BRASS

BRASS is a Battleground Productions feed named for Brass, a 19th century adventure serial filed under steampunk alternate history. The same feed carries Brass Stacks, where the serial gives way to older short fiction read aloud. The Stacks episodes run on a simple frame. A voice welcomes the listener far back into the recesses of a library, the corner the show calls the stacks, and suggests getting comfortable while a volume comes down off the shelf. After that, the story is the whole show. The sign-off calls each one a 'short fix of literature from the library' and points back toward the serial. Saki supplies some of the sharpest material. In Tobermory, Lady Blemley's guests at the tea-table fall into open panic once the conversation turns indiscreet, complete with a car nicknamed the Envy of Sisyphus because it goes uphill nicely if pushed. In The Storyteller, a bachelor on a hot, steamy train wins over three fidgeting children with the tale of a girl so 'horribly good' that her medals clicked when she walked. Guy de Maupassant's Humiliation is cooler: two young women half buried in roses and violets in a landau, discussing what it is like to be loved by a servant. Hans Christian Andersen's The Snowman is gentler, pairing a snowman who refuses to wink at the setting sun with a chained yard dog remembering his days on a velvet chair. William Dean Howells' Christmas Every Day has a father coaxed into a Saturday-morning story for his daughter, then lets a fairy's gift run until turkeys are scarce, trees are made of rags and nearly everyone lands in the poorhouse. When the Door Was Opened travels from a late train out of the suburbs to a masked ball, where a man in a Velazquez-period costume approaches his own wife and is troubled that she makes no sign of objecting. Two of these stories are about an adult telling a story to children, a neat echo of the format itself. The mood swings a long way between volumes, from drawing-room comedy to fairy tale to marital doubt. Readers change too. Nikki Diesel narrates The Storyteller, Nancy Fry introduces herself on Humiliation, Billy Wildrick reads The Snowman and Larry Albert takes When the Door Was Opened. The credits name John Longenbaugh as curator, Catherine Grant as producer and Benedict Edwards as composer. The Storyteller makes a fair first test: if the 'horribly good' girl lands, the rest of the shelf likely will too. Each reading stands alone, so there is no plot to catch up on before pressing play.