Escape Pod 99: Start the Clock
Show Notes
Rated R. Contains graphic sexual content and children who are a bit too grown up. Literally.
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Referenced Sites:
Contest: Name the Fantasy Podcast
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Start the Clock
By Benjamin Rosenbaum
Frankly, we were excited. This move was what our Pack needed — the four of us, at least, were sure of it. We were all tired of living in the ghetto — we were in three twentieth-century townhouses in Billings, in an “age-mixed” area full of marauding Thirteens and Fourteens and Fifteens. Talk about a people damned by CDAS — when the virus hit them, it had stuck their pituitaries and thyroids like throttles jammed open. It wasn’t just the giantism and health problems caused by a thirty-year overdose on growth hormones, testosterone, estrogen, and androgen. They suffered more from their social problems — criminality, violence, orgies, jealousy — and their endless self-pity.
Okay, Max liked them. And most of the rest of us had been at least entertained by living in the ghetto. At birthday parties, we could always shock the other Packs with our address. But that was when all eight of us were there, before Katrina and Ogbu went south. With eight of us, we’d felt like a full Pack — invincible, strong enough to laugh at anyone.
Escape Pod 98: Just Do It
Show Notes
Rated R. Contains sexual innuendo, advertising warfare, and better living through chemistry.
Just Do It
By Heather Lindsley
“What do you see?” he asks.
I want to say a menace, but instead I tap the delivery barrel and give the context-appropriate answer. “Unused ad space.”
Suddenly he’s a schoolmaster who has finally found a bright pupil in a classroom full of dunces.
“Exactly, Ms. Monroe. Exactly. No square millimeter wasted, that’s what I say.” He leans across the table and whispers conspiratorially, “We’re looking at co-branding an AOL-Time-Warner-Starbucks Lattepaloosa Crave with a Forever Fitness session discount.”
EP BONUS: Ancestor by Scott Sigler
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As part of Scott’s _”Monday Bloody Monday”_ campaign, we’re giving you the full text of his novel for free.
The paperback will be available on April 1st. Scott wants to hit #1 that day by having everyone order from Amazon at noon Pacific time. So if you like what you’re reading, support him by buying the book!
Escape Pod 97: Cinderella Suicide
Show Notes
Rated PG. Contains violence, unsavory characters, and opaque slang.
Referenced Links:
Scott Sigler
Podiobooks.com
(Technical Note: There was an encoding error in the original that resulted in a few skipped seconds at 15:00. I’ve corrected it. If this bothered you, please download the file again. If you just want to know what you missed: Suicide asks “Split?” and Tintype replies “Each.” Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks to Thaurismunths for pointing out the problem.)
Cinderella Suicide
by Samantha Henderson
List, then. 1788, New Holland becomes New South Wales, and dear England starts to send her slithies there, her dribs and drabs and pick-pocks and whores and cutthroats, to drain the cesspool Britannia’s become. And then we pin the gravitational constant, and solve Pringle’s Mysterious Logarithm, and then just when we’re ready for it there’s an explosion of a different sort (I’m a proud product of my state school, whoreboy though I became). From the skies over Van Diemen’s Land streaks a merry flaming angel arcing down to earth and boom! Kills most of the slithies, and their Bulls, and the Murri and the Nunga in their Dreamtime too, far as any know. Sky goes red from Yangtze to Orkney. A few Nunga are left, fishing the Outer Isles. And more slithies come soon, for England’s still all-of-cess, and we’d just as soon have them die.
But! Scattered all about, like Father Christmas tossing pennies, rare earth, yttrium and scandium in luscious ashy chunks. And soon there are Magnetic Clocks, and Automatons, and Air-Cars, and good Queen Vickie trulls about in a Magnetic Carriage like everybody else. But still there is cess, and ever will be, pretend as they might at home, so still the slithies are transported.
And a good thing for Merrie Olde too, because nowhere is there as much rare earth as Australia, being that’s where the Great Boom happened, and nothing so useful for gathering ore and jellies as a big jolly family of convicts. Work for the Squatters when you’re Docked; work for them after you serve your time and are pensioned, but on your own terms. Or whore-about. Or prentice to the tech gnomes. Or mine gold, which never goes out of style. Or wander the Nullarbor, looking for the Source, and die. Or fish with the Nunga, if they’d have you, which they won’t. Stick with your duet/triune mates, if you would live out the year.
Always something to do.
But don’t fly, not much, because the variable-mag will crash you deep, and don’t depend on Carriages to work all the time. Beware your metal, for it can betray you.
Escape Pod 96: Job Qualifications
Show Notes
Rated PG. Contains moderate violence, suffering, and politics.
Job Qualifications
by Kevin J. Anderson
“And do I agree with everything they say?”
“The statements are very much in line with your platform, sir.” Rana formed a paternal smile. “You are, however, welcome to read any of them you like — in fact, I encourage it. The experience would be valuable for you.”
Candidate Berthold gave a dismissive wave. “That won’t be necessary. I’m already tired of the incessant paperwork, and I haven’t even been elected yet.” He laboriously began to sign each one. “I’ll have plenty of time to learn after I get into office.”
Escape Pod 95: Blink. Don’t Blink.
Show Notes
Rated PG. Contains violent crime and unusual punishment.
Referenced Sites:
Stranger Things
Blink. Don’t Blink.
by Ramona Louise Wheeler
“Blink. Don’t blink. Don’t blink. Blink.” The human voice was familiar this time, expected. New orders did not come from computer voices. “This one will have to happen in a hurry, while we’re airlifting you to the crash site. It will be rougher than the first.”
It was. William listened to the hard drone of the aircraft engines in flight. He let that sound become the direction he followed while the pain made him into another shape so swiftly that even he did not know what he was becoming. His nanites had been commanded to emergency pitch. William was certain he could feel them racing through his cells.
Interviews with Steve
I’m usually not much for self-promotion (to a fault, I’ve been told) but if anyone here really wants to hear more about how the sausage is made, I did a couple of interviews recently that were released this week:
- Rusty Tanton of the Georgia Podcast Network spoke with me for about ten minutes about Escape Pod at the SoCon 2007 unconference last week:
Listen here. - Bazooka Joe of the Small World Podcast did a much longer and more detailed interview that covered Escape Pod in depth and some of my other opinions on science fiction as a whole:
Listen here.
Escape Pod 94: The Last Wave
Show Notes
Rated G. Contains aquatic monsters with a penchant for memorabilia. That’s about as scary as it gets.
The Last Wave
by Kay Kenyon
From what I gather, there are two competing theories about me. The ones who come with binoculars and cameras believe in the monster theory. I consider myself as siding with this group. The scientists, on the other hand, with their annoying echolocation devices, hold that I’m a prehistoric Earth creature, the last of my kind, cut off from my fellows. Sentimental drivel, of course. Drifting along under their hulls at night, I eavesdrop. They think I’m some kind of fish. But if they ever caught me, the DNA analysis would give them a bit of a jolt.