In March 2015, the Rochester Speculative Literature Association was invited by local literary center Writers & Books to put on an evening of staged readings of stories from the anthology Rochester Rewritten to support that year’s speculative fiction selection in the popular program If All of Rochester Reads the Same Book. The event was a success — so much so that the performance was brought to a larger audience at the 2015 First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival.

Steven Donner’s story “The Zauber City” was fortunate enough to be included in both programs and is presented here as a live recording — a recording that ultimately inspired us to create Disturbing Frequencies.

Rochester’s future has always been in the hands of its inventors and entrepreneurs. In this short, fanciful tale — performed by R. Emmett Michie, Meredith Powell Carroll, Don Beechner, and Ted Wenskus — Steven shows how some of the key players of the twentieth century might be led to remove themselves from the game … and it all starts with a mysterious stranger by the name of Hans Zauber.