Archive for 10 and Up

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Escape Pod 986: Lyra, From Many Angles

Escape Pod 986: Lyra, From Many Angles is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:24 — 69.7MB)

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Lyra, From Many Angles

by Hiron Ennes

When they came, it was in a craft the size of a golf ball. Smooth and round and perfectly seamless, it cut open the night sky in a pale streak. For a scant second it struck a fiery blemish across the moon’s face, catching the attention of forty-four children, twelve adults and a bewildered flock of geese before boring a meter-wide crater into a dry lakebed in northern Mexico.

The explosive technicians were the first to the scene. Then came counter-bioterrorism, lumbering in prophylactic spacesuits prophetic of their evolution into the Global Office of Extraterrestrial Affairs. Soon after came the Agencia Espacial Mexicana, the Northern Hemispheric Space Association, what remained of the UN, then a dozen other acronyms, most of which would dissolve before the year was out. The confused tangle of letters amassed around the crater, investigated, argued, agreed, backstabbed, and then finally excavated the little craft only to bury it in a bunker in Corpus Christi. There it stayed the worst kept secret on Earth for nearly fifty years.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 983: The Robot Whisperer

“The Robot Whisperer” first appeared in Fighting for the Future cyberpunk-solarpunk anthology in 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:04 — 37.6MB)

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The Robot Whisperer

by Holly Schofield

Emilia heard the door bang as Kore entered her workshop. Dishes clattered on the side bench. “Be there in a minute, I just have to…” She let her voice fade. How could you fix a magnifying light when you needed to magnify it to see what you were doing? And her hands were trembling again. She set down the tiny screwdriver in frustration. She was too old for this. Too old for everything. And her calendar was blinking at her again.

“Come on, Mom, it’s getting cold.” More clattering. “Your tinkering can wait.”

“You know, there was a day when I was considered more than a tinkerer.” Emilia picked her way through the crowded stacks of old electronics gear to where Kore had laid out dinner, a lentil stew and a chicory latte, both freshly steaming from the collective’s communal kitchens.

“You’ve still got it, no worries.” Kore chuckled and gestured at the faded thank-you certificate on the wall. “All of the oldtimers still have a crush on you.” In the corner of the frame, bronzed by the late afternoon light, a small printed photo perched: Emilia on the day she’d arrived six decades ago. Mirrored sunglasses—retro even then—and short black hair with an ironic flip to the bangs. And her tight black clothing, so unsuited to the climate-changed heat of western British Columbia. The collective hadn’t wanted to let her in. She’d represented everything wrong with city life—gangs, drugs, high tech for the sake of high tech, not to mention faith in capitalism and perpetual growth—everything the newly formed collective had sworn to reject.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 980: Peace by Piece

Escape Pod 980: Peace by Piece is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:25 — 34.0MB)

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Show Notes

Erin Cairns

https://erincairns.com/ErinCairns/About/Press+Kit

Adam Pracht

https://escapepod.org/people/adam-pracht/

Alasdair Stuart

https://pseudopod.org/people/alasdair-stuart/

A Man Falls Into A Hole: A Meditation on Grace

https://ceciliairene.wordpress.com/2016/03/05/a-man-falls-into-a-hole-a-meditation-on-grace/

Void Merch

https://voidmerch.threadless.com/collections/escape-artists-inc-x-voidmerch-1

Hot Singles In Your Area

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/hot-singles-in-your-area-jordan-shiveley/7704976?ean=9781800183414

Peace by Piece

By Erin Cairns

Frank thought all the battle-drones had been deactivated. Certainly, none of them had ever looked around with curious little twitches of their front-facing cameras before. This one whirred and clicked like an anxious bird, trying to find focus through a chipped and cloudy lens.

“Is the war over?” it asked.

Frank set aside his screwdriver. “It’s been over for a long time.”

“Oh,” the drone said. “What happens now?”

“Well, I was about to strip you for materials.” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 979: Steadyboi After the Apocalypse

“Steadyboi After the Apocalypse” first appeared in the collection Friends For Robots: Stories by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Robot Dinosaur Press, 2022)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:32 — 45.2MB)

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Steadyboi After the Apocalypse

by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

You trudge through another wasteland town, sticking to the narrow roads, trying not to make the potholes deeper or the dust clouds thicker, but it’s hard when you’re a hulking robot built for a war long gone. You sheared off your guns and dislocated your laser fuses, dumped your ammo stores in a bog, and snapped the various killing blades into nubs.

People don’t believe your painted chassis.

You spend a lot of your energy gleaned from solar panels on scrubbing mud and rust off so the English letters are legible. You don’t have a way to speak, and when you gesture with your blocky hands (made to crush and punch and smash) people think you’re violent. So you grind your slow, plodding way deeper into the wastes. You can’t help going through towns: your core programming guidance system overrules any detours. You were made to confront people, even if you don’t want to cause harm.

(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…)

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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 964: Show and Tell (Flashback Friday)

Show and Tell originally appeared in Strange Horizons June 10, 2002.

Contains mild scenes of violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:07 — 29.5MB)

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Show and Tell

By Greg van Eekhout

Teacher is an old-fashioned bug with a blue carapace and eyes like two domes of gold beads. She is very pretty and smells like follow, but when she flutters her wings you better look smart or you’ll get her stinger in your belly.

So we are quiet. We are three rows of quiet children, blinking slowly and steadily, as is polite.

“Today, we are having Show and Tell,” Teacher says, bending her antennae towards us. “I am certain you have all brought wonderful shows.” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 961: Mathball

Escape Pod 961: Mathball is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:41 — 46.7MB)

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Mathball

By Larry Hodges

You are a baseball fan, sitting in the centerfield seats eating an overpriced hot dog. You are wearing a baseball cap, but not a batting helmet, of course. (Why would that be an issue? Hmm…)You smile brightly, but all will not end well for you unless you pay close attention.

“Play ball!” cries the umpire, crouching behind the plate. The crowd roars. The pitcher stares down at the catcher, waiting for the sign. They are the home team. Thousands cheer for them.

The batter waves his bat menacingly. He is a hero of this story.

Six scientists sit at their desks behind home plate, three on the third-base side, three on the first-base side. The three on the first-base side work for the pitcher and we don’t care about them—they are the enemy. The three on the third-base side work for the batter. They are from MIT. These latter three are the real stars of this story.

Well… mostly. (Continue Reading…)

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