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Escape Pod 1026: What Any Dead Thing Wants (Part 1 of 3)

“What Any Dead Thing Wants” originally appeared in Psychopomp (February 2024)

Copious helpings of harsh language descriptors found here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:33 — 50.7MB)

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What Any Dead Thing Wants (Part 1)

by Aimee Ogden

The third week of a planetary exorcism is the hardest—at least if the planet in question has megafauna to deal with. Enthusiasm wanes even faster on worlds that never evolved past microbes. Hob’s crew always comes in like a team of intrepid explorers, swapping stories with the outgoing terraforming crew as they run down the handover checklist. But after ten, fifteen days, the work slows down, as the crew moves farther from the terraforming origin nexus. That’s where the ghosts are densest, the hauntings the most intense. Along the meridian lines that the crew follows around the planet to the secondary terraforming nexus, only the most stubborn haunts linger—the ones that won’t clear out at just the first reminder of their own recent mortality. The ones that don’t seem to give a shit that Hob and his crew are working to a strict deadline. Exo megafauna have, unsurprisingly, absolutely no sense of human decency.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1023: Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race

“Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race” originally appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:38 — 45.3MB)

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Mackson’s Mardi Gras Moon Race

by David DeGraff

Turtles were built for short-haul Lunar prospecting, not treks across the entire face of the Moon, but back in 2043 João Silva Henrique, desperate to celebrate Carnaval, drove a turtle from Amundsen Crater at the south pole to Byrd Crater at the north pole. Unsanctioned celebrations of any kind were forbidden in the Chinese stations, but there were enough Brazilian workers at the north pole to make the risk of trekking across unexplored terrain seem worthwhile. Now that Brazil controls Byrd Station, it’s an annual race. And I’m going to win it. If I live.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1022: Butter Side Down (Part 2 of 2)

Butter Side Down originally appeared in Writers of the Future (volume 40) – May 2024.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:42 — 77.1MB)

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Butter Side Down (Part 2 of 2)

By Kal M

 

(…Continued from Part 1)

 

INTERVIEW LOG 10023869-01-03

SUBJECT: SMITH, JOSEPH (HUMAN)

Captain Crab said humans have special abilities? Oh, sure, that’s true. It’s called sweat. It’s this biological function humans have to regulate our body temperature. You’ve heard of it? Yeah. It makes us great endurance athletes. We can also do this nifty thing called going into the alarm stage. Basically, in an emergency, our brains turn off our pain receptors and divert all energy into survival. So we’re kind of weak and slow, normally, but under duress we get this big burst of power. Sometimes you hear stories of humans managing weeks without food, or lifting several times our body weight, or cutting off our own limbs to escape a trap. An injured human can keep going for ages. That’s why, when things get dangerous, you want a human around just in case. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1021: Butter Side Down (Part 1 of 2)

Butter Side Down originally appeared in Writers of the Future (volume 40) – May 2024.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:04 — 69.2MB)

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Butter Side Down (Part 1 of 2)

By Kal M

DEPARTMENT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT CASE FILE 10023869

UNITED INTERGALACTIC SPACE COUNCIL OF FREE SENTIENT PERSONS (PLAINTIFF) VS HUMAN JOSEPH SMITH (DEFENDANT)

CHARGE(S): THEFT OF FEDERAL PROPERTY, TREASON, BREACH OF CONTRACT, CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER, WARMONGERING, CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT GENOCIDE

STATUS: DECIDED

VERDICT: GUILTY

SENTENCE: DEATH.

(Transcript begins).

INTERVIEW LOG 10023869-01-01

SUBJECT: SMITH, JOSEPH (HUMAN)

STATUS: DEFENDANT

It’s not such a crazy situation when you think about it. All I did was fall in love with a toaster and cause an intergalactic political incident. I don’t see why it’s such a big deal. It could’ve happened to anyone, yeah? (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1019: Baron Quits The Payloaders

Escape Pod 1019: Baron Quits The Payloaders is an Escape Pod original.

Death of loved ones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:57 — 69.1MB)

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Baron Quits The Payloaders

By Renan Bernardo

This story starts with a gig. Half a million people from all corners of the galaxy, hands in the air, heads banging to our vibrant noise. You probably saw the venue on some feed already. It’s the Amplitude, our spaceship, stage #3, the one with an enormous radiation-shielding dome over our heads. Right now, the glass glistens with Marzanna’s tannish and gaseous massiveness outside.

This is also how the story ends for me. How I want it to end. With a blast and nothing more. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1018: Knit Three, Save Four

“Knit Three, Save Four” first appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction (November 2019)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:38 — 50.8MB)

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Knit Three, Save Four

by Marie Vibbert

The ship was two days overdue for docking, more or less. As a stowaway, I didn’t have access to status reports. My passive data sniffer patiently checked for the docking station network, telling me, “Nope. Not there yet.” My calendar showed the original estimated time of arrival, two days and three hours ago. This had been the point at which I said I could start worrying. I was calculating a new point at which to worry. There wasn’t much else I could do. If I tried to do anything, I’d get caught and tossed out an airlock because, as I said: stowaway.

So I knitted. I always knit when I’m bumming. It helps to have something to do while you count your remaining rations and wonder if this is where you die. Also, travelling in storage containers meant I had a constant need for warm knit garments and blankets.

Since I was sure I was about to die, I was doing this insane lace stitch. Everything was slip-slip-knits and cables and knit-three-into-two and shit. Getting angry at the person who wrote this pattern distracted me from my inevitable demise.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1011: Once Upon a Planet

Once Upon a Planet originally appeared in Augur Magazine, Issue 7.1 – August 2024.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:00 — 34.8MB)

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Once Upon a Planet

By Kelsey Hutton

Once upon a time, there were three boring, totally normal planets lazily circling their sun.

One was too hot. It spewed out venomous flames like a firebreather with something pokey stuck in her teeth—dangerously unpredictable, even for the daring.

One was too cold. It was so cold even the ghosts got trapped there, growing more and more sluggish as their memories turned to ice. The lucky ones escaped off-planet into the relatively warm, radioactive embrace of space before they completely lost what made them cling to this mortal coil in the first place.

The last one, as they say, was juuuuuuuuuust right. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1009: The Combat Pilot’s Dictionary

The Combat Pilot’s Dictionary was originally published in Aurealis #167, Febuary 2024.

Wartime action and injury.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:32 — 43.8MB)

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The Combat Pilot’s Dictionary

By Arden Baker

Boot

Rookie pilot. See also – nugget.

You called us ‘boots’ when we turned up to the flight deck that first morning I laid eyes on you.

The halogen lighting shone down onto the makeshift parade ground with a harsh insistence matched only by your loud drill calls.

You looked the part. Milspec features matched with an impeccably pressed grey uniform. Hair shorn close to the scalp to fit the Z94-OptiGuard Quiklok Aerospace Aviation Helmet that you wore in combat. Broad shoulders and piercing eyes. Tall and built like a true Martian. Rust in your blood. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1006: When the Oracle Speaks (Part 2 of 2)

“When the Oracle Speaks” was first published in Metaphororsis, July 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:50 — 51.1MB)

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When the Oracle Speaks (Part 2)

by Albert Chu

Outside the warehouse, the rain fell in sheets. It whipped the Azure River into a frenzy, and the waters responded with a hungry roar as they swirled past the dock. It pounded the warehouse’s loading bay, transforming it into a marshy field of shallow ponds and rocky islands. Nobody, not even a dock worker, was about; the only things that moved were the automata. They paced back and forth, their armor caked with rust, and as they splashed through the watery field, droplets running down their limbs, they showed no signs of minding.

The shadow of a narrow alleyway enveloped me, hiding me from the automata. For a moment, anticipation and fear flickered in my chest, before I exhaled and snuffed them both out. I stepped out of the alleyway, protected by my umbrella. Espionage mission or not, I wasn’t letting my hair get wet.

Both automata stopped and turned to face me; the rain filled the void of silence left by their stilled feet. I continued walking forwards with purpose.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1005: When the Oracle Speaks (Part 1 of 2)

“When the Oracle Speaks” was first published in Metaphororsis, July 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:13 — 43.3MB)

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When the Oracle Speaks (Part 1)

by Albert Chu

One year after the war’s end, the royal court welcomed a hundred orphan boys into our ranks. They flew into the city’s spaceport by shuttle and proceeded up the hill on the backs of the court’s own palanquin-bearers; upon entering the palace grounds, they received the speeches and banquets we held in honor of their noble suffering. The boys, hailing from the kingdom’s most war-torn moon, had lost everything, but now their days of hardship were over. They had become esteemed wards of the House of Hassam.

After a few days, though, people in the court whispered of something else. The cooks and dressing girls repeated the same rumor: Did you hear? One of the new boys can see the future. The ministers and generals, who should have held themselves above idle gossip, indulged in speculation: If this is true, could the boy be of use? And everyone wondered how the king might act. We all knew his strength was the House’s strength. If the boy possessed some special power, my father would take him.

So I never had any intentions of turning the boy to my side. I was just curious.

(Continue Reading…)

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