Archive for 10 and Up
Escape Pod 130: What We Learned From This Morning’s Newspaper
What We Learned From This Morning’s Newspaper
by Robert Silverberg
I got home from the office as usual at 6:47 this evening and discovered that our peaceful street has been in some sort of crazy uproar all day. The newsboy it seems came by today and delivered the New York Times for Wednesday December 1 to every house on Redbud Crescent. Since today is Monday November 22 it follows therefore that Wednesday December 1 is the middle of next week. I said to my wife are you sure that this really happened? Because I looked at the newspaper myself before I went off to work this morning and it seemed quite all right to me.
At breakfast time the newspaper could be printed in Albanian and it would seem quite all right to you my wife replied. Here look at this. And she took the newspaper from the hall closet and handed it all folded up to me. It looked just like any other edition of the New York Times but I saw what I had failed to notice at breakfast time, that it said Wednesday December 1.
Is today the 22nd of November I asked? Monday?
It certainly is my wife told me. Yesterday was Sunday and tomorrow is going to be Tuesday and we haven’t even come to Thanksgiving yet. Bill what are we going to do about this?
Escape Pod 128: Union Dues: Send in the Clowns
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
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 124: Save Me Plz
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
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.
Genres: Aliens
Escape Pod 119: Aliens Want Our Women
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.
Escape Pod 118: The Veteran
Show Notes
Blog of the Week:
The Angriest Rice Cooker in the World
Referenced Sites:
Ecru: The Butcher of Balis
Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 (Steve’s Rice Cooker)
Casio GW-300 (Steve’s Watch)
The Veteran
by Neal Asher
Seated on a bollard, the man contemplatively removed his pipe, as if to tamp it down or relight it. Instead, he placed it stem down in the top pocket of his shirt, then reached up and pressed his fingers against his cheekbone and forehead. His face came away from his hairline, round behind his ears, down to a point just above his Adam’s apple. The inside of his mouth and much of his sinus were also part of the prosthesis, so only bare eyeballs in the upper jut of his skull remained — the rest being the black spikes and plates of bio-interfaces.
Cheel gaped. From another pocket, the man took some sort of tool and began to probe inside the back of his detached face. He put the prosthesis in his lap, then took up his pipe and placed it in his throat sphincter. Smoke bled from between the interface plates of his cheeks. His bare eyeballs swivelled towards Cheel then back down to the adjustments he was making. She suddenly realised who this must be. Here was the veteran who worked on the ferry. Here was one of the few survivors from a brutal war between factions of dense-tech humans. Not understanding what was impelling her, she walked out on the jetty and approached him.
Genres: Medical
Escape Pod 116: Ej-Es
Show Notes
Blog of the Week:
Three Laws Unsafe
Ej-Es
by Nancy Kress
Mia didn’t reply. Her attention was riveted to Esefeb. The girl flung herself up the stairs and sat up in bed, facing the wall. What Mia had see before could hardly be called a smile compared to the light, the sheer joy, that illuminated Esefeb’s face now. Esefeb shuddered in ecstasy, crooning to the empty wall.
“Ej-es. Ej-es. Aaahhhh, Ej-es!”
Mia turned away. She was a medician, but Esefeb’s emotion seemed too private to witness. It was the ecstasy of orgasm, or religious transfiguration, or madness.
“Mia,” her wrister said, “I need an image of that girl’s brain.”
Escape Pod 114: Cloud Dragon Skies
Show Notes
Referenced Sites:
Superior Audio Works
Serve It Cold
Closing music: “The Fall,” by Red Hunter.
Cloud Dragon Skies
by N. K. Jemisin
I was a child when the sky changed. I can still remember days when it was endlessly blue, the clouds passive and gentle. The change occurred without warning: one morning we awoke and the sky was a pale, blushing rose. We began to see intention in the slow, ceaseless movements of the clouds. Instead of floating, they swam spirals in the sky. They gathered in knots, trailing wisps like feet and tails. We felt them watching us.
We adapted. We had never taken more than we needed from the land, and we always kept our animals far from water. Now we moistened wild cotton and stretched this across our smoke holes as filters. Sometimes the clouds would gather over fires that were out in the open. A tendril would stretch down, weaving like a snake’s head, opening delicate mist jaws to nip the plume of smoke. Even the bravest warriors would quickly put such fires out.