We're late! We're late for a very important date! 

The second season of the Kaleidocast has officially been released into the wilds of the internet. It's been a long journey -longer than expected- but for a very good reason. Producing the Kaleidocast is a daunting task. It's not just a story podcast, it's a collaborative piece of art as well as a teaching tool. 

The initial goal of the Kaleidocast was a modest one, to help Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers improve their craft by giving them a high, yet attainable goal: write at a professional level. To that end, we purchased stories from well known professional authors and made their stories the standard to which our BSFW authors were writing. We kept our slush pile short, took resubmissions when we thought a story wasn't quite there yet, and gave personal feedback. It worked. Oh, how our authors rose to the challenge. 

But that wasn't enough. To make the podcast stand out, we created a radio drama as frame structure for the stories we produced. That's where Meta-Brooklyn came in, a Brooklyn populated by living, breathing stories. We developed characters Senior Junior Lecturer Sam Spellingbound, Crypto-Provost Dawn Fairweather Jenkins, Professor Brad Overstreet, Emeritus Professor Calliope Da Gammawitz, and story hunter James Earl King II.   

But to grow in Season Two, we needed to up our game and that meant $$$. With your help we ran a successful Kickstarter to raise enough money to pay our authors, actors, sound engineers, and artists. Even though we completed Season Two in half the time as Season One, it was twice the work.  

Season Two was all about clarifying our vision and upping our game. That took more time, but I think it was worth it. Award winning authors and voice actors, a more ambitious audio drama,  and gorgeous art came together in ways we couldn't imagine until we saw it on the page.

So here we are, late, but right on time for Readercon 29. This is only right since it was at Readercon 28, one year ago, that we launched the Kickstarter for Season Two.  

On behalf of the rest of the production team; Bradley Robert Parks (founder), Sam Schreiber (story runner), Marcy Arlin (director), and Jessica Plumbley (assistant manager), I invite you to dive into our world and immerse yourself in stories that matter.  Look for the Kaleidocast bi-weekly starting today, July 10th!

Sincerely,

Cameron Roberson
Kaleidocast Managing Editor 

        It’s an exciting time to be a fan of speculative fiction! Never before have such a diverse range of voices found purchase in our cultural consciousness, and never before has the need for these voices ever been so urgent. We at the Kaleidocast are beyond excited to pick up a tambourine and join the chorus.  All that being said, we need your help!

​        We just launched our first-everKickstarter Campaign in advance of our upcoming season. We’re bringing you short fiction from some of the most exciting writers working today, including N.K. Jemisin, Mike Allen, Carlos Hernandez and Theodora Goss! Perhaps even nearer and dearer to our hearts, we’re publishing stories from members of our very own Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers that have appeared in such publications as Unidentified Funny Objects, Daily Science Fiction and Clockwork Phoenix.
 
Your contribution to the Kickstarter will help ensure that we can keep bringing you these stories for years to come, and in style. We’re committed to paying our authors, our actors, our engineers and our artists while still keeping our podcast free. If you’re as excited as we are about new science fiction, fantasy, horror and the just plain weird, we would be thrilled to welcome you to the Kaleidocast family!

   Rewards range from original art, signed books, and consultations with some experts who’ve decided to lend a hand. Become a Junior Adjunct First Class at $10 and your name will be immortalized on our website and in the credits of our podcast. Better yet, become a Rear Associate Professor and receive scaled digital artwork, including Chibi depictions or surreal speculative fauna of some of our authors! For the truly stout of heart, be a Mecha-Chancellor! You’ll receive a piece of original artwork and much, much more!
 
Thanks again for your interest, and no matter what, keep a lookout for stories drifting in and out of your reality, and don’t forget tosubscribe!

 I2 a.m., Brooklyn, the Hollow Nickel Bar. Sam, Brad, and I met up with Jim Freund, host of the Hour of the Wolf and New York Review of Science Fiction. For those who don't know, Jim is also a font of knowledge and secret stories from the recent history of modern speculative fiction. It was well worth the cost of the beer and french fries just to sit and chill with the guy. Then we settled up and walked to the WBAI radio headquarters  in Brooklyn and got ready for the interview.

We were on for 2 hours and it felt like 15 minutes. But we packed in a plug for episode 4, and a shout-out to every author and actor of the Kaleidocast's first season, layered in between tangents on Spec-fic luminaries (listen to the Firesign Theater), George Carlin, and Shakespeare. Technical difficulties at the beginning of the show turned into a climatic finale when we successfully played the first episode of the season (I never get tired of hearing that theme music).  My only regret is that I didn't give props to our outstanding and hardworking sound engineers. None of this would have worked without Adicus Garton, Alicia Barret, Matt Mazzerlla, and Terence Taylor.  Then there were Kris Dikeman who designed the banner and website map, and Tanya Ireland McLean, the 4th producer on our team. 

So take a listen, our part of the show starts around the 20 minute mark. Weirdly, we all turn into chipmunks for a couple minutes after that. But what do you expect? This is speculative fiction.

- Cameron Roberson

So, this is what I've been working on for over a year.

I've been with the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers, founded by Bradly Parks, for almost 5 years and one thing has become clear: this group has got some seriously talented writers. Also in that time, the producers, Brad Parks, Sam Schreiber, and Tanya Ireland McLean, and I have made some life long friends in the speculative fiction writing community at KGB, NYRSF, Riverside, and, of course, Readercon. The Kaleidocast, BSFW's podcast, is our attempt to honor both groups of writers by creating a new venue for them to publish and a new speculative world to play with: Meta Brooklyn.

Our Meta-Brooklyn exists in a parallel universe where stories from the real world percolate, project, and propagate in weird, wonderful, and often lethal ways. Then again, who's to say whose reality is more real...er? We invite you to join our characters, both academics and story hunters, as they delve into the mystery that is the Kaleidocast.

Stick around, we've got a lot of story to tell.

-Cameron Roberson, aka Rob Cameron, aka Spidercam, aka that guy who does dragon boat and drank all your hard cider.