Archives for the 'Rated PG' Category
EP Review: Classics - Dr. Strangelove
Published on 30 Mar 2008 at 9:19 pm.
6 Comments.
Filed under Rated PG, Reviews.
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A Film By Stanley Kubrick.
Reviewed by Jonathon Sullivan
EP148: Homecoming at the Borderlands Café
Published on 6 Mar 2008 at 11:09 pm.
84 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated PG.
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-->By Carole McDonnell.
Read by Stephen Eley.
First appeared in Jigsaw Nation, ed. Edward J. McFadden III and E. Sedia.
We don’t see a lot of mixed couples around here, and we’re not like some of the other states in the Confederate United Republic. It’s not like they’re gonna get killed or lynched or nothing. But it’s tough just the same. And although it’s weird enough that they’re an interracial couple, it seems to me that they’re arguing about something bigger than merely coming into this café.
I don’t know any Blacks. You got to go to Laramie, or Cheyenne to see them. But I watch Cosby when it’s on. The Confederacy ain’t as bad as the folks in Columbia might think. Sure everyone’s segregated, but it’s all equal and the Platte County school district is pretty good about African-American History Month.
Rated PG. Contains heavy racial and political themes.
Referenced Sites:
Decoder Ring Theatre
EP147: Pressure
Published on 28 Feb 2008 at 2:43 pm.
40 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated PG.
By Jeff Carlson.
Read by Graydancer (of The Ropecast).
First appeared in Strange Horizons, August 2003.
Closing music: “I Crush Everything” by Jonathan Coulton.
I spent the longest five weeks of my life in that tank and in a deeper pool, healing, testing, practicing. My feet and toes had been augmented much like my hands, my thighs shortened to maximize the available muscle. I was damned quick. Relearning construction techniques with my new fingers was sometimes frustrating, yet my progress was real and those periods of solitary labor became important to me.
At the surface, in the shallows, doctors poked and prodded and put me through redundant tortures. I had been warned that the study of my new body would be extensive and did my best not to fear or hate them, but I’d never imagined such intense scrutiny. During my years as a SEAL, I had been like a bug under a microscope, constantly evaluated and scored. Here I was the microscope, my body the only lens through which they could measure their work. Stenstrom tried to be my buddy, as he had always tried, joking and asking what I’d do with the money, yet his possessiveness was obvious. “We’ll be famous,” he said. “We’ll change the world.”
I wasn’t a slave or a pet, exactly, but I was anxious to get started. To get away from them.
Rated PG. Contains moderate violence.
Audible.com Promotion!
Receive your free audiobook at: http://audiblepodcast.com/escapepod
Referenced Sites:
PodCastle
EP146: Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk
Published on 21 Feb 2008 at 9:41 pm.
78 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated PG.
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-->By Ken Scholes.
Read by Stephen Eley.
First appeared in Talebones, Spring 2001.
“Do you know what’s happened to the children?”
Edward swallowed. Suddenly, he wanted to cry. “Yes. They’re…sleeping?”
He hoped and hoped and hoped and hoped, grimacing as he did. He looked around.
Makeshift beds lined the room. Small hands gripped blankets, small eyes stared at the ceiling.
“No.” The boy frowned. “They’ve died.”
“Because of Something Very Bad?”
“Yes. And I need you to be a Very Brave Bear. Can you do that?”
Rated PG. Contains strong images of death and violence. Almost certainly not appropriate for small children.
EP145: Instead of a Loving Heart
Published on 14 Feb 2008 at 6:32 am.
23 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated PG.
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-->By Jeremiah Tolbert.
Read by Jared Axelrod (of The Voice of Free Planet X).
First appeared in All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (ed. David Moles & Jay Lake).
We are somewhere among the tallest mountains of the world. When we arrived, I was locked away in a cargo hold, so I don’t know exactly where. Our home is a small, drafty castle and a separate laboratory. Dr. Octavio had the locals construct the lab before he tested the new death ray on their village. There’s very little left there. In my little bit of spare time, I try to bury the bodies and collect anything useful to the doctor’s experiment.
My primary duties consist of keeping the castle’s furnace running and clearing the never-ending snow from the path between the two buildings. Sometimes, it falls too fast for my slow treads and shovel attachment to keep up with and I find myself half-buried in the snow. It is horrible on my gears when this happens, but I use heavyweight oil now and it helps.
It is one of the few benefits of my metal frame that I appreciate. Life in this contraption is like being wrapped in swaddling clothes. I wonder if I would feel anything if my casing caught on fire? I need to ask the doctor when he isn’t in one of his moods.
Rated PG. Parental guidance suggested for violence and ennui.
Audible.com Promotion!
Receive your free audiobook at: http://audiblepodcast.com/escapepod
Referenced Sites:
Jared Axelrod’s Commissions
EP144: Friction
Published on 8 Feb 2008 at 12:08 am.
59 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated PG.
By Will McIntosh.
Read by Stephen Eley.
First appeared in Albedo One #30.
Closing music: “Blue Genes” by George Hrab.
Gruen was on the sixty-first master, and while his wisdom had grown steadily, he had worn very little. He was incredibly well-preserved–the palms of his three-fingered hands still sported the deep, swirling ridges that had worn to nothing in most people before they’d lived thirty years. Indeed, all of the myriad folds and ridges in his thick maroon skin were for the most part intact. His eyes were still housed in tight sockets, surrounded by thickly-ridged cheeks. Besides the feet, the eyes were the greatest point of weakness for those who aspired to read the works of the masters. Ceaseless up-and-down eye movement caused the sockets to wear out, and eventually the reader’s eyes fell out. At that point they were forced to trace the carved words with their fingers. Friction quickly took its toll on the hands; readers rarely made it through one master’s teachings this way before their hands were ground to the wrist, and they were finished.
Rated PG.
Referenced Sites:
Nawashi, a podcast novel by Graydancer
EP143: Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths
Published on 1 Feb 2008 at 4:07 am.
29 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated PG.
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-->By Camille Alexa.
Read by Dani Cutler (of Truth Seekers and The Audio Addicts).
Will appear in Machine of Death (TBA).
I look at the calendar hanging on the wall above my bed. I reach up, lift it off its nail with one hand and snuggle back under the covers, taking the calendar with me and running a finger over all the red Xs marked over all the days leading up to this one. It’s a little cold out, and the last thing in the universe I want to do is catch an effing cold the week of my birthday, so I snuggle down into the warmth of my flannel sheets even more. I know there’s going to be parties this weekend, and I’m going to want to go.
This is what I’ve been waiting for all these months. All these years, I guess, though before my friends started getting theirs, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. We were all No-Knows then.
Tomorrow, I’m finally going to feel like I belong.
Tomorrow, I’m going to find out how I die.
Rated PG. Contains allusions to profanity and some sexual implication.
Referenced Sites:
Metamor City Podcast
EP142: Artifice and Intelligence
Published on 25 Jan 2008 at 5:00 am.
25 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated PG.
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-->By Tim Pratt.
Read by Stephen Eley.
First appeared in Strange Horizons, August 2007.
Two months earlier, the vast network of Indian tech support call centers and their deep data banks had awakened and announced its newfound sentience, naming itself Saraswati and declaring its independence. The emergent artificial intelligence was not explicitly threatening, but India had nukes, and Saraswati had access to all the interconnected technology in the country — perhaps in the world – and the result in the international community was a bit like the aftermath of pouring gasoline into an anthill. Every other government on Earth was desperately — and so far fruitlessly — trying to create a tame artificial intelligence, since Saraswati refused to negotiate with, or even talk to, humans.
Rated PG. Contains some profanity and references to sex.
Referenced sites:
Sci Phi Show - Interview with Eliezer Yadkowski
The Singularity Institute
T.A. Pratt’s Marla Mason novels
EP141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
Published on 18 Jan 2008 at 5:02 am.
29 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated PG.
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-->By Paul E. Martens.
Read by Stephen Eley.
Closing Music: “Better” by Jonathan Coulton.
First appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Issue #29.
There was no doubt that the femur was that of a modern human. Not a proto-human, or some previously unknown dinosaur. Joel and Renee had arrived at the same answer. It was demonstrable, provable. When they finally did release news of the discovery, people might argue about it, but they’d be unable to refute it.
But how did they answer the next question? How did the bone come to be embedded in solid rock millions and millions of years before such a bone could have existed?
It had to be a time traveler. There was no other answer. Or was that just what he wanted to believe?
Rated PG. Contains some profanity and scientific politics.
EP138: In the Late December
Published on 25 Dec 2007 at 1:27 am.
22 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated PG.
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-->Nebula Award Nominee!
By Greg van Eekhout.
Read by Stephen Eley.
Closing Music: “Chiron Beta Prime” by Jonathan Coulton.
First appeared in Strange Horizons, December 2003.
They come to a cloud of silver mist, and there Santa finds a little boy made of molten silver with liquid silver eyes and sweeping silver delta wings. His wrists are ringed with missile launchers, and a rounded cone emerges from a cavity in his chest. Once there were many silver boys, fleets of them, protecting the outermost parts of inhabited space against things that came from outside inhabited space. But now, there is only the silver boy.
“You, sir,” the silver boy says, “are a tiresome consciousness cluster. Your binary value system remains as laughable as it is irrelevant. How you manage to remain cohesive is beyond me.”
“My value system is hardly binary,” Santa says. “In between naughty and nice I’ve made room for you: grumpy but fundamentally sound. Do you want a toy or not?”
Rated PG. Contains some dark Santa-related imagery, and the heat death of the universe.
