Genres:

Escape Pod 85: Merry Christmas from the Heartbreakers

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:38 — 32.7MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains profanity, violence, and the puncturing of childhood myths. Merry Christmas!

Referenced sites:
Reading is Fundamental
Child’s Play
I Should Be Writing
Geek Fu Action Grip
Podsafe Music Network (Terms of Use)

Musical guest: Twisted Sister.

Merry Christmas from the Heartbreakers

by Mur Lafferty

“Look, I think I know where this is going,” Kris Kringle said, but Gingermuffin cut him off.

“Do you? The Heartbreakers have been making Tom Petty sound good for years, and no one gives a damn. Tom Petty gets all of the credit.”

Kris wondered if he was sober enough to have this discussion. “You’re not talking about Tom Petty.”

Gingermuffin slammed his hand down on the table. “Damn right I’m not!” Kris’s carefully stacked poker chips fell over in a clatter of Christmas.

Escape Pod 84: Smooth Talking

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:52 — 34.3MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. For profanity and somewhat wooden anatomical descriptions.

Today’s Sponsor:

Smooth Talking

by Tobias S. Buckell

Roger sighed, shifted his position on the stump, and then turned back away from Marcus.

“What I’m trying to do, Marcus, is talk that tree into moving.”

Marcus didn’t say anything. He stood behind someone he thought he once knew and tried to figure what to say next. Not a man normally tied for words, Marcus found himself in the very surreal position of being speechless.

Escape Pod 83: Ulla

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:28 — 23.0MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains violence, chemical warfare, and heavy moral themes.

Today’s Sponsor:

Ulla

by Daniel Schwabauer

The world we now occupy is red, fourth from its sun, and extreme in its temperature. The atmosphere is lethal. Without our shelters we would die. But we will not be here long. Already the attack-cylinders, loaded with machinery and the weapons of destruction, stand ready in the firing tubes. Soon I shall be sending you thoughts from the third planet.

I have loved you.

Escape Pod 82: Travels With My Cats

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 49:00 — 33.7MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. This product may be too disillusioning for young children.

2005 Hugo Winner!

Referenced sites:
PodDisc.com
DragonHearth Productions (by Tracy and Laura Hickman)

Travels With My Cats

by Mike Resnick

That night I was faced with a major decision. I didn’t want to read a book called Travels With My Cats by a woman called Miss, but I’d spent my last nickel on it — well, the last until my allowance came due again next week — and I’d read all my other books so often you could almost see the eyetracks all over them.

So I picked it up without much enthusiasm, and read the first page, and then the next — and suddenly I was transported to Kenya Colony and Siam and the Amazon. Miss Priscilla Wallace had a way of describing things that made me wish I was there, and when I finished a section I felt like I’d been there.

Escape Pod 81: Margin of Error

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:15 — 16.0MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains minor profanity, explicit bodily functions, and people being very, very mean..

Margin of Error

By Nancy Kress

She said, “What the project needs is for you to come back and work on the same small area you did originally. Looking for something–anything–you might have missed in the protein-coded instructions to successive generations of nanoassemblers.”

“No,” I said.

PodDisc.com is live!

As promised in the past couple of episodes, our online storefront for selling podcast archive CDs is (finally!) up and running at PodDisc.com. This is your chance to get all of your holiday shopping done in one place — provided everyone you know wants over 45 hours of science fiction short stories on CD.

What do the discs look like? I’m glad you asked. They look like this:

Escape Pod Collection 3

Beautiful, isn’t it? And for a very slight fee, you can have your own personal message put on the CD. You can buy each disc for $10 or a bundle of all three collections for $25. Shipping is a cheap flat rate in the U.S. (and tolerable everywhere else), and satisfaction is guaranteed.

Right now only Escape Pod CDs are available, but once the business model proves viable I plan to open this up to producing archive discs for other podcasters. If that’s a service you’d be interested in, drop me a line and I’ll give you more details.

And remember: If you’ve donated $20 or more to Escape Pod this year, or if you’re a subscriber, don’t buy yet! I’ll be sending details to you in e-mail on how you can get this stuff for free.

…Right after I get some sleep.

Escape Pod 80: Union Dues: Cleanup in Aisle Five

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:00 — 23.4MB)

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Show Notes

Rated R. Contains profanity, some violence involving children, and retail corporate exploitation.

Union Dues Stories:
EP027: Iron Bars and the Glass Jaw
EP049: Off White Lies
EP062: The Baby and the Bathwater

Union Dues: Cleanup in Aisle Five

by Jeffrey R. DeRego

“Which one are you?”

The kid fans out a small stack of super hero trading cards, but it’s not a Union deck. Figures. “Lemme see what you got there.” I flip through and remember my old baseball card collection. I knew there was something special about me, when at nine-years-old, I accurately calculated the probable batting stats of each player, on every team, in the 1996 season after opening only one pack. The Union recruited me five years later after my dad beat a couple of Atlantic City casinos for ten million bucks. I was caught on security camera tape telling him when and how to bet at the roulette wheel.

“These don’t look like you.”

The card displays a blue-costumed man leaping between buildings. I hand it back to him. “Those guys aren’t real, but I am.” Wow. Did I just say that? Maybe I’ll tell the kid that Santa and the Easter Bunny aren’t real either. He’s staring at me now, I can almost see his little brain struggling to make sense of my answer. I should tell him to buy Union Cards but, you know, he’s five.

Escape Pod 79: Mountain, Man

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:00 — 25.4MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG. Contains non-explicit sex, accidental assault, and geological scatology.

Mountain, Man

by Heather Shaw

“Look, miss, I’m going to have to cut your hair to do this. Is that all right?”

She smiled at him from her upside-down, bent-over position, so he took that as a yes. He found an old pair of garden shears and took a hunk of her hair, gathered it into a rough ponytail, and hacked it off.

A pair of mountain bluebirds flew out from where the nest of hair had been.