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Escape Pod 934: The Alien in My Bathtub

Escape Pod 934: The Alien in My Bathtub is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:44 — 61.9MB)

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Show Notes

If you aren’t familiar with Locus Magazine, they’re a respected website, magazine, award, archive, and resource for SF, fantasy, and horror.

They put on the annual Locus Awards, a top-tier award that recognizes new, diverse, and excellent voices in speculative fiction.

They tell the storytellers’ stories through author interviews, book reviews, curated reading lists, international industry news, obituaries, and more.

Locus is holding their regular fundraising drive to keep their doors open, lights on, and future bright. Explore the campaign and wonderful reward tiers on their website!

Thank you!

Strange New Worlds: Hegemony: https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-hegemony-season-2-episode-10-quotes/

The Alien in My Bathtub

by Tony Dunnell

The alien in my bathtub refused to leave. It was there when I returned to my apartment in Ring B. It ignored me when I asked it to vacate the premises, and when I enquired as to how it had entered my apartment it replied with a dismissive grunt. I had no intention of trying to remove it by physical force, which would have gone against the most basic rules of human-alien etiquette. And, to be honest, I didn’t want to touch it. So, I called Station Relations. I waited and watched as the spindly creature splashed around. The water was greasy and tinted green with the entire contents of the luxury exfoliating scrub I had ordered from Earth a week ago, at no small expense.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 933: Summitting the Moon

Escape Pod 933: Summitting the Moon is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:17 — 51.7MB)

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Summitting the Moon

By Pragathi Bala

T-7 days

The moon Landed, the Rut appeared, home equity plummeted, jobs disappeared, and Ghis liked riding the moon. It was the last item on this tragic list that her wife couldn’t accept. It was the leaf that broke the whale’s back or something similar.

“It’s the last time, Max,” Ghis said. “I promise.”

Max rolled her eyes and blew cigarette smoke out the window. The pungent vapor followed the wind back into the house a second later. On another night years ago, Max had stood at that window on a full moon night with the light caressing her profile as she looked out at the landscape with a hopeful expression. But there were no more moonlit nights, and Max was no longer the hopeful woman Ghis once knew.

“I’m not lying this time,” Ghis said. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 932: The Walking Mirror of the Soul

This story was originally published at Apex Magazine #134 in December 2022.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:37 — 61.7MB)

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The Walking Mirror of the Soul

by Renan Bernardo

My desire was written all over Halcyon’s torso, a shimmering tattoo composed of my thoughts and the Vonkrai’s crusted skin.

{Tell Vitória you know.}

Luckily, we were alone in Teresa Station’s investigation room, so no one could read it. I was uneasy, palms sweating, tapping my feet on the floor. Normally, I met Vonkrai in restaurants, in the sightseeing deck or in the human-Vonkrai gatherings and conferences to restate our decade-long commercial and cultural partnership. In those places, their bodies were scrawled with everyone’s thoughts in a mess of unidentifiable and overlapping scribbles translated from human minds to Vonkrai bodies. Latin, Gujarati, Hangul, Cyrillic, Nsibidi, Arabic, and dozens of others from the Teresa Station human population. Mingled with our bulky and confusing thoughts, the Vonkrai’s own dot-like script were scattered all over their bodies, words and logograms hopping from body to body, untraceable even for those who knew how to read Vonkraish.

But now, my mind glared back at me from their body like a damn accusation. It was hard to even follow the Detective 101 tips, like maintaining eye contact and interpreting body language. On the other hand, those things wouldn’t really work with Vonkrai—or they would be hard enough even for me, Isabela Cardoso, Teresa Station’s only investigator.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 921: Death by Water

“Death By Water” originally appeared in From the Waste Land (PS Publishing, Oct 2022). It was shortlisted for the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Short Story 2022.

Content warning for claustrophic situations and drowning.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:58 — 54.0MB)

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Death by Water

by Grace Chan

I spread you out on the medical bed. Frayed suit, splintered body, frosted eyes.
“I can’t see anything.”
“Lie still. I’ll see what we can salvage.”
“Please, Peiyi.” You twitch, frantic. The odour of wet rot rises into my nostrils. “Just tell me what’s happened to my body. I can handle it.”
I approve the highest dose of sedative and start the scan. “You know I’m not Peiyi.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I know.”

The mountains collapse into swirls of liquid black.

I blink. It’s just an optical illusion. There’s no running water here on Orpheus—impossible at minus sixty degrees Celsius. I’m surrounded by knots of ice and stone, as I’ve been since I arrived yesterday.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 920: Harvest the Stars

Escape Pod 920: Harvest the Stars is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:36 — 29.3MB)

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Show Notes

Theater of the Midnight SunThis episode is sponsored by The Theater of the Midnight Sun podcast, an anthology series of sci-fi/fantasy audio dramas where…

FUN ADVENTURE AWAITS! With wall-to-wall music and nifty stereophonic sound!

THRILL to your own little end of the world from something the size of a spaghetti noodle, in the harrowing tale “Uniform”!

HEAR Santa’s annual “State of the Workshop” address while dodging an army of partying, out-of-control elves in “Goodbye, Cruel World”!

CHUG back a Mountain Dew with a burnt-out Devil who’s bored, bored, bored with his job, in the story “Big Business”!

All this and MORE can be found at The Theater of the Midnight Sun! Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and podcast directories everywhere. Ad-free.

The Reviews Are In!

“A top notch production well worth your time! This troupe of foundlings will have you thrilled, chilled, and laughing out loud! Theater of the Midnight Sun is a serialized podcast anthology worth every minute.”

“Awesome podcast! I am truly in awe of how ‘out of the box’ these podcasts are. Completely love it!”

Harvest the Stars

By Mar Vincent

The summer Sif turned one, the starships were ripe on the vine.

They hulked in fields ringing the town where Tuja had always lived. A place far from big cities, where the starlight they fed on came pure and bright.

“The seeds start out like any seeds; small, unassuming. Until we fertilize them, tend them. Give them space to grow,” Tuja said to the infant on her lap, who must have been more focused on the fingers stuffed in her mouth than the sight of the field crew moving amongst hulls like insects scrambling over gourds. They started in the early afternoon to harvest with the dusk. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 919: Emotional Resonance

Escape Pod 919: Emotional Resonance is an Escape Pod original.

Cursing and warfare

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:17 — 41.8MB)

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Emotional Resonance

By V.M. Ayala

Arbor’s favorite part of a mission was always the first view of a planet. Even after seven hundred years of being a giant robot, it never got old. Green and blue clouds churned over purple seas, imposing storms that flashed red with threads of lightning. Beautiful.

And they were sent to clear it of all human life. Courtesy of ExoPLENTI, Inc.! Ugh, that slogan clung to their digital psyche no matter how hard they tried to scrub it from their databases.

At least this part, floating in orbit, wasn’t so bad. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 907: A Layer Thin As Breath

A Layer Thin As Breath originally appeared in Metaphorosis, July 2019.

Includes cursing and personal peril.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:05 — 70.6MB)

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A Layer Thin As Breath

By T. K. Rex

“Valley. Can you still hear me?”

Julian’s voice filtered through her dying radio. The Prince of Cats was a speck of light, dimming through the gold-grey film that, atom by atom, was devouring her helmet.

Valley tried to say something, anything. Failed.

Julian was sobbing on the other end. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so kzzzzzzchchchcffft-” and that was it. Her radio was gone.

“Oh god,” she breathed to herself, to no one. “Oh god,” I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. She sobbed once, twice, and then, with tears pooling in her eyes and the Prince of Cats invisible through the liquid, she found a pocket of calm, like stepping from a noisy bar onto a cool, quiet street.

Something brushed against her hand, and she cried out, startled. Her vision was still blurred by tears, and the thing dissolving her space suit was like an iridescent veil across the glass of her helmet, but through it all she could see the outline of her hand.

Not her glove.

Her hand. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 906: Trash (Flashback Friday)

“Trash” was originally published in Escape Pod 467 (November 2014)

Harsh language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:58 — 43.0MB)

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Trash

by Marie Vibbert

Nanlee was a woman with the sort of past that necessitated moving to a non-extradition treaty country, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t planned on enjoying her “retirement” on Luna Colony.  She was Facilities Manager – a polite term for the boss of all janitors.  Her staff jumped anxiously at her every glance, and waste was down nine percent since she had taken office.  She was still important; the life of the colony depended on her work.  No one bothered her.  Which was fortunate, given how she used to deal with people who bothered her.

Luna Colony concerned itself with maintaining the Ungodly Huge Array on the dark side of the moon and serving as a weigh station between Earth’s inconvenient atmosphere and the rest of the universe.  Nanlee concerned herself with minding her own business.

She was at her desk when the alarms started.  A male voice recorded long ago grunted “Evacuate.  Imminent danger of decompression. Evacuate.”  No doubt he had thought he sounded important and tough. Nanlee sighed and locked her workstation.

Vince, her assistant, fell to a halt against the door as she was picking up her cane.  “Boss! The station—”

“Yes, I heard.  I do have two working ears.  Probably a drill, but gather everyone to the garage.”

Vince’s hazel eyes just about vibrated, so wide open she could see the white all the way around the iris.  “It isn’t a drill!  This is ‘we could all die tonight’ bad news.”

Nanlee paused, half on her cane, half on the edge of the desk, pulling herself out of her chair.  She fell back into the seat.  She could feel her hot-tub calling to her.  “Metaphorical death or literal?”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 905: Six Ways to Get Past the Shadow Shogun’s Goons, and One Thing to Do When You Get There

Six Ways to Get Past the Shadow Shogun’s Goons, and One Thing to Do When You Get There was originally published in Galaxy’s Edge, April 2023.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:04 — 40.4MB)

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Six Ways to Get Past the Shadow Shogun’s Goons, and One Thing to Do When You Get There

By Stewart C. Baker

1. Dust ’em

“Listen, little lady,” the guy in front of the door is saying with a sneer. “There’s two types of swordsman…”

Chiyome’s already heard enough to peg his type, so she tunes out his braggadocio and pulls out a bag of nanite dust. She’d hoped to use her status as the Shingen warlord’s only child to bluff her way in to the Shadow Shogun’s presence, but the dust works too. She blows a handful in his face and he shrieks, drops his sword, then follows it to the floor, thrashing in the station’s artificial gravity.

Behind her, Rui whistles. “What’d you give him?” The other woman asks.

“You know how my father’s always talking about unsanctioned violence and other threats to order?”

“Sure, but I always figured he only says it because he’s the one doing the sanctioning. No offense.”

“None taken. The point is, every time this guy even thinks about violence for the next 4 hours, this will happen.”

“Not bad.”

“Not bad? It’ll take you longer to beat the next one with your naginata, I bet.”

“A bet, eh?” Rui cups Chiyome’s chin in one long, slender hand and tilts her head up. “Well and good, then. We’ll bet a favor.”

“A favor and a kiss.” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 904: Itoro fe Queen

“Itoro fe Queen” was originally published in The Sunday Morning Transport, May 2022

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:34 — 35.6MB)

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Itoro fe Queen

by Maurice Broaddus

“It’s all gone.” The ethereal voice whispered—almost robotic and clearly distant—its desperate lament choked off with a gasp, which tugged Itoro back from unconsciousness. Sprawled on her back, dazed and in shock, she sat up along the cavern floor. Through one of the station’s viewport the greeting holo read:

Welcome to Oyigiyigi:
Muungano’s portal to the space-mining industry

Her memories still a jumble of images, when the first (first?) explosion happened, the force of the blast slammed her against a console. A juncture collapsed, burying her under a shower of debris. The venting pumps reduced to a scorching mound of embers. Itoro shifted the beam from her. She attempted to stand, but as soon as she tried to put weight on her leg, she cried out and fell back onto the ground. Her left leg was broken, though she couldn’t tell the extent of the damage through her phase suit.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” the voice muttered.

“Mack?”

Mack Johnson was the chief mechanic from Original Earth (OE). Oyigiyigi was originally conceived as Muungano’s joint venture with OE’s provisional government, the Liberation Investment Support Cooperative (LISC). They hoped to develop platforms to explore and extract off-world resources. Things were not going well.

(Continue Reading…)

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