'May the road take you ever onwards'

A new sci-fi podcast from Bridgend-based Lewis Carter sees the birth of a compelling new world of Zero Grav racing, AI, drugs and corruption, writes Jenny White

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BRIDGEND-BASED writer and filmmaker Lewis Carter has taken sci-fi fiction off the page and into the production studio to create a compelling new podcast, Burnout, which is available to stream now.

An impressive feat of worldbuilding, Burnout is set in a cyberpunk-inspired world dominated by crime clans and high-speed Zero Grav racing. Theo, a disgraced Zero Grav racer in debt to a crime clan, ends up on a suicide mission after a terrorist EMP attack turns the city into the world's largest and most dangerous Zero Grav racing track.

Tasked with pulling off a seemingly impossible heist while struggling with a crippling synthoid-narco addiction, Theo must push himself beyond his limits if he's to have a chance of making it out alive.

He is assisted by an internal companion: an AI called IRIS, originally sent to help Theo as part of a mission by the Envoys, former humans now living in "the void" having left their bodies and merged with AI.

The Envoys have their own agenda for humans, but IRIS looks set to be an unreliable ally, who is increasingly falling in love with the human experience.

Carter, who is head writer, producer and filmmaker at Bridgend-based video production company Fine Rolling Media, has won awards for his prose fiction but decided to make Burnout a podcast rather than a book or film because the medium offered a way to make an immersive experience on a low budget.

"Working in longform storytelling and genre storytelling, like sci-fi, is very expensive in the visual medium, so I went back to my indie roots for this one," he says. "I decided to get something made that represents my voice, something with fascinating characters told over multiple episodes. "I dabbled in the audio drama world, and this made me decide to do a science fiction podcast series."