The Little M@tch Girl by Heather Shaw is a great story podcast over at the sci-fi podcast website Escape Pod. I really enjoyed it. This is how I commented on it over at EP."I liked this story a lot and see it as a form of parable or cautionary tale trying to serve as a metaphorical mine canary for the rest of society. It is a service that the art form known as sci-fi does especially well in my opinion."
The title is a play on the Hans Christian Anderson story of the same name. Like the HCA classic it is the dying hallucination of a troubled young girl succumbing to privation. In the HCA version she is dying from the cold, in the Shaw version of the story she's dying from privation but also psychological torment and hopelessness. I highly recommend it.
