively niche science-fiction genres: "medical field, but what if it was in space?", a surprisingly unexplored idea that was established by 2014's EOS 10, but never had the privilege of a string of copycats.
Following my bimonthly schedule, I'll be tackling one now and the second one later, the first of which, and the considerably shorter of the two, is 2024's Clinical Space from Cozy AF, self-described as "a cerebral sci-fi audio fiction podcast".
Looks around. Akmazian design in 2026? I miss him
"His name was Ben... but I knew him by another name."
out of this random grab bag of favorite characters, which one should i put in a box and shake around a little bit (affectionately)?
dr. joan bright | the bright sessions
the obituary writer | death by dying
ryan dalias | eos 10
madge stallion | fawx & stallion
ariadne culver | the kingmaker histories
kayne | malevolent
peter nureyev | the penumbra podcast
bryony halbech | red valley
sister carpenter | the silt verses
carlos robles | welcome to night vale
isabel lovelace | wolf 359
antigone funn | wooden overcoats
reblog after voting for bigger sample size ♡