http://escapepod.org The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine. Each week Escape Pod delivers science fiction short stories from today's best authors. Listen today, and hear the new sound of science fiction! Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:25 +0000 en-US hourly 1 2005-2012 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 editor@escapepod.org (Escape Pod) editor@escapepod.org (Escape Pod) science fiction 1440 http://escapepod.org/wp-content/images/pod-org-icon300.jpg http://escapepod.org 144 144 The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine. Each week Escape Pod delivers science fiction short stories from today's best authors. Listen today, and hear the new sound of science fiction! science, fiction, sf, stories, audiobooks, storytelling, fiction, short, fiction, short, story Escape Pod Escape Pod editor@escapepod.org no no http://escapepod.org/2013/05/20/film-review-star-trek-into-darkness/ http://escapepod.org/2013/05/20/film-review-star-trek-into-darkness/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:25 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4257 Star Trek fan. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that I was going to see Star Trek Into Darkness on opening weekend. Since my birthday was the same weekend as the opening, it was like J.J. Abrams himself gave me a present.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/05/20/film-review-star-trek-into-darkness/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2013/05/16/ep396-dead-merchandise/ http://escapepod.org/2013/05/16/ep396-dead-merchandise/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 04:51:12 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4252 http://escapepod.org/2013/05/16/ep396-dead-merchandise/feed/ 0 0:35:05 by Ferrett Steinmetz Read by Kathy Sherwood Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… A firm believer in the “apply butt to chair, [...] by Ferrett Steinmetz Read by Kathy Sherwood Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… A firm believer in the “apply butt to chair, then fingers to keyboard” philosophy, Ferrett Steinmetz writes for at least an hour every day – which helps, he promises. He is a graduate of both the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and Viable Paradise, and has been nominated for the Nebula Award, for which he remains stoked. Ferrett has a moderately popular blog, The Watchtower of Destruction, wherein he talks about bad puns, relationships, politics, videogames, and more bad puns. He is the creator of the most popular and comprehensive online purity quizzes (this one’s for sex, but he’s also done them for roleplaying and Livejournal). He’s written four computer books, including the still-popular-after-two-years Wicked Cool PHP. He lives in Cleveland with his wife, who he couldn’t imagine living without. About the Narrator… Kathy Sherwood resides in a (probably only figuratively) magical forest in North Central Florida, with her significant other, two dogs and two cats.  She also hosts alternative rock show Not Quite Random on 88.5 WFCF–Flagler College Radio. Dead Merchandise by Ferrett Steinmetz The ad-faeries danced around Sheryl, flickering cartoon holograms with fluoride-white smiles. They told her the gasoline that sloshed in the red plastic canister she held was high-octane, perfect for any vehicle, did she want to go for a drive? She did not. That gasoline was for burning. Sheryl patted her pockets to make sure the matches were still there and kept moving forward, blinking away the videostreams. Her legs ached. She squinted past a flurry of hair-coloring ads (“Sheryl, wash your gray away today!”), scanning the neon roads to find the breast-shaped marble dome of River Edge’s central collation unit. River’s Edge had been a sleepy Midwestern town when she was a girl, a place just big enough for a diner and a department store. Now River’s Edge had been given a mall-over like every other town — every wall lit up with billboards, colorful buildings topped with projectors to burn logos into the clouds. She was grateful for the dark patches that marked where garish shop-fronts had been bombed into ash-streaked metal tangles. The smoke gave her hope. Others were trying to bring it all down — and if they were succeeding, maybe no one was left to stop her. Rotting bodies leered out at her through car windows, where computer-guided cars had smashed headlong into the collapsed shopfronts that had fallen into the road. Had the drivers been fleeing, or trying to destroy the collation unit? She had no idea. The ad-faeries sang customized praises to each auto as she glanced at the cars, devising customized ditties about the ’59 Breezster’s speed. Sheryl needed speed; at her arthritic pace, walking through the women’s district might tempt her into submission. Given that the ad-faeries suggested it, driving was a terrible idea. River’s Edge had been so gutted by bombings that she’d have to drive manually — and it was already hard to see through the foggy blur of chirping ad-faeries, each triangulating her cornea’s focal point to obscure her vision for the legal limit of .8 seconds. They elbowed each other aside, proffering chewy pomegranate cookies, diamond-edged razors, laser-guided wall-bots that would paint her house a new color every day. She had no use for them. She’d burned her house down, leaving Rudy’s body underneath the pile of engraved stones with her sons’ names on them. She had to pass through the two main shopping districts to destroy the collation center at River’s Edge — and if she did that, then she could free Oakmoor, then Daleton, and then who knows where?  But they’d kill her if she weakened. Sheryl clutched the gasoline canister to her chest as she maneuv[...] Podcasts Ferrett Steinmetz yes no http://escapepod.org/2013/05/09/ep395-robot/ http://escapepod.org/2013/05/09/ep395-robot/#comments Thu, 09 May 2013 04:50:55 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4246 http://escapepod.org/2013/05/09/ep395-robot/feed/ 1 0:23:19 by Helena Bell Read by Eleiece Krawiec Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… Helena Bell is a poet and writer living in eastern North[...] by Helena Bell Read by Eleiece Krawiec Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… Helena Bell is a poet and writer living in eastern North Carolina.  She has a BA, an MFA, aJD, and LLM in Taxation which fulfills her lifelong ambition of having more letters follow her name than are actually in it.  Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Clarkesworld, Shimmer, Brain Harvest and Rattle.  Her story “Robot” is a nominee for the 2012 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. About the Narrator… Eleiece Krawiec lives in a suburb of New Orleans, Louisiana. She began voice acting in early 2007, discovered how much she liked it, and is still going strong. She’s voiced (and continues to voice) characters for Star Trek: Excelsior, Star Trek: Outpost and a variety of characters for Misfits Audio. Robot by Helena Bell You may wash your aluminum chassis on Monday and leave it on the back porch opposite the recyclables; you may wash your titanium chassis on Friday if you promise to polish it in time for church; don’t terrorize the cat; don’t lose the pamphlets my husband has brought home from the hospital; they suggest I give you a name, do you like Fred?; don’t eat the dead flesh of my right foot until after I have fallen asleep and cannot hear the whir of your incisors working against the bone. This is a picture of the world from which you were sent; this is a copy of the agreement between our government and theirs; these are the attributes they claim you are possessed of: obedience, loyalty, low to moderate intelligence; a natural curiosity which I should not mistake for something other than a necessary facet of your survival in the unfamiliar; this is your bill of manufacture; this is your bill of sale; this is a warrant of merchantability on which I may rely should I decide to return you from whence you came; this is your serial number, here, scraped in an alien script on the underside of your knee; the pamphlets say you may be of the mind to touch it occasionally, like a name-tag, but if I command you, you will stop. This is a list of the chores you will be expected to complete around the house when you are not eating the diseases out of my flesh; this is the corner of my room where you may stay when you are not working; do not look at me when you change the linens, when you must hold me in the bathroom, when you record in the notebook how many medications I have had that day, how many bowel movements, how the flesh of my mouth is raw and bleeding against the dentures I insist on wearing. The pamphlets say you are the perfect scavenger: completely self contained, no digestion, no waste; they say I can hook you up to an outlet and you will power the whole house. You may polish the silver if you are bored; you may also rearrange the furniture, wind the clocks, pull weeds from the garden; you may read in the library any book of your choosing; my husband claims you have no real consciousness, only an advanced and sophisticated set of pre-programmed responses, but I have seen your eyes open in the middle of the night; I have seen you stare out across the fields as if there is something there, calling you. Cook my meals in butter, I will not eat them otherwise; do not speak to the neighbors; do not speak to my children, they are not yours; do not let anyone see you when I open the door for the mail; no, there is nothing for you, who even knows that you are here? Help me to walk across this room; help me to wipe bacon grease from the skillet—do not think I do not see you trying to wash it with soap when I am done. Help me to knit my granddaughter a sweater, she is my favorite and it is cold where she will be going; if you hold my hands so they are steady I will allow you to terrorize my Bridge club; I will teach you the rules: cover an honor with an honor; through strength and up to weakness. Help me t[...] Podcasts Helena Bell no no http://escapepod.org/2013/05/02/ep394-good-hunting/ http://escapepod.org/2013/05/02/ep394-good-hunting/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 05:35:09 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4240 http://escapepod.org/2013/05/02/ep394-good-hunting/feed/ 1 0:54:35 by Ken Liu Read by John Chu Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… I’ve worked as a programmer and as a lawyer, and the two profession[...] by Ken Liu Read by John Chu Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… I’ve worked as a programmer and as a lawyer, and the two professions are surprisingly similar. In both, one extra level of indirection solves most problems. I write speculative fiction and poetry. Occasionally, I also translate Chinese fiction into English. My wife, Lisa Tang Liu, is an artist. I’m working on a novel set in a universe we came up with together. Things I like: pure Lisp, clever Perl, tight C; well-designed products, the Red Sox; sentences that sound perfect in only one language; math proofs that I can hold in my head; novels that make me quiver; poems that make me sing; arguments that aren’t hypocritical; old clothes, old friends, new ideas. Labels that fit with various degrees of accuracy: American, Chinese; Christian, Daoist, Confucian; populist, contrarian, skeptic, libertarian (small “l”); a liminal provincial in America, the New Rome. About the Narrator… John designs microprocessors by day and writes fiction by night. His work has been published at Boston Review, Asimov’s and Tor.com. His website is http://johnchu.net Good Hunting by Ken Liu Night. Half moon. An occasional hoot from an owl. The merchant and his wife and all the servants had been sent away. The large house was eerily quiet. Father and I crouched behind the scholar’s rock in the courtyard. Through the rock’s many holes I could see the bedroom window of the merchant’s son. “Oh, Tsiao-jung, my sweet Tsiao-jung…” The young man’s feverish groans were pitiful. Half-delirious, he was tied to his bed for his own good, but Father had left a window open so that his plaintive cries could be carried by the breeze far over the rice paddies. “Do you think she really will come?” I whispered. Today was my thirteenth birthday, and this was my first hunt. “She will,” Father said. “A _hulijing_ cannot resist the cries of the man she has bewitched.” “Like how the Butterfly Lovers cannot resist each other?” I thought back to the folk opera troupe that had come through our village last fall. “Not quite,” Father said. But he seemed to have trouble explaining why. “Just know that it’s not the same.” I nodded, not sure I understood. But I remembered how the merchant and his wife had come to Father to ask for his help. _”How shameful!” The merchant had muttered. “He’s not even nineteen. How could he have read so many sages’ books and still fall under the spell of such a creature?”_ _”There’s no shame in being entranced by the beauty and wiles of a _hulijing_,” Father had said. “Even the great scholar Wong Lai once spent three nights in the company of one, and he took first place at the Imperial Examinations. Your son just needs a little help.”_ _”You must save him,” the merchant’s wife had said, bowing like a chicken pecking at rice. “If this gets out, the matchmakers won’t touch him at all.”_ A _hulijing_ was a demon who stole hearts. I shuddered, worried if I would have the courage to face one. Father put a warm hand on my shoulder, and I felt calmer. In his hand was Swallow Tail, a sword that had first been forged by our ancestor, General Lau Yip, thirteen generations ago. The sword was charged with hundreds of Daoist blessings and had drunk the blood of countless demons. A passing cloud obscured the moon for a moment, throwing everything into darkness. When the moon emerged again, I almost cried out. There, in the courtyard, was the most beautiful lady I had ever seen. She had on a flowing white silk dress with billowing sleeves and a wide, silvery belt. Her face was pale as snow, and her hair dark as coal, draping past her waist. I thought[...] Podcasts Ken Liu no no http://escapepod.org/2013/04/29/tv-review-going-postal/ http://escapepod.org/2013/04/29/tv-review-going-postal/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:00:25 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4218 Going Postal on Netflix, my head asplode. Because there was another live-action Pratchett miniseries for me to watch.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/04/29/tv-review-going-postal/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2013/04/26/ep393-red-card/ http://escapepod.org/2013/04/26/ep393-red-card/#comments Fri, 26 Apr 2013 06:35:13 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4227 http://escapepod.org/2013/04/26/ep393-red-card/feed/ 0 0:41:58 by S. L. Gilbow Read by Heather Bowman-Tomlinson Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… (taken from http://www.johnjosephadams.com/bra[...] by S. L. Gilbow Read by Heather Bowman-Tomlinson Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… (taken from http://www.johnjosephadams.com/brave-new-worlds/table-of-contents/red-card-s-l-gilbow/) S. L. Gilbow is a relatively new writer, with five stories published to date, four inThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and one in [the] anthology Federations.Gilbow served twenty-six years in the Air Force, and has been on dozens of deployments, and has flown more than 2000 hours as a B-52 navigator. He currently makes his living by teaching English at a public high school in Norfolk, Virginia. Everyone knows that James Bond has a “license to kill.”  As an international spy, he must sometimes fight for his life. But he’s a trained government employee, specially selected for Her Majesty’s Service.  But could you trust just anyone with a license to kill? What about your neighbor? Or your boss? In fact, what if the government gave everybody one free pass to shoot one person,any person, for whatever reason? That’s the premise of [this] story.  S. L. Gilbow says that the idea for “Red Card” actually came from a conversation he had with his daughter, Mandy.  “One day after a driver cut me off in heavy traffic, I… turned to my daughter and said, ‘Everyone should be allowed to shoot one person without going to prison.’ My daughter thought for a second then turned to me and said, ‘Dad, if that were true you would have been dead a long time ago.’” About the Narrator… “I may not be perfectly wise, perfectly witty, or perfectly wonderful, but I am always perfectly me.” Anonymous The best part of my life is being Bill’s wife. I’m a horticulturist by trade, current stay at home mom for two children, team mom for the local Goalball team, and advocate for Blind/Visually Impaired causes and adoption causes. I love D20 gaming, reading, camping and canoeing, card playing, and music. Red Card by S.L. Gilbow     Late one April evening, Linda Jackson pulled a revolver from her purse and shot her husband through a large mustard stain in the center of his T-shirt.  The official after incident survey concluded that almost all of Merry Valley approved of the shooting.  Sixty-four percent of the townspeople even rated her target selection as “excellent.”  A few, however, criticized her, pointing out that shooting your husband is “a little too obvious” and “not very creative.” Dick Andrews, who had farmed the fertile soil around Merry Valley for over thirty years, believed that Larry Jackson, more than anyone else in town, needed to be killed.  “I never liked him much,” he wrote in the additional comments section of the incident survey.  “He never seemed to have a good word to say about anybody.” “Excellent use of a bullet,” scrawled Jimmy Blanchard.  Born and raised in Merry Valley, he had known Larry for years and had even graduated from high school with him.  “Most overbearing person I’ve ever met.  He deserved what he got.  I’m just not sure why it took so long.” Of course, a few people made waves.  Jenny Collins seemed appalled.  “I can hardly believe it,” she wrote.  “We used to be much more discerning about who we killed, and we certainly didn’t go around flaunting it the way Linda does.”  Jenny was the old-fashioned kind. Linda would never have called her actions “flaunting it.”  Of course she knew what to do after shooting Larry.  She had read The Enforcement Handbook from cover to cover six times, poring over it to see if she had missed anything, scrutinizing every nuance.  She had even committed some of the more important passages to memory:  Call the police immediately after executing an enforcement–Always keep your red card in a safe, dry place–Never reveal to anyone that you have a red card–Be proud; you’re performing an important civic duty. But flaunting it?  No, Lind[...] Podcasts, Uncategorized S. L. Gilbow no no http://escapepod.org/2013/04/22/film-review-the-phantom-tollbooth/ http://escapepod.org/2013/04/22/film-review-the-phantom-tollbooth/#comments Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:00:50 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4191 The Phantom Tollbooth may never have had occasion to see the filmed version. But if you can find a copy, and you liked the book, it's certainly worth a look.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/04/22/film-review-the-phantom-tollbooth/feed/ 1 http://escapepod.org/2013/04/19/ep392-aftermaths/ http://escapepod.org/2013/04/19/ep392-aftermaths/#comments Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:40:57 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4210 http://escapepod.org/2013/04/19/ep392-aftermaths/feed/ 0 0:30:28 by Lois McMaster Bujold Read by Mat Weller Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… Lois McMaster Bujold was born 2 November 1949 in Colu[...] by Lois McMaster Bujold Read by Mat Weller Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… Lois McMaster Bujold was born 2 November 1949 in Columbus, Ohio. She attended Ohio State University from 1968 to 1972, but didn’t graduate. She describes her real education as reading five books a week for ten years from the Ohio State University stacks, reading enormous amounts of SF as a teenager, and listening to her father, an engineer. She discovered fandom in 1969, and married fellow fan John Fredric Bujold in 1971 (now recently divorced); they have one son and one daughter.She started writing in 1982, and sold her first story to Twilight Zone in 1985. Then in one glorious moment, Baen bought all three of the novels she had already written. All three were published in 1986.She has won four Hugo awards in the Novel category, more than any other writer except for Robert A Heinlein, (excluding his Retro Hugo) and yet many SF readers have never heard of her!Lois was on the Locus Recommended Reading list with Falling Free, Brothers In Arms, Mountains of Mourning, Labyrinth, Barrayar and Mirror Dance. She won the Locus Award for Barrayar, Mirror Dance and Paladin of Souls.She won the Nebula Award for Falling Free and The Mountains of Mourning. She won the Hugo Award for The Vor Game, Barrayar, Mirror Dance, Paladin of Soulsand The Mountains of Mourning. She was nominated for the John W Campbell Award in 1987. About the Narrator… Aside from producing, Mat is also a graphic designer, an amateur voice actor, an amateur father, a forum agitator and a professional fat guy who has been trying desperately to take up jogging. You can follow him as he does all of these things at matweller.com. Read it online: http://books.google.com/books?id=1fys98YnuGMC&pg=PT163&lpg=PT163&ots=4bCo2hJAEb&dq=aftermaths+bujold Podcasts Lois Mcmaster Bujold no no http://escapepod.org/2013/04/15/movie-review-safety-not-guaranteed/ http://escapepod.org/2013/04/15/movie-review-safety-not-guaranteed/#comments Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:00:13 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4164 Safety Not Guaranteed, which is actually kind of based on a true story. Kind of.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/04/15/movie-review-safety-not-guaranteed/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2013/04/11/ep391-making-my-entrance-again-with-my-usual-flair/ http://escapepod.org/2013/04/11/ep391-making-my-entrance-again-with-my-usual-flair/#comments Thu, 11 Apr 2013 05:01:34 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4197 http://escapepod.org/2013/04/11/ep391-making-my-entrance-again-with-my-usual-flair/feed/ 0 0:30:05 by Ken Scholes Read by Bill Bowman Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… He sold his first story to Talebones Magazine in 2000 and won[...] by Ken Scholes Read by Bill Bowman Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… He sold his first story to Talebones Magazine in 2000 and won the Writers of the Future contest in 2004.  His quirky, offbeat fiction continues to show up in various magazines and anthologies like Polyphony 6, Weird Tales and Clarkesworld Magazine.In 2006, his short story “Of Metal Men and Scarlet Thread and Dancing with the Sunrise” appeared in the August issue of Realms of Fantasy.  Later that year, inspired by Allen Douglas’s uncanny painting of Isaak and taunted by his friends and family to finally write a novel, Ken extended that story and Lamentation was born.  Lamentation is the first in a five book series from Tor Books called The Psalms of Isaak. Ken lives near Portland, Oregon, with his amazing wonder-wife Jen West Scholes and twin daughters:  Elizabeth Kathleen and Rachel Ann. He invites readers to contact him through the website or through his blog.  When he’s not writing, Ken loses himself in Story elsewhere or sings Paul Simon songs to his immoveable cats. About the Narrator… Bill started voice acting on the Metamor City Podcast, and has wanted to do more ever since.  He spends his days working at a library, where he is in charge of all things with plugs and troubleshooting the people who use them.  He spends his nights with his wife, two active children, and two overly active canines and all that goes with that. Making My Entrance Again With My Usual Flair by Ken Scholes No one ever asks a clown at the end of his life what he really wanted to be when he grew up. It’s fairly obvious. No one gets hijacked into the circus. We race to it, the smell of hotdogs leading us in, our fingers aching for the sticky pull of taffy, the electric shock of pink cotton on our tongue. Ask a lawyer and he’ll say when he was a kid he wanted to be an astronaut. Ask an accountant; he’ll say he wanted to be fireman. I am a clown. I have always wanted to be a clown. And I will die a clown if I have my way. My name is Merton D. Kamal. The Kamal comes from my father. I never met the man so I have no idea how he came by it. Mom got the Merton bit from some monk she used to read who wrote something like this: We learn humility by being humiliated often. Given how easily (and how frequently) Kamal is pronounced Camel, and given how the D just stands for D, you can see that she wanted her only child to be absolutely filled to the brim with humility. My Mom is a deeply spiritual woman. But enough about her. This is my story. “Merton,” the ringmaster and owner Rufus P. Stowell said, “it’s just not working out.” I was pushing forty. I’d lost some weight and everyone knows kids love a chubby clown. I’d also taken up drinking which didn’t go over well right before a show. So suddenly, I found myself without prospects and I turned myself towards home, riding into Seattle by bus on a cold November night. Mom met me at the bus stop. She had no business driving but she came out anyway. She was standing on the sidewalk next to the station wagon when she saw me. We hugged. “I’m glad you’re home,” she said. I lifted my bag into the back. “Thanks.” “Are you hungry?” “Not really.” We went to Denny’s anyway. Whenever my Mom wanted to talk, we went to Denny’s. It’s where she took me to tell me about boys and girls, it’s where she took me to tell me that my dog had been hit by a car. “So what are you going to do now?” She cut and speared a chunk of meatloaf, then dipped it into her mashed potatoes and gravy before raising it to her mouth. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’ll fatten up, quit drinking, get back into the business.” I watched her left eyebrow twitch—a sure sign of disapproval. I hefted my double bacon cheeseburger, then paused. “Why? What do you think I should do?” She leaned forward. She brought her wrinkled hand u[...] Podcasts Ken Scholes no no http://escapepod.org/2013/04/08/film-review-the-croods/ http://escapepod.org/2013/04/08/film-review-the-croods/#comments Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:00:42 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4181 The Croods, in case you've been living in a cave, is a new animated film about a family of cavemen who come face to face with the end of the world against the backdrop of a formulaic, sitcom-like plot.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/04/08/film-review-the-croods/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2013/04/04/ep390-cerbo-un-vitra-ujo/ http://escapepod.org/2013/04/04/ep390-cerbo-un-vitra-ujo/#comments Thu, 04 Apr 2013 04:30:08 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4175 http://escapepod.org/2013/04/04/ep390-cerbo-un-vitra-ujo/feed/ 7 0:41:42 By Mary Robinette Kowal Read by Veronica Giguere Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Cerbo un Vitra ujo By Mary Robinette Kowal Grete snipped a diseased branch [...] By Mary Robinette Kowal Read by Veronica Giguere Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Cerbo un Vitra ujo By Mary Robinette Kowal Grete snipped a diseased branch off her Sunset-Glory rosebush like she was a body harvester looking for the perfect part. Behind the drone of the garden’s humidifiers, she caught a woosh-snick as the airlock door opened. Her boyfriend barreled around Mom’s prize Emperor artichoke. Something was wrong. The whites showed around Kaj’s remarkable eyes, a blue-green so iridescent they seemed to dull all the plants around them. “Mom and Dad got me a Pass to a down-planet school!” The blood congealed in her veins. Kaj would leave her. Grete forced a smile. “That’s the outer limit!” “I didn’t even know they’d applied. Fairview Academy—game design.” His perfect teeth flashed like sunshine against the ink of space. “It’s wacking crazed. Should’ve been you, you’re a better hack than me.” “I’m already entitled to school.” Grete winced as the words left her mouth. Like he didn’t know that. He was the middle of five children, way past the Banwith Station family allowance. She picked up the pruning sheers to hide the shake in her hands. How would she live without Kaj? “So, I guess you got packing to do and stuff.” “They provide uniforms. All I’m taking is my pod with music and books. Zero else.” Kaj slid his arm around her waist and laced his long, delicate fingers through hers. “And I want to spend every moment till launch with you.” She loved him so much, it hurt. Grete leaned her head against him, burning the feel of his body into her memory. She breathed in the musky smell of his sweat and kissed his neck, sampling the salt on his skin. After a moment, Kaj hung a chain around her neck. The metal tags hanging from it were still warm from his body. “What?” “Dogtags, like they used in the oldwars. I put all my bios on there so you’d remember me.” “Kaj Lorensen, don’t think I could forget you.” But if he was away at school, he might forget her. She studied her rosebush and freed the most perfect rose with her sheers. She held it out to him, suddenly shy. He kissed the rose and then her palm. Grete sank into his gaze, lost in the blue-green of his eyes. # Grete buzzed the Lorensen cubby and waited as the comunit scanned her retina for i.d. If her mom knew how to hack into scanner records,  Grete would get major grief for skipping school, but she couldn’t stand the waiting anymore. Around her, the kids who weren’t entitled to school played a game of tag in the corridor. She watched to see if any of Kaj’s younger sibs were there. The door hissed open. Kaj’s mother, belly starting to round with another pregnancy, glared at Grete. “What.” “Sorry, the address I have for Kaj doesn’t respond.” A month. She’d pinged him and waited. Pinged his mom, and waited. She’d even asked the counselor at her school, but he had never even heard of Fairview Academy. Grete was tired of waiting. Ms. Lorensen’s eyes were as flat and grey as her voice. “You leave him alone. You want to mess this up for him?” “No, ma’am. I just miss him.” “Maybe he doesn’t miss you.” The door hissed shut. Grete stared at the mute door for a moment, and then started looking for Kaj’s sibs, hoping they would know how to contact him. The older two would be in school, which was where Grete should be, but Kaj’s younger sibs were not entitled. On any other station, no parent in their right mind would let their unentitled kids run free, for fear they’d be taken by a body harvester on a job for some rich-ass client. Banwith Stat[...] Podcasts Mary Robinette Kowal yes no http://escapepod.org/2013/04/02/tv-review-orphan-black/ http://escapepod.org/2013/04/02/tv-review-orphan-black/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:00:07 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4159 Orphan Black. What follows is science fiction. Kind of. ]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/04/02/tv-review-orphan-black/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2013/03/28/ep390-keeping-tabs/ http://escapepod.org/2013/03/28/ep390-keeping-tabs/#comments Thu, 28 Mar 2013 04:30:53 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4152 http://escapepod.org/2013/03/28/ep390-keeping-tabs/feed/ 8 0:36:37 By Kenneth Schneyer Read by Dani Cutler Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   Keeping Tabs By Kenneth Schneyer I was so excited when I could finally buy a[...] By Kenneth Schneyer Read by Dani Cutler Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   Keeping Tabs By Kenneth Schneyer I was so excited when I could finally buy a Tab. They cost so much, you know, but I saved up for maybe six months. I waitressed at Antonio’s in the North End, and let me tell you, it’s murder on the feet.  Those trays are heavy, too, and Nico screams at everybody the whole shift, not to mention the way you smell after six hours.  But the customers tip really well, and I was able to save up enough money, even after paying rent and stuff. I could never have gotten a Tab when I was still married to Marc, that shit.  He never liked anything I liked.  When I married him, all I saw was the big brown eyes and the cleft in his chin and the way he could make his voice go down low, so that I felt it all the way down to my knees.  I had to learn the hard way. Not that I could’ve afforded a Tab back then, anyway.  The price started coming down just a few years ago, about when Marc broke my front tooth. By that time I couldn’t go to my mom’s, because she said I always went back to that shit anyway, and she wasn’t going to help me do it again, and my friend Lila wouldn’t let me stay with her either, same reason. So I went to a shelter, and the police came, and we got a restraining order on Marc.  But yeah, the same damn thing happened, he gave me that look with those eyes and told me how things were really, really going to change this time, because he’d seen the light and couldn’t believe he’d done something like that to me, and like an asshole, I dropped the charges and lifted the restraining order and went back to him. Two years ago, right after I divorced Marc, Pearl Moulton started playing Mandi Trenton on _Dark Little Corners_, which was her first really big break, and they announced that there’d be a Tab on her.  I wanted it as soon as I saw her on the show, because Mandi is so awesome; she’s this really tough girl who works in a bar, and she gives as good as she gets, and she never gives up on love when all these guys leave her all the time. And Pearl Moulton is so beautiful and talented; I used to watch her on _Deception_, when nobody paid her any attention. Now she was in all the magazines, and she’s exactly my age, and she was Tabbed. But then my mom got sick, and I was taking care of her for two months. My brother Johnny didn’t do squat, and his wife Nadine, forget it. So I wasn’t able to get the Tab until she got better.  That was last year, in May. I got the injection and the ear cuff, went home and waited for Pearl Moulton’s Tab time, which was ten to twelve, Eastern. I was so excited I couldn’t sit down; I kept making cups of coffee and forgetting to drink them, picking up the _Herald_ and reading stuff I’d already read. Finally it was ten, and I sat down in the recliner and turned on the cuff. First thing, while it was making the connection, it was like I didn’t have a body at all — no sight, no sound, no feeling, nothing. It’s a good thing your body breathes by itself, because I couldn’t even tell if I was.  Then, all of a sudden, wham, I was in this padded chair, and I had Pearl Moulton’s body. She’s a lot thinner than I am, and her teeth are really straight, and you feel those things right away. At first there was no sound and I couldn’t see anything, but there was this sweet smell, and something soft brushing down over my face, that is, her face. Then a girl’s voice said, “Okay, done,” and Pearl opened her eyes and blew out through her nose, like there was dust in it.  She was sitting in a swivel chair in front of a big mirror like they have at a salon, with vanity bulbs all around it.  In the mirror Pearl looked exactly like Mandi Trenton on _Dark [...] Podcasts Kenneth Schneyer yes no http://escapepod.org/2013/03/21/ep388-trixie-and-the-pandas-of-dread/ http://escapepod.org/2013/03/21/ep388-trixie-and-the-pandas-of-dread/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2013 04:27:12 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4146 http://escapepod.org/2013/03/21/ep388-trixie-and-the-pandas-of-dread/feed/ 5 0:41:58 By Eugie Foster Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   Trixie and the Pandas of Dread by Eugie Foster Trixie got out of her cherry-red[...] By Eugie Foster Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   Trixie and the Pandas of Dread by Eugie Foster Trixie got out of her cherry-red godmobile and waved away the flitting cherubim waiting to bear her to her sedan chair. She wasn’t in the mood for a reverent chorus of hosannas, and the sedan chair desperately needed re-springing. She felt every jostle and jounce from those damned pandas. A day didn’t pass that she didn’t regret adopting giant pandas as her sacred vahanas. Sure, it seemed like a good idea at the time. They were so cute with their roly-poly bellies and black-masked faces, but they were wholly unsuited to be beasts of conveyance. The excessive undulation of their waddling gaits was enough to make Captain Ahab seasick, and their exclusive diet of bamboo made them perpetually flatulent. The novelty of being hauled along by farting ursines in a stomach-roiling sedan chair had gotten very old very fast. But there wasn’t a lot she could do about it now. It was all about the brand. Pandas were part of her theology. If she adopted new vahanas, she’d likely end up with a splitter faction, possibly even a reformation. Such a pain in the ass. So she’d started walking more—well, floating really, since gods weren’t supposed to tread the earth. Appearances and all. Drifting a hairsbreadth above the pavement, Trixie pulled out her holy tablet and launched the Karmic Retribution app. The first thumbnail belonged to a Mr. Tom Ehler, the owner of the walkway and the two-story colonial house it led to. She unpinched two fingers across the screen to zoom up Mr. Ehler’s details. Yesterday, Mr. Ehler, under the handle GodnessWins, had posted on a public forum a series of inflammatory comments in response to a YouTube video depicting a street fight. His sins were a nearly perfect fit for the specifications she’d told the app to flag, right down to the secondary parameters (Mr. Ehler’s toxic vitriol was also egregiously ungrammatical). But even reading, “yo n***rs, whiteman gave u freedom whiteman take it away” and “f**king street monkey deserved to get hang from a tree like the good old days,” only made Trixie feel tired. Where was the seething indignation? The fiery wrath and burning rage? She knocked on the hardwood door, admiring the architecture as she waited. It was a pretty swank piece of real estate, red brick with whitewashed wooden trim. Definitely upscale. The door opened at her fourth knock. The man glaring at her matched his profile headshot—receding hairline, thickening gut, age spots beginning to speckle his face—but she didn’t need the app to confirm his identity. Her omniscience had kicked in. “What you want, missy? Knocking on decent people’s door this time of night?” Trixie didn’t bother with any theatrical pyrotechnics or a “repent now” spiel. She just punched her fist into Tom Ehler’s chest and yanked out a handful of viscera. He collapsed, spraying blood and choking on his own bile. With disinterest, she watched him flail and shriek before calling down a white-hot levin bolt to finish him off. She sighed. Yeah, it was still satisfying, ridding the world of another dickhead, but something was missing. Trixie had been a god for so long she barely remembered the time when she’d been mortal, just an earnest supplicant imploring the deities to smite sinners in the name of justice and an offended sense of _Why hasn’t this asshole been horribly maimed or engulfed in hellfire yet?_ She did remember her euphoric rapture when the Karma Committee appeared at her door with an oversized certificate of godhood and a bouquet of burning bushes. But she hadn’t felt anything but a plodding sense of duty for a long time. A middle-aged woman and a high-school-aged you[...] Podcasts Eugie Foster yes no http://escapepod.org/2013/03/14/ep387-perspective/ http://escapepod.org/2013/03/14/ep387-perspective/#comments Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:14:38 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4140 http://escapepod.org/2013/03/14/ep387-perspective/feed/ 0 0:20:37 By Jake Kerr Read by Julian Bane Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   PERSPECTIVE By Jake Kerr  The worst part about picking my son up from the police [...] By Jake Kerr Read by Julian Bane Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   PERSPECTIVE By Jake Kerr  The worst part about picking my son up from the police station was the walk to get there. I hadn’t been outside in years, but it was still the same–the drab gray of the smog-stained overcast sky, the decaying concrete, the stench of gasoline, urine, and who knew what else. But thanks to Jeffrey there was a new assault to my senses–black molecular paint permanently defacing an already wretched city.With every step I could see his work–his “tags” as the police called them. They were all different, and there was no rhyme or reason as to what he would vandalize–the sides of buildings, street surfaces, retailer kiosks, even windows. The randomness made catching my son a difficult task for the police, but catch him they did, and now I had to walk these vile streets to bring him home. I paid the bail, followed the directions to processing, and waited for my son. The policewoman there was polite and offered me a seat, but I stood. I wasn’t in the mood to relax, and Jeffrey needed to see how angry I was. So I waited, arms behind my back, staring at the door that led inside. His head hung low as he walked out. He glanced up at me and then lowered his head again. “Hi, Pop,” he mumbled. I didn’t move. He walked over and added in a whisper, “I’m really sorry.” “You lied to me.” I grabbed his right hand and pulled it up between us. “These black stains aren’t paint, Jeffrey. That is your _skin_. It was the price to pay for your job, you said. I’m painting ships with a new kind of paint, you said. You made the stains sound like a worthy sacrifice.” I tossed his hand down. “Pop, please. Let’s talk about this at home.” He looked around the room, shifting from one foot to the other. “Yes, we will discuss this at home.” I turned and walked out the door. He followed. I walked the streets again, Jeffrey shuffling behind me. I focused on the concrete at my feet, unable to bear looking at his work. My hands were clenched tight enough to turn my knuckles white, so I shoved them in my pockets. ### I closed the door and set all the locks. I couldn’t remember the last time I had left the apartment for the drab world outside, and I did not intend to do it again.  Jeffrey followed me in as I sat in my media chair and stood near the door. The distance felt greater than the span of a room. At least he was quiet and respectful. I sighed. “The lies are what bother me the most, Jeffrey.” He stiffened. “I never lied.” I frowned and raised my voice. “You never lied? You said you were working at the shipyards!” “I did work there. I painted ships.” “Did you, now? Or were you defacing them in the middle of the night?” I pounded my hand on the arm of the chair. “I was sad, but I was still proud of you, Jeffrey. All those art lessons. All those awards. That you couldn’t make a living with your art broke me up inside. But to see you finally turn your art into industry, even if it required your hands to be stained that horrible coal black, that was a price I could at least understand. You were doing something meaningful.” As I shook my head, he interjected, “I am doing something meaningful, Pop.” His voice rose. “You just don’t understand!” “Painting permanent black marks across the city is not meaningful. This ‘tagging’ that the police told me about. It’s a mark of pride, they said. A way for gangs and others to know that this is your city.” I closed my eyes and lowered my head. “I thought I had raised you better.” “Pop, I wish I could explain, but I’m not done. When I am, you will understand.” He looked so earnest and so sad. I stared at him, and he lowered his head. Despite his hope, I knew I would never understand. How could I? He was marching off to scar the city again, and he expected me to just accept it. I couldn’t. I stood up. “Not done? You[...] Podcasts Jake Kerr no no http://escapepod.org/2013/03/13/book-review-soon-i-will-be-invincible-by-austin-grossman/ http://escapepod.org/2013/03/13/book-review-soon-i-will-be-invincible-by-austin-grossman/#comments Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:00:01 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4117 Soon I Will Be Invincible for quite some time. I got an electronic copy of it about a year ago and really wanted to read it, but I've been busy. Lots of books to read. Until now.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/03/13/book-review-soon-i-will-be-invincible-by-austin-grossman/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2013/03/11/film-review-oz-the-great-and-powerful/ http://escapepod.org/2013/03/11/film-review-oz-the-great-and-powerful/#comments Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:00:02 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4127 Oz the Great and Powerful was certainly an enjoyable movie, but it's rather like the Wizard himself from the 1939 version -- don't look behind the curtain, because there's a lot that doesn't work the way you expect it to.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/03/11/film-review-oz-the-great-and-powerful/feed/ 3 http://escapepod.org/2013/03/07/ep386-finished/ http://escapepod.org/2013/03/07/ep386-finished/#comments Thu, 07 Mar 2013 05:39:46 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4121 http://escapepod.org/2013/03/07/ep386-finished/feed/ 0 0:46:14 By Robert Reed Read by Joel Nisbet Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   Finished by Robert Reed  What did I plan?  Very little, in truth.  An evening walk a[...] By Robert Reed Read by Joel Nisbet Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   Finished by Robert Reed  What did I plan?  Very little, in truth.  An evening walk accompanied by the scent of flowers and dampened earth, the lingering heat of the day taken as a reassurance, ancient and holy.  I was genuinely happy, as usual.  Like a hundred other contented walkers, I wandered through the linear woods, past lovers’ groves and pocket-sized sanctuaries and ornamental ponds jammed full of golden orfes and platinum lungfish.  When I felt as if I should be tired, I sat on a hard steel bench to rest.  People smiled as they passed, or they didn’t smile.  But I showed everyone a wide grin, and sometimes I offered a pleasant word, and one or two of the strangers paused long enough to begin a brief conversation. One man—a rather old man, and I remember little else—asked, “And how are you today?” Ignoring the implication, I said, “Fine.” I observed, “It’s a very pleasant evening.” “Very pleasant,” he agreed. My bench was near a busy avenue, and sometimes I would study one of the sleek little cars rushing past. “The end of a wonderful day,” he continued. I looked again at his soft face, committing none of it to memory.  But I kept smiling, and with a tone that was nothing but polite, I remarked, “The sun’s setting earlier now.  Isn’t it?” The banal recognition of a season’s progression—that was my only intent.  But the face colored, and then with a stiff, easy anger, the man said, “What does it matter to you?  It’s always the same day, after all.” Hardly.  Yet I said nothing. He eventually grew tired of my silence and wandered off.  With a memory as selective as it is graceful, I tried to forget him.  But since I’m talking about him now, I plainly didn’t succeed.  And looking back on the incident, I have to admit that the stranger perhaps had some little role in what happened next. I planned nothing. But a keen little anger grabbed me, and I rose up from the bench, and like every pedestrian before me, I followed the path to the edge of the avenue.  Later, I was told that I looked like someone lost in deep thoughts, and I suppose I was.  Yet I have no memory of the moment.  According to witnesses, I took a long look up the road before stepping forwards with my right foot.  The traffic AI stabbed my eyes with its brightest beam, shouting, “Go back!”  But I stepped forwards again, without hesitation, plunging directly into the oncoming traffic. A little pink Cheetah slammed on its brakes.  But it was an old car with worn pads—a little detail that couldn’t have found its way into my calculations—and despite the heroic efforts of its AI pilot, the car was still moving at better than eighty kilometers an hour when it shattered my hip and threw my limp body across the hood, my chest and then my astonished face slamming into the windshield’s flexing glass. Again, I tumbled. Then I found myself sprawled in a heap on the hot pavement. For a thousand years, I lay alone.  Then a single face appeared, scared and sorry and pale and beautiful.  Gazing down through the mayhem, she said, “Oh, God.  Oh, shit!” With my battered mouth, I said, “Hello.” Leaking a sloppy laugh, I told her, “No, really, I’ll be fine.” Then I asked, “What’s your name?” “Careless,” she said.  “Stupid,” she said.  And then she said, “Or Bonnie.  Take your pick.” # I picked Bonnie. A beautiful young woman, she had short dark hair arranged in a fetching fish-scale pattern and a sweet face made with bright brown eyes and skin that looked too smooth and clear to be skin.  On most occasions, her smile came easily, but it could be a crooked smile laced with weariness and a gentle sadness.  There was a girlish lightness to her voice, but in difficult circumstances, that voice and the pretty face were capable of surprising strength.  “What should I do?” she asked the crumbled figure at her feet.  “What [...] Podcasts Robert Reed no no http://escapepod.org/2013/03/04/book-review-the-mirage-by-matt-ruff/ http://escapepod.org/2013/03/04/book-review-the-mirage-by-matt-ruff/#comments Mon, 04 Mar 2013 15:00:39 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4111 The Mirage by Matt Ruff begins.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/03/04/book-review-the-mirage-by-matt-ruff/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2013/02/28/ep385-the-very-pulse-of-the-machine/ http://escapepod.org/2013/02/28/ep385-the-very-pulse-of-the-machine/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 03:03:55 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4108 http://escapepod.org/2013/02/28/ep385-the-very-pulse-of-the-machine/feed/ 0 0:53:21 By Michael Swanwick Read by Amy Elk Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Special thanks to user ERH at FreeSound.org who created and/or recorded the sound effect us[...] By Michael Swanwick Read by Amy Elk Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Special thanks to user ERH at FreeSound.org who created and/or recorded the sound effect used in this episode!   “The Very Pulse of the Machine” by Michael Swanwick   Click. The radio came on. “Hell.” Martha kept her eyes forward, concentrated on walking. Jupiter to one shoulder, Daedalus’s plume to the other. Nothing to it. Just trudge, drag, trudge, drag. Piece of cake. “Oh.” She chinned the radio off. Click. “Hell. Oh. Kiv. El. Sen.” “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Martha gave the rope an angry jerk, making the sledge carrying Burton’s body jump and bounce on the sulfur hardpan. “You’re dead, Burton, I’ve checked, there’s a hole in your faceplate big enough to stick a fist through, and I really don’t want to crack up. I’m in kind of a tight spot here and I can’t afford it, okay? So be nice and just shut the f*** up.” “Not. Bur. Ton.” “Do it anyway.” She chinned the radio off again. Jupiter loomed low on the western horizon, big and bright and beautiful and, after two weeks on Io, easy to ignore. To her left, Daedalus was spewing sulfur and sulfur dioxide in a fan two hundred kilometers high. The plume caught the chill light from an unseen sun and her visor rendered it a pale and lovely blue. Most spectacular view in the universe, and she was in no mood to enjoy it. Click. Before the voice could speak again, Martha said, “I am not going crazy, you’re just the voice of my subconscious, I don’t have the time to waste trying to figure out what unresolved psychological conflicts gave rise to all this, and I am not going to listen to anything you have to say.” Silence. The moonrover had flipped over at least five times before crashing sideways against a boulder the size of the Sydney Opera House. Martha Kivelsen, timid groundling that she was, was strapped into her seat so tightly that when the universe stopped tumbling, she’d had a hard time unlatching the restraints. Juliet Burton, tall and athletic, so sure of her own luck and agility that she hadn’t bothered, had been thrown into a strut. The vent-blizzard of sulfur dioxide snow was blinding, though. It was only when Martha had finally crawled out from under its raging whiteness that she was able to look at the suited body she’d dragged free of the wreckage. She immediately turned away. Whatever knob or flange had punched the hole in Burton’s helmet had been equally ruthless with her head. Where a fraction of the vent-blizzard—“lateral plumes” the planetary geologists called them—had been deflected by the boulder, a bank of sulfur dioxide snow had built up. Automatically, without thinking, Martha scooped up double-handfuls and packed them into the helmet. Really, it was a nonsensical thing to do; in a vacuum, the body wasn’t about to rot. On the other hand, it hid that face. Then Martha did some serious thinking. For all the fury of the blizzard, there was no turbulence. Because there was no atmosphere to have turbulence in. The sulfur dioxide gushed out straight from the sudden crack that had opened in the rock, falling to the surface miles away in strict obedience to the laws of ballistics. Most of what struck the boulder they’d crashed against would simply stick to it, and the rest would be bounced down to the ground at its feet. So that—this was how she’d gotten out in the first place—it was possible to crawl under the near-horizontal spray and back to the ruins of the moonrover. If she went slowly, the helmet light and her sense of feel ought to be sufficient for a little judicious salvage. Martha got down on her hands and knees. And as she did, just as quickly as the blizzard had begun—it stopped. She stood, feeling strangely foolish. Still, she couldn’t rely on the blizzard staying quiescent. B[...] Podcasts Michael Swanwick no no http://escapepod.org/2013/02/21/ep384-the-tamarisk-hunter/ http://escapepod.org/2013/02/21/ep384-the-tamarisk-hunter/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 05:01:51 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4103 http://escapepod.org/2013/02/21/ep384-the-tamarisk-hunter/feed/ 0 0:39:20 By Paolo Bacigalupi Read by Caith Donovan Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   The Tamarisk Hunter by Paolo Bacigalupi  “The Tamarisk Hunter” originally ap[...] By Paolo Bacigalupi Read by Caith Donovan Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   The Tamarisk Hunter by Paolo Bacigalupi  “The Tamarisk Hunter” originally appeared in the environmental journal High Country News. It was inspired by the only thing that really matters in the Western U.S. — water. A big tamarisk can suck 73,000 gallons of river water a year. For $2.88 a day, plus water bounty, Lolo rips tamarisk all winter long. Ten years ago, it was a good living. Back then, tamarisk shouldered up against every riverbank in the Colorado River Basin, along with cottonwoods, Russian olives, and elms. Ten years ago, towns like Grand Junction and Moab thought they could still squeeze life from a river. Lolo stands on the edge of a canyon, Maggie the camel his only companion. He stares down into the deeps. It’s an hour’s scramble to the bottom. He ties Maggie to a juniper and starts down, boot-skiing a gully. A few blades of green grass sprout neon around him, piercing juniper-tagged snow clods. In the late winter, there is just a beginning surge of water down in the deeps; the ice is off the river edges. Up high, the mountains still wear their ragged snow mantles. Lolo smears through mud and hits a channel of scree, sliding and scattering rocks. His jugs of tamarisk poison gurgle and slosh on his back. His shovel and rockbar snag on occasional junipers as he skids by. It will be a long hike out. But then, that’s what makes this patch so perfect. It’s a long way down, and the riverbanks are largely hidden. It’s a living; where other people have dried out and blown away, he has remained: a tamarisk hunter, a water tick, a stubborn bit of weed. Everyone else has been blown off the land as surely as dandelion seeds, set free to fly south or east, or most of all north where watersheds sometimes still run deep and where even if there are no more lush ferns or deep cold fish runs, at least there is still water for people. Eventually, Lolo reaches the canyon bottom. Down in the cold shadows, his breath steams. He pulls out a digital camera and starts shooting his proof. The Bureau of Reclamation has gotten uptight about proof. They want different angles on the offending tamarisk, they want each one photographed before and after, the whole process documented, GPS’d, and uploaded directly by the camera. They want it done on-site. And then they still sometimes come out to spot check before they calibrate his headgate for water bounty. But all their due diligence can’t protect them from the likes of Lolo. Lolo has found the secret to eternal life as a tamarisk hunter. Unknown to the Interior Department and its BuRec subsidiary, he has been seeding new patches of tamarisk, encouraging vigorous brushy groves in previously cleared areas. He has hauled and planted healthy root balls up and down the river system in strategically hidden and inaccessible corridors, all in a bid for security against the swarms of other tamarisk hunters that scour these same tributaries. Lolo is crafty. Stands like this one, a quarter-mile long and thick with salt-laden tamarisk, are his insurance policy. Documentation finished, he unstraps a folding saw, along with his rockbar and shovel, and sets his poison jugs on the dead salt bank. He starts cutting, slicing into the roots of the tamarisk, pausing every 30 seconds to spread Garlon 4 on the cuts, poisoning the tamarisk wounds faster than they can heal. But some of the best tamarisk, the most vigorous, he uproots and sets aside, for later use. $2.88 a day, plus water bounty. * * * It takes Maggie’s rolling bleating camel stride a week to make it back to Lolo’s homestead. They follow the river, occasionally climbing above it onto cold mesas or wandering off into the open desert in a bid to avoid the skeleton sprawl of emptied towns. Guardie choppers buzz up and down the river like swarms of angry yellow jackets, hunting fo[...] Podcasts Paolo Bacigalupi no no http://escapepod.org/2013/02/19/book-review-this-book-is-full-of-spiders-seriously-dude-dont-touch-it-by-david-wong/ http://escapepod.org/2013/02/19/book-review-this-book-is-full-of-spiders-seriously-dude-dont-touch-it-by-david-wong/#comments Tue, 19 Feb 2013 15:00:54 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4098 This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It without spoiling David Wong's previous novel, John Dies at the End. So, if you don't want that one spoiled for you, just pick up both books and read them. That's my recommendation.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/02/19/book-review-this-book-is-full-of-spiders-seriously-dude-dont-touch-it-by-david-wong/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2013/02/13/ep383-the-first-book-of-flaccid-swords/ http://escapepod.org/2013/02/13/ep383-the-first-book-of-flaccid-swords/#comments Thu, 14 Feb 2013 04:29:17 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4082 http://escapepod.org/2013/02/13/ep383-the-first-book-of-flaccid-swords/feed/ 1 0:22:02 By Edward Cowan Read by Bruce Busby Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   The First Book of Flaccid Swords by Edward Cowan It was a snake–and Gods, wha[...] By Edward Cowan Read by Bruce Busby Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page   The First Book of Flaccid Swords by Edward Cowan It was a snake–and Gods, what a snake it was. Fifty feet from sweeping tail to flicking tongue, its eyes as cold as deepest space and dim as the farthest star, its fangs dripping poison so vile the stench alone would kill a lesser man. This, then, was the dreaded Doom of Lla Haathra, into whose black maw the unlucky and damned were fed to the Impotent God. Never having counted myself among His faithful, I saw no reason to submit meekly to His wrath. His priests had made one crushing mistake when they lured me onto the trap door: they failed to relieve me of my blade. _Wind,_ they called it, those for whom that name was the last word to leave their lips. I rushed the foul altar, upon which lay my Darinda, black chains coiling about her supple form, her body purest alabaster against the crimson stone marbling her flesh. Tsutu Kalai, highest of the wretched priests, cackled as I approached, throwing the lever that opened the trap. Darinda’s scream followed me down the endless, serpentine flue. Beyond that, darkness. Rolling to my feet, I stood in the shaft of light piercing the abyss from the chamber above, Wind held before me, daring the almost tangible shadow to draw near. Within moments came a rasping omen, as of a great mass dragging itself awake after a slumber of eons. Now the Doom reared before me, thrusting its head into the light. We goaded one another to strike–it with the insolence of the predator that has never known failure, I with a rage that would never be clenched till the serpent’s blood coated my blade from point to pommel. From above echoed the laughter of the priests and the muffled screams of my Darinda. Here there was only silence–the sweet anticipation of the moment before death. Finally I saluted the beast with a nod and spoke: “At least your masters have granted me a worthy adversary. Very well; let us have at it. I will not pretend to the ancient patience of the serpentfolk.” It hissed its reply. At that I lunged. Its mammoth head darted forward quicker than mercury, but primal speed avails not against human cunning. I ducked its strike and gripped my blade for the piercing jab: up under the jaw and through the skull. I sprang up, mighty thews tensing for the killing blow– And found myself holding a wet noodle. BREAK Static shrieks as Jessica tears off her headgear and hurls it to the floor. Test pattern jackhammers my eyes and ears. That’s the thing about couples therapy: when one quits, she drags the other with her. And you can’t do it unless you do it together. Repeat ad nauseam and there–you’ve got a bead on the entire experience. She glares at me from her couch. “You died _again,_ didn’t you?” BREAK Clearing his throat, Dr. Freundlich removes his own headgear with none of his patients’ violent frustration. He regards us across the vast mahogany plane of his desk, steepling his fingertips, tap-tap-tapping them together. “We are not making the progress we had hoped for, hmm?” Jessica and I shift on our couches–the same vivid red as Lla Haathra’s altar–searching for comfort or at least a spot of dignity in what she calls the “birthing position”: feet level with head, ankles parted. This posture is designed for optimum relaxation, says the doctor. I say it’s designed to keep us permanently at bay; from these positions we gaze up at him as children to father. Jessica shushes me when I mutter things like that, but the doctor doesn’t disagree. _It is in fact necessary; in the realm of the neue psychology, patients no longer want friends or confidants. In these times of broken homes, late marriage and early divorce, they desire discipline, orde[...] Podcasts Edward Cowan no no http://escapepod.org/2013/02/12/book-review-the-graveyard-book-by-neil-gaiman/ http://escapepod.org/2013/02/12/book-review-the-graveyard-book-by-neil-gaiman/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:00:03 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4078 The Graveyard Book and leave it at that.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/02/12/book-review-the-graveyard-book-by-neil-gaiman/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2013/02/06/ep382-they-go-bump/ http://escapepod.org/2013/02/06/ep382-they-go-bump/#comments Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:39:22 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4071 http://escapepod.org/2013/02/06/ep382-they-go-bump/feed/ 0 0:51:03 By David Barr Kirtley Read by Alasdair Stuart Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Special thanks to user esperri at FreeSound.org who created and/or recorded the s[...] By David Barr Kirtley Read by Alasdair Stuart Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Special thanks to user esperri at FreeSound.org who created and/or recorded the sound effect used in this episode!   They Go Bump By David Barr Kirtley      Ball placed his feet carefully. Walking on rough terrain was treacherous when you couldn’t see your feet — or your legs, for that matter, or any part of yourself. All he could see was the uneven ground, the shady stones outlined with sharp sunlight, drifting eerily beneath him. His boot caught and twisted, and he pitched forward, falling and smacking his elbows rough against the ground. From somewhere up on the hilltop, Cataldo’s voice laughed. That voice — smooth and measured, with just a hint of sharpness. Ball had never paid much attention to voices before, but now voices were all he had. Cataldo’s shouted, “Was that you, Ball? Again?” Ball groped on the ground for his rifle. He felt it, grasped it, and slung it over his shoulder. He clambered to his feet, and wavered there a few moments, unsteady. Cataldo’s voice again: “How many times is that now? Twelve?” “Eleven.” Ball groaned, stretched, and looked around. “Where are you?” “By the rock.” Ball sighed. The rock. There was nothing but rocks, nothing but rolling expanses of rocks and more rocks, stretching to the horizon in every direction. The orange sky was littered with rocks, too, rocky moons. “Which rock?” “The big, triangular one.” Ball squinted up the hill. “See the tall peak?” Cataldo’s voice prompted. “Follow the gully down. There’s a patch of boulders, and then at the edge of those there’s this big, triangular –” “All right, I see it.” Ball took a deep breath. “I’m coming.” He scrambled over the boulders and picked his way carefully among smaller stones. He tried to picture Cataldo’s face — slick black hair, long, narrow face, oversized nose. Ball hadn’t seen that face all day. Now there was just the voice. “OK, I’m here,” he breathed, finally. The empty spot of nothingness that was Cataldo said, “Where’s Sweezy?” “I don’t know.” Ball shook his head, though he realized Cataldo couldn’t see it anyway. “He hasn’t said anything all day. I’ve tried talking to him.” Cataldo groaned. “Sweezy! Hey, Sweezy! Where are you?” The vast plains of boulders were stony and silent. There was no answer. “He might have fallen behind,” Ball said. “Maybe he got lost, or hurt his ankle.” “He’s out there. Goddamnit, Sweezy! Sound off.” Finally, a plaintive voice, from far down in the rockslide, called out, “I’m here. What?” Sweezy. His voice tended to waver as he spoke. It always seemed tired and prickly, that voice. Ball shouted, “We’re checking to make sure you’re still with us.” “Just go,” Sweezy’s voice said. “I can take care of myself.” Cataldo grunted in disgust, and said to Ball, “Come on. Let’s catch up with the others.” Ball turned wearily, and moved to follow. He walked in the direction he thought Cataldo had gone. Invisible soldiers. Ball chuckled tiredly. Invisible soldiers on an important mission, invisible soldiers with invisible feet. He tripped again, and fell. The week before, Ball had been safe, tucked far underground in the winding, humid, steel — rimmed tunnels of Fort Deep. He had been sitting on a hard bench outside Captain Schemmer’s office. They were giving Ball a mission; he wondered if he was going to die. Cataldo had come and gone already, but Sweezy was still in there. Ball could [...] Podcasts David Barr Kirtley yes no http://escapepod.org/2013/02/04/book-review-ready-player-one-by-ernest-cline/ http://escapepod.org/2013/02/04/book-review-ready-player-one-by-ernest-cline/#comments Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:00:15 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4066 Ready Player One by Ernest Kline is such a book. And it is good -- very good -- except for the places where it can't get out of its own way fast enough.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/02/04/book-review-ready-player-one-by-ernest-cline/feed/ 4 http://escapepod.org/2013/01/31/ep381-elias-smith-and-jones/ http://escapepod.org/2013/01/31/ep381-elias-smith-and-jones/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 05:22:50 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4059 http://escapepod.org/2013/01/31/ep381-elias-smith-and-jones/feed/ 1 0:28:40 By Mark English Read by Dave Robison Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories by this author or narrator, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Special thanks to user Tomlija at FreeSound.org who created and/or recorded the sound ef[...] By Mark English Read by Dave Robison Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories by this author or narrator, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Special thanks to user Tomlija at FreeSound.org who created and/or recorded the sound effect used in this episode! About the author… Mark is an ex-rocket scientist with a doctorate in physics so has an unwitting talent for taking the magic out of twinkling stars, sunsets, colourful flames dancing in a roaring fire, and rainbows. His medium term aims are to introduce other fathers to the world of creative storytelling, and to find his feet with short story writing. This will involve him having to appreciate that what he sees as funny does not always accord with other people’s points of view. Christchurch, New Zealand has been his home for 10 years with all the ups and downs that entails.   Elias Smith and Jones By Mark English Every space in the four thousand seat lecture theatre was taken. Additional folk had snuck in to sit on the dark steps at the back. With everyone whispering discretely, the noise was deafening to the grizzled old-timer who stood leaning on the lecturn at the front—or it would have been except for the myPod player earbuds delivering their tinny frantic bluegrass tunes into his head. He chuckled to himself as he looked up at the wall of people in front of him. Political leaders, military leaders, space systems engineers; all desperate to hear the words of an aged ship’s monkey from the Frontier. All because he and his co-conspirators had blackmailed the solar system. Elias chuckled to himself again. Who would have figured things would have turned out so? He plucked the ear buds out. Instant silence. The university had scored a coup in convincing one of the Sundance gang to tell their tale since any spaceway robbers were generally executed. However the Sundance gang had a thirty year old secret, one that everyone wanted. With the removal of the first earbud old Elias had indicated he was ready to start; all the spectators held their breath. Elias turned his face up to the watchers, felt the bright lights warming his face, and smiled a toothy grin. “Howdy folks, I’m good an’ pleased to be here today, to see so many notables amongst you. Some I have met before.” A five star general shuffled uncomfortably in his seat as if the warm smile made him sweat—which it did. Elias continued in his soft southern-states patois. “We are gathered here today to hear a story, so let’s go back thirty years, back to when I was even more good lookin’. My partners and I had just obtained a large cargo of rare earth metals from an asteroid cargo waggon, and this had been mistak’n for a robbery. I guess after these years I gotta ‘fess up and say that it sure as hell was a robbery!” Elias leaned forward and grinned at the Sheriff-Admiral in the front row like he was about to lay a golden egg—which as history showed he had (in a manner of speaking). The Sheriff-Admiral returned a tight grimace filled with thirty years of difficult restraint. ### Elias Earnbuckle leaned on his broom next to Captain Miriam Smith and Jones-the-gun as they looked through the rear viewing port. The star field was tremendous with Sol out of view. The nearest asteroids shone starkly black and white, with sunlight flooding them edge-on. However it was Mars that held their attention. Or more correctly, it was the glow from the foldspace-prow of the rapidly approaching sheriff’s pursuit boat with Mars as a back-drop, that garnered their attention. Smith leaned her weight onto her left leg and crossed her arms. “That was a quick response.” Elias and Jones grunted in unison. Jones as man-at-arms was second in command and Elias, as general gopher and do-all, was the ship’s rat and the closest thing the gang had ever had to an engineer. Jones unconsciously mimicked his boss, placing his weight on his left leg and crossing his heavily muscled arms over a chest designed to awe folk [...] Podcasts Mark English no no http://escapepod.org/2013/01/24/ep380-punk-voyager/ http://escapepod.org/2013/01/24/ep380-punk-voyager/#comments Fri, 25 Jan 2013 03:59:23 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4053 http://escapepod.org/2013/01/24/ep380-punk-voyager/feed/ 8 0:33:05 By Shaenon Garrity Read by Nathaniel Lee Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories by this author or narrator, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Rated 13+ for rebellious vulgarity Punk Voyager By Shaenon K. Garrity Punk Voyager[...] By Shaenon Garrity Read by Nathaniel Lee Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories by this author or narrator, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Rated 13+ for rebellious vulgarity Punk Voyager By Shaenon K. Garrity Punk Voyager was built by punks.  They made it from beer cans, razors, safety pins, and a surfboard some D-bag had left on the beach. Also plutonium.  Where did they get plutonium?  Around.  f*** you. The punks who built Punk Voyager were Johnny Bonesaw, Johnny Razor, Mexican Johnny D-bag, Red Viscera, and some other guys.  No, asshole, nobody remembers what other guys.  They were f***ing wasted, these punks.  They’d been drinking on the San Diego beach all day and night, talking about making a run to Tijuana and then forgetting and punching each other.  They’d built a fire on the beach, and all night the fire went up and went down while the punks threw beer cans at the seagulls. Forget the s*** I just said, it wasn’t the punks who did it.  They were f***ing punks.  The hell they know about astro-engineering? Truth is that Punk Voyager was the strung-out masterpiece of Mexican Johnny D-bag’s girlfriend, Lacuna, who had a doctorate in structural engineering.  Before she burned out and ran for the coast, Lacuna was named Alice McGuire and built secret nuclear submarines for a government contractor in Ohio.  It sucked.  But that was where she got the skills to construct an unmanned deep-space probe.  Same principle, right?  Keep the radiation in and the water out.  Or the vacuum of space, whatever, it’s all the same s*** to an engineer. f*** that, it wasn’t really Lacuna’s baby.  It wasn’t her idea.  The idea was Red’s. “f***ing space,” he said that fateful night.  He was lying on his back looking up at space, is why he said it. “Hell yeah,” said Johnny Bonesaw. “s*** ain’t nothing but rocks and UFOs.” “Ain’t no such thing as a UFO.” “Like hell there ain’t,” said Red.  “CIA knows all about it.  Them and the astronauts.” Red was always saying that s***, though.  Everything was the CIA and the saucer people with that burnout. “That’s why they sent up that cigar-box spaceship with the porn in it,” said Red.  “They know there’s life up there.” “What spaceship?” said Johnny. “There’s no f***ing spaceship.” “He means the Voyager space probe,” said Lacuna. “Which is real, asshole.” Lacuna was pissing off everyone but Mexican Johnny D-bag with her knowing-s*** routine.  That and eating all the mushrooms and throwing them up in the ocean. “I want wine,” Johnny Razor yelled down the beach.  “Mexican wine. Weren’t we going to Tijuana?” “We already went,” yelled Mexican Johnny D-bag.  “We went without you.  We’re not even here.”  Then he laughed like a pinhead.  He was on some s***. “Keep it down,” snapped Lacuna.  “I’m telling these assholes about the space probe.” “f*** the space probe,” said Johnny Bonesaw. “The Voyager 1 space probe,” said Lacuna, “was launched into space to study the gas giants and then continue out beyond the solar system.” “No s***?” “Told you it was real,” said Red.  “But the thing is, the important thing is the messages it’s got in it.  For the space people.  Tell him about the messages.” Down the beach, Johnny Razor and Mexican Johnny D-bag started punching each other, mostly for something to do. “Okay, yeah.  Voyager carries a record of stuff from Earth for the aliens to find.” “And naked pictures.  They put in naked pictures of people.” “Yeah, whatever, naked pictures.  And photos, different languages, music, stuff like that.” “Music?” said Johnny Bonesaw. “What music?” said Red. “Um.” Lacuna chewed her lip, thinking.  “Beethoven, maybe.  Or Mozart.  You know, classical music.  And tribal stuff, like, from around the world.  And ‘Johnny B. Goode.’” Johnny Bonesaw and Red stared at her.  They stared up at space.  They stared back at her. “Chuck Berry?” [...] Podcasts Shaenon K. Garrity yes no http://escapepod.org/2013/01/22/book-review-john-dies-at-the-end/ http://escapepod.org/2013/01/22/book-review-john-dies-at-the-end/#comments Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:00:42 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4050 John Dies at the End by David Wong is ostensibly about a drug called soy sauce that immensely sharpens a person's perception of reality. But it's about so much more than that as well. So much that it took me four days to write the review.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/01/22/book-review-john-dies-at-the-end/feed/ 4 http://escapepod.org/2013/01/17/ep379-concussion/ http://escapepod.org/2013/01/17/ep379-concussion/#comments Fri, 18 Jan 2013 04:10:49 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4033 http://escapepod.org/2013/01/17/ep379-concussion/feed/ 0 0:23:24 By David Glen Larson Read by Mat Weller Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories by this author or narrator, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Rated 13+ for mild language Special thanks to users costaipsa, iankath, mario1298 and [...] By David Glen Larson Read by Mat Weller Discuss on our forums.  For a list of all Escape Pod stories by this author or narrator, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Rated 13+ for mild language Special thanks to users costaipsa, iankath, mario1298 and DJ Chronos at FreeSound.org who created and/or recorded the sound effects used in this episode! Concussion By David Glen Larson He scrambled from the fire that was snaking through the corridor when another explosion jolted the ship, and just like that he was dead again. A moment later he was someone else, gazing down with another’s eyes at the mangled green body he’d left behind. Never before had Tyler experienced such terror. Sure, he’d been afraid—afraid his knee would give out again, sidelining him for the big game; afraid he’d let down his teammates and make a fool of himself—but he’d never been terrified of being incinerated in an alien system countless light-years from the home world he was forced to flee. Not until now. Staring up at the night sky, the stars were dim under the glare of the stadium lights. Which star was theirs? He caught himself and shook his aching head. It was only a dream, after all. The frog people weren’t real. The doctor shined a penlight into each pupil. “Any headache, nausea, or dizziness?” “What do you think? I was just hit by a freight train.” Good old Number 32—the biggest, meanest linebacker in the NFL. “You may have a concussion.” Coach Landis spit tobacco juice on the grass only inches from Tyler’s head. “We’re down 22-27 in the fourth quarter with under a minute to go. Montoya’s out, Casper’s out, and now you’re saying I’m out my third string too? Uh-uh, Doc. I need Harden in the game.” “If he takes another hit—” “A few aches and pains go with the territory,” said the coach. “Forget aches and pains. I’m talking stroke or death. Those go with the territory?” “Ordinarily no, but this is the Super Bowl and I’m out of quarterbacks.” “I can play, Coach.” Tyler rolled onto his knees and wobbled to his feet with a groan. Lights flashed and popped behind his eyes, some internal wiring knocked loose, but he didn’t let on. “I’m fine.” Tyler teetered backward, but the coach steadied him, pretending to pat him on the back. “That a boy. See, Doc? It was just a tap.” “All right, but I’ll need to check his cognitive function after every play.” “Whatever you say,” said the coach. “I’m going to ask you to remember a list of five words. If you can’t repeat them back to me, you’re a NO-GO.” “Apple, wrench, sombrero, parrot, porcupine,” Tyler said with confidence. “But I didn’t give you the words yet.” “Sure you did. Last season against the Colts. It was the only time I played. Number 24 clocked me from behind on our 15.” “Well I’m glad to see your long-term memory isn’t impaired, but it’s your short-term memory that concerns me.” “Fine, but make it quick. I have a qweetah to win.” “Beg your pardon?” “I said, make it quick. I have a game to win.” # The clock was frozen with 54 seconds to go, a lifetime on the field. “This is it, Fellas. Whole country’s watching us. Hell, the whole world. Presidents, kings, grandmothers, your own mothers and kids, and God. Every one of ‘em watching to see if we have what it takes to dig deep and pull out a victory. Let’s not disappoint them.” They broke with a clap and toed the line of scrimmage, growling, snorting like racehorses waiting to spring from the gate. But the other side showed blitz. Even if there had been time for the coach to call a new play, they’d been having trouble with the headsets. The broadcast booth had complained about it all night. Something about atmospheric distortion. That left Tyler with only one option. He had to call an audible. But running through the plays in his head was like slogging through quicksand. He still heard the screams, the frog-peoples’ cries for help. Jagged lightning stabbed into his brain, and he clamped his eyes shut, trying to push them all away. He needed a play. And then he [...] Podcasts David Glen Larson no no http://escapepod.org/2013/01/14/fan-film-review-sonic/ http://escapepod.org/2013/01/14/fan-film-review-sonic/#comments Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:00:43 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4028 Mega Man fan film, is back with another venture into classic gaming. This time he turns his attention to a very fast, very blue, very spiky dude with his short film Sonic.]]> http://escapepod.org/2013/01/14/fan-film-review-sonic/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2013/01/10/ep378-scout/ http://escapepod.org/2013/01/10/ep378-scout/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 04:58:18 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4022 http://escapepod.org/2013/01/10/ep378-scout/feed/ 0 0:50:46 By Bud Sparhawk Read by Corson Bremer Discuss on our forums.  All stories by Bud Sparhawk   Scout By Bud Sparhawk Captain Sandels came in during prep.  “Falcon,” he said, but softly, as if he didn’t want to disturb the techs w[...] By Bud Sparhawk Read by Corson Bremer Discuss on our forums.  All stories by Bud Sparhawk   Scout By Bud Sparhawk Captain Sandels came in during prep.  “Falcon,” he said, but softly, as if he didn’t want to disturb the techs working on squeezing me into the bomb casing.  I twittered our channel and winked: Kind of busy right now. Something come up? “No,” the captain responded, again so softly that I knew he definitely didn’t want the techs to overhear.  The only reason I could hear him was that my acoustic enhancements were so sensitive that I could hear a mouse fart from a klick away.  “I just wanted to wish you luck.” For making it back? I answered.  Not likely. “That’s brutal,” he replied and I heard his pain. “I thought that, after all we. . .’ I stopped him there.  I’m not Falcon; just a revised edition. “So it’s just goodbye, then?” Sure.  I closed the channel before he could say anything else.  What I don’t need now is some damn puzzling reference to a past that no longer concerned me. Better not to dwell on the past.  Given humanity’s precarious state, sentiment was dangerous.  Besides, I had to concentrate on my scouting mission. We had to learn more about the aliens on the planet below. I shut everything but the maintenance channel as they oozing the cushioning gel around me.  Its plasticity enfolds me in a warm, soft embrace that creeps into every crack and crevice, sealing me off from sight and sound and every sense save an assurance of my own humanity.  My form might be much reduced, to be sure, but nevertheless I retain my inherent humanity. “We’re closing the lid,” the tech reports over the maintenance channel. It’s time for sleep.  Landing will wake me up.   # The idea behind the drop was dramatic and simple.  Three attack cruisers would carpet bomb the area where the aliens landed.  The drops consisted of ten burrowers, thirty sweepers, and twenty HE bombs from each ship, all distributed to randomly bracket the target. The third, eleventh, and nineteenth bomb of each pod were slow-fuse HE duds, except for the one that contained me. I woke as soon as the bomb slammed into the ground on an oblique angle.  I was not quite fully awake by the second bounce but fully aware as my container rolled down some piece of bumpy geography, stopped, and rocked for a moment before finding a stable orientation.  I pushed up to pop the hatch and got out, dripping gel over the dented casing of the faux bomb. I quickly scanned the area around me.  Apparently I’d tumbled down a steep cliff to come to rest at the bottom among assorted rocks that had fallen from the eroding slope.  I could feel the shock of exploding ordinance through my feet as the delay fuses fired.  That told me that I’d landed near the center of the distribution. My empty casing still packed a punch –enough to fool a casual inspection into thinking it was just another delayed bomb– and the clock was running.  I moved away to put as much distance as I could between me and the bomb before it –WHAM– exploded and threw me tumbling ass over teacup.  Shit!  The techs had set the fuse’s timer too short.  Well, nothing I could do about that now, but I check my systems to be certain and find that no harm was done.  I am hyper-alert to my surroundings and take note of insect sounds, random wind action on the sparse vegetation, small animal movements, and the trembling ground beneath my feet to establish a baseline of whatever passed for “normal” on this planet.  So far, everything agreed with the data the former colonists had provided. Every ten meters I stop to feel the ground for approaching footfalls.  I am continually sniffing the air for any unusual smell, listening for any sound, and watching for anything that might be artificial. At the same time I was “lis[...] Podcasts Bud Sparhawk no no http://escapepod.org/2013/01/03/ep377-real-artists/ http://escapepod.org/2013/01/03/ep377-real-artists/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2013 21:34:03 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=4012 http://escapepod.org/2013/01/03/ep377-real-artists/feed/ 4 0:18:56 By Ken Liu Read by Ann Leckie Discuss on our forums.  All stories by Ken Liu All stories read by Ann Leckie Rated 10 and up Real Artists By Ken Liu “You’ve done well,” Creative Director Len Palladon said, looking over Sophia’s résumé. Sophia squinte[...] By Ken Liu Read by Ann Leckie Discuss on our forums.  All stories by Ken Liu All stories read by Ann Leckie Rated 10 and up Real Artists By Ken Liu “You’ve done well,” Creative Director Len Palladon said, looking over Sophia’s résumé. Sophia squinted in the golden California sun that fell on her through the huge windows of the conference room. She wanted to pinch herself to be sure she wasn’t dreaming. She was here, really here, on the hallowed campus of Semaphore Pictures, in an interview with the legendary Palladon. She licked her dry lips. “I’ve always wanted to make movies.” She choked back _for Semaphore_. She didn’t want to seem too desperate. Palladon was in his thirties, dressed in a pair of comfortable shorts and a plain gray t-shirt whose front was covered with the drawing of a man swinging a large hammer over a railroad spike. A pioneer in computer-assisted movie making, he had been instrumental in writing the company’s earliest software and was the director of _The Mesozoic_, Semaphore’s first film. He nodded and went on, “You won the Zoetrope screenwriting competition, earned excellent grades in both technology and liberal arts, and got great recommendations from your film studies professors. It couldn’t have been easy.” To Sophia, he seemed a bit pale and tired, as though he had been spending all his time indoors, not out in the golden California sun. She imagined that Palladon and his animators must have been working overtime to meet a deadline: probably to finish the new film scheduled to be released this summer. “I believe in working hard,” Sophia said. What she really wanted was to tell him that she knew what it meant to stay up all night in front of the editing workstation and wait for the rendering to complete, all for the chance to catch the first glimpse of a vision coming to life on the screen. She was ready. Palladon took off his reading glasses, smiled at Sophia, and took out a tablet from behind him. He touched its screen and slid it across the table to Sophia. A video was playing on it. “There was also this fan film, which you didn’t put on your résumé. You made it out of footage cut and spliced from our movies, and it went viral. Several million views in two weeks, right? You gave our lawyers quite a headache.” Sophia’s heart sank. She had always suspected that this might become a problem. But when the invitation to interview at Semaphore came in her email, she had whooped and hollered, and dared to believe that somehow the executives at Semaphore had missed that little film. # Sophia remembered going to _The Mesozoic_. She was seven. The lights dimmed, her parents stopped talking, the first few bars of Semaphore’s signature tune began to play, and she became still. Over the next two hours, as she sat there in the dark theater, mesmerized by the adventure of the digital characters on that screen, she fell in love. She didn’t know it then, but she would never love a person as much as she loved the company that made her cry and laugh, the company that made _The Mesozoic_. A Semaphore movie meant something: no, not merely technological prowess in digital animation and computer graphics that were better than life. Sure, these accomplishments were impressive, but it was Semaphore’s consistent ability to tell a great _story_, to make movies with _heart_, to entertain and move the six-year old along with the sixteen-year old and the sixty-year old, that truly made it an icon, a place worthy of being loved. Sophia saw each of Semaphore’s films hundreds of times. She bought them multiple times, in successive digital formats: discs, compressed downloads, lossless codecs, enhanced and re-enhanced and super-enhanced. She knew each scene down to the second, could recite every line of dialogue from memory. She didn’t even need the movies themselves any more; she could play them in her head. She took film studies classes and began to make her own shorts, and she yearned to make them _feel_ as great as the Sem[...] Podcasts Ken Liu no no http://escapepod.org/2012/12/28/film-review-timer/ http://escapepod.org/2012/12/28/film-review-timer/#comments Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:00:00 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=4006 TiMER. I finally got around to watching it. It's... well, it's a romantic comedy with just a hint of sci-fi.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/12/28/film-review-timer/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/12/27/ep376-shutdown/ http://escapepod.org/2012/12/27/ep376-shutdown/#comments Fri, 28 Dec 2012 04:10:57 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=4009 http://escapepod.org/2012/12/27/ep376-shutdown/feed/ 0 0:46:09 By Corry L. Lee Read by MK Hobson Discuss on our forums. First appeared in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Vol. 28 (winner) (2011) All stories by MK Hobson All stories read by Corry L. Lee Rated 17 and up for language Shutdown By Cor[...] By Corry L. Lee Read by MK Hobson Discuss on our forums. First appeared in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Vol. 28 (winner) (2011) All stories by MK Hobson All stories read by Corry L. Lee Rated 17 and up for language Shutdown By Corry L. Lee The alarm blared over the forest’s metallic rustling, and my HUD’s red warning light glazed the view through my faceplate. Ten seconds until the defense scan hit my position. Ten seconds until any motion, any electrical signature would whip vines down from the iron-cored trees, wrapping me as surely as steel cables, pinning me while cutter-bugs took me apart. My muscles clenched, and I froze. The training sims hadn’t prepared me for the terror twisting my gut, for the way my heart seemed to dance a _pas-de-bourrée_, its ballerina toes rapping against my ribs. I didn’t have time to panic. I chinned my skinsuit’s kill switch and dropped to the forest floor. In the silence after the klaxon died, my breather hissed out one final gasp of oxygen. The red glow faded from my faceplate and the forest closed in, dark without the HUD’s gain and unnaturally silent without the suit’s audio pickups. Weak sunlight filtered through the thick canopy, yellowed by sulfur gas, enough to make out shapes but not details. In sims, they’d cut our visual enhancement, but they must have extrapolated badly because the shadows had never been this deep, the shafts of sunlight never so diseased. I crouched on a patch of dirt, crumpling fallen leaves but avoiding the forest’s ragged undergrowth. I folded my legs beneath me, splaying my arms for balance. My hands slipped on the metal-rich berries that covered the ground as if someone had derailed a freight train of ball bearings. I swept some impatiently aside and rested my helmeted forehead on the dirt. How much time had passed? Eight seconds? No time to worry. Gritting my teeth, I stopped my heart. A vise seemed to close about my chest. Sweat beaded on my brow as I dragged in one last breath, my body panicking, automatic reflexes screaming at me to fight, to struggle, to escape. I fought them as Sergeant Miller and Captain Johnston trained me, fought them and stopped breathing. My vision narrowed. My lips tingled and went numb. _Twelve minutes_, I repeated to myself as the forest grew dark and disappeared. _You’ll come back._ The words echoed in Sergeant Miller’s clipped bark. Just a few minutes ago he’d given me the thumbs-up after checking my suit’s seals. He’d rapped his knuckles against my helmet for luck, and I’d stridden toward this forested hell. # “So, Amaechi,” Private Yaradua said as I topped my glass off from her flask. “If we were back on Hope’s Landing, what would you do with your last night?” “I’d go whoring,” Obasanjo said. “Nice place in Makurdi where–” “Wouldn’t call it _nice_,” Tamunosaki said. “You mean cheap.” “No, not that place we went with Akpu-nku. There’s one uptown.” Obasanjo shrugged. “Might as well spend all my money, right?” He said it like a joke, but nobody laughed. Yaradua knocked her glass back, and Balogun focused on twirling her knife. We headed planetside at 0800 tomorrow, and MilComm gave slim odds that we’d make it back. The silence stretched, Obasanjo looking expectantly around for someone to agree with him. Yaradua clanged her empty glass down on the table. “I didn’t fucking ask you, Obasanjo. I asked Amaechi.” “She’d probably go to the ballet,” he said with a snort. The corners of my glass dug into my palms; I wondered if I could squeeze it hard enough for it to shatter. The two missing fingers on my left hand itched. I twitched the stub of my middle finger, and contemplated slamming my glass into Obasanjo’s forehead. If it weren’t for those [...] Podcasts Corry L. Lee no no http://escapepod.org/2012/12/20/ep375-marley-and-cratchit/ http://escapepod.org/2012/12/20/ep375-marley-and-cratchit/#comments Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:21:41 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=4002 http://escapepod.org/2012/12/20/ep375-marley-and-cratchit/feed/ 0 0:40:37 By David Steffen Read by Emma Newman Discuss on our forums. An Escape Pod original! All stories by David Steffen All stories read by Emma Newman Rated 13 and up Marley and Cratchit by David Steffen STAVE 1: THE MARVELOUS MACHINE In those days Jacob[...] By David Steffen Read by Emma Newman Discuss on our forums. An Escape Pod original! All stories by David Steffen All stories read by Emma Newman Rated 13 and up Marley and Cratchit by David Steffen STAVE 1: THE MARVELOUS MACHINE In those days Jacob Marley was full of life and vigor. His smile shone so that anyone who saw him soon smiled widely in return. A moment in his presence would make one’s worst burdens seem lighter. His optimism and generosity brought out the best in others, catching easily as a torch in dry straw. Those were happy, hopeful times. Ebenezer Scrooge, the pinch-faced and greedy miser, would not weigh on his mind until many years later. In those later years the two men’s appearances matched as twins, and their customers would often confuse one for the other. But in every other manner they were as different as two men could be. I will speak further of Scrooge, but not yet, for this is not his tale. In these days long gone, Jacob Marley was a portly man, neatly dressed and neatly groomed, with hair black as pitch and never a whisker on his face. Marley entered the shop on that momentous day in the manner with which he was accustomed, swinging the door wide and exclaiming “Hallo!” to his business partner in a sonorous voice that any Shakespearian actor would envy. His jowls swung with the force of his entry, and wobbled like a custard for quite some time after. His clothes were not of the finest material, but were fine enough for a man of his young age, a sign of the moderate inheritance left him by his father the year prior. The front office held two desks, one tidy and one covered with heaps of paper and mechanisms. Behind the cluttered desk Bob Cratchit looked up with a quiet smile. Where Marley was expansive and memorable, Cratchit was small and quiet and utterly forgettable. He was a pleasant man, so pleasant that I have only ever known one man to ever speak crossly of him: Scrooge, that nasty old miser who spoke crossly of everyone, regardless of cause. Look! He has intruded again upon our story where he is not wanted. I will speak of him no more until his presence enters upon the story. Although Cratchit was a pleasant man, and earnest, he was easily forgotten, apt to leave no lasting impression on the memory. In fact, even I can no longer bring his features clearly to my mind. All I can say of his appearance is that he was exceedingly ordinary in every respect, and he was of an age with his partner, both old enough to have earned their own reputation, but young enough to hold wild and optimistic musings of their future. Cratchit’s forgettable appearance suited him well enough, because people made him unaccountably nervous, and he found even idle conversation to be terribly taxing. If no one remembered him, then no one would seek him out and he would be left to his alchemy. In those days he did little else, his efforts supported by Marley’s coffers in the hopes of finding something to build a business on. “I’ve finished it,” Cratchit. “I’ve finished my great work, the one which will make us our fortune.” “Oh! Why didn’t you say so!” Marley asked, with a slap to Cratchit’s shoulder. “To your feet, Bob. Jump with joy, shout from the rooftops.” “I am quite excited,” Cratchit admitted, still smiling his quiet little smile. “Would you like to see it work?” “Of course, of course.” Cratchit led the way to the workroom in the back where Marley hadn’t ventured for months, not wanting to disturb the alchemical processes. The workroom was but a larger manifestation of the cluttered desk at the front, packed from wall to wall with papers and metalwork, beakers and boilers. Cratchit’s newest and greatest work stood in the center of the room, looking like a shrine within its circle of clear space. It was an upright wooden hoop a pace in diameter, with strang[...] Podcasts David Steffen no no http://escapepod.org/2012/12/19/book-review-serpents-storm-by-amber-benson/ http://escapepod.org/2012/12/19/book-review-serpents-storm-by-amber-benson/#comments Wed, 19 Dec 2012 15:00:52 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3994 Serpent's Storm by Amber Benson: at first I thought she'd turned into Laurell K. Hamilton. Then I thought she was writing a madcap roller-coaster adventure. Then I got completely lost. The ending was good, but the journey didn't work for me.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/12/19/book-review-serpents-storm-by-amber-benson/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/12/18/announcing-the-new-editor-of-escape-pod/ http://escapepod.org/2012/12/18/announcing-the-new-editor-of-escape-pod/#comments Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:34:38 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3997 http://escapepod.org/2012/12/18/announcing-the-new-editor-of-escape-pod/feed/ 11 http://escapepod.org/2012/12/13/ep374-oubliett/ http://escapepod.org/2012/12/13/ep374-oubliett/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 21:52:00 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3990 http://escapepod.org/2012/12/13/ep374-oubliett/feed/ 0 0:17:54 By J. Kelley Anderson Read by David Moore Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Ray Gun Revival (2012) All stories by J. Kelley Anderson All stories read by David Moore Rated 13 and up Oubliette By J. Kelley Anderson The half-buried thing h[...] By J. Kelley Anderson Read by David Moore Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Ray Gun Revival (2012) All stories by J. Kelley Anderson All stories read by David Moore Rated 13 and up Oubliette By J. Kelley Anderson The half-buried thing hadn’t moved once, but I didn’t have to include that in the story when I got back to base. The great, gray mass of it rose at least ten feet out of the red earth, tucked close to the sheer wall of the plateau. That part I’d tell. If there had been anything like a head, I would have shot it, but it just looked like a giant, lumpy football, oozing a viscous yellowy liquid here and there. The non-military personnel tried to remember their instructions, looking away from the muzzle of my rifle as the metallic squeal of the charging weapon warned of an impending discharge. The moment the noise ended, a pencil-thin beam of white light leapt from the gun and bored another sizzling hole into the motionless mound of wrinkled gray flesh. There was a sound like someone cooking giant bacon in a giant skillet. I just can’t describe how much I love photon rifles. They’re big, noisy, ugly, unapologetic things that leave your hands shaking and the entire area smelling like ozone. They were shit on stealth missions but, then, so am I—that’s just one of the many reasons I got this gig as the Army equivalent of a galactic janitor. Sergeant Wroblewski and I made eye contact as I turned to address the science team, and I noted the silent “high-five” look on his face. “Well?” I said smoothly to Science Officer Neely. “Doesn’t get much deader than that.” I tried to look nonchalant. Neely raised some sort of high-tech monocular to his eye and peered at the creature. “No, I’m afraid not,” he said, shaking his head. “What? That’s the fourth direct hit. What the hell is that goo bubbling out of it, if it isn’t dead?” “Well, I’m not certain captain, but that ‘goo’ was bubbling out of it when we arrived.” “Christ, the thing has four holes through it that weren’t there when we got here. I may not know much, but I know dead. And that thing is dead.” “Captain, we all have the same orders. We can’t establish a construction base, let alone a settlement, until we clear the indigenous flora and fauna from this sector. It is fortuitous that, on this occasion, there is only a single life form here. But, I’m telling you, that organism’s life signs have not changed since we arrived.” “Look,” I said slowly, “I put holes in things. That’s how we kill things. It’s a tried and true method that has worked for humanity many, many times. What do you suggest I do next?” “That isn’t really my area of expertise, but explosives come to mind.” “I would agree with you, if I had brought any.” (Truthfully, I didn’t have the clearance to handle explosives.) “I was told ‘one, big sedentary critter.’ Didn’t think I needed to bring detonators.” “Well, then might I suggest. . .” Neely’s lips kept moving, but it suddenly seemed like the sounds just plain weren’t reaching my ears. There was a strange subtle pressure building behind my eyes, and a low rumbling steadily becoming louder. Neely’s mouth just kept flapping and I could tell that neither he, nor the rest of the group, felt anything out of the ordinary. Then, without warning, everything just stopped. I don’t mean the group stood still, I mean stopped—like I had just found myself in the middle of a photograph. The pressure in my head slacked to a general, sustained discomfort. It sorta felt like being in deep water, except that I could breathe and move just fine. I glanced up at a swirling cloud of whitish vapor that was now simply frozen motionless against the pinkish backdrop of the sky. “Uh. . .” I said thoughtfully to nobody in particular. “That’s probably not good.” “What, you mean you can’t do that?” Asked a voice behind me. I whirled around, bracing the stock of my rifle against my shoulder as I moved. “Seriously? That’s your plan? You’re really gonna shoot me with that thing[...] Podcasts J. Kelley Anderson no no http://escapepod.org/2012/12/12/book-review-cats-claw-by-amber-benson/ http://escapepod.org/2012/12/12/book-review-cats-claw-by-amber-benson/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:00:34 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3985 Death's Daughter universe in 2010 with Cat's Claw, a sequel that pretty much depends upon the main character making bad decisions for the story to succeed. Make no mistake, I still had fun reading the book, but there was an awful lot of narrative convenience in it.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/12/12/book-review-cats-claw-by-amber-benson/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/12/08/ep373-chandras-game/ http://escapepod.org/2012/12/08/ep373-chandras-game/#comments Sat, 08 Dec 2012 06:58:35 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3979 http://escapepod.org/2012/12/08/ep373-chandras-game/feed/ 0 0:37:20 By Samantha Henderson Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Lone Star Stories (2009) All stories by Samantha Henderson All stories read by Mur Lafferty Rated 13 and up Chandra’s Game by Samantha Henderson Joey Str[...] By Samantha Henderson Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Lone Star Stories (2009) All stories by Samantha Henderson All stories read by Mur Lafferty Rated 13 and up Chandra’s Game by Samantha Henderson Joey Straphos, Papa Joe, told me once that Chandra’s Game is a bitch of a city, fickle but generous when the mood strikes her.  But Papa Joe was a romantic. Chandra’s Game roots in the side of a barren asteroid moon like a tick.  Over the years we’ve burrowed deeper into rock and ice until poor Chandra is mostly Game.  We loop the twin wormholes, Gehenna and Tartarus, roundabout in a figure eight, ready to catch the freighters as they escape from hell’s dark maw.  We strip them of goods and drink their heat, load them up and send them into another hell.  It’s a profitable game, Chandra’s. My mother smuggled me into Chandra’s Game without patronage and compounded her error by dying without permission; I was Terra-born unless she was lying, which was likely enough.  I joined the other unregistereds down in the Warrens: ferals that lived off the Mayor’s Dole and by odd-jobs when that wasn’t enough.  Papa Joe fed us, and sometimes the tunnels were glorious with the smell of meat, and if you were smart or hungry enough you didn’t ask from what.  Where there’s humanity there are rats, and Joey wasn’t a rich man, not then.  But food is food, and he’d bunk you if he could, and if all he asked in return for the latest Warren scuttlebutt or a few sticks of ephedrine off a freighter’s load, what of it?  Saints are few and far between in Chandra’s Game. Papa Joe always liked me: I stayed a bit feral, tomboy—nothing like his daughters.  He had them late in life, when he got rich, and they were elegant, lux level creatures.  Not like Joey, not like Mrs. Joe.  She was quiet and kind, and if she knew a nano of Joey’s business she never let on.  When Gregor Straphos died I died a little.  But Mrs. Joe died all the way. I’d been legit for years.  I still snooped, but in an upright way.  Helped the Company Men find bits of their loads that went astray between Gehenna and Tartarus, passed on Warren talk to the prefects when some smart kid got out of hand, pointed the way to speedwell labs that weren’t circumspect about what went into their product.  Nothing that would disturb the delicate balance between the business of the Family, the Companies and the Mayor. Joey had his own snoops, payroll loyal.  So when a grubby-faced feral knocked up my crib, saying Joey wanted a word, I had to wonder why.  I hadn’t seen him in years.  Not since Gregor was cremated. Papa Joe never lived on the lux levels: too far away from his daily business.  His crib was in that middle span twixt Warren and lux, where the heavy, humid smell of humans going about their dailies pervaded.  Inset into the dull rough rock of Chandra’s tunnels, his entry was like mine but for the over-muscled toughs that bracketed it, giving me a once-over glare but no guff.  Past his door it was different. Good living thickened him.  He gripped me by the shoulders, hard, and shook me, his heavy gold rings bruising my shoulders. “It’s been a long time, Sarabet,” he rumbled.  “Too long.” He pushed me into an overstuffed sofa, and I looked at the crib with a professional eye.  The room was luxurious, almost frivolous.  The walls had been polished smooth, and intricate patterns were visible in the surface that looked so dull in the tunnels.  The furniture, Terran-antique, could’ve kept me living high for years.  A thick Thantopian carpet covered the floor, cut from the surface of a place Joey and me would never see—it was the probably the most precious thing in the place, beautifully marbled in blue and green.  The warmth of it struck up through my thin corridor slippers. There were ikons of people I didn’t recognize on tabletops and inset into the smooth walls.  Some I did: there was Mrs. Joe, looking mild and maybe sl[...] Podcasts Escape Pod no no http://escapepod.org/2012/11/29/ep372-flash-collection/ http://escapepod.org/2012/11/29/ep372-flash-collection/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2012 02:26:01 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3967 http://escapepod.org/2012/11/29/ep372-flash-collection/feed/ 0 0:20:56 Awkward– Miscommunication between editor, host, and producer caused us to, within the audio, proclaim these stories as the winners of the flash contest, and they’re not, they’re stories we’ve purchased through the year. We wi[...] Awkward– Miscommunication between editor, host, and producer caused us to, within the audio, proclaim these stories as the winners of the flash contest, and they’re not, they’re stories we’ve purchased through the year. We will be showcasing the flash contest winners on their own in future episodes. I apologize for the embarrassing mistake. Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums. All stories read by Mur Lafferty Rated 10 and up Health Tips for Traveler by David W. Goldman Since the short time from mutual greetings of worlds, many Earther wish to visit the lovely world of the Pooquar peoples. This explainer before so will bring yourselves a voyage most lovely. Within The Transit The travel via cross-continuum portal will be novel to many Earther. Hydration is a paramount for not having the small problems of liver, marrow, blood tubes, and self memory. Also good before your trip is to make fat, especially under the skin. The scrawny traveler should begin preparation many week prior. Portal going is sudden and then done. But many Earther say after that they think the journey is very very very long and never to stop. Thus is Earther brains supposed bad attuned to one or more of the interim journey continuum. For thus, non-conscious makes for most lovely travel. Means of non-conscious both pharmacological and percussive are on offer by helpful Pooquar portal agents. As the Early Days Because subtle differences in physics regulations from what most Earther are parochially accustomed, the traveler is suggested to acclimate in the “horizontal” position until local niceties of unreliant gravity, time-keeping, and atmospheric presence become appreciated. Acclimation such will entertain you for no more than two — or for some traveler, twenty or thirty — “days.” While thus occupied with your appreciation of localness, helpful Pooquar hostelry staffpersons will provide you with lovely hydration and fat-making nutritionals. For your best healths, stint not on your consumption. Touring the Out-Vicinity While you delight yourselves in the appreciation of very-known scenics as the Flowing Up Falls of Nagbaf, the Lesser Half Dark Big Hole, the Plain of Many Breath Sucks, and other such lovely vicissitudes, some attention to health and safeness are ordered. Firstmost, if urgent advised by helpful Pooquar tour leader, immediately disobey not! Your very life endurance may happen. This is especially as pertains to stepping away from lovely trails, consuming unadvised nutritionals, perusing explainers offered by exiled dissident non-persons, or providing unsolicited refreshment to local fauna/flora/other life-beings. Next, maintenance your lovely all-enwrapping tourist jumpsuit and coverall always. The presentation of the skin, even a small only piece of the skin, is discouraged for health. This from the fad of local life-beings to reproduce by injecting seed-forms into passing faunas, later to germinate and partake of the subcutaneous lipids in achieving bigness. Thus is best always your jumpsuit and coverall with integrity. (Small note: In the event of any rash of discolor or tendrils from the skin please notify immediately your helpful Pooquar tour leader for the swift extirpation.) In finality, avoid districts of elevated temperature and humidity. In these grow the grubs of local life-beings, who may exhibit unsolicited hunger of lovely Earther visitor. After leaving the out-vicinities, you should place the above-spoken biologic factual concerns far from your self memories. Of the Urban Jollity In welcome for subsequent your joyful tours of the out-vicinities, the Pooquar peoples of the citified regions will ply you unsparingly with lovely bring-home curios and appliances and also nutritionals without betterment for taste and skin-fat-making. Enjoy all these with loveliness! In the cities is no great harm for concern of health. But be full of alert to avoiding speech from irks[...] Flash, Podcasts Escape Pod no no http://escapepod.org/2012/11/23/ep371-a-querulous-flute-of-bone/ http://escapepod.org/2012/11/23/ep371-a-querulous-flute-of-bone/#comments Sat, 24 Nov 2012 04:31:07 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3953 http://escapepod.org/2012/11/23/ep371-a-querulous-flute-of-bone/feed/ 0 0:36:03 By Cat Rambo Read by Elizabeth Musselman Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in TALES FROM THE FATHOMLESS ABYSS All stories by Cat Rambo All stories read by Elizabeth Musselman Rated 13 and up A Querulous Flute of Bone by Cat Rambo Wherever,[...] By Cat Rambo Read by Elizabeth Musselman Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in TALES FROM THE FATHOMLESS ABYSS All stories by Cat Rambo All stories read by Elizabeth Musselman Rated 13 and up A Querulous Flute of Bone by Cat Rambo Wherever, whenever wealth accumulates enough to create the idle, one finds those who collect things. Such collections vary. Some catalog every cast off bit of flesh or chitin they shed. Others look outside themselves for art, or titillation, or an oblivion in which they can forget everyday life. Collections may consist of the most mundane objects: string, or chewed up paper, or broken teacups, for example. Or they can take on outré forms: dioramas made of nihlex bone (considered contraband in certain areas), or squares of cloth exposed to the Smog, prized for the oracular patterns of dirt left deposited on the fabric, or the tiny aluminum snowflakes said to have fallen into the world during an Opening over a century ago. Aaben was such a collector. S/he was one of the geniod, whose gender varies according to mood, location, and other private considerations, and who are known, in the face of great trauma, to forget who they are and become entirely different personalities, their old selves never to be resumed or spoken of. Some races adulate them for this, while others mock them. Such excesses of reaction have driven the geniod to keep to themselves, not by law, but preference. Aaben was an oddity in its own preferences, for it was willing to travel, to go farther than most of its race, driven by the desire to augment its collection, choosing to focus only on its quest. The items it sought, ranging up and down the Tube in expeditions funded by two sets of indulgent grandparents and a much less indulgent set of parents, were things that could be considered metaphors for the world and the state of those in it. In this pursuit, it followed the strictures of the philosopher-king Nackle, who described the emotions that such objects evoked in the beholder in one five hundred page monograph, and the intellectual effect of such exposure in a second, even longer work, followed by a six volume set of explanatory footnotes and addendums. Aaben had studied at the knee of an ancient human who had himself been instructed by an uncle who had read thoroughly in the works of Nackle. The teaching had impressed it with a gravity and depth of the sort that scores the soul and directs all its movements in later years. Its search was a tribute to Nackle’s ideas, for it looked for the things that Nackle posited existed, which could only be discovered by matching the emotion they evoked with that described in Nackle’s pages, a task that required the laborious memorization of all of the philosopher’s works. Nackle’s theory, insofar as such a thing can be simplified, was this: Twenty one types of emotion exist in the world. Certain artifacts create emotions in the viewer, emotions unaffected by the viewer’s history or idiosyncrasies of personality, but which are basic to the existence of all intelligent creatures. There are literally hundreds of sub-emotions, ranging from a soul’s regret when it wishes to sing but cannot, to the joy of carrying on one’s ancestral line in the face of tremendous adversity or the anticipatory worry that one might not fully recall an upcoming oracular dream. The perception of these emotions required deep study and meditation. To find the artifacts that replicated the base emotion, the one from which all the smaller sub-emotions sprang, one must move through a progression of refinement of the senses, created by the search for and exposure to artifacts exemplifying the emotions Nackle described. Most of Nackle’s followers would object to this simplification. They would point to subtleties of one kind or another, but truth be told, the theory was relatively uncomplicated. It was the lengthy cataloging of emotions that gave the philosophy intellectual density, rather than any complex thou[...] Podcasts Cat Rambo no no http://escapepod.org/2012/11/15/ep369-the-care-and-feeding-of-mammalian-bipeds-v-2-1/ http://escapepod.org/2012/11/15/ep369-the-care-and-feeding-of-mammalian-bipeds-v-2-1/#comments Thu, 15 Nov 2012 21:20:41 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3919 http://escapepod.org/2012/11/15/ep369-the-care-and-feeding-of-mammalian-bipeds-v-2-1/feed/ 0 0:34:00 By M. Darusha Wehm Read by Christiana Ellis Discuss on our forums. An Escape Pod Original! All stories by M. Darusha Wehm All stories read by Christiana Ellis Rated 13 and up for language The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1 by M. Darus[...] By M. Darusha Wehm Read by Christiana Ellis Discuss on our forums. An Escape Pod Original! All stories by M. Darusha Wehm All stories read by Christiana Ellis Rated 13 and up for language The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1 by M. Darusha Wehm The first day I meet my human herd they are so well-behaved that I wonder if they really need me at all. I arrive at their dwelling, and am greeted by the largest one of their group. I access the manual with which I have been programmed and skip to Section 3: Verbal and Physical Clues for Sexing Humans. I can tell by the shape and outer garments that this human is a male, and I make a note of this data. He brings me into the main area of their living space, and as we move deeper into the dwelling, he asks me to call him Taylor, so immediately I do. He makes a noise deep in his throat, then introduces me to the rest of the herd. He puts his forelimb around the next largest one, who he introduces as Madison. The Madison bares its teeth at me in a manner that Section 14: Advanced Non-Verbal Communication suggests is a gesture indicating happiness, approval, cheerfulness, or amusement, but which may belie insincerity, boredom or hostility. The Madison says, “Welcome to the family, Rosie.” “Thank you, Madison,” I respond, as suggested by the manual in Section 2: Introductions: Getting To Know Your Humans. “I am looking forward to serving you and your family.” The manual indicates that human herds designate each individual with a name, and that most will bestow a similar designation on their caregiver. Section 0: A Brief Overview of Current Anthropological Theories states that the predominant view is that humans believe we are a new addition to the herd, and the best thing to do is to go along with this idea so as not to confuse them. The Taylor and the Madison appear to have chosen to refer to me by the name Rosie, and I set my monitoring routine to key on the sound of that word. “These here are Agatha and Frederick,” the Taylor says, pushing two smaller humans toward me. I am unable to tell by looking whether or not they are male or female — they are about the same height as each other, with shoulder-length glossy fur. Their outer coverings are very similar, shapeless and dark coloured except with colourful designs in the upper section. One of them bares its teeth at me, in a manner similar to the Madison’s earlier display, but the other looks away. “Kids,” the Taylor says, his voice growing deeper, “say hi to the new robot.” “Hi, Rosie,” the toothy one says, “I’m Frederick, and this is my sister, Aggie.” The Frederick pulls on the forelimb of the other one, who looks through its fur at me. “This is so stupid,” it says, pulling its arm out of its sibling’s grip. “I don’t have to say hi to the dishwasher or the school bus, why do I have to pretend to be nice to this thing?” “Agatha,” the Madison says, its voice becoming higher pitched. “Be civilized.” “We don’t need a house-bot,” the Agatha says. “It’s so embarrassing.” It turns away from the rest of the herd, and walks into another part of the dwelling. “I’ll go talk to her,” the Frederick says, and walks away. Her. The Agatha is female, then. The Madison turns toward me, its skin colouring a dark pink tone. I make a note to check its temperature later — it would not do for a member of my herd to become ill. “I’m sorry about Agatha,” it says. “She’s thirteen. You know how teenagers are.” I do not understand what it is I am expected to know about teenagers, but I do know that the correct response to the sounds “I’m sorry,” is “Don’t worry, it’s okay,” so that is what I say. I notice the Madison’s colour return to[...] Podcasts M. Darusha Wehm no no http://escapepod.org/2012/11/14/support-clarkesworld/ http://escapepod.org/2012/11/14/support-clarkesworld/#comments Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:55:26 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3946 http://escapepod.org/2012/11/14/support-clarkesworld/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/11/08/ep369-passengers/ http://escapepod.org/2012/11/08/ep369-passengers/#comments Thu, 08 Nov 2012 15:53:29 +0000 Mat http://escapepod.org/?p=3928 http://escapepod.org/2012/11/08/ep369-passengers/feed/ 0 0:00:01 By Robert Silverberg Read by Michael Spence Discuss on our forums All stories by Robert Silverberg All stories read by Michael Spence Rated 13 and over for sexual innuendo Nominee for Hugo Award for Best Short Story (1970) Passengers By Robert Silve[...] By Robert Silverberg Read by Michael Spence Discuss on our forums All stories by Robert Silverberg All stories read by Michael Spence Rated 13 and over for sexual innuendo Nominee for Hugo Award for Best Short Story (1970) Passengers By Robert Silverberg There are only fragments of me left now. Chunks of memory have broken free and drifted away like calved glaciers. It is always 
like that when a Passenger leaves us. We can never be sure of all the things our borrowed bodies did. We have only the lingering traces, 
the imprints. Like sand clinging to an ocean-tossed bottle. Like the throbbings of amputated legs. I rise. I collect myself. My hair is rumpled; I comb it. My face is creased from too little sleep. There is sourness in my mouth. Has my Passenger been eating dung with my mouth? They do that. They do anything. It is morning. A gray, uncertain morning. I stare at it awhile, and then, shuddering, I opaque the window and confront instead the gray, uncertain surface of the inner panel. My room looks untidy. Did I have a woman here? There are ashes in the trays. Searching for butts, I find several with lipstick stains. Yes, a woman was here. I touched the bedsheets. Still warm with shared warmth. Both 
pillows tousled. She has gone, though, and the Passenger is gone, and I am alone. How long did it last, this time? I pick up the phone and ring Central. “What is the date?” The computer’s bland feminine voice replies, “Friday, December fourth, nineteen eighty-seven.” “The time?” “Nine fifty-one, Eastern Standard Time.” “The weather forecast?” “Predicted temperature range for today thirty to thirty-eight. Current temperature, thirty-one. Wind from the north, sixteen miles an hour. Chances of precipitation slight.” “What do you recommend for a hangover?” “Food or medication?” “Anything you like,” I say. The computer mulls that one over for a while. Then it decides on both, and activates my kitchen. The spigot yields cold tomato juice. Eggs begin to fry. From the medicine slot comes a purplish liquid. The Central Computer is always so thoughtful. Do the Passengers ever ride it, I wonder? What thrills could that hold for them? Surely it must be more exciting to borrow the million minds of Central than to live awhile in the short-circuited soul of a corroding human being! December fourth, Central said. Friday. So the Passenger had me for three nights. I drink the purplish stuff and probe my memories in a gingerly way, as one might probe a festering sore. I remember Tuesday morning. A bad time at work. None of the charts will come out right. The section manager irritable; he has been taken by Passengers three times in five weeks, and his section is in disarray as a result, and his Christmas bonus is jeopardized. Even though it is customary not to penalize a person for lapses due to Passengers, according to the system, the section manager seems to feel he will be treated unfairly. So he treats us unfairly. We have a hard time. Revise the charts, fiddle with the program, check the fundamentals ten times over. Out they come: the detailed forecasts for price variations of public utility securities, February-April 1988. That afternoon we are to meet and discuss the charts and what they tell us. I do not remember Tuesday afternoon. That must have been when the Passenger took me. Perhaps at work; perhaps in the mahogany-paneled boardroom itself, during the conference. Pink concerned faces all about me; I cough, I lurch, I stumble from my seat. They shake their heads sadly. No one reaches for me. No one stops me. It is too dangerous to interfere with one who has a Passenger. The chances are great that a second Passenger lurks nearby in the discorporate state, looking for a mount. So I am avoided. I leave the building. After that, what? Sitting in my room on bleak Friday morning, I eat my scrambled eggs and try to reconstruct the three lost nights. Of course it is impossible. The conscious mind functions during the period of captivity[...] Podcasts Robert Silverberg no no http://escapepod.org/2012/11/07/flash-contest-winners-announced/ http://escapepod.org/2012/11/07/flash-contest-winners-announced/#comments Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:14:26 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3921 http://escapepod.org/2012/11/07/flash-contest-winners-announced/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/11/05/book-review-the-tyrant-strategy-revenant-man-by-jonathan-c-gillespie/ http://escapepod.org/2012/11/05/book-review-the-tyrant-strategy-revenant-man-by-jonathan-c-gillespie/#comments Mon, 05 Nov 2012 15:00:15 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3904 The Tyrant Strategy: Revenant Man I wasn't sure if it was going to be my cup of post-apocalyptic, augmented humanity, military-style, humans-aren't-so-great tea. Turns out the book had lots of things I liked, even though the tea wasn't ultimately to my taste.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/11/05/book-review-the-tyrant-strategy-revenant-man-by-jonathan-c-gillespie/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/11/01/ep368-springtime-for-deathtraps/ http://escapepod.org/2012/11/01/ep368-springtime-for-deathtraps/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2012 18:42:14 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3911 http://escapepod.org/2012/11/01/ep368-springtime-for-deathtraps/feed/ 0 0:36:23 By Marjorie James Read by Dr. John Cmar Discuss on our forums. An Escape Pod Original! All stories by Marjorie James — including EP007– The Trouble With Death Traps and EP224– The Ghost In The Death Trap. All stories read by John [...] By Marjorie James Read by Dr. John Cmar Discuss on our forums. An Escape Pod Original! All stories by Marjorie James — including EP007– The Trouble With Death Traps and EP224– The Ghost In The Death Trap. All stories read by John Cmar Rated 13 and up for language Springtime for Deathtraps By Marjorie James The building sat in a small clearing in the jungle, its stone walls radiating solidity and the midday heat. Giant statues of warrior-gods crushing skulls beneath their feet flanked the doorway. Xnab looked from the ornately carved keyhole to his customer and back again. “And the key is where, exactly?” he asked. “In the treasure chamber,” the big man said in a small voice. “We had just finished putting everything away and, well, it had been a long day. I think I must have put the key down on the altar or something. The problem is, the place locks automatically, and our entire fortune is in there. We had a few locksmiths out to work on it, but they didn’t get very far.” Xnab nodded. He had already noticed the blood spatter around the keyhole. “So that’s why we called you. Everyone said that if anybody could get in there, it would be you.” Xnab accepted that, not as a compliment, but a statement of fact. He was a specialist the design and construction of booby traps, deadfalls and other, largely fatal, security options. He was a small man, thin and wiry, his shaved head still smooth and unwrinkled despite years of working in the sun. Despite making a very good living, he wore a plain tunic and no adornments at all. In his business, he considered it a bad idea to have anything extra hanging around, and he was very good at his business. In fact, anyone who knew anything considered Xnab the best death trap designer alive. Which typically would have been reason enough to turn down a job like this, but in this case it was actually why he was there. “How long have you owned the temple?” he asked the man, who had introduced himself as Tuak. “Just a couple of months, actually,” Tuak admitted. “It’s not really a temple. I think the statues of the gods are just there for show. The family who used to have it used it to store their treasures and they spared no expense on the security.” He sighed heavily and stared up at the tiers of stone vanishing into the jungle. “It seemed like a good idea when we bought it.” Xnab’s apprentice, Qualenizmunetil (Qual to anyone who couldn’t be bothered) came back from where he had been examining the walls of the entrance and joined them. “They’re perfectly smooth, sir,” the boy said with something close to awe. “I can’t even find a tool mark.” “And you won’t,” said Tuak, pride of ownership momentarily overcoming his embarrassment. “There isn’t another building like this anywhere in the eighteen kingdoms.” “No,” Xnab said. “There isn’t.” He spent a moment staring down the apparently open and inviting corridor, then turned back to his customer. “You mentioned the previous owners. How did you come to own this place?” Tuak smirked. “Well, a treasure house isn’t much use if you don’t have any treasure left to store. You know, all these the aristocrat families are the same. They go on for generations, saying they’re the cousins of the wind gods, making everyone lick the stones in front of them. Then one day they lose a couple wars and the next thing you know the last of the line is blowing through the money like he doesn’t know what saving is. The storehouse was the last thing he had to sell.” None of this was of much interest to Xnab, so he listened with half an ear as the man turned his attention to Qual, his earlier embarrassment apparently forgotten. “I say it’s about time,” Tuak went on. [...] Podcasts Marjorie James no no http://escapepod.org/2012/10/31/25-days-of-tng-day-25-where-do-we-go-from-here/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/31/25-days-of-tng-day-25-where-do-we-go-from-here/#comments Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:00:44 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3625 Star Trek: the Next Generation? How about by giving you some new TNG-related media you might not have thought to enjoy?]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/31/25-days-of-tng-day-25-where-do-we-go-from-here/feed/ 2 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/29/25-days-of-tng-day-24-the-top-25-episodes-part-2/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/29/25-days-of-tng-day-24-the-top-25-episodes-part-2/#comments Mon, 29 Oct 2012 19:00:35 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3657 TNG episodes. I'm sure you'll find some you expect... but you'll also find some you won't, and I hope you're surprised. In a good way.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/29/25-days-of-tng-day-24-the-top-25-episodes-part-2/feed/ 1 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/28/25-days-of-tng-day-23-the-top-25-episodes-part-1/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/28/25-days-of-tng-day-23-the-top-25-episodes-part-1/#comments Sun, 28 Oct 2012 19:00:41 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3643 TNG episodes" list. Well, here's another one, with my scintillating (for certain values of scintillating) commentary.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/28/25-days-of-tng-day-23-the-top-25-episodes-part-1/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/27/25-days-of-tng-day-22-the-bottom-25-episodes-part-2/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/27/25-days-of-tng-day-22-the-bottom-25-episodes-part-2/#comments Sat, 27 Oct 2012 19:00:48 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3681 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/27/25-days-of-tng-day-22-the-bottom-25-episodes-part-2/feed/ 1 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/26/submission-guidelines-changes/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/26/submission-guidelines-changes/#comments Fri, 26 Oct 2012 19:41:02 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3901 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/26/submission-guidelines-changes/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/26/25-days-of-tng-day-21-the-bottom-25-episodes-part-1/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/26/25-days-of-tng-day-21-the-bottom-25-episodes-part-1/#comments Fri, 26 Oct 2012 19:00:41 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3668 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/26/25-days-of-tng-day-21-the-bottom-25-episodes-part-1/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/25/ep367-lion-dance/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/25/ep367-lion-dance/#comments Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:16:01 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3896 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/25/ep367-lion-dance/feed/ 0 0:47:03 By Vylar Kaftan Read by John Chu Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Asimov’s (2012) All stories by Vylar Kaftan All stories read by John Chu Rated 15 and up for language and adult situations Lion Dance by Vylar Kaftan I knew Wing[...] By Vylar Kaftan Read by John Chu Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Asimov’s (2012) All stories by Vylar Kaftan All stories read by John Chu Rated 15 and up for language and adult situations Lion Dance by Vylar Kaftan I knew Wing’s idea was stupid.  But we were all so goddamn sick of quarantine that it sounded great anyway. “Chinese New Year on Halloween night, huh?” I asked him.  We sat on his broken futon and some folding chairs, passing a bottle of Captain Jack among the eight of us.  Someone leaned on a car horn outside our apartment.  When they didn’t stop, my buddy Matt leaned out the window and swore at them in Mandarin.  Matt was loud–even a flu mask didn’t muffle his bellowing.  I swear, even though every restaurant in San Francisco Chinatown had been closed since February, tourists still cruised the streets.  Even a pandemic couldn’t stop them completely. “Dude.  Someone will shoot us,” said the guy from 4B, who I think was named Jimmy Li.  We all lived in the same nasty building on Grant Street above a dim sum place owned by our slumlord.  I knew Matt, who’d invited me, and my little brother Jian of course.  Wing lived here in 3A.  I’d just met the Chao twins who had different haircuts, and then Jimmy and some dude Xiang.  At twenty-three, I was pretty sure I was the oldest guy here. “That’s the point,” said Wing heavily, as if he’d explained this a hundred times when he actually hadn’t.  “We’ll be in costume.  First off, all the riots will be in the Mission, so that’s where the cops will be.  Second, no one’s going to shoot a New Year’s lion.  Dude.  It’s Chinatown.  All the old cops here are superstitious.  Can you imagine how much bad luck it would bring?  Even if some cop got itchy on the trigger, he’ll think about it long enough for us to run away.” “No one’s shooting anyone,” said Matt.  “For God’s sake, this isn’t Montana.”  He pushed his mask aside, swigged the Jack, and passed it to Jian.  I snagged the bottle out of his hands.  No freaking way would I let my little brother drink from that bottle.  Who knew where the other guys had been?  They might pull off their masks and drink, but damned if I let my little brother do it.  Jian glared at me, but didn’t fight back. I passed the bottle to Wing.  “They might shoot if things get out of hand,” I said.  “It’s Halloween.  Everyone’s twitchy.  But you’re right, I heard a bunch of people are gonna swarm the Mission.  That’s where the cops will go.” Wing took another swig.  He wasn’t wearing a mask; that was only Matt and Jian and me.  Wing went to the kitchen and reappeared with a stack of well-used disposable cups and washed straws.  He swiped an unopened bottle of Jose Cuervo off a shelf and handed it to me. I thanked him and poured myself way too much tequila.  I knew I wasn’t supposed to peel the mask off, even for a minute, but it’d been a bad week.  My parents were getting evicted and Jian’s antivirals were out of stock everywhere.  Pissed me off–HIV drugs did crap against the flu, but people were desperate and they got prescriptions from quacks.  So my little brother might develop full-blown AIDS thanks to those selfish jackholes. I slid my mask aside and sucked furiously on the straw.  The Cuervo burned my throat as it went down.  Screw it all.  I felt so goddamn helpless.  More than anything I wanted to do something to make things better, but what could I do?  I couldn’t cure the flu or save anyone’s life.  All I could do was avoid getting sick.  I mean, I’d thought about helping at the hospital or something, but I had to protect my brother. “Bo,” said Jian, leaning over, “come on, gimme some of that.  Please?” I looked at hi[...] Podcasts Vylar Kaftan no no http://escapepod.org/2012/10/24/25-days-of-tng-day-20-11-lost-best-episodes/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/24/25-days-of-tng-day-20-11-lost-best-episodes/#comments Wed, 24 Oct 2012 19:00:01 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3633 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/24/25-days-of-tng-day-20-11-lost-best-episodes/feed/ 1 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/22/25-days-of-tng-day-19-the-relaunch/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/22/25-days-of-tng-day-19-the-relaunch/#comments Mon, 22 Oct 2012 19:00:49 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3691 Star Trek canon says that, after Nemesis, there was no more official Trek until Spock attempted to save Romulus, I think we all knew the intellectual property was too valuable to just be left lying there. So they relaunched it.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/22/25-days-of-tng-day-19-the-relaunch/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/21/25-days-of-tng-day-18-the-best-and-worst-of-the-tng-films/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/21/25-days-of-tng-day-18-the-best-and-worst-of-the-tng-films/#comments Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:00:28 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3698 TNG season finale, I think it was already known that a film was in the offing. At least one. Turns out we got four, all of which you've probably seen, and most of which have both good and bad parts.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/21/25-days-of-tng-day-18-the-best-and-worst-of-the-tng-films/feed/ 2 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/19/ep366-som-of-them-closer/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/19/ep366-som-of-them-closer/#comments Sat, 20 Oct 2012 01:40:15 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3891 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/19/ep366-som-of-them-closer/feed/ 0 0:33:42 By Marissa Lingen Read by The Word Whore Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Analog (2011) All stories by Marissa Lingen All stories read by The Word Whore Rated 13 and up Some of Them Closer Marissa Lingen Coming back to Earth was not th[...] By Marissa Lingen Read by The Word Whore Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Analog (2011) All stories by Marissa Lingen All stories read by The Word Whore Rated 13 and up Some of Them Closer Marissa Lingen Coming back to Earth was not the immediate shock they expected it to be for me. It was something, certainly, but I’d been catching up on the highlights of the news as it cascaded back to the ship on our relativistic return trip, and I never knew the island where we landed, when we left home twenty of our years ago and a hundred of theirs, so I expected it to look foreign to me, and it did. The sun was a little yellower than on New Landing, the plants friendlier. But I never thought of myself as an Earther. Even with the new system, hardly any of us do. I thought of myself as from Montreal. Quebecoise. Canadian, even. But Earther? No. I am far more provincial than the colonists whose home I built will ever be. I flew into the new place instead of Dorval. It looked like Dorval used to. It looked nearly exactly like Dorval used to, and I had a twinge of discomfort. The floors were curiously springy, though, which made me feel like something was different, and that was reassuring. There isn’t an Old Spacers’ Legion or anything like that to meet people like me coming in from off-planet–they did that on the little Brazilian island where we landed–but there was a department for Cultural Integration, meant for people traveling from elsewhere on Earth. They assigned me to a representative of the government, who greeted me in a French whose accent was nearly my own. To my ear it sounded more English, with the round vowels, but even with the new system I thought it might be rude to say that to a Quebecoise. The English-sounding French-speaker gave me a key to the four-room apartment they’d gotten me, not far from the Guy-Concordia Metro station. I told her I could take the Metro to it, but she smiled and said no, they’d have to get my things out of storage for me anyway. So we did that. There were only three boxes. Once you do the math on what will keep for a hundred years, it’s a lot easier to give away the things you can’t take with you. I gave them to my sister, who died, and whatever was left, she probably gave to her son, who had also died, or her daughter, who was retired and living comfortably in Senegal last I heard. So what I had left myself fit in three small plastic boxes, all labeled “Mireille Ayotte NL000014.” We terraformers all got two-digit numbers for our colonies, NL for New Landing, 14 because there were thirteen team members signed up before they took me. There was never any doubt they were going to take me. It was just a matter of where I wanted to go, and I wanted New Landing because the survey probes made the plants look promising, which I think they were. When I wasn’t catching up on Earth culture for the last hundred years, I was looking at reports from the other colonies, and I thought ours did the best with plant adaptation so far. I had to start thinking of New Landing as “theirs,” not “ours.” I could go back, of course, but by the time I got there they’d have gone on without me as well, and I’d just have the same thing as Montreal all over again: a city full of things that seem like they should look familiar, but they don’t. They had furnished my apartment with stylish clothes and furniture, and everything felt squishy and slightly damp. There was also entertainment in my handheld, and there were more tutorials in case I hadn’t had enough of them. The cupboards were stocked with food. They thought of everything. There was nothing for me to do but hang a very old photograph on the wall and go to bed. The bed, at least, was not squishy or damp. It felt like a ship’s bunk or a colony housing bed. They could do that properly still, and so I could sleep. My great-niece ca[...] Podcasts Escape Pod no no http://escapepod.org/2012/10/19/25-days-of-tng-day-17-the-best-and-worst-of-season-7/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/19/25-days-of-tng-day-17-the-best-and-worst-of-season-7/#comments Fri, 19 Oct 2012 19:00:44 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3703 TNG was going to be the final one, but as far as final seasons go, it didn't really blow me away. Compared to other final seasons, it was decidedly lackluster... but there were a few high points.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/19/25-days-of-tng-day-17-the-best-and-worst-of-season-7/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/17/25-days-of-tng-day-16-the-10-best-tie-in-novels/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/17/25-days-of-tng-day-16-the-10-best-tie-in-novels/#comments Wed, 17 Oct 2012 19:00:10 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3719 TNG tie-in on my top-ten list?]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/17/25-days-of-tng-day-16-the-10-best-tie-in-novels/feed/ 3 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/16/tv-review-dog-with-a-blog/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/16/tv-review-dog-with-a-blog/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2012 14:00:27 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3884 Dog with a Blog.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/16/tv-review-dog-with-a-blog/feed/ 1 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/15/25-days-of-tng-day-15-the-10-worst-tie-in-novels/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/15/25-days-of-tng-day-15-the-10-worst-tie-in-novels/#comments Mon, 15 Oct 2012 19:00:52 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3712 TNG tie-in novels since they were first released. Unfortunately, there have been some real stinkers over the years. Here are ten of them.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/15/25-days-of-tng-day-15-the-10-worst-tie-in-novels/feed/ 2 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/14/25-days-of-tng-day-14-the-best-and-worst-of-season-6/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/14/25-days-of-tng-day-14-the-best-and-worst-of-season-6/#comments Sun, 14 Oct 2012 19:00:57 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3726 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/14/25-days-of-tng-day-14-the-best-and-worst-of-season-6/feed/ 2 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/13/25-days-of-tng-day-13-10-things-that-dont-hold-up/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/13/25-days-of-tng-day-13-10-things-that-dont-hold-up/#comments Sat, 13 Oct 2012 19:00:16 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3733 TNG was substantially more advanced than TOS, there were still technological advancements coming that have since made TNG into a bit of a dinosaur. What doesn't hold up, 25 years later?]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/13/25-days-of-tng-day-13-10-things-that-dont-hold-up/feed/ 9 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/12/25-days-of-tng-day-12-the-best-and-worst-of-season-5/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/12/25-days-of-tng-day-12-the-best-and-worst-of-season-5/#comments Fri, 12 Oct 2012 19:00:57 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3742 TNG. Though it had a few big-time stinkers, the great episodes were really great and even the middling ones weren't too bad. Plus, one of the all-time best episodes of TNG ever occurred in this season -- I'm sure you know which.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/12/25-days-of-tng-day-12-the-best-and-worst-of-season-5/feed/ 1 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/11/ep365-the-garden-of-earthly-delights/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/11/ep365-the-garden-of-earthly-delights/#comments Fri, 12 Oct 2012 03:54:02 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3874 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/11/ep365-the-garden-of-earthly-delights/feed/ 0 0:00:01 By Jay Caselberg Read by Mat Weller Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Electric Velocipede (2007) All stories by Jay Caselberg All stories read by Mat Weller Rated 17 and up for sexual situations The Garden of Earthly Delights Jay Caselb[...] By Jay Caselberg Read by Mat Weller Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Electric Velocipede (2007) All stories by Jay Caselberg All stories read by Mat Weller Rated 17 and up for sexual situations The Garden of Earthly Delights Jay Caselberg Bosch drew deeply on his cigarette and exhaled slowly, watching the smoke paint clouds of tissue paper across the chill moon. If his hard-boned mouth had been capable of smiling, it would have. He’d tried to mimic the gesture often enough. He took one last drag at the cigarette, then flicked it out in a wide arc to scatter sparks against the broad stone steps. It was funny how compelling these human habits could be, even the ones they frowned upon. There was no risk for Bosch, but the humans seemed to like the fact that he had adopted one of their vices. It showed them he had his personal weakness. Compelling. It was less compulsion than convenient subterfuge, but they weren’t to know that. Smoking, and alcohol, and sex — particularly sex; the examples went on and on. “Ambassador Bosch, come to escape the crowd?” It was Davy, his shadow, his cultural liaison, assigned to keep him on the straight and narrow. Bosch turned his head to make eye contact. These humans liked eye contact. He whistled once and snapped his mouth, forgetting for a moment for the hundredth time that Davy could not understand. Quickly, he followed it with a series of signs using his three long fingers. Davy nodded and waited while Bosch withdrew his pad from inside his clothes, slipped the stylus from the carry case and tapped at the screen. Davy craned over Bosch’s shoulder to read, then glanced down at the still-smouldering cigarette end lying on the steps below. “Yes, I needed some fresh air as well. I think it’s going well, don’t you?” Bosch tapped at the pad once. As well as it could be, he thought, but Davy seemed satisfied. The smooth, dark-haired human leaned his head back and looked up at the stars. “Yes, a good night for it,” he said. A good night for what? Often, these little expressions eluded Bosch. Expressions, cultural behaviours, so many things. Inside, the reception swirled and circulated and networked and did all the things that these events did. The diplomats and attachés held glasses and mingled with functionaries and celebrities, engaging in polite conversation, or dealing, heads tilted close together, with matters of extreme import to their tiny little world. Bosch was out here to escape the incessant looks, the asides, the little nuances of meaning that he had learned so quickly to interpret. What was it about an alien being that excited them so much? The human culture was ridden with vices of various sorts. It was yet another thing that showed their pathetic weakness. The higher up they became, the more elevated, the more they showed their true natures. It might be behind closed doors, but it was there, all the same. To some extent, he was shielded from the general populace by Davy and by others like him. Perhaps these weaknesses really did extend throughout the entire population, but he found it hard to imagine how the race could survive if it were true. Ultimately, it was why he’d made the choice. Bosch. Bosch was a good name. When he’d learned how to see them, how to look at them with human eyes to find the meaning, that particular painter among many had revealed multiple things about this race. Bosch, and Goya, Dali, the others. Ambassador Bosch had looked, he had studied, and he had learned. The educational and cultural tours the humans had been so quick to provide had revealed so much. It was only about a month after arrival that he had finally decided to take the name as his own. The libraries had been most revealing too, but he’d decided to stay with the painter’s name. It had a certain gravitas. “Ambassador Bosch,” said Davy. “We should really be getting back inside. It would be hard for you not to be miss[...] Podcasts Jay Caselberg no no http://escapepod.org/2012/10/10/25-days-of-tng-day-11-anachronisms-and-the-stifling-of-creativity/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/10/25-days-of-tng-day-11-anachronisms-and-the-stifling-of-creativity/#comments Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:00:22 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3748 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/10/25-days-of-tng-day-11-anachronisms-and-the-stifling-of-creativity/feed/ 3 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/08/25-days-of-tng-day-10-the-best-and-worst-of-season-4/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/08/25-days-of-tng-day-10-the-best-and-worst-of-season-4/#comments Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:00:21 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3758 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/08/25-days-of-tng-day-10-the-best-and-worst-of-season-4/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/07/25-days-of-tng-day-9-in-their-own-words/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/07/25-days-of-tng-day-9-in-their-own-words/#comments Sun, 07 Oct 2012 19:00:52 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3763 TNG have provided a lot of memorable quotes -- both on the show and off. Let's take a look at a sampling.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/07/25-days-of-tng-day-9-in-their-own-words/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/06/25-days-of-tng-day-8-the-best-and-worst-of-season-3/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/06/25-days-of-tng-day-8-the-best-and-worst-of-season-3/#comments Sat, 06 Oct 2012 19:00:40 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3775 TNG came back with the third season. Though Five is probably my favorite, Three is a close runner-up.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/06/25-days-of-tng-day-8-the-best-and-worst-of-season-3/feed/ 2 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/05/25-days-of-tng-day-7-the-10-best-recurring-characters/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/05/25-days-of-tng-day-7-the-10-best-recurring-characters/#comments Fri, 05 Oct 2012 19:00:11 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3781 Star Trek: TNG had a strong core cast, sometimes it was guest stars and recurring characters that made certain episodes work. With that in mind, here are the ten that I consider the "best".]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/05/25-days-of-tng-day-7-the-10-best-recurring-characters/feed/ 1 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/04/ep364-techno-rat/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/04/ep364-techno-rat/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:38:13 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3863 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/04/ep364-techno-rat/feed/ 0 0:29:43 By Brad Hafford Read by Al Stuart Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Reflection’s Edge, 2010 All stories by Brad Hafford All stories read by Al Stuart Rated 13 and up for language Brought to you by Audible! Techno-Rat by Brad Haffo[...] By Brad Hafford Read by Al Stuart Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Reflection’s Edge, 2010 All stories by Brad Hafford All stories read by Al Stuart Rated 13 and up for language Brought to you by Audible! Techno-Rat by Brad Hafford West London was, as always, abuzz. Even at 4:00 AM on a chilly November Tuesday, electric motorcars whirred down Kings Road, zipping people along, early to work or late from parties. The residential side streets, however, were quiet. Lined with parked cars, occasional street lamps, and darkened flats, they dozed peacefully. Ornate houses huddled in gracefully curving queues, awaiting the sunrise with little attention to the two figures loitering outside their narrow, iron-fenced entryways. “There it is, innit?” the scrawnier figure said, pointing to a parked car. “D’ya see?” The taller man stared intently at the vehicle. “See what?” he said, his breath misting in the frosty air. Their eyes were fixed on a car sitting at the curb of a constricted street in Chelsea, part of the fashionable Kensington district. It was a brown cabriolet with a weather-worn faux leather top. An aging example, its low-light number plates showed it to be registered ten years previously. Its MOT and inspection were up to date, but its bonnet was dented and its windscreen cracked. Such an automobile did not belong in Chelsea. But neither did the two men examining it. The smaller of the two impatiently tugged on the grey flatcap he wore. “Pay attention, Mik,” he sniped. “We in’t got all night.” Clipped words and rounded vowels marked his speech. The bells of St. Mary’s were ancient history and the East End had long since been gentrified, but he was retro-Cockney. “I’m paying as much attention as I’ve got, Artie. More, really. I just don’t see it.” “It’s a slight vibration, see. An ’ologram shift called glitching. The generator keeps the image dynamic, right. So it has to refresh at a specific rate.” He tapped his nose, a signal that he was imparting secrets. “Oy, there it goes again!” “I still don’t see it.” “And you fink you got what it takes to be a Techno-Rat?” “It was Uncle Lazlo’s idea, not mine.” Mik said. His speech was not as thick as his teacher’s. It carried the calmer, neutral accent of the Midlands. “’E was a great tea leaf, was Lazlo Utzbahn, but ’e’s been ’round for yonks. Since afore the ’lectric laws. Maybe his judgement’s gone tits up.” “Give me a break, Artie. I’m trying, you know.” “Awright, awright. Look down this street. What d’ya see?” “A bunch of cars.” “No, you stupid tosser. You see a bunch o’ targets. Now, which d’ya go for?” Mik examined the narrow street, a mere alleyway but packed with sleeping transport. It was a car thief’s dream. Some of the latest models lay there, prime for the taking. But despite the calm appearance of the darkened streets, security was tight. “Um, that one.” Mik pointed to an angular contraption glistening like mercury frozen in ice. “The shiny one with the big fins.” “Crikey! Could’ya be more obvious? Even if you got past its AI, you’d be spotted in a second, mate. Plus it’s all show. The Tatzu Shark breaks down every hundred kilometers like clockwork. It’s utter bollocks. Try again.” “Could you, uh, give us a clue?” “Watch for the tar, mate. Watch for the tar.” “Tar?” “Cor, you are green, in’t ya? Tar and pitch–glitch!” “But I don’t see this glitch, or tar, or whatever it is.” “It’s like I been tryin’ to show ya. Watch this ’ere cabriolet close-like. Wait fer it… There!” Mik’s light blue eyes flickered with recognition. “Hey, I saw it that time! Like it glittered for a second.” “More like a nanosecond, mate. And as generators go, this one’s shite. For the pico-second freqs, you gotta be damn good.” Artie positioned Mik by the passenger door of the car. “Now touch it,” he said. “Feel the roof.” Mik pushed up the sleeve of his dark blue anorak as if to put his hand in a bucket of water. “Take off the gloves you berk,” Artie chastised. “B[...] Podcasts Brad Hafford no no http://escapepod.org/2012/10/03/25-days-of-tng-day-6-the-best-and-worst-of-season-2/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/03/25-days-of-tng-day-6-the-best-and-worst-of-season-2/#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:00:06 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3787 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/03/25-days-of-tng-day-6-the-best-and-worst-of-season-2/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/02/book-review-apollos-outcasts-by-allen-steele/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/02/book-review-apollos-outcasts-by-allen-steele/#comments Tue, 02 Oct 2012 14:00:12 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3845 Apollo's Outcasts, definitely fits that bill.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/10/02/book-review-apollos-outcasts-by-allen-steele/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/01/25-days-of-tng-day-5-meet-the-new-ship-not-the-same-as-the-old-ship-part-2/ http://escapepod.org/2012/10/01/25-days-of-tng-day-5-meet-the-new-ship-not-the-same-as-the-old-ship-part-2/#comments Mon, 01 Oct 2012 19:00:25 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3800 http://escapepod.org/2012/10/01/25-days-of-tng-day-5-meet-the-new-ship-not-the-same-as-the-old-ship-part-2/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/30/25-days-of-tng-day-4-meet-the-new-ship-not-the-same-as-the-old-ship-part-1/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/30/25-days-of-tng-day-4-meet-the-new-ship-not-the-same-as-the-old-ship-part-1/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2012 19:00:44 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3792 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/30/25-days-of-tng-day-4-meet-the-new-ship-not-the-same-as-the-old-ship-part-1/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/29/25-days-of-tng-day-3-the-best-and-worst-of-season-1/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/29/25-days-of-tng-day-3-the-best-and-worst-of-season-1/#comments Sat, 29 Sep 2012 19:00:07 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3808 TNG were, it's a wonder the show didn't get cancelled. Had it aired last year (instead of 25 years ago), it wouldn't even have gotten past three airings. We're lucky it started in 1987.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/09/29/25-days-of-tng-day-3-the-best-and-worst-of-season-1/feed/ 4 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/28/25-days-of-tng-day-2-episode-review-encounter-at-farpoint/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/28/25-days-of-tng-day-2-episode-review-encounter-at-farpoint/#comments Fri, 28 Sep 2012 19:00:54 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3814 Enterprise. Her continuing mission: to explore strange, new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before. Then... Stretch. Snap. Zoom. Flash. And an era began.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/09/28/25-days-of-tng-day-2-episode-review-encounter-at-farpoint/feed/ 2 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/27/ep363-flowing-shapes/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/27/ep363-flowing-shapes/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:40:38 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3854 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/27/ep363-flowing-shapes/feed/ 0 0:41:54 By Rajan Khanna Read by Josh Roseman Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Basement Stories Issue 1 (2010) All stories by Rajan Khanna All stories read by Josh Roseman Rated 17 and up for sexual situations Flowing Shapes Rajan Khanna Part O[...] By Rajan Khanna Read by Josh Roseman Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Basement Stories Issue 1 (2010) All stories by Rajan Khanna All stories read by Josh Roseman Rated 17 and up for sexual situations Flowing Shapes Rajan Khanna Part One: Contemplation The human came to She Shalu on the Day of Flowering Awareness. Damo met him near the Still Garden, the fumes of the exiting shuttle mixing with the sharp spice of the tall, white twizak plant. Damo wore a humanoid shape so as to minimize the stranger’s discomfort. Damo studied the human with the practiced eyes of a Synan. Dark hair covered his head and parts of his body, and he was sleight of build, despite the solidity of his form. About 1.7 meters tall. His features were mostly smooth, bones prominent, eyes with the barest hint of a slant. A mouth surrounded by full lips. “How may I help you?” Damo said, trying to sound gracious. “I came to study Wan She,” the human said. Damo felt his features flow with his astonishment. Perhaps he had not heard correctly, or his translation module was malfunctioning. “I am sorry,” he said. “Wan She is the Path of Flowing Shapes. It is a Synan practice. Humans, being incapable of shifting, cannot practice it.” The human smiled, revealing straight, white teeth. “I know. I’m writing a book,” he said. “But isn’t it true that the first stage is concerned solely with contemplation? Surely that is not beyond a human.” Damo stifled his urge to shift in response to his unease. Uncontrolled shifting was against the teachings of Wan She. “That is true,” he said. “But Wan She is a path. Not a series of distinct teachings. To step on that path is to begin a journey.” “All I ask is that you let me speak to your Tanshe. Let him decide.” Damo was all too willing to accommodate the human in this. Let the Tanshe decide. It certainly saved Damo the trouble of having to assimilate this odd request. “Please follow me,” he said. He led the human through the Still Garden, inhaling the heady scent of it, delighting in its exoticness. Most of the students overlooked the Still Garden, and in doing so missed out on one of the true beauties of She Shalu. They moved through the pearlescent designs of the sanctuary’s hallways to the Tanshe’s bubbled door. “Wait here,” Damo said, then entered. The Tanshe was in an original form, multilimbed, eyeless, lacking both ears and nose. Turning inward. Her bright amber skin was splattered with black inky spots. She looked up as Damo entered, eyes appearing from inside her face. Damo let his features droop in the customary manner. “Tanshe, there is a human to see you.” The Tanshe’s features flowed and shifted until they were almost exactly a human’s. “Send it in,” she said. “And wait outside.” Damo’s skin settled. He was not to be involved in this discussion. It was good. The Tanshe would deal with it and send the human away. Damo did as the Tanshe asked. He waited outside, letting his features relax into the default Synan shape. He’d worn the humanoid one as a courtesy, and because it was polite and expected, but he disliked it. It was distasteful. Too firm. Too set. He waited for some time, then the door bubble opened. He quickly shifted back into his humanoid form and turned to face the human, now exiting. “She told me to send you in,” the human said. Damo looked at the human’s firm, immobile face. So alien. So disgusting. Damo entered. “Yes, Tanshe?” “I have decided to accept the human’s request to stay with us.” “Tanshe?” Damo’s features wavered. “I believe it will be beneficial for us,” the Tanshe said. “He is to be placed with the other novices in the First Stage. He will write about the Path. He will be an observer.” “Yes, Tansh[...] Podcasts Rajan Khanna no no http://escapepod.org/2012/09/26/25-days-of-tng-day-1-an-introduction/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/26/25-days-of-tng-day-1-an-introduction/#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2012 19:00:15 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3820 Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home, which we'd seen in theaters the previous fall. Attached to the beginning was a trailer for a new version of the show called Star Trek: the Next Generation. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/09/26/25-days-of-tng-day-1-an-introduction/feed/ 4 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/21/ep362-contamination/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/21/ep362-contamination/#comments Fri, 21 Sep 2012 21:21:56 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3837 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/21/ep362-contamination/feed/ 0 0:37:33 By Jay Werkheiser Read by Dave Thompson Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Analog, 2010 All stories by Jay Werkheiser All stories read by Dave Thompson Rated 10 and up Contamination By Jay Werkheiser Ari allowed his skimmer to brush the [...] By Jay Werkheiser Read by Dave Thompson Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Analog, 2010 All stories by Jay Werkheiser All stories read by Dave Thompson Rated 10 and up Contamination By Jay Werkheiser Ari allowed his skimmer to brush the outer edge of Nouvelle Terre’s atmosphere. He tried to imagine air jostling the light nanofiber support frame, whistling through the skimmer’s magsails. Excitement pulsed through his veins at the thought of being so close to the blue-and-white surface, perhaps closer than any human had ever dared. Nothing but his skinsuit and a few hundred kilometers of atmosphere separated him from the living, breathing landscape below. He spread his arms and legs, trying to feel the miniscule tug of atmospheric drag. Is that what wind feels like? His faceplate HUD showed a ripple in the magsail’s yaw loop. The threat of a coil collapse brought his mind back into focus, and he hiked up the field strength to gain some altitude. He savored every precious minute the skimmer took to climb away from the atmosphere. Nouvelle Terre’s secondary sun climbed over the horizon, visible only because the primary sun hadn’t yet risen. He scanned the starry sky, taking advantage of the view before primary sunrise darkened his faceplate. Earth’s distant sun was almost directly overhead, a pinpoint at the tail of a zig-zag of stars. The drive flare that cut across the constellation chilled his good mood. After a generation of silence, what could the Earth people possibly want? Bah. Figuring that out was the job of bureaucrats. Ari preferred jockeying around with a skimmer, launching and retrieving microprobes, and taking time to enjoy the freedom of flight. Before long, the Gardien rose above the limb of the planet. He’d be home within a half hour, pining for his next chance to fly free. “That you, Ari?” If his solitude had to be interrupted by a human voice, he could do worse than Maura’s. “Who else would it be?” He knew damn well who she was afraid it might be. He tilted his head upward toward the spear of light that dominated the sky. A new ship from Earth arriving unannounced after all these years was reason enough to be on edge. “I’ll have your approach vector in a moment.” Maura’s image in his faceplate wore the drive flare like a burning gash on her forehead. “Your drop was perfect. The microprobe will skim the atmosphere deep enough to pick up some dust samples, but high enough to avoid surface contamination. With any luck, some of those dust grains will carry living spores.” “We wouldn’t need luck if they’d let us dive lower. Damn Earthborn are too cautious.” “You managed to get a pretty deep dive on that last orbit.” She pursed her lips in mock disapproval. “You’re going to catch hell for your little maneuver.” “What? I was just dropping low for a perigee kick.” Her laugh was pure music. “Good luck getting the director to buy that one. She’s in a foul mood.” He snorted, momentarily fogging his faceplate. “She doesn’t need my help. Dear old Mom takes foul to a new level, even for an Earthborn.” “Don’t be cruel. They earned the right to be grumpy.” “Maybe they’d be more caring if they hadn’t cranked us out of their wombs like an assembly line.” “Have some respect. You don’t know how long they’ll be around.” “We’ll be restocking our supply of Earthborn soon, from the looks of it.” He gestured toward the light as he spoke, even though his helmet’s cam couldn’t show it. “It warms my heart to know that even the Secretary-General has no idea why Earth sent a second ship after all these years.” She huffed. “You have no respect for authority, Ari.” “It’s all part of my char[...] Podcasts Jay Werkheiser no no http://escapepod.org/2012/09/17/book-review-wrayth-by-philippa-ballantine/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/17/book-review-wrayth-by-philippa-ballantine/#comments Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:00:50 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3708 Wrayth is a good entry into that milieu. Like its predecessors, the book moves quickly and has strong characterization, furthering the worldbuilding and setting up a very unexpected Big Bad. But it wasn't without its problems.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/09/17/book-review-wrayth-by-philippa-ballantine/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/13/ep361-ashes-on-the-water/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/13/ep361-ashes-on-the-water/#comments Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:03:06 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3620 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/13/ep361-ashes-on-the-water/feed/ 0 0:29:11 By Gwendolyn Clare Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Asimov’s, 2011 All stories by Gwendolyn Clare All stories read by Mur Lafferty Rated 13 and up Ashes on the Water by Gwendolyn Clare I hoped that Ranjeet[...] By Gwendolyn Clare Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Asimov’s, 2011 All stories by Gwendolyn Clare All stories read by Mur Lafferty Rated 13 and up Ashes on the Water by Gwendolyn Clare I hoped that Ranjeet’s friends were as disreputable as promised.  Ranjeet himself was late, of course.  I’d asked him to park his car out on the road and meet me behind the house–my cousin is, shall we say, out of favor, and I couldn’t afford to get caught with him.  So I sat on the dry, cracked ground in the shadow of the house, waiting where Father wouldn’t think to look for me.  A meter away, heat rose off the sun-baked earth, wavering like water, as if the dormant land dreamed of monsoon season.  I shut my eyes against the image.  For years now, each summer has come harsher than the last. Soft footsteps in the dirt, and Ranjeet strolled around the corner of the house, calling, “You’ll never make it across the border, kid.” I stood up and brushed the dust off my jeans, annoyed. Seventeen and he still calls me a kid.  “Why don’t you say that a little louder?  I don’t think the neighbors could hear you clearly.” The closest neighbors live on the other side of a one-hectare vacant field that used to be the mango grove, before the mango trees withered.  I used to sit on Father’s shoulders to help with the harvest when I was small.  He keeps saying we’re going to replant the grove, but nobody’s all that eager to dig up the dead roots. Ranjeet folded his arms and leaned back against the side of the house.  “You know it’s true.” “Did you get the papers for me, or not?” He pulled a thick envelope out of the inner pocket of his cream-colored sportcoat, but he held on to it, turning it over in his hands.  “What are you planning to do, smuggle it in your shoes? You’re going to get caught.” I held out my empty palm impatiently.  “What do I owe you?” “Nothing.  This is a family matter, Riti.”  He passed the envelope reluctantly.  “Just don’t tell anyone where you got this.” My fingers itched to open the envelope, but it would be rude to check the quality of the forgery with Ranjeet watching.  “You know I have to go.  I owe her that much.” “She wouldn’t have asked you for this.” “She didn’t need to.”  I would have given her much more without her asking.  I wished I could trade places and let her be the one to live, but I couldn’t.  All I had was this one thing left to do. # The day Priya died, I saved my water ration for washing the body. Father did not approve.  He said we didn’t have the luxury of adhering to the old customs anymore.  He said I was being foolish, hurting myself for the sake of my dead sister.  Her soul had moved on, after all.  The body was just an empty shell.  He said that God had taken her. Mother didn’t say anything at all.  She went out to sit on the balcony overlooking the almond grove.  Hands folded in her lap, she stared into the distance with dry, tired eyes.  The youngest of the almond trees were planted when I was seven, and Mother used to sit up there to watch Priya and me watering the saplings through their first difficult summer.  I wondered if she thought about that, now.  She refused to eat or drink, or even sleep.  I think she scared Father. That left Grandmother and me to wash Priya and change her clothes.  Grandmother’s fingers look as brittle as old sticks, but she held the sponge steadily, patting it against Priya’s cold skin with a serene gentleness.  Mine were the hands that shook while I brushed out my sister’s lustrous dark hair. At least her eyes were closed.  There had always been something in her eyes–a deep compassion, as if she really saw not just me, but everyone–and I didn’t want to k[...] Podcasts Gwendolyn Clare no no http://escapepod.org/2012/09/10/book-review-the-long-earth-by-terry-pratchett-and-stephen-baxter/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/10/book-review-the-long-earth-by-terry-pratchett-and-stephen-baxter/#comments Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:00:26 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3614 The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, looks at this idea (and others). I just wish it was more Pratchett-y.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/09/10/book-review-the-long-earth-by-terry-pratchett-and-stephen-baxter/feed/ 3 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/06/ep360-follow-that-cathedral/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/06/ep360-follow-that-cathedral/#comments Fri, 07 Sep 2012 02:02:30 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3608 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/06/ep360-follow-that-cathedral/feed/ 0 0:36:39 By Gareth Owens Read by Pip Ballantine Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Immersion Book of Steampunk All stories by Gareth Owens All stories read by Pip Ballantine Rated 13 and up Follow that Cathedral! By Gareth Owens …and with that Pi[...] By Gareth Owens Read by Pip Ballantine Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Immersion Book of Steampunk All stories by Gareth Owens All stories read by Pip Ballantine Rated 13 and up Follow that Cathedral! By Gareth Owens …and with that Pixie dived from the open door of the Zeppelin. The air around her suddenly becoming liquid, rushing over the smooth leather of her helmet and bringing tears to her eyes. “Always some bloody thing!” she grinned into the gale, falling headlong towards the welcoming embraces of Mother Earth and Mother Russia below. Siberian night enveloped her, storm filled frozen darkness, cloud shrouded full moon, and below, the steam powered lightning of The Iron Czar. A hissing, glowing, monster of a train, three storeys high, and even longer than the leviathan Fourteen Bags of Mischief hanging above. Pixie saw the orange furnaces erupting sparks through the twin stacks, as if Hephaestus himself stoked on the imperial railways. Kirby wires between Pixie and the nose of the airship took up the slack, her harness tightened, squeezing the breath from her as she slid down the gradient gravity prescribes for a pendulum. Spreading her arms out wide she released the winglets of her full-length leather drop-coat, ankle wings for trim springing from her boots. Suddenly the harness became her trapeze and she somersaulted with creak of leather, freed into the hundred-knot headwind. Orange fire below and frozen storm above, these were the moments Pixie lived for. Card tricks in the dark. A moment of genius for her own consumption and not for the sharing. She flew alone, arms wide, graceful as an angel dancer sweeping over a darkened stage. The first swing reached the peak of gravity assistance and Pixie saw the roof of the train below her slow in comparison, stopping for a second just past the midpoint of her pendulum arc, then once more seeming to gather pace against her, leaving her trailing as she fell back. “There have got to be easier ways for a pirate girl to catch a train,” she said. With an emphatic flick, she opened her drop-coat out wide, catching the full blast of the wind, whipping her back up the arc of swing like a human kite. Then, pulling her arms into her sides she rocketed forwards again, a bullet through the air, streamlining, catching the train once more but this time lower as Jeti tried to match the altitude of the dirigible. Eyes wide, Pixie saw the end of the last carriage, a black wall lit with a single dim red eye of a lamp. A sudden graunch through the cable, the winch bit, dragging her six feet further up in the air. Her speed increased as the cable shortened. She flew far too close and far too fast, sweeping up, only just carrying over the edge of the roof, arms held out backwards like the Spirit of Ecstasy. The bitter smelling pitch of the Russian rustproof coating mere inches below her nose. She lifted at the end of the swing, snapping upright, and with a perfect matching of momentum, she stood, placing her boots down and solid on Imperial rolling stock. A single twist to the circular brass locking clasp and she shrugged free of the harness and drop-coat, before it could pull her over backwards. Jingling cable fading away into the storm as her crew winched it back. Pixie’s knee length mini-crini sprang back into shape, like a chrysanthemum released from a fist. She wore the dark red corset, all the rage in St Petersburg Jeti assured her, but always with that twinkle in her eye. Pixie never knew whether her second-in-command was joking at her expense or not. Pixie set off at the run towards the storming volcano of the armour-plated engine. She knew she should put Jeti off at the next port, but she just couldn’t do it to her. Dear, sweet Jeti van Borkel, the girl might not have been the best steersman this side of the Roaring Forties, but she did have such a cute popo, particularly in those Oxford bags she wore. Momentarily distracted, Pixie nearly tripped over a spinning [...] Podcasts Gareth Owens no no http://escapepod.org/2012/09/04/short-film-review-play-dead/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/04/short-film-review-play-dead/#comments Tue, 04 Sep 2012 14:00:26 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3602 Play Dead is the story of the survivors of a zombie apocalypse in Miami, Florida. An unlikely group of survivors bands together to seek out a place where they can ride out the chaos until it ends. But the survivors have a few more legs than you'd expect.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/09/04/short-film-review-play-dead/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/01/week-hiatus/ http://escapepod.org/2012/09/01/week-hiatus/#comments Sat, 01 Sep 2012 20:46:37 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3610 http://escapepod.org/2012/09/01/week-hiatus/feed/ 2 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/29/web-series-review-the-booth-at-the-end/ http://escapepod.org/2012/08/29/web-series-review-the-booth-at-the-end/#comments Wed, 29 Aug 2012 14:00:44 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3581 The Booth at the End is an extremely compelling web series that takes place on exactly one set and contains exactly nothing but people talking to The Man (Xander Berkeley) about the thing they need and the things they'd do to get it.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/08/29/web-series-review-the-booth-at-the-end/feed/ 10 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/27/book-review-ink-by-sabrina-vourvoulias/ http://escapepod.org/2012/08/27/book-review-ink-by-sabrina-vourvoulias/#comments Mon, 27 Aug 2012 14:00:45 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3572 Ink, the new novel by Sabrina Vourvoulias.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/08/27/book-review-ink-by-sabrina-vourvoulias/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/24/ep359-chasers/ http://escapepod.org/2012/08/24/ep359-chasers/#comments Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:35:00 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3578 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/24/ep359-chasers/feed/ 0 0:32:52 By Scott W. Baker Read by Mat Weller Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Triangulation anthology (2004) All stories by Scott W. Baker All stories read by Mat Weller Rated 13 and up Chasers by Scott W. Baker Sebastian’s organs squeez[...] By Scott W. Baker Read by Mat Weller Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Triangulation anthology (2004) All stories by Scott W. Baker All stories read by Mat Weller Rated 13 and up Chasers by Scott W. Baker Sebastian’s organs squeezed into his pelvis as he accelerated past point-one.  He had a good feeling this time.  This catch was going to be his. He could see his objective ahead of him, the enormous Drifter-class colony ship Calypso barreling through space on her inertial journey from Earth to Terra III.  Since she carried no fuel for deceleration, Calypso would travel through space forever without Chasers like Sebastian.  It was the job of a Chaser to run down Drifters and fill their tanks.  The job had sounded easy when he signed with Mulligan Mining eight months ago.  But despite nine arrivals since then, Sebastian has not made one catch. Calypso was a slow Drifter at a mere point-13 c.  Surely he could catch that.  His Skeeter was designed to reach point-2, faster and more maneuverable than any other company’s ships.  Yet what advantages Skeeters held in speed and agility they sacrificed in capacity.  Even if he caught the Drifter, it took a total of three Skeeters to fill her. Sebastian ran a scan of Calypso.  Leonard was already docked.  That was too fast for him to have waited for the Drifter’s beacon; he must have taken his Skeeter out without confirmation a Drifter was coming in.  Lucky.  Blind patrols were expensive gambles, especially on a Chaser’s budget.  The exorbitant price of fuel on Earth was the primary reason Drifter-class colonizers dominated the colonization market, and a booming fuel industry made Terra III the most popular destination.  Like most things, it boiled down to money. A pair of blips appeared on Sebastian’s nav screen. Two ships were approaching from behind.  The tiny blip indicated the presence of another Skeeter, the third they’d need to fill the Calypso.  The larger blip was an Essex Bus, a hundred-percent capacity tanker from a rival fuel company.  Rather, Essex was the rival of Mulligan.   Both Sebastian and the other Skeeter would have to beat this Bus if Mulligan was going to make the sale.  If the Bus docked first, the sale would go to Essex.  One Bus could do the job of three Skeeters, assuming it could get to the colony ship first. Sebastian pushed his engines harder. The big blip was moving fast for a ship its size.  It drew closer until Sebastian could see it through his canopy.  It was more than three times the size of his little Skeeter and was now careening at point-16 c.  “Damn,” Sebastian whispered as he was overtaken, “I thought Busses maxed out at point-15.”  It was the reason Sebastian had signed with Mulligan instead of Essex: the need for speed.  Busses just weren’t meant to go that fast.  But even one percent of the speed of light could mean the difference between a bonus check and a long flight back to port.  If a Chaser could finagle a little extra zip out of his ship, he did.  Apparently this Bus pilot was a finagler. Sebastian adjusted his fuel ratios and pushed his engines even harder.  The ship began to vibrate around him.  Still the Bus pulled away.  “One Skeeter already on and Essex is going to get the sale anyway,” Sebastian said.  He started the calculations for his return to port. “You ain’t giving up, are you?” a voice croaked across the closed-circuit communicator.  Closed-circuit meant it was another Mulligan pilot. “Repeat?” Sebastian replied. “Bas, that you?”  Only one person ever called him Bas. “Roger, this is Sebastian.  What’s your twenty, Wild?” “I’ll be on your screen in a shake.” “Don’t bother.  I was just passed by a Bus going point-16.” “Isn’t Freebird already on?”  Wild meant Leonard.  He refused to call anyone by their actual name, inclu[...] Podcasts Scott W. Baker no no http://escapepod.org/2012/08/19/worldcon-meetup/ http://escapepod.org/2012/08/19/worldcon-meetup/#comments Sun, 19 Aug 2012 14:53:30 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3568 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/19/worldcon-meetup/feed/ 5 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/16/ep358-like-a-hawk-in-its-gyre/ http://escapepod.org/2012/08/16/ep358-like-a-hawk-in-its-gyre/#comments Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:10:09 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3564 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/16/ep358-like-a-hawk-in-its-gyre/feed/ 0 0:00:01 By Philip Brewer Read by Tim Crist Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Redstone Science Fiction (2011) All stories by Philip Brewer All stories read by Tim Crist Rated 15 and up for language Like a Hawk in Its Gyre by Philip Brewer The bi[...] By Philip Brewer Read by Tim Crist Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in Redstone Science Fiction (2011) All stories by Philip Brewer All stories read by Tim Crist Rated 15 and up for language Like a Hawk in Its Gyre by Philip Brewer The bicycle noticed someone was following before Kurt did. Watching for a tail was a habit he’d finally broken himself of, but not before the bicycle’s impressionable brain had picked it up. Its low warning hum sent a thrill of adrenalin through him, giving power to the part of his brain that wanted him to sprint away. Kurt glanced back down the single track. The trees were already beginning to turn fall colors around the edges of the forest, but here along the narrow trail the foliage was green and thick. Resisting the urge to pick up the pace, he continued on, looking back when he could take his eyes off the trail, and after a few moments caught sight of what the bicycle had seen. “It’s just another cyclist,” Kurt said, reaching down to pat the bicycle’s yellow-and-black, hornet-striped frame. The bicycle didn’t understand–its brain was small and lacked the regions for understanding speech–but Kurt’s tone of voice calmed it and the warning hum grew softer and less anxious. The end of the trail, a scenic overlook above the Vermillion River, was not far ahead, but the overtaking bicyclist was approaching even faster. The polite thing to do would be to find a place to pull off the trail and let the cyclist past. But there were no surveillance devices in the forest, and Kurt couldn’t face meeting someone out of sight of some sort of watching eyes. At just the thought of it, his adrenaline surged again. Letting his brain chemistry have its way with him, Kurt leaned low over his handlebars and pedaled hard. With its good forward eyes, the bicycle watched the trail, sending little twitches into the steering to help Kurt take the best line. On the road it didn’t make much difference, but on a technical trail the bicycle’s assist could add several percent to his speed. Giving in to the urge to sprint away took some of the pressure off, enough that Kurt had a chance to think. The urge to find surveillance cameras–the need to do nothing that wasn’t observed–was one that he’d had some time to get used to. Even, to an extent, come to terms with. What his brain needed was watching eyes. It wanted surveillance cameras, but those weren’t the only kind of eyes. His own two didn’t count, but there were others. His bicycle had eight. And the forest was full of eyes. He could hear a woodpecker hammering not far off, the buzzing of deer flies around his head, and rustlings in the litter that might be frogs or small mammals. They all had eyes. Focusing on that, Kurt was able to ease his speed down and brake to a stop as he reached the end of the trail, where a wide, clear area looked out over the river. Breathing hard, he looked back down the trail. He started to reach for his water bottle, but the trembling in his hand made him wait. The approaching rider was dressed like a cyclist–lycra shorts, padded gloves, helmet, wrap-around amber shades. The bike had a rack over the rear wheel and a large bag, as big as the bag that Kurt had on his own bike, big enough for a picnic lunch and a six-pack of beer. The man angled toward the other side of the viewing area and jumped off his bike a good distance away. Kurt began to relax. The lack of surveillance was fine if they didn’t interact. The clearing, nearly flat until it dipped sharply down to the river, began to feel a little more comfortable. His breathing slowed and he calmed down enough to smell the moist dirt. He pulled out his water bottle. “Hello, Kurt,” said the man. Kurt’s hand tightened, forcing a narrow spray of water out the top of the bottle. “My name’s Starkweather. [...] Podcasts Philip Brewer no no http://escapepod.org/2012/08/09/ep357-connoisseurs-of-the-eccentric/ http://escapepod.org/2012/08/09/ep357-connoisseurs-of-the-eccentric/#comments Fri, 10 Aug 2012 02:19:43 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3559 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/09/ep357-connoisseurs-of-the-eccentric/feed/ 0 0:20:06 By Jetse de Vries Read by Nathan Lowell Discuss on our forums. An Escape Pod Original! All stories by Jetse de Vries All stories read by Nathan Lowell Rated 15 and up for language Connoisseurs of the Eccentric by Jetse de Vries Salvador Dalí took h[...] By Jetse de Vries Read by Nathan Lowell Discuss on our forums. An Escape Pod Original! All stories by Jetse de Vries All stories read by Nathan Lowell Rated 15 and up for language Connoisseurs of the Eccentric by Jetse de Vries Salvador Dalí took his pet ocelot to a New York restaurant, where a woman protested that wild animals were being allowed in. Dalí replied it was only a cat he’d painted in op-art style. The woman looked closer: “Now I can see it’s a cat,” she said. “At first, I thought it was an ocelot.” Seated near the swimming pool in the artist’s retreat in Port Lligat, a BBC interviewer said that he had “heared that Dalí was unkind to animals. Was that true?” “Dalí cruel to ze animal?” The artist exclaimed, “Nevair!” After which he picked up his pet ocelot and hurled it into the swimming pool. —Eccentric anecdotes; I SEE HER arriving in her private vacuum zeppelin, flying over the rewilded mountains of the Nagasaki peninsula, while I’m tending the extreme bonsai wine garden on top of my farmscraper. Expertly manoeuvering through the photovoltaic city forest, the zep berthes at the telescopic docking station. It gives me time to change from my gardening attire into something more formal. Originally, she found me through my hyperdense pinot noir à la bonsaïe, almost two decades ago. Back then, I proudly showed her my grotto garden, but she quickly decided that she liked my ecological acumen better than my micro bonsai specimen. Today, for the second time only, she comes unnanounced. I come prepared, but even my Icho’s ‘the power of light and shadow’ complemented with a pair of Peron & Peron’s is no match for the way Afri Kamari makes an off-the-shelf, demure business suit look like haute couture. Above ebony cheekbones: deep brown eyes that see straight through you. Under a head of long, thick, fine curls: a brain that never shifts from top gear. Inside a very conservative skirtsuit: an animated sensuality that puts any anime girl to shame. Thousands of times I’ve talked with her over vidcon and — recently — EPIT-link: but when I see her in the flesh, I’m both entranced and edgy. I open my special cabinet and start uncorking my Takashima pinot noir — still the most exclusive wine in the world — to celebrate her extremely rare personal visit. She takes her time to smell, taste and enjoy it. Not bad for a beer aficionado, part of me thinks, while another part wishes she would cut to the chase. Neither needs to wait long. “Superb,” she says, “the Delirium Nocturnum of wine.” “Which you didn’t find special enough to sell to the aliens.” I remind her. “It’s phenomenal craftsmanship, second to none, but not quite . . . eccentric enough.” “Well, you are the true connoisseur,” I try to hide my frustration behind my half-full glass, in vain, “the best of the world.” “The best of this world.” Her eyes shine like crazy diamonds. “It’s time to expand the market.” “You don’t need me for the mad part of your schemes. Am I not the orderly yin to your chaotic yang?” “I do. You can deliver a quintessential part for this project.” The moment I’ve most feared and longed for in my life. “What is it?” Her amused smile broadens. “Your soul.” # THE ALIENS ARE still alien. After twenty years, nobody knows how they look like, where they came from or even how many there are. Yet, out of the grey they came. Of all places, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence ended when it received a clear, unencrypted message from the Moon, about the only place where SETI wasn’t looking. The aliens said they declined to say who they were and where they came from, as that was ‘irrelevant’. They said they came in peace, looking for trade. They declared the Moon off-limits, while the rest of our solar system was open ‘to explore as you see fit’. The trade items they were looking for were something else: they weren’t interested in our science & technology, art & history or culture & biology in general. They didn’t want to tell us[...] Podcasts Jetse de Vries no no http://escapepod.org/2012/08/06/film-review-griff-the-invisible/ http://escapepod.org/2012/08/06/film-review-griff-the-invisible/#comments Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:00:13 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3535 True Blood know Ryan Kwanten as Sookie's buff but not too bright brother, Jason Stackhouse. But Kwanten isn't just eye candy. Sometimes, he plays a man with cripplingly-bad social anxiety disorder. This man is named Griff, and the movie about him is called Griff the Invisible.]]> http://escapepod.org/2012/08/06/film-review-griff-the-invisible/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/03/note-from-the-ethan-ellenberg-literary-agency/ http://escapepod.org/2012/08/03/note-from-the-ethan-ellenberg-literary-agency/#comments Fri, 03 Aug 2012 20:52:31 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3549 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/03/note-from-the-ethan-ellenberg-literary-agency/feed/ 0 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/02/ep256-three-quarters-martian/ http://escapepod.org/2012/08/02/ep256-three-quarters-martian/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:21:17 +0000 Mur Lafferty http://escapepod.org/?p=3551 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/02/ep256-three-quarters-martian/feed/ 0 0:27:30 By CR Hodges Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in On the Premises (2011) All stories by CR Hodges All stories read by Mur Lafferty Rated 15 and up for language Three-Quarters Martian C.R. Hodges The first man to walk o[...] By CR Hodges Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums. Originally appeared in On the Premises (2011) All stories by CR Hodges All stories read by Mur Lafferty Rated 15 and up for language Three-Quarters Martian C.R. Hodges The first man to walk on the moon was a hero to five generations. The first woman to walk on Mars was forgotten even before her boots plunked into the red dust.   “Hey,” a husky voice said in the dark. I ignored her: the Swedish hockey team was calling to me from the sauna. “Anna-Jing.” Same voice. A large hand grasped my shoulder. I was losing my battle to recapture the fading dream. “Wake up,” commanded a new voice in a rich brogue, “now.” I took a deep breath, tasting the dust in the cool air, then slowly opened my eyes. Pulling the threadbare blanket around me, I sat up in my hammock. Kaiza, the first and likely last aboriginal Australian to teach planetary astrophysics at Stanford, gently removed her hand from my shoulder. “Trouble in Florida.” “The launch isn’t today.” I said, still groggy. Our resupply rocket was scheduled to lift off from Cape Lee in a week. We needed this one—the last launch, from Kazakhstan, had crashed in West Korea. “There won’t be a fecking launch,” said Mick, our mission commander. He gestured at the wall screen, which snapped to life. Grainy footage showed a giant rocket lying on its side like a beached whale, next to a familiar gantry. A dozen old pickups were parked beyond the shattered nosecone. Scores of horses and four oxen grazed nearby, a web of cables and ropes leading back to the rocket. A horde of men and women in shorts and tank tops, flip-flops and baseball caps, were prying metal panels from the side of the rocket. Hundreds more lay dead on the ground, interspersed with the bodies of gray vested soldiers. “Where are the pitchforks and torches?” I asked. No reply. A helicopter arrived, ten commandos zip lining to the ground just meters from the camera crew. Seventy looters went down in the first minute, but then flight after flight of arrows from unseen archers decimated the commandos. “Goodbye freeze-dried steak and potatoes,” said Mick. “Goodbye replacement mini reactor.” I pointed at the four oxen dragging a sledge with a brightly marked container the size of a large desk. “Gotta crank the thermostat down again,” said Mick. He lumbered off to make it so. The last image we witnessed before a sword crashed down on the camera lens was a line of children siphoning kerosene from the rocket’s fuel tank into buckets. Goodbye civilization. # Carrying a basket of mushrooms three times my size, I trudged back to the main module from the redhouse. As I passed the Gagarin, I searched for those first boot prints—my boot prints—but they were covered in dust. I should’ve at least gotten a shoe contract. The crew was waiting for me just inside the airlock. The mushrooms, the one food item that we could grow in near native conditions, added flavor to endless soy based meals despite being red and gritty. They were not, however, tasty enough to warrant an all hands greeting. “The Chinese sent the offer,” said Gabriel before I had my helmet off. He was our geologist and physician. “And what is the emperor proposing?” I asked. It had been three weeks of frustrating negotiations. We desperately needed provisions; they had the only rockets left. Mick shrugged and tossed me the tablet. “My Mandarin is limited to ordering up pints and whores.” “He’d pay more for a pint,” said Olga, my copilot and Mick’s former hammock buddy. Her quirky sense of humor had helped us through numerous rough patches over the years, but it was getting old. I scrolled through the long winded missive until I got to the crux of the deal. I looked up. Really up—the rest of the crew dwarfed me. Even Gabriel had fifteen centimeters on me, and he could have been a jockey. “They’re offering to send us a rocket full of supplies.” “In return for?” asked Kaiza. “Planting their flag on Olympus Mons.” “Feckin[...] Podcasts CR Hodges no no http://escapepod.org/2012/08/01/product-placement-the-next-generation/ http://escapepod.org/2012/08/01/product-placement-the-next-generation/#comments Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:00:41 +0000 Josh Roseman http://escapepod.org/?p=3528 http://escapepod.org/2012/08/01/product-placement-the-next-generation/feed/ 4