It Could Happen Here - CZM Book Club: Moonkids, by Abbey Mei Otis, Part 1

Episode Date: May 10, 2026

Margaret reads you the first part of a story about kids who grew up on the moonSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm Sam Jay. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

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Book club. Book club. I wonder how long I can do this. Book club. No, I don't actually want to do it all that long. Hello and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club. The only book club where you don't have. have to do the reading, because I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and we are back to

our usual business this week. I've got the first of two parts for you today of an absolutely brutal story by my friend and co-conspirator Abby Mae Otis. This is from her 2018 collection from Small Beer Press called Alien Virus Love Disaster. And this collection has all kinds of accolades like the Newcomb Institute debut Literary Arts Award Shortlist and Philip K. Dick Award finalist. And it shows that Abby's writing is just entrancing. Her writing, you might say, has more humanity than a lot of the humans I know.

And I'm excited to read you this story called Moon Kids. Why is it called Moon Kids? Because it's about some Moon Kids. It's also about coping with rejection and yearning and disability and being a waitress for tourists and just how brutal it is acclimating to a new reality. And moon kids.

So here it is. Moon Kids by Abby May Otis. Souso says moon kids find their way to Sandpoint because they're drawn to the tides. They like to be around something else that's ruled by the pole of the moon. Colleen thought she came to Sandpoint because Craby Abbey's was hiring and soft shelton seemed like such a bad thing to eat for lunch every day. But she's willing to concede that maybe Souso has a lot.

a point. At any rate, there are a lot of Moon Kids in town, which mostly Colleen likes, though every so often it makes her crazy. She's been here a year. She likes that Suzo lets her wait tables instead of keeping her kitchen side. Plenty other restaurants keep Moon Kids' kitchen side on account of the odd-ass-old customer who makes a snide comment about Moonie's putting him off his food. Sousos into jumping on stuff like that. This is an equal opportunity place of employment, he'll say, and at this point, I'd like to give you equal opportunity to get the fuck out of my dining room. No denying it, though, moon kids, they're kind of stubby. On account of them growing up on the moon, your muscles learn differently in moon gravity. Your bones form light like

birds. Used to not even be possible to make the transition, you'd touch down into earthball and collapse like fast melting candles. Too many fractures for all the king's horses and all the king's men. Way, way too many for Earth doctors to deal with. Earth doctors are known for not giving a shit. Now though, they've got ways around it. They've got operations and stuff. Every moon kid's got incision scars in the same places. Colleen likes that her friend Tesla works for Souso too. Tesla got promoted to assistant manager a couple weeks ago because she's so bomb with the business side of things. Encouragement is good for Tesla. The people side of things, she has more trouble with.

The restaurant is hopping today, some obscure holiday, some excuse for money bags to wallow in a day at the shore. Big well-fed families sit around the tables and snorke down crab bisque and get a total kick out of summoning, waiter, a waiter! The air droops with fish smells and sweaty fervor of overtipping. Everyone likes reliving the golden consumer boom once in a while. Colleen sloops between tables like a freaking old-school roller skatress.

Shrimpoppers here, cod basket there. She can recommend the most expensive thing on the menu in a way that doesn't feel sleazy. She takes orders without a pad. The food is grody, but the money bags pay for service, for the anachronistic privilege of getting served, and the tips are spinning out like cotton candy and Colleen's feeling on top of the world. It's been a year since she last. stumbled and spilled someone's calumari,

a year since she overthought the business of walking an earth pole and smashed down and had to have two people haul her upright. A year since anyone watched her failing and tittered and edged away. Colleen, you'd look at her today and you'd say, now there's a moon girl who's coping. Mostly, you'd be right. Tesla isn't doing as well. The customer rush today.

It means big tips but also big noise, and they've got a sous chef out sick and 15 other things, and all Tesla wants is to get the purchase order in, but instead she's smudging the e-paper with her elbows, biting eight of her fingernails at once. Tesla feels people staring even when they're not. She starts to twitch. She picks her lips until they bleed, and then people ogle the chick with blood down her mouth, and then she picks more frantically, and a feedback loop gears up. Stop, Tesla, sweetheart, hush.

Moongirl par excellence. Bones too frail for all the muscle. Mine too frail for all the grief. After work, they go down to the boardwalk, working up salt air to swab with a deep friar smell out of their nostrils. Tourists are sparse here, their enthusiasm thinned by sparser raindrops. Tesla digs her nails into the sag of Colleen's upper arm,

pushes her nose into Colleen's shoulder. Colleen imagines she smells like sweat but doesn't pull away. Earth pole is fickle like a trickster gnome. Sometimes even after months and months it sneaks up behind you and punches you in your knees. A mother with a whole flock of kidlets snodding behind her passes the two of them. Every single head in the flock turns,

eyes swell up with the witnessing of something other. Mama swats their heads. They're Lunarian, honey. You keep walking. You know what Lunarians do? Colleen appreciates how Mom tries to keep her voice low, but she could polish up the explanation. Excuse me, ma'am, we're moon kids, she could say.

Don't let real Lunarians catch you mixing us up. Lunarian, fancy word, reserved for the fancy few who claim residents up on the cheese ball. I haven't been Lunarian for three years and seven months. want to see my certificate of dismissal signed by the head of the exam board and the council chairman and the CEO himself that one's probably a stamp

with this piece of paper we divest you of your homeland where you were born it doesn't want you anymore as the kidlets trot away Tesla whimpers and Colleen nips two fingers on the rough of her elbow fuck them Tess you know

she whispers just keep saying it in your head Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them. Moon kids every now and then, they treat themselves to a little rage. Just like you, dear listener, can treat yourself to a little products and services that support this podcast.

Or rage. Rage works too. Harry Stiles, live in London, England at Wembley Stadium. This is Harry Stiles. IR Radio wants to send you and a mate across the pond with flights from Virgin Atlantic. Hotel from TripCentral.ca, tickets, and $1,000 cash. Here we got it!

Download the free IHeart Radio app. Listen to IHeart New Music for 10 minutes. Enter to win. Every day is another chance to see Harry Styles. Very excited to see you with the show. Kiss all the time, disco occasionally, available now. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk,

to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard,

you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. since you guys are middle-aged.

One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smygel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games.

Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George? George Bush got to do a little kill. Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence.

I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Tesla and Colleen, bestest friends, didn't meet on Luna. Sat for the exams in the same hall, rode the same.

bused down to earth, didn't lay eyes on each other until they were poured onto the asphalt with 15 other fresh-chucked moon kids, blinking in the alien sunlight, bus seat patterns still printed on their thighs, with their heavy torsos and brittle spider limbs. Tesla was tallest, Colleen remembers, arms startlingly long in a look on her face like she was moving pebbles with her mind. They met, their skin shivered. 16 sterile years now stamped with hotness. How about you, Colleen spoke first. What's your plan?

Oh, we have the same shirt, Tesla flapped her spider arms. Awkward. They all had the same standard-issue shirt, draped over their bodies like towels flung unspilled drinks. But Colleen didn't catch the joke until Tesla had already begun to laugh. They hiked the beaten-down Maryland countryside, figuring out step by step just how much jack shit 10 years of moon education did for you. Tesla can solve fifth-order partial differentials in her head.

Colleen can recite a hundred pieces of pie like a bedtime story. But could either of them get hired as a sales clerk? You're not really the image we look for in retail. Variations of that line droned out at an infinitum. Maybe if your legs weren't bowed, if your spine didn't crook, if your body wasn't running down itself like hot wax and your eyes didn't bore straight into the back of my skull. In so many hack hostels clinging to plugged-in towns,

they lay on cotton comforters crusted to a shine. They discovered wine and how it improved their impressions of the assholes they'd met that day. Yo, Chica, tell me, Colleen polished her earth drawl. Is it really made a cheese? Man or rabbit? Tesla snorted. and smeared the nanopaint she was dabbing on her cheeks. Man or rabbit, man or rabbit. In the late night, Colleen listened to the tiny noises Tesla made in her sleep,

wimpers from a tongue and lips newborn. They never said anything about heading for the coast, never talked much about any direction at all until one day they got off a bus and threw their heads back and inhaled weedy brine. Salt-fingered wind started thinning through the air. A jewelry man on Sam. Andy's street clacked his tongue, booted them on their way with pale, bruising eyes. But in a few blocks, they found the restaurant, flat-roofed crabbies,

crusted with pre-aged kitsch. Souso picked a red mole on his neck and looked Colleen up and down. You can do weekends? Girl thought the question was rhetorical. Took her three minutes before she remembered to answer. Yeah. Yes. In the gray mornings and clouded nights, they put on those loose clothes and go down to

the beaches. They learn what it's like to regret little things. They track sand through sublet rooms and wake up with tooth sweaters and crud in their eye. This thing, Colleen wonders, does it count? As a kind of living? Feels more like yanking free driftwood that waves have buried under sand. But what else could you call it? Today, trespass joins them on the boardwalk. trespasses Tesla's younger brother, with the ignoble honor of being the second in a family to flunk off the moon. Trespass is kind of a bampf. He named himself.

He shaves the crown of his head and paints his face in bright white segments. He insults people in loud, clinical terms. He carries his moonbulk like a bounty from a hunt and swings his fist often enough that no one's fooled by the whisper squeak of his voice. And at moonrise? He sits on the sand and sobs like a girl. He comes up behind them as they lean on the railing and claps a hand on each one's shoulder.

Ladies, how does it shake? Colleen laughs and shoves him away, but Tesla doesn't move at all. She has her chin on her palm and her elbow propped on the boardwalk railing as she slides her elbow out so that her whole upper body sinks lower. She purses her lips and stares out at the ocean.

The moon is out in the sky this afternoon, soft as an exhalation on a cold window. None of them ever look up at the sky, but they can all feel it, feel the finger it brushes along the backs of their necks. Trespass whistles a seagull trill. Oh, big sister, you still sweating Guy McAdams? Guy McAdams is a riot shield of an earth-born dude

who slides his body through two small waves with two big flash. Guy McAdams wears a state-of-the-art repelling suit when the water is 72 degrees. But that's perfectly Tesla. It was always liked falling in love with shiny outsides. Her crushes rail like silent storms and then dissipates so fast that Colleen doesn't even argue anymore.

Just stocks up canned goods and tries to ride them out. Trespass, though, can't resist a few digs. Guy McAdams, that dude's a human pap smear. If Guy McAdams was a snow cone flavor, he'd be strawberries and shit. trespass if you couldn't tell is hell-bent on milking every last drop out of his teenage years dude i spent 16 years in front of a screen he tells anyone who listens

sixteen years i got force-fed science like one of those faux-graw ducks and now i'm free failing those exams i swear best thing that ever happened to me what trespass won't tell you is that a score was zero point six points away from being a passing grade one corrected form formula, one fewer stray penmark, and he could have made it. Could have gotten the gold confetti and a hand-drawn banner over his pod door. Welcome, scholar of the Lunarian Research Academy. Pillar of our scientific society. Jewel of our education system.

Mom and Daddy's golden boy. Welcome. Welcome. What trespass won't tell you is that for the first three weeks after he came down to Earth, He sat on a bathroom floor in Colleen's apartment and shivered. Turned the showerhead on and off and on. Tesla's curled up inside her funk and not coming out to play, so trespass turns to Colleen instead.

Here there's a new girl turned up. Out of Station 65, I think. I heard she went around to Suso's looking for work. Colleen snorts. A seal could get work with Suso. She stretches her arms out and pokes Tesla's shoulder. Two middle-aged women mince passed and gawk out of the corners of their eyes. Their lips pursed a little bouquets of, well, isn't that unfortunate?

Trespass rounds on them. What are you looking at, colostomy bags? Yeah, I thought so. Get the fuck away. But we, dear listeners here at Cool Zone Media, of course, love and cherish our listeners who wear colostomy bags. And hope the best for you. Also, here's ads. Experience Harry Styles, live in London, England at Wembley.

Stadium. This is Harry Stiles. IHart Radio wants to send you and a mate across the pond with flights from Virgin Atlantic, hotel from TripCentral.ca, tickets, and $1,000 cash. Here we got it! Download the free IHartRadio app. Listen to IHart new music for 10 minutes. Enter to win. Every day is another chance to see Harry Styles. Very excited to see you with the show. Kiss all the time disco occasionally available now. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy.

Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst?

Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt Yard's, right? Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection.

Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Huber me I need some jokes to make me seem funny Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged It's the enhanced games Some call it grotesque Others say it's unleashing human potential Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all

Embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year Within probably 10 days I'd put on 10 pounds I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do a little Kim?

Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam Jett. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know.

I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack, so I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now, so... Thank you for finishing that sentence. Yes, I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years.

for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Here's the deal. The Earth isn't fit for much anymore. Everyone's given up growth, cold turkey, which means they seize on development

like an ex-smoker chewing pencils. The moon helps out with that. Luna, her airtight city is full with scuttling hordes of washed-out researchers, working like spastic cogs in the breakthrough machine, hacking away at the mystery forest while they wait for the real trees to grow back. Except no one's yet figured out a way to get people to work so hard

they don't have time to screw. Even the Mondo geeks get the pole in the hole every now and then. Plenty of those poindex or fetuses end up down the shoots where they belong, but sometimes someone gets a bee in their bonnet about being parental, having a family, So you end up with moon kids.

You can keep your moon kid, super fun pet that it is, until it turns 16. Then they give out tests. The ones who pass get fitted into the machine. A nerd-alicious parent and child cog set. How adorable! The ones who don't, who choke during the multiple choice or blank out during the neural net scan or just maybe admit during the oral exam that there's a part of them that's uncertain, that wonders.

They're out. The population board picks you up by the scruff of your neck and drop kicks you the 200,000 mile ride down to Earth. The moon doesn't give a shit where you go after that. You sucked the moon's tit for 16 years and had the gall to turn out stupid. The moon never even looks back. Moon kids are lucky enough to get screwed two ways,

inferior to the Lunarians because of cold hard calculation and no one knows better than Lunarians that numbers don't lie. inferior to Earth people because, well, just look at them. Limbs so breakable, veins popping out, fat pulling their torsos and thighs. The real Lunarians, when they come to Earth, they get on this high horse of, sure, I'm ugly, but I invented those cosmeds you're sucking down. Your interfaces, your gen-modding. Where do you think that comes from, huh?

Moon Kids don't even get that. Moon Kids get the illustrious task of trucking out slabs, beer-battered cod, shiny tourists who look at them like their furniture. Yes, ma'am, thank you, ma'am. Would you like fries with that? At night, they get the pain of watching the moonrise. The next morning, when Colleen gets to Cravy Abbeys, there's the new girl up front getting the tour from Suso, wild long hair cascading down her back and apple cheeks that force her eyes into a squint. Her body jiggles, quaveres all the time,

And Colleen bites her lip in sympathy. She remembers how it was, holding every muscle tense, earth pull like an anvil dropped on your shoulders. When New Girl sticks out her blue-veined hand, though, Colleen reconsiders. There's a flash in the girl's eyes, like Spoon from a motorboat. Abitha, she introduces herself.

Glad to be here. Colleen is bemused. New Girl's voice is deeper than she expected, Raspie. Most Moon Kids, their first year don't speak above a squeak. Abitha must be screaming to make herself heard. You don't need to do that, Colleen thinks. We get it here. We'll take care of you. I'm happy to have a job, Abitha says, but I don't want to be taken care of. It's important to blend in. I get that. I'm going to work hard. Souso says, damn straight you are and leads New Girl away before Colleen can figure out if her mind

got red. She shakes herself and follows. New Girl is harsh on the customers and hard. harsher on herself when she makes mistakes. Colleen says over and over, it's okay, that's how you learn. And Abitha snaps, no patronizing. I'll do better. By the end of the night, she can recite the whole appetizer menu from memory, and when her shift ends,

she pulls a fistful of tips from her apron. The money bags think it's a hoot to pay with cash, and kisses the bills. Check it. I'm rich. It's only as the two of them exit into the evening that Collian realizes Tesla never should. showed up for work. Abitha smokes behind the restaurant, cupping her hands around the stickeret. I can't stay here for long, you know. Hot brightness in her eyes as she looks at Colleen.

I want to do something. Politics, law. Back there, they never told who was making decisions for us. I want people to listen to me. The certainty in her voice is startling. Politics? Law? Colleen tries not to laugh. But come on, who does that junk anymore? The earth doesn't know law. The earth knows pleasure, pouring out of the fountain, and as soon as you get close enough to dip your cup, you drink down enough to ignore the people who can't get a sip. Politicians are sad, grey people, turned on by drudgery.

Colleen tries to picture a new girl like that. Abitha slides her fingers over her forehead and flips her long hair away from her face, tosses the stickeret away. Of course, I got to stop looking like a gob of mud first. This job isn't so bad for that. I'm going to get rich quick if they keep making me cover shifts for that other Mooney. What's her name? Edison?

What's wrong with her? Colleen knows she should defend Tesla. She bites her lip. She watches the dark strands of Abitha's hair settle around her shoulders, forces her eyes to move to the sidewalk, where the stickeret is dying like a star. It's a new cycle, Colleen shrugs. Luna's waxing.

Sometimes that, she doesn't feel so good, you know. Waxing, huh? Abitha rolls her eyes skyward in consideration. Never thought of that. Bam, chica bam, bam, bam, party on the beach. Not a cool party, obviously, because it's moon kids, but party nonetheless. Moon kids and bargain bin clothes that curtain their heavy bodies, stick limbs emerging coated in nanopaint, body snakes,

glowing like so many anemones in the dark night water. On the outskirts, a few drunk body kite dudes whose standards don't go much narrower than by pedal. Cool or no, Moon Kids didn't spend 16 years getting educated for nothing. They spend their surplus smarts with abandon. They build music machines that wail like electric banshees. They synthesized party pills that sing you up into the clouds. Colleen Weaves,

through bodies searching for Tesla. People call out to her, pat her shoulders. Hey, Collie, my girl, how goes it? I owe you one. You owe her one? I owe her three. Almost any moon kid who's gotten here in the last three years. They've cried on Colleen's shoulder.

They've knocked on her door at midnight and been let in. Colleen half smiles, slides out of their grasp. She likes watching people braid together. trespass lurches up his round face painted half white half black he pushes a beer into her hand cold condensation shocks her palm makes her smile thanks tea seen big sister his nose scrunches and paint flakes onto his shirt not tonight she's in a dark phase isn't she Tesla lives her life too raw, thanks Colleen. It makes her easy to love and hard to protect. One time she sat on the beach for two straight days. Let the tide wash in and over her up to the neck, then out again,

leaving her seaweed strewn and quaking, then in, then out. Abitha has been crowned queen of a circle of sand. Boys hold her hands and she swoops and bobs between them. Fuck this pole, she crows. I've got an appointment next week. Just wait. I'm going to get my bones scraped straight.

I'm going to get this bulk shaved off. Someone hoots. Yeah, like you got the credit for that. Abitha bends an ear to her shoulder so that all her hair flows to one side. Her eyes are blade sharp. I've got ways. Just wait. I'm going to get drool set into my kneecaps.

I'm going to get chimes in my ears. So when you go blah, all I hear is music. Girl wrenches herself away from the boys and collars one of the kite dudes. If this dude, she jabs his chest, if this dude can get body-modded for fucking surfing, why would I ever sit around looking like an ugly lump? Fuck that. Kite dude looks bewitched. He is touching a moon girl, and somehow it's not disgusting.

He traces a finger along Abitha's face, and she, She smirks and snaps her teeth at him. You know on Luna, I was four inches taller. Now I'm squashed down. She grabs kite dude's hand and runs it along the lumpy flesh below her armpit. All this, these are compressional folds. Colleen looks on with weird feelings beating moth wings in her chest. She thinks she should calm Abitha down.

She thinks she should inform her. Those body mods? They're for money bags, not us. It doesn't do any good calling people ugly. What does good is keeping your head down, making it from one day to the next. But she can't make herself step in. Watching a moon girl crow like that, some deep part of her grows honey warm. It makes her think, maybe all these years she's been aiming at the wrong target.

Maybe there are other kinds of hope. When Abitha lurches forward and grabs Colleen's shoulders and hollers, How about you, see? Be a movie star with me? Colling grins and blows kisses to pretend paparazzi. And then someone is yelling, Here, she's here! All heads turn waterward.

It's Tesla bawling, pointing with both hands. Over the ocean, a half moon is rising. Laughter simmers down. No one touches the volume, but the music fades to a background, Lubb, lub. Oh, oh, hey, Luna. fancy seeing you here. What a small world.

Colleen walks over and puts an armor on Tesla. Hey, honey, shh. Tesla leans so that her tears fall on Colleen's shirt. One of the kite dudes starts singing Buffalo gals, and Colleen hears trespass growl. Buffalo, motherfucker, you want Buffalo? Buffalo fucking Stampede. She turns in time to see trespass haul out

and clock a dude in the face, and then the brawl is on. And of course, trespass will win, though he will end it wheezing and choking on the sand. Abitha has disappeared. Colleen scans the shore and finally catches a mini-figure hiking up into the dunes, long hair trailing behind her, back turned to the moon. Dun-dun-dun! That's where we're going to leave it for today.

Hazel, who helps with the scripts behind the scenes, says this about this story. Quote, I've read a lot of stories about people deciding whether or not they're going to get on the rocket ship

to leave Earth, to live on the moon or Mars or generation ship. But this is the first one I've read about people who are forced back onto Earth. Abby takes that trope

and really masterfully excises the bitter underbelly. Exclusion, elitism, grief, refugee narrative even. This story is so super smart and I'm excited for you all to hear more

about the Earth left behind next week. As for me, what do I want to say about it? I like when we do things that kind of flow with each other. Like I like that we read a story from decades ago about the rich people go live elsewhere and do all of the thinking for the people who stay behind and just kind of have fun with sports and have an underbelly even under them. And so it's cool to see that idea, I don't know, decades later, I guess it's a truce.

but I think of it more of as an idea. Like, what does this mean? Science fiction is the fiction of ideas more than tropes. And so this idea can mean so many different things in different authors' hands and different ways of thinking about it. I don't know. I like it.

That's what I have to say about it. As for what I have to say about Abby Mae Otis, I'm going to say her bio. Abby May Otis is a writer, a teaching artist, a storyteller, and a firestress. starter, raised in the woods of North Carolina. She loves people and art forms on the margins. Her story collection, Alien Virus Love Disaster from Small Beer Press, was named one of the best science fiction books of the year by The Washington Post and was a finalist for the 2018 Philip K. Dick

Award. She studied creative writing at the Missioner Center for Writers, Oberlin College, and the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Currently, she is making a living as an artist in residence at the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in West Philly, where her favorite days are spent walking her dogs in the woods, overstaying her welcoming coffee shops, chipping away at a novel, and dismantling the state. And I'm Margaret Kiljoy, and you can find me nowhere, except I guess you can find me most places under my name. Marguerette Kiljoy.

Anyway, until next week, take care of each other. Fuck ice, and do something you're bad at. art that you're no good at. That's your homework. Bye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite, unhumored me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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