One of the podcast anthologies that asks me to do narrations for them--the last one being the unfortunately-located "The Cat That Went To Uranus"--is Cast of Wonders.
Recently, they had me narrate "Silver Screen Syndrome" by Mia Xuan. The father of the narrator is suffering from an uncommon mental (or physical?) disorder wherein he only comes alive and alert when cameras are on him, to increasingly diminishing results.
It's one of those Science Fiction stories that is clearly about Something Else, but cloaked in the fantastic so as to make the subject more palatable to a 1950s audience. Having to be around someone you love when their mind is deteriorating has got to be difficult, and I can imagine the writer of this story dealing with that by creating a malady that's distant from reality, yet just as baffling and/or frustrating as the real thing.
The story is extremely short, and yet it had half a dozen words in it I did not know how to pronounce, which is pretty rare nowadays. I did the best I could with it*, but whether my performance is affective (or affecting) or not really depends on the listener. Find out for yourself HERE.
*And that ain't nothin. But still.
