ARTIES AREN’T STUPID by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’m really enjoying this new thing that I’ve discovered. Again, I know, I’m way behind the curve. But in my defense, I’m also new to iTunes. I know that you don’t need iTunes to listen to podcasts, but it is how I learned about them.

Anyway, this go around, while walking to work this morning, I listened to the latest edition of Escape Pod, the science fiction short story podcast, EP179: Arties Aren’t Stupid by Jeremiah Tolbert.

This is a great story full of wonderful slang and a strange new world order in which the children are highly specialized. From what I could gather, the children fall into a couple groups, the ones the story deals with anyway, which are: Arties, Melodies, Smarties (my word), Tuffies (my word). I say, “my word” because I forget what they were really called in the story.

The story centers on a group of Arties, children who must create. They must make things and art or they physically suffer. Their hands twitch and they begin to feel ill. They don’t mingle with other groups with different specializations. Well, except for one.

This is a story that is fun to listen to and think about. Why would a civilization what children to grow up only every wanting, no needing to perform one kind of task. Where is the logic? Or is it logical?

Besides being able to listen to it on my walk in to work, what I really enjoyed was the dialogue. It was hard to listen to at first, but by the time the story was done, I felt like I was in the know, part of an entire different culture. I guess that is the risk when writing any jargon or slang into a story, a reader must trust that there is going to some kind of pay for learning it. And in this story it was nicely done!

Tolbert, Jeremiah. Arties Aren’t Stupid. Escape Pod. 179, October 11, 2008