Archive for 17 and Up

Escape Pod 223: The Uncanny Valley

Originally appeared in the Polyphony 6 anthology.

Rated R

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:55 — 38.4MB)

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The Uncanny Valley

By Nick Mamatas

The trouble with knowing everything there is to know, Stephanie Dowling decided instantly, because that’s how clever she was, was that when there was something unknown out there, she had nobody to consult.

And there was something unknown out there, nibbling away at the edge of the economy, and screwing with the Cottrell-Cockshot tatonnements sufficiently that there’d be problems. Shortages of essentials: power cells and answer boxes. Ridiculous surpluses of nonsense like chrome and diamonds. She could tell because the bride was coughing between her lines and the donkey she rode on suddenly looked ill. It would be just like … wossname … that old thing. Capitalism. Till she fixed it anyway.

Wossname?

Escape Pod 222: Infestation

Originally appeared in By Blood We Live edited by John Joseph Adams

Rated R for violence and very different vampires.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:26 — 31.2MB)

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Infestation

By Garth Nix

They were the usual motley collection of freelance vampire hunters. Two men, wearing combinations of jungle camouflage and leather. Two women, one almost indistinguishable from the men though with a little more style in her leather armour accessories, and the other looking like she was about to assault the south face of a serious mountain. Only her mouth was visible, a small oval of flesh not covered by balaclava, mirror shades, climbing helmet and hood.

They had the usual weapons: four or five short wooden stakes in belt loops; snap-holstered handguns of various calibers, all doubtless chambered with Wood-N-Death® low-velocity timber-tipped rounds; big silver-edged bowie or other hunting knife, worn on the hip or strapped to a boot; and crystal vials of holy water hung like small grenades on pocket loops.

Protection, likewise, tick the usual boxes. Leather neck and wrist guards; leather and woven-wire reinforced chaps and shoulder pauldrons over the camo; leather gloves with metal knuckle plates; Army or climbing helmets.

Escape Pod 219: Sleepy Joe

Originally appeared in The Infinite Matrix

Rated R for adult situations, a smattering of violence, and overly friendly chairs.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:44 — 25.2MB)

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Sleepy Joe

By Marc Laidlaw

The plan must have come to Rog fully formed that first morning, as he stepped off the elevator into the lobby of Szilliken Sharpenwright and saw the old soldier newly stationed there in his omnichair between the potted silk ferns and the coffee tables.

“Oh. My. God. I am in love.”

Megan, her arms loaded with Rog-House props and paraphernalia she hadn’t had time to ditch yet, said, “You say that an awful lot for someone who styles himself completely asexual. Not to mention atheistic.”

Escape Pod 217: The Kindness of Strangers

Escape Pod 217: The Kindness of Strangers is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:00 — 35.7MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R for sexual situations and alien-caused genocide.

The Kindness of Strangers

by Nancy Kress

When morning finally dawns, Rochester isn’t there anymore.

Jenny stands beside Eric, gazing south from the rising ground that yesterday was a fallow field. Maybe the whole city hasn’t vanished. Certainly the tall buildings are gone, Xerox Square and Lincoln Tower and the few others that just last night poked above the horizon, touched by the red fire of the setting September sun. But, unlike Denver or Tokyo or Seattle, Rochester, New York sits – sat – on flat ground and there’s no point from which the whole city could be seen at once. And it was such a small city.

“Maybe they only took downtown,” Jenny says to Eric, “and Penfield is still there or Gates or Brighton…”

Escape Pod 216: βoyfriend

Originally appeared at Worldchanging.ca

Rated R for language, teen-adult situations, and virtual steadies. Also, Norm’s sexy talk.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:20 — 31.1MB)

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βoyfriend

By Madeline Ashby

Violet snapped three photos of herself from various angles, sent them, and waited for her boyfriend’s response. He rang her up—a slow vibrating purr, unlike the staccato door-knocking of her mother’s ringvibe—and said: “Me likey. Now take it off.”

Violet frowned. “You were _supposed_ to dig up the backstory on the dress.”

“Well, you can’t blame me for getting a little distracted. Besides, isn’t it bad luck for me to see?”

“That’s only for weddings, not prom.”

Escape Pod 214: Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast

First published in Interzone #220 (Feb 2009).

Rated R for sex, masks, and violence

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:51 — 39.7MB)

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Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast

By Eugie Foster

Each morning is a decision. Should I put on the brown mask or the blue? Should I be a tradesman or an assassin today?

Whatever the queen demands, of course, I am. But so often she ignores me, and I am left to figure out for myself who to be.

Dozens upon dozens of faces to choose from.

1. Marigold is for murder.

Genres:

Escape Pod 213: A Monkey Will Never Get Rid of Its Black Hands

Escape Pod 213: A Monkey Will Never Get Rid of Its Black Hands is an Escape Pod original.

Rated R for amputation fads.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:40 — 34.8MB)

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A Monkey Will Never Get Rid of Its Black Hands

By Rachel Swirsky

Papa and Uncle Fomba told me if I didn’t join the army, they’d kill me. They didn’t. They cut off my hands.

This was after U.S. forces marched on Syria, but before we invaded Lebanon. On every city block, posters of Uncle Sam entreated every Tom, Duc, and Haroun to get blown up in the name of freedom. Papa and Fomba gave me two weeks to enlist. I ran for Canada instead. They caught me.

Escape Pod 212: Skinhorse Goes to Mars

Originally published in PostScripts

Rated R for strong language, strong violence, and world-spanning tumors.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:53 — 28.8MB)

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Skinhorse Goes to Mars

By Jay Lake

When I met Skinhorse, my first thought was old. Which was weird. Nobody gets old these days. We all die young, some of us after living a long time, if we’re lucky.

He was in Piet’s Number Seven, a bar-cum-caravanserai in an illegal orbit trailing far enough behind Vesta to be ignorable. Piet’s had been instantiated in an old volatiles bladder that had done the Jovian run a few too many times before falling into the surplus circuit. You could store entire cities in Piet’s cubage, which made for a somewhat attenuated bar experience. Plus the place had one of those gravity cans — yes, those gravity cans — which meant your drink stayed stuck down long as you were near a Higgs carpet.

So there I was annoying myself with three perfectly disrespectable rock jocks, each of us out to fleece the others, when this cadaver starts to stand over me. We’re all forever young or forever dead, but this armstrong looked like he’d shaved about half a cent too deep across his whole body, then restored his dermis with spray-on thermal insulation.

Escape Pod 207: Wonder Maul Doll

Appeared originally in From the Trenches

Rated R for violence and sexual situations.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:01 — 21.3MB)

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Wonder Maul Doll

By Kameron Hurley

We set down in Pekoi as part of the organics inquisition team, still stinking of the last city. We’re all muscle. Not brains. The brains are out eating at the foreigners’ push downtown, and they don’t care if we whore around the tourist dregs half the night so long as somebody’s sober enough to haul them out come morning. When the brains aren’t eating, they’re pretending to give us directions in the field, telling us where to sniff out organics. They’re writing reports about how dangerous Pekoi is to the civilized world.

We’re swapping off some boy in a backwater push the locals cleared out for us. We’re sitting around a low table. I pass off another card to Kep. Luce swaps out a suit. She has to sit on one leg to lean over the table. It’s hot in the low room, so humid that moths clutter aroundour feet, too heavy to fly.

The boy’s making little mewling sounds again. Somebody should shut him up, but not me. This is my hand. I’m ahead.

Escape Pod Flash: A Preference for Silence

Rated R. Contains sexual situations and noisy people.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:01 — 4.1MB)

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A Preference for Silence

By Lucy A. Snyder

Veronica was a spaceworthy lass with a definite preference for silence and a sensitivity to detail. She’d never lost her tea in zero gee and had always been the first to note when the coffee maker needed cleaning or when the fluorescent lights would flick-flicker in signal of the bulbs’ impending death.

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