Archive for August, 2007

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EP at Dragon*Con 2007

Just a quick note for those of you attending Dragon*Con 2007 — here are the places you’ll be able to find Steve during the weekend:

  • Steve will be producing the Daily Dragon Podcast every day of the con. Listen in for convention news, interviews, and music!
  • The panel Fancasting, 2:30 PM Friday in the Jackson/Carter room in the Hilton.
  • The 2nd Annual Parsec Awards, 7 PM Saturday in the Hyatt Regency V ballroom. Escape Pod and Pseudopod are both nominated for excellence in short fiction.
  • The Escape Pod Listener Meet-Up, 1 PM Sunday at the Gordon Biersch Brewpub at 848 Peachtree Street. Everyone is welcome!
  • The panel Podcasting Into the Future, 10 AM Monday in the Jackson/Carter room in the Hilton.

And of course you might just see me around the convention any other time. If you’re there, I hope to see you — and I hope you have a great time!

Aug 31, 2007 | 2 comments View Post
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EP121: The Snow Woman’s Daughter

By Eugie Foster.
Read by cunning minx (of Polyamory Weekly).
First appeared in Cricket magazine, February 2007.

When I was a little girl, I thought my mother’s name was Yuki, which means snow. That was part of her name, but I didn’t learn the rest of it until the night my father died.

My mother left us on a slate-gray evening when I was five, with her namesake falling from the sky and piled high around the windows and doors. Awakened by raised voices, I watched through a tear in the curtain that shielded my sleeping mat as my mother wrapped her limbs in a shining, white kimono. As far back as I could remember, she had always worn the dark wool shifts that all mountain people wear, spun from the hair of the half-mad goats that give us milk and cheese. In her kimono she looked like a princess, or a queen. Her skin was paler than mine, and I am thought quite fair. Roku, the boy who lived on the northern crest, used to tease me when we were little, calling me “ghost girl” and “milk face.”

Rated G. Contains non-graphic death and childbearing.

Referenced Sites:

Daily Dragon Podcast

Dragon*Con 2007

 
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Aug 30, 2007 | 11 comments View Post
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EP120: The Sundial Brigade

By James Trimarco.
Read by Graydancer (of The Ropecast).
First appeared in Glorifying Terrorism, ed. Farah Mendlesohn.

Closing song: “Think For Yourself” by George Hrab

Not long after that, Antonio had an appointment with his curator,
Yoshi, at the Department of Human Heritage. Antonio explained his
situation in the Tyrranean language.

“So you’re unsatisfied with your role as a beggar,” Yoshi said.
“That’s hardly surprising. The unemployed of the early twenty-first
century were also unhappy. Your emotions are true to period, that’s
all.”

“But it’s all wrong,” Antonio insisted. “I did well in school. I
studied to be an engineer. If this was the real Italy, someone like me
wouldn’t end up like this.”

Yoshi’s mouth curved into the sterile non-smile of a bureaucrat with
no time for sympathy.

Rated R. Contains strong themes of violence and terrorism, strong language, and some sexual content.

Referenced Sites:
UK Terrorism Act 2006

Graydancer.com

Stranger Things

 
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Aug 23, 2007 | 26 comments View Post
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EP119: Aliens Want Our Women

Ramona Louise Wheeler
Read by Leann Mabry (of Tag in the Seam).

He was a widower, weary of too many years of loneliness. He had decided to travel to someplace distant and exotic, in hopes of finding as a companion someone completely different from his lost love. He had chosen Earth for its very remoteness.

“I want to marry the most wonderful woman on Earth,” he said.

Every female on the planet had just acquired a brand new agenda in life.

Rated G. Contains gender role stereotyping, but no strong sex, language or violence. Sorry.

Blog of the Week:

The Evil Eyebrow

(receives The John W. Campbell Letters, Vol. 1)

Referenced Sites:

Polyamory Weekly

The DrabbleCast

 
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Aug 16, 2007 | 25 comments View Post
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EP118: The Veteran

By Neal Asher.
Read by Stephen Eley.

Seated on a bollard, the man contemplatively removed his pipe, as if to tamp
it down or relight it. Instead, he placed it stem down in the top pocket of
his shirt, then reached up and pressed his fingers against his cheekbone and
forehead. His face came away from his hairline, round behind his ears, down
to a point just above his Adam’s apple. The inside of his mouth and much of
his sinus were also part of the prosthesis, so only bare eyeballs in the
upper jut of his skull remained – the rest being the black spikes and plates
of bio-interfaces.

Cheel gaped. From another pocket, the man took some sort of tool and began
to probe inside the back of his detached face. He put the prosthesis in his
lap, then took up his pipe and placed it in his throat sphincter. Smoke bled
from between the interface plates of his cheeks. His bare eyeballs swivelled
towards Cheel then back down to the adjustments he was making. She suddenly
realised who this must be. Here was the veteran who worked on the ferry.
Here was one of the few survivors from a brutal war between factions of
dense-tech humans. Not understanding what was impelling her, she walked out
on the jetty and approached him.

Rated PG. Contains slight profanity and high-tech violence.


Blog of the Week:

The Angriest Rice Cooker in the World

Referenced Sites:

Ecru: The Butcher of Balis

Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 (Steve’s Rice Cooker)
Casio GW-300 (Steve’s Watch)

 
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Aug 09, 2007 | 5 comments View Post
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EP BONUS: Ecru – The Butcher of Balis

Ecru

Here’s a special prerelease of a new podcasting first: a full comic book distributed exclusively via podcast!

Ecru debuts today from Particle 9 Productions, distributed by Outcast Multimedia. The first issue features art by Chasen Grieshop and an original story by Earl Newton (of Stranger Things). We’re pleased to deliver this special preview edition of the comic on the Escape Pod feed.

(And yes, today’s regular Escape Pod episode will be posting shortly.)

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Aug 09, 2007 | 4 comments View Post
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EP Review: Sunshine


A Film by Danny Boyle .

Reviewed by Jonathon Sullivan.

 
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Aug 03, 2007 | 12 comments View Post
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EP117: Reggie vs. Kaiju Storm Chimera Wolf

By Matthew Wayne Selznick.
Read by Scott Sigler (of Earthcore, Ancestor, Infected, The Rookie).

Yarborough led them through the impromptu village of broad white
tents, rows of outhouses, sensor towers, and heavy weapons
installations that had obliterated the turf of the athletic field.
They stopped at the fence on the edge of the hilltop.

“You can get a pretty good look at the swath, here.”

On a day without monsters, it would have been a nice view. You could
see most of the town center, and all the way to Pacific Coast Highway
the misty ocean beyond. A wide, flat, smoking scar of ruin cut from
the water to a shopping center half a mile inland.

Rated R. Contains profanity and giant monster violence.

Referenced Sites:
Knitwitch’s Sci-Fi & Fantasy Zone on Talkshoe

 
icon for podpress  EP117: Reggie vs. Kaiju Storm Chimera Wolf [39:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Aug 02, 2007 | 18 comments View Post