Archives for the 'Hugo Awards' Category
Episode 197: From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled…
Published on 30 Apr 2009 at 3:59 pm.
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Filed under Flash, Hugo Awards, Hugo Awards, Podcasts, Rated PG, Site News.
Read ‘Episode 197: From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled…’
-->By Michael Swanwick
Read by Sarah Tolbert
First appeared in Asimov’s Feb 2008
Imagine a cross between Byzantium and a termite mound. Imagine a jeweled mountain, slender as an icicle, rising out of the steam jungles and disappearing into the dazzling pearl-grey skies of Gehenna. Imagine that Gaudí—he of the Segrada Familia and other biomorphic architectural whimsies—had been commissioned by a nightmare race of giant black millipedes to recreate Barcelona at the height of its glory, along with touches of the Forbidden City in the eighteenth century and Tokyo in the twenty-second, all within a single miles-high structure. Hold every bit of that in your mind at once, multiply by a thousand, and you’ve got only the faintest ghost of a notion of the splendor that was Babel.
Now imagine being inside Babel when it fell.
Rated PG. Contains the destruction of cities, a lack of trust, and sentient suits.
EP195: 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss
Published on 18 Apr 2009 at 2:30 pm.
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Filed under Hugo Awards, Rated PG.
Read ‘EP195: 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss’
-->2009 Hugo Nominee!
By Kij Johnson.
Read by Diane Severson (of The Diva’s Divine Days).
First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2008.
Narration first appeared at and produced by Starship Sofa. Special thanks to Tony Smith and Diane Severson for their kind permission to resyndicate this award nominee.
She sets a stepladder next to it. She claps her hands and the 26 monkeys onstage run up the ladder one after the other and jump into the bathtub. The bathtub shakes as each monkey thuds in among the others. The audience can see heads, legs, tails; but eventually every monkey settles and the bathtub is still again. Zeb is always the last monkey up the ladder. As he climbs into the bathtub, he makes a humming boom deep in his chest. It fills the stage.
And then there’s a flash of light, two of the chains fall off, and the bathtub swings down to expose its interior.
Empty.
Rated PG. Contains 26 monkeys. Also, the abyss.
EP194: Exhalation
Published on 10 Apr 2009 at 1:00 am.
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Filed under Hugo Awards, Podcasts, Rated PG, Uncategorized.
2009 Hugo Nominee!
By Ted Chiang.
Read by Ray Sizemore (of X-Ray Visions).
First appeared in Eclipse 2, ed. Jonathan Strahan.
Narration first appeared at and produced by Starship Sofa. Special thanks to Tony Smith and Ray Sizemore for their kind permission to resyndicate this award nominee.
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But in the normal course of life, our need for air is far from our thoughts, and indeed many would say that satisfying that need is the least important part of going to the filling stations. For the filling stations are the primary venue for social conversation, the places from which we draw emotional sustenance as well as physical. We all keep spare sets of full lungs in our homes, but when one is alone, the act of opening one’s chest and replacing one’s lungs can seem little better than a chore. In the company of others, however, it becomes a communal activity, a shared pleasure.
Rated PG. Contains entropy, eschatology, and empirical evisceration.
EP156: Distant Replay
Published on 1 May 2008 at 11:59 pm.
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Filed under Hugo Awards, Podcasts, Rated PG.
2008 Hugo Nominee!
By Mike Resnick.
Read by Steve Anderson (of SGA Creative and Great Tales Live).
First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2007.
“Let me show you,” I said, pulling out my wallet. I took my Deirdre’s photo out and handed it to her.
“It’s uncanny,” she said, studying the picture. “We even sort of wear our hair the same way. When was this taken?”
“Forty-seven years ago.”
“Is she dead?”
I nodded.
Rated PG. Contains mature themes and wistfulness.
Referenced Sites:
2008 Hugo Awards
“First of May” by Jonathan Coulton (Not work-safe)
EP155: Tideline
Published on 24 Apr 2008 at 12:19 pm.
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Filed under Hugo Awards, Podcasts, Rated PG.
2008 Hugo Nominee!
By Elizabeth Bear.
Read by Stephen Eley.
Closing Music: “The Fall” by Red Hunter.
They would have called her salvage, if there were anyone left to salvage her. But she was the last of the war machines, a three-legged oblate teardrop as big as a main battle tank, two big grabs and one fine manipulator folded like a spider’s palps beneath the turreted head that finished her pointed end, her polyceramic armor spiderwebbed like shatterproof glass. Unhelmed by her remote masters, she limped along the beach, dragging one fused limb. She was nearly derelict.
The beach was where she met Belvedere.
Rated PG. Contains implied violence and themes of death.
Referenced Sites:
2008 Hugo Awards
WisCon May 23-26, Madison, WI
