Archive for Podcasts

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Escape Pod 977: Reflected in Mirrored Skies (Part 2 of 2)

“Reflected in Mirrored Skies” was published by Compelling Science Fiction (Special Kickstarter Companion issue Nov. 6, 2018)

Mentions of sexual assault

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:16 — 42.0MB)

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Reflected in Mirrored Skies

by Deborah L. Davitt

Mariana stood in the security room, listening to Tesar and Bitna Park-Lee speak to the head of security. Ephraim Novak was a tall man with a surprisingly weathered face. “You’re saying that all the video and logs from the entire station were deleted between 17:00 and 19:00? Down to who opened which doors?” Tesar asked incredulously.

“Whoever did it, clearly didn’t want their route discernible through omission. And probably easier just to do a full sweep of the files,” Novak replied, shaking his head.

“Are the files recoverable?” Bitna asked in her precise manner. “Surely you have ways of reconstituting lost data.”

Novak shook his head again. “They knew what they were doing. The data’s gone.”

“Which implies that it would be a member of your staff, given that whoever did it also got into your secure system.” Tesar bit off the ends of his words.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 976: Reflected in Mirrored Skies (Part 1 of 2)

“Reflected in Mirrored Skies” was published by Compelling Science Fiction (Special Kickstarter Companion issue Nov. 6, 2018)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:36 — 35.6MB)

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Reflected in Mirrored Skies

by Deborah L. Davitt

Above them, stars; below, the endless roil of leaden clouds that engulfed Venus from pole to pole. Mariana Delahaye watched the radar screen and eyed the autopilot’s trajectory. Beside her, her co-pilot had his feet up on the console. “Relax,” Oluwa Jelani told her. “The computer’s done the flying for months. It’ll handle the docking maneuvers, too.” He laced his hands behind his head. “I don’t get why they need us along for these hauls.”

Mariana shrugged, overriding the autopilot. She loved the feel of the ship, the sensation of wind transmitting into her hands through the controls. She’d flown a C-17 Globemaster back on Earth. She missed it. Her current assignment felt like a glorified trucking gig. “The human mind, Oluwa,” she reminded him, “is our best backup. We’re here to ensure that computer error doesn’t cost thousands of lives.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 975: Don Ysidro (Flashback Friday)

Don Ysidro first appeared in Polyphony 3, October 2003.

Includes death rituals with possible disturbing imagery.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:54 — 27.8MB)

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Show Notes

Evo Terra’s “The End”

The Fiction Podcast Preservation Project

Don Ysidro (Excerpt)

By Bruce Holland Rogers

On that last morning, anyone who came to visit me could see that I was dying. I knew it myself. As if I had cotton in my ears, I heard the voice of don Leandro saying to my wife, “Dona Susana, I think it is time to fetch the priest,” and I thought, yes, it’s time. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 974: Once Abandoned

Escape Pod 974: Once Abandoned is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:18 — 46.2MB)

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Once Abandoned

By A.P. Hawkins

Sappel whistled as he walked to the construction site, the sound echoing off nearby buildings in a muffled way. It was early spring, and the city was bursting with the vibrant green of new growth. Wild edibles sprouted from rooftops like tufts of hair. Wildflowers and herbs crowded ledges beneath every window. Vines crawled over walls, buds promising fruit come summer.

Out of all the buildings in the city, only the new one was bare. Its fresh grey concrete was harsh, unnatural, sticking out like a sore thumb from the green city and the wild country that surrounded it.

But it wouldn’t be bare for much longer. They’d had a good, hard rain last night, which meant the substrate the builders had left behind would be perfectly conditioned for planting. Sappel kept whistling, repeating his song’s refrain. (Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 973: Forever the Forest

“Forever the Forest” was first published in “Life Beyond Us: An Original Anthology of SF Stories and Science Essays” (April 2023)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:26 — 51.9MB)

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Forever the Forest

by Simone Heller

It is known that the Rootless are only ever leaving. Always moving on, never embracing soil long enough for connection. A life tumbled and tossed, and if it touches ours, it is only by chance, and ill chance more often than not.

But you came, in a tumble and a glorious blaze, by intention and by ill chance.

The night of your arrival was almost my undoing. You rode an incandescent gust tearing into our rows, escorted by a rain of hot metal. The ground rippled once with your impact, outward and onward, quicker than the fungal network could warn us. When the air stilled and the Conversation erupted in bursts of pain! and fire!, no-one knew what had crashed down on us. We sucked moisture from the deep, made the lesser plants close their ranks and smother the flames, and we calmed the Conversation with memories of renewal and regrowth.

You had plummeted from the sky, the fungal network relayed, as the filament reached out again to take hold of the large swath of churned and scorched soil, of everything that lay fallen and ready to decompose. Our rootscape expanded anew, tasting the damage and the altered lay of the land. But one blank spot persisted.

(Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 972: The Bargain of Death and Saint Nicholas

Escape Pod 972: The Bargain of Death and Saint Nicholas is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:21 — 72.4MB)

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The Bargain of Death and Saint Nicholas

by Craig Church

“What’s your favorite tale?” I ask, voice quivering.

My audience of thieves and killers, their gaunt, dirty faces illuminated by flickering firelight, eye me with equal parts skepticism and expectation. Their captain sits front row center, an energy rifle across his lap as a reminder of my fate should I attempt to run or, worse, fail to entertain. My stomach is eager to empty itself all over the stage of this derelict theater. Thank the spirits I didn’t eat much today.

“It’s the Eve of Giving,” says the captain. “Start with your favorite holiday story.” Nods and grunts of assent follow from the raiders surrounding him. I curl my fingers into fists to stop them from trembling, unable to steer my mind away from the fact that my life depends on choosing the right tale to bring my bloodthirsty captors into a festive mood. No pressure.

(Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 971: In the Late December (Flashback Friday)

“In the Late December” appeared in Strange Horizons, December 2003.

This story was also a Nebula Award Nominee!

Contains some dark Santa-related imagery, and the heat death of the universe.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:58 — 38.9MB)

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In the Late December

by Greg van Eekhout

They come to a cloud of silver mist, and there Santa finds a little boy made of molten silver with liquid silver eyes and sweeping silver delta wings. His wrists are ringed with missile launchers, and a rounded cone emerges from a cavity in his chest. Once there were many silver boys, fleets of them, protecting the outermost parts of inhabited space against things that came from outside inhabited space. But now, there is only the silver boy.

“You, sir,” the silver boy says, “are a tiresome consciousness cluster. Your binary value system remains as laughable as it is irrelevant. How you manage to remain cohesive is beyond me.”

“My value system is hardly binary,” Santa says. “In between naughty and nice I’ve made room for you: grumpy but fundamentally sound. Do you want a toy or not?”

Read the full story at Strange Horizons: http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/in-the-late-december/

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Escape Pod 970: Red in Tooth and Cog (Flashback Friday)

“Red in Tooth and Cog” originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 2016, and was previously published in Escape Pod 607

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:53 — 80.0MB)

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Red in Tooth and Cog

By Cat Rambo

A phone can be so much. Your memory, your edge against boredom, your source of inspiration. There’s always an app for whatever you need. Renee valued her phone accordingly, even celebrating it by giving way to the trend for fancy phone-cases. Its edges were bezeled with bling she’d won on a cruise the year before, and she’d had some tiny opals, legacy of her godmother, set into the center.

It was an expensive, new-model phone in a pretty case, and that was probably why it was stolen.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 969: Code Switching (Part 4 of 4)

Code Switching originally appeared in If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes and Other Stories – September 12, 2023.

Contains racism, war, and grade-A cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:38 — 56.3MB)

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Code Switching (Part 4 of 4)

By Malon Edwards

(…continued from Part 3)

  1. THIS IS THE TRUTELL

MICHAËLLE-ANNABELLE FEAT. JEAN-MICHEL

 

I strap into my rig, take a really big swig from my hydration dispenser tube I call The Ultra Black Vig, and settle back to begin this all-night white-hat gig.

At first, I decide to do this like the Stig, but instead I shake awake my lightbox, pull on my knee-high fuzzy socks, and momentarily disable my sigTell locks. This is my double-dog dare for Saffron Sutton to try and hack this whitefox. She and I have been doing this since the first day of SSI hacker sprints, which always takes place on the vernal equinox. Usually, I tell her she better kick rocks because my sigTell is damn well capable of delivering emotional shocks along her TruTell stalks all the way back to those frilly frocks she designs and thoroughly maligns (although, she would say signs) with a matte black gingham fox.

Now, watch me as I disregard all the clocks and enter the susso-sphere where the only thing I see is multicolored sigTell stalks everywhere. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 968: Code Switching (Part 3 of 4)

Code Switching originally appeared in If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes and Other Stories – September 12, 2023.

Contains racism, war, and grade-A cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:29 — 53.3MB)

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Code Switching (Part 3 of 4)

By Malon Edwards

(…Continued from Part 2)

 

  1. A SWEET-ASS HELICOPTER AND TEN STATER STRANGERS?

JEAN-MICHEL FEAT. THE NAUGHTY NINETY-DAY FANDANGO

 

I’m feelin’ this Bell 525 Relentless like Ellen Gilchrist playin’ bid whist wit her redheaded MILF temptress. She’s a proper drawers dropper chopper wit no love for the paupers. Her black chrome exterior makes me want to chill in her eighty-eight-square-foot cabin interior until homo erectus becomes superior.

And I’m not the only one.

Sittin’ wit me are ten Stater strangers who fear no danger because of the two exo-fighters flankin’ us as we drink an’ cuss, comforted by their protection against the Sovereign State of Chicago’s skanky trust.

Listen to me. Talkin’ like how a real Stater must.

Three of these girls might be smilin’ true, but on their faces you can see fear of Electric Resurrection, too. It’s a look all eleven of us have, but we play it cool—or at least try to appear to. (Continue Reading…)

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