Archive for Podcasts

Escape Pod 175: Reparations

Originally appeared in Fortean Bureau. (June 2004)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:48 — 19.1MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains mass destruction and graphic descriptions of the wounded.

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Reparations

By Merrie Haskell

I just swab my arm and administer the cocktail, a booster for my radiation immunization. The taste of brass fills my mouth in seconds, and I know that the cocktail has flooded my system. With this stuff burbling inside, I can stare down three sieverts without blinking, or, more importantly, losing my immune system, teeth, hair, and intestines.

When I finish with my dose, I grab the skin on the newbie’s arm, swab her and shoot her up, too. “Ow!” She jumps and rubs her arm. I watch carefully to see her smack her lips at the taste. “You could’ve warned me.”

“No time,” I say, doctoring Ken and the others just as abruptly. We’re pressed, and they know it.

We’re all nice and anodized on the inside at 8:12. We’re waiting for 8:16, or thereabouts. There aren’t any atomic clocks in 1945, so all times are approximate, internally speaking. And from here on in, there’s no point speaking any other way.

Escape Pod 174: Private Detective Molly

Originally published in Strange Horizons

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:30 — 26.5MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. A somewhat dark kid’s story; contains parental tragedy and complex social issues.

Private Detective Molly

By A.B. Goelman

That’s when I see my new boss. Four feet of trouble. Brunette variety. Tear tracks cutting through the dirt on her face, wearing jeans that were already old when Molly Dolls were nothing more than molded plastic and fantasy homes.

She’s no idiot, though. “I want the Debutante persona,” she says. “You’re still not Debutante Molly are you?”

I like a girl who doesn’t need me to explain everything. “That’s right, kid,” I pull my blonde hair back into a pony tail and cover it with my fedora.

“Why do you keep coming out as a Petey persona?” Poor kid sounds like she’s about to cry. Don’t blame her for wanting Debutante Molly. Debbie’s the kind of girl who reminds me why God bothered with Adam’s rib in the first place. As wholesome and satisfying as a virgin daiquiri on a hot day. Everything I’m not. “Petey’s not even a girl’s name,” the kid says.

Escape Pod 173: Robots Don’t Cry

Rated R. Contains profanity and some sadness.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:23 — 29.1MB)

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Robots Don’t Cry

By Mike Resnick

Every now and then we strike it rich. Usually we make a profit. Once in a while we just break even. There’s only been one world where we actually lost money; I still remember it — Greenwillow. Except that it wasn’t green, and there wasn’t a willow on the whole damned planet.

There was a robot, though. We found him, me and the Baroni, in a barn, half-hidden under a pile of ancient computer parts and self-feeders for mutated cattle. We were picking through the stuff, wondering if there was any market for it, tossing most of it aside, when the sun peeked in through the doorway and glinted off a prismatic eye.

“Hey, take a look at what we’ve got here,” I said. “Give me a hand digging it out.”

Escape Pod 172: Union Dues: Tabula Rasa

Escape Pod 172: Union Dues: Tabula Rasa is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:41 — 28.0MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains profanity, sexual innuendo, and a bit of soap opera.

Referenced Sites:
Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty

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Union Dues: Tabula Rasa

By Jeffrey R. DeRego

I raise my hand and she stops chattering. “Just tell me who you are and where I am.”

She freezes and blinks twice. “Tell you where you are? Cap, you’re home. This is the Cleveland Pyramid. I’m Sarah Shadow. You don’t recognize me?”

“That doesn’t mean anything to me!” I stand up. Frustration washes over me like heat from a blast furnace, and worse, my stomach is rumbling. “I woke up today. The first person I saw was you, but I’ve never seen you before in my life. I figured as long as I was in the hospital, or wherever, I’d start to remember, but it’s a blank. Where am I, what is this place, what are you people?” I point at her costume. “And that, what’s that, are you part of a circus act or something?”

Escape Pod 171: Fenneman’s Mouth

Originally appeared in Beluthahatchie and Other Stories

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:50 — 25.3MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains profanity, and real and simulated persons behaving badly.

Featured Site:
Playing for Keeps

Fenneman’s Mouth

By Andy Duncan

“Fenneman?”

The studio audience laughed loudly, as it always did when Groucho turned, in mock desperation or annoyance, to his long-suffering, hopelessly square announcer. Groucho’s voice slightly increased in pitch whenever he said Fenneman’s name, as if he were just at the edge of losing his celebrated cool. This half-squawk had been funny in the stateroom scene of A Night at the Opera (“Steward! Steward!”), and it was still funny on You Bet Your Life twenty-five years later. He was a pro, Groucho was, and I did right by him; I modulated that pitch myself.

Escape Pod 170: Pervert

First appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 2004

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:03 — 24.1MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains explicit sexual activity.

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Pervert

By Charles Coleman Finlay

When the bus reaches the corner, they climb onboard, taking seats on their side and evening out the ride so it doesn’t feel so much like we’ll tip over. We rattle along past road construction, the men working behind screens that are consecrated by the priests each morning as part of the men’s quarter, and resanctified to the women at quitting time. The sun already pelts down mercilessly and they will have to leave off working soon.

We enter the government quarter and arrive at the Children’s Center, a long concrete brick of a building with windows shielded from the sun by an open grid of deep squares made of the same material. The morning light turns it into a chessboard of glaring white and dark shadow. I don’t work with the children, who are on the lower floors and the sheltered playground of the courtyard, but toil away with records on the upper floors. Unlike Jamin or Zel, I am permitted by the job to work alongside women, but only because I completed my theological studies and am a candidate for the priesthood. My superiors do not know of the taint on my soul. Do not know yet, I should say, and when they discover it I will never be ordained or promoted.

Late notice (and a bonus file)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:25 — 41.5MB)

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Sorry folks. I know that EP is getting to the point where it’s usually late these days, but today it’s going to be a bit later than usual. There are a few good reasons for it — some related to the content itself, and some related to things going on with me — but it would be inappropriate for me to go into all of it right this moment. We’re not skipping a week, and I’m fairly certain EP170 will be posted by noon today.

In the meantime, by way of apology and spurred by some demand for it in the forums, here’s a minor bonus for those interested: the raw, mostly unedited recording session from Dr. Bowie’s and my reading of “How I Mounted Goldie, Saved My Partner Lori, and Sniffed Out the People’s Justice” last week. If you enjoy knowing how the sausage gets made, this particular file is a slightly more entertaining example than most. This isn’t going into the feed, because it isn’t really an Escape Pod episode; you’ll have to either listen in the browser, or right-click on it and download it yourself if you want to hear it.

Escape Pod 169: How I Mounted Goldie, Saved My Partner Lori, and Sniffed Out The People’s Justice

Escape Pod 169: How I Mounted Goldie, Saved My Partner Lori, and Sniffed Out The People’s Justice is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:03 — 33.0MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains profanity, violence, and canine sexuality.

Referenced Sites:
CrimeWAV Crime Fiction Podcast

How I Mounted Goldie, Saved My Partner Lori, and Sniffed Out The People’s Justice

By Jonathon Sullivan

Q: What happened when you arrived at the address in question?

A: My Partner Lori opened my door and I jumped out. I arrested a suspect!

Q: Yes, Officer Bull. But I would like you to tell me exactly what happened, in detail, from the time you got out of the car.

A: Okay. My skulltop showed me which house, and I ran toward it. A man and three dogs ran out the door. One of them was a bitch with pretty haunches. She was in heat, and I really really really liked the way she smelled. I wanted to run after her, but I knew I should go after the man. So I did. Even though I liked the way she smelled!

Escape Pod 168: Family Values

First appeared in Cosmos, August/September 2007

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:32 — 15.5MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains alien reproduction, politics, and other sordid topics.

Referenced Sites:
The Daily Cabal

Family Values

By Sara Genge

Senator Wu accepted Twing’s seed out of courtesy, although she had no intention of conceiving his child. Twing of Sails had thrown this party in his house in her honour, but he wasn’t as free with kilojoules as he was with genetic material, and Senator Wu wasn’t prepared to funnel the heat donations of her two crèche mates to bring another man’s child to the World. She acidified the pores in her tentacle and waved it around, letting the current carry away the dead spores. She smiled at Twing and a wave of blue burst from his centre and radiated towards the thin membranes that rippled on the edge of his disc-shaped body.

He didn’t look bad, but he wasn’t as comely as Senator Wu. Her body was an almost perfect sphere, and she was well aware of it. Wherever she went, she took care to rotate every few minutes, lest gravity pull on her too long in any one direction and tug her gelatinous figure out of shape.

Escape Pod 167: Love and Death in the Time of Monsters

First appeared in Abyss & Apex, 4th Quarter 2007.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:14 — 21.5MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains violence on a grand scale and illness on a human scale.

Referenced Sites:
GUIDOLON The Giant Space Chicken
Well-Told Tales

Special closing music: “Showdown in Shinjuku” and “Incognito” by Daikaiju.

Love and Death in the Time of Monsters

By Frank Wu

They try everything. Cellular toxins. DNA replication inhibitors. Anti-sense nucleic acids. Artillery. Great bolts of lightning. Nothing stops him, it only makes the monster angrier. They try mutagens, teratogens, carcinogens, neurotoxins, hemotoxins, genotoxins — they think that toxins in the environment created the monster, and maybe toxins can kill it. Maybe two wrongs can make a right.

They don’t, apparently. I worry about the residues left in the ground after the monster’s moved on. He’s going up and down the eastern seaboard. Janie talks about flying out there to help, but she doesn’t want to get stomped on. Who would? A team of guys from work drive across the country to do whatever they can. They figure that patent annuities can still get paid in their absence. I want to go, but I have to stay to help my mom. That’s my fight.

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