Air Raid | Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction | Podcast

Air Raid | Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction | Podcast

From Nightshade Diary by M.P. Pellicer

April 15, 2026 · 32 min

About this episode

The episode discusses John Varley's award-winning short story 'Air Raid', exploring its themes of time travel and moral dilemmas in a post-apocalyptic setting.

Air Raid is a short story by John Varley that won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. Set in a post-apocalyptic future where humanity is decimated by disease and deformity, the plot follows a team of reanimated "undead" time travelers who travel back to the past to rescue victims of impending air crashes. These "Snatch teams" extract healthy passengers from doomed flights (such as a 1979 plane crash) before they die, bringing them forward to Centauri-3 (or "New Earth") to repopulate the dying future world. The story explores themes of time travel paradoxes, moral ambiguity, and human survival, noting that the rescuers must replace the victims with "wimps" (realistic dummies) to maintain the timeline's integrity. The story served as the basis for the 1989 film Millennium . Host - M.P. Pellicer www.MPPellicer.com SUPPORT VIA DONATION Buy Me A Coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Marlene11 LISTEN TO ALL MY PODCASTS www.EeriePodcast.com Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/nightshade-diary--2765110/support .

People in this episode

Host: M.P. Pellicer

Topics covered

  • post-apocalyptic
  • time travel
  • moral ambiguity
  • human survival
  • science fiction

Keywords

  • Air Raid
  • John Varley
  • post-apocalyptic
  • time travel
  • Hugo Award
  • Nebula Award
  • Millennium
  • science fiction

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Air Raid, Millennium

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