Archive for Podcasts

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 333: Asteroid Monte

Originally appeared in Analog

Rated 15 and up for language, drug abuse

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:59 — 28.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Asteroid Monte

By Craig DeLancey

“You don’t look like an omnivore.”

I was supposed to spend the next several years working side-by-side with this bear monster thing from an unpronounceable planet, and the first words she speaks to me are these.

“Excuse me?”

“Your teeth are flat,” she hissed. “Like a herbivore’s.”

I had been waiting in the tiered square outside the Hall of Harmony, main office of the Galactic police force officially called the Harmonizers, but which everyone really called the Predators. Neelee-ornor is one of those planets that makes me a believer. Cities crowd right into forests as thick as the Amazon, and both somehow thrive with riotous abandon. It proves the Galactic creed really means something. Something worth fighting for. Something that could get me to take this thankless job.

So I waited to meet my partner, as I sat on a cool stone bench under a huge branch dripping green saprophytes. The air was damp but smelled, strangely, like California after the rain, when I would leave CalTech and hike into the hills. I almost didn’t want her to show, so I could sit and enjoy it. I really knew only three things about her. She had about two e-years under her belt as a Predator. She was a Sussuratian, a race of fierce bearlike carnivores evolved from predatory pack animals, only a century ahead of humanity in entering Galactic Culture. And she was named Briaathursiasaliantiormethessess.

God help me.
(Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 332: Overclocking

Originally appeared in Apex Magazine in December, 2009

Rated 15 and up for language, drug abuse

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:46 — 15.0MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Overclocking

By James L. Sutter

They’re waiting for him when he comes out of the tank.  Whether plainclothes or just another pair of clockers, he can’t quite tell, but the way they avoid looking in his direction tips him off in a heartbeat.  When Ari Marvel walks by, you _look_.

They start drifting idly in his direction, and that clinches things.  Reaching down into the lining of his pocket, Ari palms the whole batch and trails his hand over the edge of the bridge railing.  The brittle grey modsticks crumble with ease, and by the time the two have dropped their cover and made the sting he’s moved smoothly into position, hands against the brick and legs spread wide.  The pigs don’t even thank him for being so efficient.  The patdown’s rougher than necessary, but after a minute they throw their hoods back up and move off down the street.

Ari runs his hands through his faded blue-green spikes, then takes the stairs down to the tube.  A beginner might have lingered at the railing and thought about all the time and money now floating down the culvert, but Ari doesn’t look back.  Necessary expenditures.  Expected losses.

It’s just business, baby.
(Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 331: Devour

Escape Pod 331: Devour is an Escape Pod original.

Rated 15 and up for language, brief sexual imagery, brief violent imagery

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:58 — 31.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Devour

By Ferrett Steinmetz

“I want some water,” Sergio says.  The bicycle chains clank as he strains to
put his feet on the floor.

Sergio designed his own restraints.  He had at least fifteen plumbers on his
payroll who could have installed the chains – but Sergio’s never trusted
anything he didn’t build with his own hands.  So he deep-drilled gear mounts
into our guest room’s floral wallpaper, leaving me to string greased roller
chains through the cast-iron curlicues of the canopy bed.

“You’re doing well, Bruce,” he lied, trying to smile – but his lips were
already desiccated, pulled too tight at the edges.  Not his lips at all.

I slowed him down; I had soft lawyer’s hands, more used to keyboards than
Allen wrenches.  Yet we both knew it would be the last time we could touch
each other.  So I asked for help I didn’t need, and he took my hands in his
to guide the chains through what he referred to as “the marionette mounts.”

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 330: The Ghost of a Girl Who Never Lived

Originally appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show.

Rated 13 and up

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:57 — 20.0MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

The Ghost of a Girl Who Never Lived

By Keffy R. M. Kehrli

I am Sara’s second body.

My first memory is of Sara’s resurrection in a room that smelled of cotton balls and hydrogen peroxide.

“That’s funny,” a man said.

The world felt raw, sore, and new. Under my back, my butt, my fingertips, I could feel every thread in the sheets beneath me. The blanket over my stomach scratched. Padded straps crossed my arms.

“What’s funny?” This voice was a woman’s.

“Got another error message,” the man answered. “Have you ever seen that one before?”

I felt the sheets with Sara’s fingers, and the texture conjured memories I didn’t have. I should have known where I was and what I was there for, but I couldn’t catch hold of the fleeting thoughts. In the dim light of the room I could only see the ceiling.

“Let me see.” I heard a frenzied clicking. “It failed twice?”
(Continue Reading…)

The Soundproof Escape Pod #16

Read

E-Book PDF: Open in New Window | Download (3.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Click here for the epub version.

Hello everyone,

Can we talk about Fringe for a second? It’s somehow managed to survive to a fourth season on Fox, which is a feat in and of itself. But it’s also managed to keep the monsters of the week new and interesting, even when they’re new iterations of the same monsters of the week because we’re now in a slightly more adjacent parallel universe than the one we’d gotten used to. And when the new monsters are the old good guys.

It’s also notable for surviving because we’re kind of awash in fantasy on the (American) teevee right now. Grimm, Being Human, and Once Upon a Time are the new-ish ‘genre’ shows, and SyFy, which some of you elderly folks may remember as the SciFi channel, doesn’t have a science fiction series that isn’t imminently headed for the grave.

Which is kind of a show of how fickle the fates of TV production is, and how swiftly the tide can shift away once a new shiny happy fun ball enters the room.

But Fringe continues to turn in the solid mediations on the endless strange that lurks in the corners of space-time, while keeping you caring about characters even as many of them permutate as the show moves from universe to universe.

This month we bring you a trio of stories from Judith Tarr, Randy Henderson, and Zachary Jernigan. They contain dinosaurs, a future of literature or at least novels, and the souls of Earth — in a convenient travel cube.

—Bill

Bill Peters
Assistant Editor
Escape Pod

Escape Pod 329: Pairs

Originally appeared in Asimov’s, April 2011

Rated 17-and-up for violence, language, and sexual imagery

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:54 — 41.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Pairs

By Zachary Jernigan

I had been practicing turning myself into a knife. Between star systems I gathered and focused my particles into a triangle, a sharp shape. Hurling myself against the diamond-hard walls of my small ship, the point of the weapon hardened. I honed myself.

You see, I had decided to murder my employer. I had studied his weaknesses and come to believe myself capable of the act. I did not know when and where, nor did I know what would trigger it. I simply knew it had to happen. On that day I would either die or buy myself a measure of freedom.

Originally, this was the extent of my plan: To serve myself.

My name is Arihant. I am one of two humans still inhabiting a physical form, diminished though it is. Outside the walls of my ship, I am in form a faintly translucent white specter, strong and powerfully built—an artist’s anatomical model. Over the years it has become difficult to remember what my face looked like, and thus my features are only approximately human, my head bare. My eyes glow the color of Earth’s sun.

I am quite beautiful, Louca tells me. On more than one occasion she has run her hands over the ghostly contours of my body. “I wish you were solid,” she once said. “Oh, Ari. The things I would do to you.”

Louca is the one I am forced to follow and observe. Her name means crazy—an appropriate name. She is the second human possessing a body. Technically, her body is a black, whale-shaped ship one hundred meters long, but her avatars take the forms of anything she imagines. Very rarely, she is human, and never the same person twice. More often, she wears the bodies of flying animals.

She dreams of flying, which is appropriate.
(Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 328: Surviving the eBookalypse

Escape Pod 328: Surviving the eBookalypse is an Escape Pod original.

Rated 13 and up for language

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:02 — 30.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Surviving the eBookalypse

By Randy Henderson

I entered the City Public Library wearing my plastic replica chainmail and sword, and my suede “book jacket” with a laminated author’s license clipped to the collar.

Before me stood a fully automated checkout kiosk for scheduling author recitals. The library floor beyond that was filled with neat rows of author cubicles, each with a desk and chair. Most were occupied. The air was filled with the soft tickity-ticking of keyboards, and the smells of coffee, “New Book” scented air fresheners, and Cup o’ Soup. Heads popped up over cubicle walls in response to the clacking of the door, then disappeared again when they saw I was no customer or potential patron.

I understood their disappointed expressions too well. This was not at all where I thought I would be two years after publishing my first e-book.

A woman’s smile caught my attention. It was like cherry-haloed sunshine, floating between her neon blue hair and her black lace dress. She emerged from a cube in the Romance section, walked up to me, leaned in close and sniffed at the air. Then she said with the hint of a Mexican accent, “I smell a transfer from Bainbridge library, no? An MFA boy, if I’m not mistaken?”

“That obvious?” I asked.

“Lucky guess.” She laughed, and flicked my author’s license. “Says so right here.”
(Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 327: Revenants

First published in DINOSAURFANTASTIC from DAW edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg, 1993

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:54 — 15.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Revenants

By Judith Tarr

Janie wanted to pet the pterodactyl.

“Here’s the auk,” I said. “Look how soft his feathers are. Look at the dodo, isn’t he funny? Don’t you want to give the quagga a carrot?”

Janie wouldn’t even dignify that with disgust. It was the pterodactyl or nothing.

Janie is four. At four, all or nothing isn’t a philosophy, it’s universal law. A very intelligent four can argue that this is the Greater Metro Revenants’ Zoo, yes? And this is the room where they keep the ones that can be petted, yes? So why can’t a person pet the pterodactyl?

No use explaining that everything else was inoculated and immunized and sterilized and rendered safe for children to handle. Everything but the pterodactyl. They’d just made it, and it was supposed to be pettable when they were done, but not yet. There’d been plenty of controversy about putting it on display so soon, but public outcry won out over scientific common sense. So the thing was on display, but behind neoglas inlaid with the injunction: No, I’m Not Ready Yet. Look, But Don’t Touch.
(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 326: Flash Fiction Special

Escape Pod 326: Flash Fiction Special is an Escape Pod original.

Appropriate for teens and up due to erotic imagery and language

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:58 — 31.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

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

The Soundproof Escape Pod #15

Read

E-Book PDF: Open in New Window | Download (597.1KB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Click here to get the epub version.

Dear Faithful Listeners And Readers—

Happy 2012! It’s looking to be a very exciting year at Escape Pod, and we’re delighted you’re still hanging out with us!

We had a lot of fun bringing you different things in 2011, from our first audio drama at the end of the year to the various story collections to our supporters. And thanks to your supporters, by the way. It’s amazing to realize we’re in our seventh year doing this, and we’ve operated in the black the entire time. We couldn’t have done that without you, so thank you.

To be completely honest, it hasn’t been smooth sailing. We got behind in submissions this year, even with some time off to catch up. Authors got angry, as they should have done, and we’ve figured out where things went wrong and are working on fixing it. I won’t offer excuses, only that I’m responsible for this magazine and I let down our authors, and I’m very sorry for this. We’re closing our doors to submissions in January in order to get everything organized.

Hugo voting is open, from now until March 31! I’ll have a blog post soon about what Escape Pod has offered that is eligible, and we’re appreciate a consideration if you’re eligible to nominate.

Resolutions are promises to fail, so we won’t make any, but we do promise to continue to bring you weekly SF that will be fun. And lose those 10 pounds, of course.

Have a safe and happy 2012. Be mighty, and have fun!

Mur Lafferty
Editor

hot mature website