Archives for the 'Rated R' Category
EP159: Elites
Published on 22 May 2008 at 4:30 am.
35 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated R.
By Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
Read by Máia Whitaker (of KnitWitch’s SciFi/Fantasy Zone and Superior Audioworks).
First appeared in Women of War, ed. Tanya Huff & Alexander Potter.
I could’ve followed the sounds. The closer I get, the louder voices grow—yelling obscenities, cheering, clapping in approval.
These women love fights.
I used to let them do it too, without interference, until the repair bills got too much. Then the House shrink told me about the added toll of repeated trauma—the fights would often replicate something that happened Out There—and I realized that no matter how much steam got blown off, the fights weren’t worth the expense.
Still, I wished for those old days sometimes.
Rated R. Contains violence, profanity, and strong themes of war and psychological trauma.
Referenced Sites:
“Recovering Apollo 8″ by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
7th Son: OBSIDIAN, ed. J.C. Hutchins
EP158: Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?
Published on 15 May 2008 at 9:15 pm.
32 Comments.
Filed under Hugo Awards, Rated R.
Read ‘EP158: Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?’
-->2008 Hugo Nominee!
By Ken MacLeod.
Read by Stephen Eley.
First appeared in The New Space Opera, ed. Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan.
When you’re as old as I am, you’ll find your memory’s not what it was. It’s not that you lose memories. That hasn’t happened to me or anyone else since the Paleocosmic Era, the Old Space Age, when people lived in caves on the Moon. My trouble is that I’ve gained memories, and I don’t know which of them are real. I was very casual about memory storage back then, I seem to recall. This could happen to you too, if you’re not careful. So be warned. Do as I say, not as I did.
Some of the tales about me contradict each other, or couldn’t possibly have happened, because that’s how I told them in the first place. Others I blame on the writers and tellers. They make things up. I’ve never done that. If I’ve told stories that couldn’t be true, it’s because that’s how I remember them.
Here’s one.
Rated R. Contains profanity, nudity, and in flagrante delicto.
Audible.com Promotion!
Receive your free audiobook at: http://audiblepodcast.com/escapepod
Referenced Sites:
2008 Hugo Awards
Free Novels for Worldcon Members
EP154: Union Dues - Freedom With a Small f
Published on 18 Apr 2008 at 4:30 am.
39 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated R.
Read ‘EP154: Union Dues - Freedom With a Small f’
-->By Jeffrey R. DeRego.
Read by Nuri (of CandyCorn Studios and Artist Alley).
Closing Music: “Juzt Mizunderztood” by Norm Sherman.
My head throbs. I think about the mess in the fridge, the heaps of crap in the flat while I force the clumps of wet clothes into the dryers.
As far as I know I am the only Union member who works outside the system, the only one tasked specifically with fighting crime, secretly, of course. Darksider put the program together with one of the Luminaries as a way to explore expanding our role in the maintenance of Normal society. He chose me specifically because I am the only super-agile who is also an orphan. Therefore, I won’t be tempted to throw my costume in a dumpster and make a break for mom and dad.
Communication with the Union ended seven months ago. Darksider was supposed to make sure that a stipend was deposited into a bank account under my phony name every month. But that stopped too. I don’t know why. I tried everything to make contact short of walking up to the Boston Pyramid and knocking. Not that it would have done any good since none of the regular Union knows I even exist.
Rated R. Contains sordid occupations, drug use, and violence. Welcome to the city.
Referenced Sites:
The Union Dues Series
Tales of the Zombie War
SciFiDig interview with Jeffrey DeRego
The DrabbleCast
EP153: Schwartz Between the Galaxies
Published on 10 Apr 2008 at 3:59 am.
48 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated R.
Read ‘EP153: Schwartz Between the Galaxies’
-->By Robert Silverberg.
Read by Stephen Eley.
This much is reality: Schwartz sits comfortably cocooned — passive, suspended — in a first-class passenger rack aboard a Japan Air Lines rocket, nine kilometers above the Coral Sea. And this much is fantasy: the same Schwartz has passage on a shining starship gliding silkily through the interstellar depths, en route at nine times the velocity of light from Betelgeuse IX to Rigel XXI, or maybe from Andromeda to the Lesser Magellanic.
Rated R. Contains some sex, some drug use. It’s a Silverberg story.
Audible.com Promotion!
Receive your free audiobook at: http://audiblepodcast.com/escapepod
Referenced Sites:
GeekLabel
EP152: The Big Guy
Published on 4 Apr 2008 at 6:30 am.
22 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated R.
By Mike Resnick.
Read by Stephen Eley.
First appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, June 2007.
“Okay,” said Fishbait. He tossed a ball to the Big Guy. “Let’s try a little one-on-one. Ralph, let’s see what you can do against Jacko here.”
The Big Guy took a look at me, his face totally expressionless. I moved forward to lean on him a little, just enough to make contact and see which way he was going to move when he began his drive to the basket, but before I got close enough to touch him he’d already raced by me and stuffed the ball through the hoop.
“Again,” said Fishbait.
Rated R. Contains strong language and testosterone.
Today’s Sponsor:
Infected by Scott Sigler
Referenced Events:
Penguicon: April 18-20, 2008
Sex 2.0: April 12, 2008
EP151: Behind the Rules
Published on 28 Mar 2008 at 4:03 am.
25 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated R.
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-->By Stephanie Burgis.
Read by MA in PA (of Better Late Than Never).
First appeared in Forgotten Worlds, July 2006.
Closing music: “I Feel Fantastic” by Jonathan Coulton.
The first Jacqui wrote me out a list of instructions thirty pages long. It contained all her history with Robert, in detail. It gave me a list of all the things to say and do when he’s hurt, or angry, or depressed. I think she was the perfect wife. When I think about how hard it is to measure up to her, my stomach feels twitchy.
I’d been doing this job for three months. It was supposed to get easier with time, not harder.
Rated R. Contains strong language and relationship drama.
Today’s Sponsor:
Infected by Scott Sigler
EP140: Astromonkeys!
Published on 11 Jan 2008 at 3:05 am.
20 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated R.
By Tony Frazier.
Read by Norm Sherman (of The Drabblecast).
First appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, June 2006.
“All right, so I’m chasing these things down the street, and there’s more showing up all the time, so now there’s like ten of them. I have no idea how I’m supposed to wrangle all these space monkeys, and right about then is when this dude comes swooping down out of the sky, wearing this blue costume with a big yellow star on his chest.”
“Another hero,” Jill says.
“Guy named Astro,” I say. “I’d run into him a few times before, back when GoDS 1.0 was still together. He would be fighting this monster - that was his thing, fighting these random space monsters - and we’d show up to help out. I thought he was okay, but the other guys didn’t like him much.”
“Why not?” Jill asks.
“Well, he was kind of a dork. No offense,” I say, turning to Dave. Dave waves it off.
Rated PG. Contains some profanity, some scatology, and a lot of silly superhero violence.
Referenced Sites:
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Mur Lafferty
EP139: Acephalous Dreams
Published on 4 Jan 2008 at 1:59 am.
29 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated R.
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-->By Neal Asher.
Read by Stephen Eley.
“AI Geronamid has need of a subject for a scientific trial. This trial may kill you, in which case it would be considered completion of sentence. Should you survive, all charges against you will be dropped.”
“And the nature of this trial?”
“Cephalic implantation of Csorian node.”
“Okay, I agree, though I have no idea what Csorian node is.”
The Golem stood and as she did so the door slid open. Daes glanced up at the security eye in the corner of the cell and stood also. He thought, briefly, about escape, but knew he stood no chance. His companion might look like a teenage girl but he knew she was strong enough to rip him in half.
“You didn’t tell me. What’s a Csorian node?”
“If we knew that with any certainty we would not be carrying out this trial,” replied the Golem.
Rated R. Contains scenes of strong graphic violence and sexual assault.
EP136: Bright Red Star
Published on 14 Dec 2007 at 4:33 am.
21 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated R.
By Bud Sparhawk.
Read by Paul Haring (of Escape Pod Classic).
First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 2005.
Survivors isn’t exactly the word. What they found were sixteen bodies without arms, legs, and most organs. What remained were essentially heads hooked up to life support and fueled by oxygenated glucose pumps. There were a couple hundred strands of glass fibre running from the ship’s walls into each skull, into each brain, into each soul. Four of the sixteen were still functioning–alive is not a word to describe their condition.
There was no hesitation on the part of Command. They ordered everyone, except combat types like us, from the most likely targets. Humanity couldn’t allow any more people to become components for the Shardie offense.
But civilians never listen. Farmers were the worse, hanging onto their little plots and crops until somebody dragged them away, kicking and screaming at the injustice of it all. That’s why we were here. Forty settlers had stupidly refused to be evacuated from New Mars. Forty we didn’t know about until we got that one brief burst.
My mission was to make certain that they didn’t become forty armless, legless, gutless, screamless weapon components.
Rated R. Contains strong violence and heavy moral themes.
Referenced Sites:
Reading is Fundamental
Starship Sofa
EP134: Me and My Shadow
Published on 29 Nov 2007 at 8:08 pm.
21 Comments.
Filed under Podcasts, Rated R.
Read ‘EP134: Me and My Shadow’
-->By Mike Resnick.
Read by Stephen Eley.
First appeared in Unauthorized Autobiographies and Other Curiosities, 1984.
Of course, even if we had met before, they couldn’t recognize me now. I know. I’ve spent almost three years trying to find out who I was before I got Erased — but along with what they did to my brain, they gave me a new face and wiped my fingerprints clean. I’m a brand new man: two years, eleven months, and seventeen days old. I am (fanfare and trumpets, please!) William Jordan. Not a real catchy name, I’ll admit, but it’s the only one I’ve got these days.
I had another name once. They told me not to worry about it, that all my memories had been expunged and that I couldn’t dredge up a single fact no matter how hard I tried, not even if I took a little Sodium-P from a hypnotist, and after a few weeks I had to agree with them–which didn’t mean that I stopped trying.
Erasures never stop trying.
Rated R. Contains violent crime, violent imagery, and themes of violence.
