Archive for May, 2010

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EP242: The Love Quest of Smidgen the Snack Cake

 
icon for podpress  EP242 [42:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Robert T. Jeschonek
Read by John Cmar.
Discuss on our forums.
First appeared in Space and Time Magazine, issue 108.
All stories by Robert T. Jeschonek
All stories read by John Cmar

For her entire adolescent and adult life up until three weeks ago, Lynda had been the queen of junk food. Aside from the briefest blips of non-junk spending due to occasional failed diets, she had purchased only the most fattening, high-cholesterol, chemical-soaked foods available from grocery stores, restaurants, vending machines, and mail order websites.

In short, she was the perfect woman. Though she was on a diet that day, she had eaten non-nutritious foods in great quantities all her life. Though her last purchases had been salad greens and bottled water, her 250-pound body told the true story.

I knew she was just waiting for someone like me to come along.

Rated PG: for innuendo-heavy snack cake desire.

Show Notes:

  • Mur will be at Balticon this week, along with Drabblecast’s Norm Sherman! Come by and say hi!

FRIDAY

  • 5pm Reading

SATURDAY:

  • 3pm NaNoWriMo for Noobs
  • 8pm Autograph Session

SUNDAY

  • 4pm Girls’ Rule Live!
  • 5pm Story Improv
  • 8pm ISBW Live!
  • Enter the Escape Pod Flash Contest! It runs June 1- July 4, stories must be under 500 words. More information at the link.

Next week… the podcast comes on a special day: June 1. And it shows us that love is relative. And so is Reno.

May 27, 2010 | 0 comments View Post
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EP241: Thargus and Brian

 
icon for podpress  Escape Pod 241 [30:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By Stephen Gaskell.
Read by Chris Miller of Unquiet Desperation.
Discuss on our forums.
All stories by Stephen Gaskell
All stories read by Chris Miller

Thargus thought the time right. He set the lights to full strength and flailed and gnashed and roared as he’d been practising. He felt rather silly, but the performance seemed to be working. The human, one hand steadying its spin, looked on intensely. It moved the white stick up to its mouth, breathed in, and then stabbed the stick out against the sac wall.

“Don’t be afraid,”  Thargus said, meaning the opposite. He’d seen the trick on old films stored in the moss-brain when humans always said one thing and meant another like “We’re safer if we split up.”

The human exhaled a long stream of smoke. “I’m not,” it said.

That didn’t sound right. Thargus considered his response while staring at the human. It sure was ugly. A patchwork of dirty synthetics over the majority of its body, and on top of its pudgy, pink head, strand upon strand of greasy hair. Ugh!  Thargus felt sick.

“Be afraid, then,” he said.

“Why, are you going to eat me?”

Thargus didn’t feel comfortable telling an outright lie, but that didn’t mean he needed to be too honest. “I might.”

Rated F: for two f-bombs and some serious munchies.

Show Notes:

Next week… we discover that food is, in fact, love.

May 20, 2010 | 2 comments View Post
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EP240: The Last McDougal’s

 
icon for podpress  Standard Podcast [31:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By David D. Levine.
Read by Stephen Eley.
Discuss on our forums.
First appeared in Asimov’s, January 2006.

Special closing song: “Blue,” by Yoko Kanno.

As the old man came in, letting the door close gently behind him, an expression came over his face that Garth had seen many times before: a compound of misty nostalgia and appalled astonishment. His gaze swept across the yellow and orange fiberglass chairs, their cracks and dings lovingly but visibly repaired; the plastic-topped tables with the white half-moons rubbed by millions of elbows; the light softly shining from the satiny steel of the napkin and catsup dispensers. Finally the old man’s eyes stopped dead on the smiling face of the six-foot-tall fiberglass cow that stood at the end of the counter, wearing an apron and a chef’s hat. “My God,” he said, “it’s Moogle McDougal.”

“It certainly is,” said Garth. “Welcome to McDougal’s. May I take your order?”

“Give me a minute,” he replied as he perused the menu. He had a comfortable old boot of a voice, rough but mellow. “It’s been… jeez, thirty years? …since I’ve been in one of these places. Um, I’ll have a double cheeseburger, a small order of fries, and….” He grinned. “…and a shake. Chocolate.”

Rated PG. Contains some violence and is high in saturated fats.

May 12, 2010 | 0 comments View Post
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Mur on Becoming Escape Pod’s editor

Cross posted from Murverse.com:

I’ve been hinting at a seekrit project for a while now, and it’s finally public: Steve Eley, the brilliant mind behind the first podcast fiction magazine, is stepping down from Escape Pod, and I’ll be taking his place.

I’ve been involved with Escape Artists in one way or another several times in the past five years. Steve has published several of my short stories, and asked me and Ben Phillips to helm Pseudopod when it launched. I had to step down in 2007 because i had a day job and simply had to let some outside things go.

I’ve been working behind the scenes on the EP thing for a couple of weeks now, sifting through slush with some truly dedicated volunteers. We re-launch after our hiatus next week on Escape Pod’s fifth anniversary with Steve’s last podcast. Then I will take over hosting for three weeks, then we will run our traditional Hugo short story offering. July is when I’ll settle into the job fully with hosting and editing. We’ve got some new things coming up for the podcast this summer.

But never fear! The podcast is awesome because of Steve’s vision: fun SF, and I’ll never turn away from that.

I’ve got a great team helping me, and I’m very excited to see where we can steer this ship. Thanks for all the congrats that came through Twitter and email so far, it really means a lot to me that people have confidence in my ability to take this amazing podcast and keep it strong.

May 07, 2010 | 0 comments View Post
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EP Metacast 5

 
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Steve discusses the downtime and announces the new editor of Escape Pod.

May 06, 2010 | 0 comments View Post