Escape Pod 326: Flash Fiction Special
Poppies and Chrome by Sylvia Hiven
Rabbi Aaron Meets Satan by Tim Lieder
Fine-Tuning the Universe by Merrie Haskell
Narrated by Mat Weller, author Richard E. Dansky, and Mur Lafferty
About the Authors
Merrie Haskell
Merrie Haskell was born in Michigan and grew up in North Carolina. She wrote her first story at the age of seven, and she walked dogs after school in order to buy her first typewriter.
Merrie returned north to attend the Residential College of the University of Michigan, where she earned a BA in biological anthropology. Her fiction has appeared in Nature, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Unplugged: The Web’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy: 2008 Download. She now lives in Saline, Michigan, with her husband and stepdaughter. Merrie works in a library with over seven million books, and she finds this to be just about the right number. She is also the author of The Princess Curse and Handbook for Dragon Slayers.
Tim Lieder
Tim Lieder began Dybbuk Press in order to self-publish but changed his mind halfway through the editing process of Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre. Through Dybbuk Press, he has published 9 titles including Rashi by Maurice Liber and King David & the Spiders from Mars. His fiction has been published in Big Pulp, Shock Totem and Lamplight.
Sylvia Anna Hiven
Sylvia Hiven was born in Sweden but lives and writes in Atlanta, Georgia. Her fiction has appeared in over thirty-five publications, including PseudoPod, Flash Me Magazine, EscapePod, Everyday Fiction, and others. She edits the speculative fiction magazine Lingerfiction
About the Narrators
Richard E. Dansky
Richard E. Dansky is the author of several novels and a video game designer who works for Ubisoft.
Mat Weller
Mat Weller is the servant to a lovely family in eastern Pennsylvania. After his wife and kids go to sleep at night, he sometimes re-watches old episodes of X-Files on Netflix and other times retires to his basement booth where he records noises that get played on the Internet. Rumor has it he also makes delightful chocolate chip cookies.
Oh, and in October 2014, he beat Metroid II for the first time since 1991.
Mat had the honor of producing for Escape Pod from 2010 to 2016. He is also a graphic designer, an amateur voice actor, an amateur father, and he narrates a growing catalog of books for ACX.
Mur Lafferty
An inaugural inductee of the Podcast Academy’s Hall of Fame, Mur Lafferty began podcasting in 2004 and later built her writing career from her work as a science fiction podcaster.
As of 2026, Mur has written ten novels, eight novellas, and one nonfiction book. Her work has ranged from Star Wars to superhero fiction to afterlife fiction to paranormal fantasy to space murder–plus one book supporting writers based on her award winning podcast.
After winning the 2013 Astounding Award for Best New Writer, her work has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Parsec, Philip K. Dick, Manly Wade Wellman, and Podcast Peer Awards. Her podcast Ditch Diggers, with Matt Wallace, won the 2018 Best Fancast Hugo Award.
As an editor, Mur was the first editor of Pseudopod and Mothership Zeta, and is currently the co-editor of Escape Pod (with Valerie Valdes), eight-time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.
Her nonfiction work has appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table, and on the podcast The Dragon Page. In 2014, she received an MFA in popular fiction from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine.
She lives in Durham, NC, with her husband. She likes video games, tabletop games, murder mysteries, and dogs.
