Category: Hugo Awards

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EP248: Spar

By Kij Johnson.
Read by: Kate Baker of Clarkesworld Magazine.
Discuss on our forums.
Originally published in: Clarkesworld — Download and read the text.
All stories by Kij Johnson.
All stories read by Kate Baker.

The alien is not humanoid. It is not bipedal. It has cilia. It has no bones, or perhaps it does and she cannot feel them. Its muscles, or what might be muscles, are rings and not strands. Its skin is the color of dusk and covered with a clear thin slime that tastes of snot. It makes no sounds. She thinks it smells like wet leaves in winter, but after a time she cannot remember that smell, or leaves, or winter.

Its Ins and Outs change. There are dark slashes and permanent knobs that sometimes distend, but it is always growing new Outs, hollowing new Ins. It cleaves easily in both senses.

It penetrates her a thousand ways. She penetrates it, as well.

Rated X – Graphic language and sexual situations. Not for kids. Seriously.

Show Notes:

  • This particular story and narration were originally recorded by Kate Baker for Clarkesworld Magazine, and is used here with their expressed permission. Thanks very much to Baker and Clarkesworld.
  • The Escape Pod Flash Contest is over! now check out the judging!
  • Editor’s note: Thanks so much to Dave Thompson and Peter Wood for taking on this project of securing all five Hugo stories during the hiatus of Escape Pod. Most of the work was done before I joined, and this wouldn’t have happened without them stepping up.

Next week… We’re back to our regularly scheduled programming with a story from Heather Shaw!

 
icon for podpress  EP #248 [22:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Jul 08, 2010 | 0 comments View Post
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EP247: Bridesicle

By Will McIntosh
Read by: Amy H. Sturgis of StarShipSofa
Discuss on our forums.
Originally published in: Asimov’s — Download and read the text
Guest Host: Ben Phillips of Pseudopod
All stories by Will McIntosh
All stories read by Amy H. Sturgis

“Aw, I know you’re awake by now. Come on, sleeping beauty. Talk to me.” The last was a whisper, a lover’s words, and Mira felt that she had to come awake and open her eyes. She tried to sigh, but no breath came. Her eyes flew open in alarm.

An old man was leaning over her, smiling, but Mira barely saw him, because when she opened her mouth to inhale, her jaw squealed like a sea bird’s cry, and no breath came, and she wanted to press her hands to the sides of her face, but her hands wouldn’t come either. Nothing would move except her face.

Rated PG

Show Notes:

  • Starship Sofa is the first podcast ever to be nominated for a Hugo award, in the “Best Fanzine” category. If you’re eligible to vote in the Hugos, you have less than a month left to put in your vote! Please consider Starship Sofa – it’s a fantastic show on its own merit, and it’s a HUGE credibility booster for all podcasts if it wins!
  • The Escape Pod Flash Contest ends soon! It runs June 1- July 4, stories must be under 500 words. More information at the link.
  • Editor’s note: Thanks so much to Dave Thompson and Peter Wood for taking on this project of securing all five Hugo stories during the hiatus of Escape Pod. Most of the work was done before I joined, and this wouldn’t have happened without them stepping up.

Next week… Our final Hugo-nominated story!

 
icon for podpress  Escape Pod 247 [52:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Jul 01, 2010 | 0 comments View Post
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EP246: Bride of Frankenstein

By Mike Resnick
Read by: Julie Davis of the Forgotten Classics podcast
Discuss on our forums.
Originally published in: Asimov’s — Download and read the text
Guest Host: Alasdair Stuart of Pseudopod
All stories by Mike Resnick
All stories read by Julie Davis

Victor can be so annoying. He constantly whistles this tuneless song, and when I complain he apologizes and then starts humming it instead. He never stands up to that ill-mannered little hunchback that he’s always sending out on errands. And he’s a coward. He can never just come to me and say “I need money again.” Oh, no, not Victor. Instead he sends that ugly little toady who’s rude to me and always smells like he hasn’t washed.

And when I ask what the money’s for this time, he tells me to ask Victor, and Victor just mumbles and stammers and never gets around to answering.

Rated PG: for spousal annoyances

Show Notes:

  • The Escape Pod Flash Contest ends soon! It runs June 1- July 4, stories must be under 500 words. More information at the link.
  • Editor’s note: Thanks so much to Dave Thompson and Peter Wood for taking on this project of securing all five Hugo stories during the hiatus of Escape Pod. Most of the work was done before I joined, and this wouldn’t have happened without them stepping up.

Next week… Another Hugo-nominated story!

 
icon for podpress  EP246: Bride of Frankenstein [38:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Jun 24, 2010 | 0 comments View Post
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EP245: The Moment

By Lawrence M. Schoen
Read by: Graeme Dunlop
Discuss on our forums.
Originally published in: Footprints
Guest Host: Norm Sherman of Drabblecast
All stories by Lawrence M. Schoen
All stories read by Graeme Dunlop

One of the first generation of Krenn had lived long enough to reach the site, though none had expected to. The very first Krenn had conceived of this journey in the distant past, dedicating his life and his posterity to the pilgrimage with an ever recycling population of clones. Like their clone-father, each was an optimized collection of smart matter no bigger than a speck. Hundreds of generations of Krenn had lived and died during the voyage, their remains enshrined into niches in the very walls of the vessel that now lay shattered at its destination.

The survivors flooded out upon the steppes of the heel, rejoicing despite the crushing weight that gravity forced upon them. They settled in, constructing mansions of haze and shadow, and waited for enlightenment to come. The mission and purpose of the first Krenn remained with each of them. This place had been the site of the greatest triumph of the greatest archaeocaster in all of history. Before the beginning of the quest, Krenn—the original Krenn—had felt drawn to it. He had cultivated the tales, sifted myth from coincidence, mastered the lost language of the interview-eschewing, spatial curmudgeons of the ancient dark times, and recreated the route through dimensional puzzles to this theoretical location. The odds of success had been so absurd not a single entelechy of Krenn’s crèche dared invest time or expense in the project. And yet, here they were, nearly three hundred unique individuals sharing the template of Krenn.

Rated PG: for Space Exploration and Looking into the Abyss

Show Notes:

  • Enter the Escape Pod Flash Contest! It runs June 1- July 4, stories must be under 500 words. More information at the link.
  • Editor’s note: Thanks so much to Dave Thompson and Peter Wood for taking on this project of securing all five Hugo stories during the hiatus of Escape Pod. Most of the work was done before I joined, and this wouldn’t have happened without them stepping up.

Next week… Another Hugo-nominated story!

 
icon for podpress  EP245: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Jun 17, 2010 | 0 comments View Post
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EP244: Non-Zero Probabilities

By N.K. Jemisin
Originally recorded by Kate Baker for Clarkesworld Magazine, and is used here with their expressed permission.
Discuss on our forums.
Guest Host: Dave Thompson of Podcastle
All stories by N.K. Jemisin
All stories read by Kate Baker

Her neighbor — the other one, across the hall — helped her figure it out, long before the math geeks finished crunching their numbers.

“Watch,” he’d said, and laid a deck of cards facedown on her coffee table. (There was coffee in the cups, with a generous dollop of Bailey’s. He was a nice-enough guy that Adele felt comfortable offering this.) He shuffled it with the blurring speed of an expert, cut the deck, shuffled again, then picked up the whole deck and spread it, still facedown. “Pick a card.”

Adele picked. The Joker.

“Only two of those in the deck,” he said, then shuffled and spread again. “Pick another.”

She did, and got the other Joker.

“Coincidence,” she said. (This had been months ago, when she was still skeptical.)

Rated R: for Lucky Streaks and Getting Lucky.

Show Notes:

  • Enter the Escape Pod Flash Contest! It runs June 1- July 4, stories must be under 500 words. More information at the link.
  • Editor’s note: Thanks so much to Dave Thompson and Peter Wood for taking on this project of securing all five Hugo stories during the hiatus of Escape Pod. Most of the work was done before I joined, and this wouldn’t have happened without them stepping up.

Next week… Another Hugo-nominated story!

 
icon for podpress  EP244: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Jun 10, 2010 | 0 comments View Post
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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.

 
icon for podpress  Standard Podcast [59:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Apr 30, 2009 | 30 comments View Post
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EP195: 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss

By Kij Johnson.
Read by Diane Severson (of The Diva’s Divine Days).
Discuss on our forums.
First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2008.
All stories by Kij Johnson.
All stories read by Diane Severson.

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.

 
icon for podpress  Standard Podcast [32:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Apr 18, 2009 | 23 comments View Post
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EP194: Exhalation

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.

Audible.com Promotion!

Get your free audiobook at: http://audiblepodcast.com/escapepod

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.

 
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Apr 10, 2009 | 51 comments View Post
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EP156: Distant Replay

By Mike Resnick.
Read by Steve Anderson (of SGA Creative and Great Tales Live).
Discuss on our forums.
First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2007.
All stories by Mike Resnick.
All stories read by Steve Anderson.

“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)

 
icon for podpress  Standard Podcast [35:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

May 01, 2008 | 43 comments View Post
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EP155: Tideline

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

 
icon for podpress  Standard Podcast [36:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Apr 24, 2008 | 52 comments View Post