Search Results for 'http://www.benjamin rosenbaum'

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EP106: The House Beyond Your Sky

2007 Hugo Nominee!

By Benjamin Rosenbaum.
Read by Paul Tevis (of Have Games Will Travel).
First appeared in Strange Horizons, September 2006.

The simulations, while good, are not impenetrable even to their own inhabitants. Scientists teaching baboons to sort blocks may notice that all other baboons become instantly better at block-sorting, revealing a high-level caching mechanism. Or engineers building their own virtual worlds may find they cannot use certain tricks of optimization and compression‚Äîfor Matthias has already used them. Only when the jig is up does Matthias reveal himself, asking each simulated soul: what now? Most accept Matthias’s offer to graduate beyond the confines of their simulation, and join the general society of Matthias’s house.

You may regard them as bright parakeets, living in wicker cages with open doors. The cages are hung from the ceiling of the priest’s clay hut. The parakeets flutter about the ceiling, visit each other, steal bread from the table, and comment on Matthias’s doings.

Rated R. Contains some profanity and child abuse. It’s probably too complex for young children as well.

Referenced Sites:

Diversity in SF Markets (blog post by Tobias S. Buckell)

Finis: A Book of Endings

Nina Kimberly the Merciless

SciFi Smackdown

 
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May 17, 2007 | 27 comments View Post
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EP099: Start the Clock

By Benjamin Rosenbaum.
Read by Chris Fisher (of The Adult Space Childfree Podcast).
First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 2004.

Frankly, we were excited. This move was what our Pack needed — the four of us, at least, were sure of it. We were all tired of living in the ghetto — we were in three twentieth-century townhouses in Billings, in an “age-mixed” area full of marauding Thirteens and Fourteens and Fifteens. Talk about a people damned by CDAS — when the virus hit them, it had stuck their pituitaries and thyroids like throttles jammed open. It wasn’t just the giantism and health problems caused by a thirty-year overdose on growth hormones, testosterone, estrogen, and androgen. They suffered more from their social problems — criminality, violence, orgies, jealousy — and their endless self-pity.

Okay, Max liked them. And most of the rest of us had been at least entertained by living in the ghetto. At birthday parties, we could always shock the other Packs with our address. But that was when all eight of us were there, before Katrina and Ogbu went south. With eight of us, we’d felt like a full Pack — invincible, strong enough to laugh at anyone.

Rated R. Contains graphic sexual content and children who are a bit too grown up. Literally.

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Referenced Sites:

Contest: Name the Fantasy Podcast

WHOIS Gateway Service

 
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Mar 29, 2007 | 24 comments View Post
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EP024: The Death Trap of Dr. Nefario

By Benjamin Rosenbaum.
Read by Chris Miller (of Unquiet Desperation) with Stephen Eley.

“Well, you know, Doc, safe is a relative thing in my profession, but I
have you on the headset, and I’m picking the lock on these handcuffs
as we’re talking. I think I’ll be fine, the piranhas are still 5 or 6
feet below me.”

“All right, but isn’t our conversation going to distract you?” I
asked. “I know you’re upset, but wouldn’t you rather call back at
another time?”

“I’d really like to talk about it, Doc. I always find talking to you
clears my mind and makes me more effective. I may need to go if the
henchmen come back, though.”

Rated PG. Contains childhood trauma and mild gratuitous villainy.

Referenced sites:
Dead White Guys
The Sci Phi Show

 
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Oct 20, 2005 | 14 comments View Post