Archive for Podcasts

Escape Pod 128: Union Dues: Send in the Clowns

Escape Pod 128: Union Dues: Send in the Clowns is an Escape Pod original.

Rated PG. Contains superhero violence and organizational politics.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:00 — 28.9MB)

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Union Dues: Send in the Clowns

by Jeffrey R. DeRego

Tina tugs on Kindred’s bullet-tattered red cape. “What kinda tricks do you do?”

Kindred shakes her head as if bewildered by the question. “Tricks?” She glances back at Megaton, who now juggles three Jersey barriers about a hundred meters out in the devastation.

“Let it go Kindred. We’ve been through a lot.”

“Well that’s good. So now you’re free to put on a carnival. Get everyone together and onto the jet now. And I mean now!” Her voice is so loud it draws everyone’s attention away from the show.

Megaton drops the Jersey barriers and the ground shakes.

Kindred lowers herself to one knee beside the little girl. “My trick is special,” she says, “I can make the whole circus disappear. Abracadabra…”

Escape Pod 127: Results

First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 2000.

Rated PG. Contains serious themes involving family planning and childbearing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:33 — 21.0MB)

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Show Notes

Special closing music: “Faithful” by The Shillas.

Results

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

She should have called her folks last night. They paged her three separate times after the test. But she wanted to wait until she had results, until she had something new to say instead of going over the same old arguments. She’s twenty-five, old enough to make her own choices. Old enough to make her own mistakes.

Her parents thought the testing was mistake number one. It certainly was expensive enough, but the doctor said he advised it for any couple about to get married. If they’re genetically incompatible, he’d said, they have the choice of terminating the relationship, planning for an expensive future, or tying tubes — practicing irreversible infertility, as one of her friends called it.

Options. That’s what her parents don’t get. It’s all about options.

And results.

Escape Pod 126: The Sweet, Sad Love Song of Fred and Wilma

First appeared in Science Fiction Age, November 1994.

Rated X. Contains explicit sex of several kinds. Not recommended for younger audiences.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:00 — 30.2MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Books:
A Small and Remarkable Life by Nick DiChario
Magic Feathers: The Mike and Nick Show, by Nick DiChario and Mike Resnick

The Sweet, Sad Love Song of Fred and Wilma

by Nick Dichario and Mike Resnick

So there you have him, Frederick Bannister, tripping across the highways and byways of of life, stubbing a toe here, bruising an elbow there, spilling this, dropping that, and managing to make it to the halfway point without too many major accomplishments or disasters.

And what of Wilma?

She possessed massive storage capacity, and no fourth-level equation, no matter how complex, was beyond her, but whether she was bright or merely well programmed is a moot point. Or at least it was in the beginning.

Escape Pod 125: End Game

First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April 2007.

Rated R. Contains profanity, sexual innuendo, and chess-related violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:00 — 25.4MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
2007 Podcast & New Media Expo
California Brunch Meetup 9/30/07
Better Late Than Never (Stardust review)

End Game

by Nancy Kress

“What exactly happened in the seventh grade?” I found myself intensely curious, which I covered by staring at the board and making a move.

He told me, still unembarrassed, in exhaustive detail. Then he added, “It should be possible to adjust brain chemicals to eliminate the static. To unclutter the mind. It should!”

“Well,” I said, dropping from insight to my more usual sarcasm, “maybe you’ll do it at Harvard, if you don’t get sidetracked by some weird shit like ballet or model railroads.”

“Checkmate,” Allen said.

Escape Pod 124: Save Me Plz

First appeared in Realms of Fantasy, October 2007.

Contains sexual innuendo, some mild language, and fantasy violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:55 — 28.1MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
Geek Fu Action Grip
This Day in Alternate History

Blog of the Week:
Ogre Marco’s LiveJournal
(receives Carnal Knowledge by Charles Hodgson)

Save Me Plz

by David Barr Kirtley

Meg hadn’t heard from Devon in four months, and she realized that she missed him. So on a whim she tossed her sword and scabbard into the trunk of her car and drove over to campus to visit him.

Escape Pod 123: Niels Bohr and the Sleeping Dane

First appeared in Strange Horizons July 2005.

Rated PG. Contains scenes of graphic violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:00 — 37.1MB)

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Niels Bohr and the Sleeping Dane

by Jonathan Sullivan

“Herr Doktor Bohr!” The captain’s cruel smile returned. “What a relief. We’ve been very concerned about you.”

Bohr sighed, looked up at the Gestapo captain with calm resignation, and took his wife’s hand. He started to get up.

“You are mistaken, sir,” Papa said.

I was nineteen years old. I had followed Bohr’s career for half my life, with something bordering on worship. A terrible miracle of circumstance had finally brought me into his presence. But at that moment his life meant nothing next to my own. Niels Bohr was already a prisoner of the Third Reich–nothing could stop that now. Papa’s action could only put us on a boxcar to Theresienstadt.

Escape Pod 122: Transcendence Express

First appeared in Hub Magazine Issue #2.

Rated R. Contains sexual innuendo, some strong language, and an R-rated bit of podcast feedback at the end.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:00 — 24.1MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
Steve’s Dragon*Con Report
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders
One Laptop Per Child

Blog of the Week:
Hares Rock Lots
(receives Carnal Knowledge by Charles Hodgson)

Transcendence Express

by Jetse de Vries

Unable to keep my distance, I walk up to three classmates interacting with one such a BIKO. The pictures are fuzzy, the colours ill-defined and the reaction time tediously slow. However, the letters appearing are large and easily readable, and after all three kids have been asked to introduce themselves the program equally divides its attention to each of them, making them take turns while the other two can effortlessly follow what’s going on. But man, is it slow. The display makes your eyes water and would have any western whizz kid tuning the screen properties like crazy.

Still, the real wonder is that those pell-mell constructions are doing anything at all. Furthermore, those African kids have nothing to compare them with, so are uncritically happy with what they’ve got. As dinner time closes in Liona has to wrestle most kids away from their new toys and promises that first thing tomorrow they will — after school hours — start making new BIKOs, so that eventually every classmate will have one. The whole class cheers and Liona’s smile doesn’t leave her face for the rest of the evening.

Escape Pod 121: The Snow Woman’s Daughter

First appeared in Cricket magazine, February 2007.

Rated G. Contains non-graphic death and childbearing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:25 — 15.4MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
Daily Dragon Podcast
Dragon*Con 2007

The Snow Woman’s Daughter

by Eugie Foster

When I was a little girl, I thought my mother’s name was Yuki, which means snow. That was part of her name, but I didn’t learn the rest of it until the night my father died.

My mother left us on a slate-gray evening when I was five, with her namesake falling from the sky and piled high around the windows and doors. Awakened by raised voices, I watched through a tear in the curtain that shielded my sleeping mat as my mother wrapped her limbs in a shining, white kimono. As far back as I could remember, she had always worn the dark wool shifts that all mountain people wear, spun from the hair of the half-mad goats that give us milk and cheese. In her kimono she looked like a princess, or a queen. Her skin was paler than mine, and I am thought quite fair. Roku, the boy who lived on the northern crest, used to tease me when we were little, calling me “ghost girl” and “milk face.”

Escape Pod 120: The Sundial Brigade

First appeared in Glorifying Terrorism, ed. Farah Mendlesohn.

Rated R. Contains strong themes of violence and terrorism, strong language, and some sexual content.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:58 — 37.8MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
UK Terrorism Act 2006
Graydancer.com
Stranger Things

Closing song: “Think For Yourself” by George Hrab

The Sundial Brigade

by James Trimarco

Not long after that, Antonio had an appointment with his curator, Yoshi, at the Department of Human Heritage. Antonio explained his situation in the Tyrranean language.

“So you’re unsatisfied with your role as a beggar,” Yoshi said. “That’s hardly surprising. The unemployed of the early twenty-first century were also unhappy. Your emotions are true to period, that’s all.”

“But it’s all wrong,” Antonio insisted. “I did well in school. I studied to be an engineer. If this was the real Italy, someone like me wouldn’t end up like this.

Yoshi’s mouth curved into the sterile non-smile of a bureaucrat with no time for sympathy.

Genres:

Escape Pod 119: Aliens Want Our Women

Escape Pod 119: Aliens Want Our Women is an Escape Pod original.

Rated G. Contains gender role stereotyping, but no strong sex, language or violence. Sorry.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:30 — 20.3MB)

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Show Notes

Blog of the Week:
The Evil Eyebrow
(receives The John W. Campbell Letters, Vol. 1)

Referenced Sites:
Polyamory Weekly
The DrabbleCast

Aliens Want Our Women

by Ramona Louise Wheeler

He was a widower, weary of too many years of loneliness. He had decided to travel to someplace distant and exotic, in hopes of finding as a companion someone completely different from his lost love. He had chosen Earth for its very remoteness.

“I want to marry the most wonderful woman on Earth,” he said.

Every female on the planet had just acquired a brand new agenda in life.

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