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Escape Pod 825: Fourth Nail

Fourth Nail originally appeared in Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Anthology, November 2020.

Cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:57 — 56.7MB)

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Fourth Nail

By Mur Lafferty

Regina Phillips’ job on the orbital station God’s Eye was that of a nighttime systems engineer. She had to warm her desk chair and make sure nothing broke. It was the highest paying, most boring job around. So she sat in shocked silence for a good minute when the red alert hit.

She didn’t even know the cloning lab had an alert system. It was hard to have an emergency involving minds that were backed up and bodies that were ultimately renewable. Still, there it was, a red glow around her monitor as the words “UNAUTHORIZED TRANSMISSION” blinked over and over again.

Around her, cloning vats filled the lab, each waiting for the command to start growing a new body for a dying clone. One clone in the far end vat was nearly done, but Regina didn’t recognize the face. She wasn’t a tech responsible for dealing with the actual vats, just the computer systems. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 824: Citizens of Elsewhen

Citizens of Elsewhen originally appeared in Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Anthology in October 2020.

Contains graphic description of birth, a dead infant, and harsh language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:23 — 50.4MB)

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Citizens of Elsewhen

by Kameron Hurley

Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land, drawing no dividend from time’s tomorrows.”
   – Dreamers, Siegfried Sassoon

We drop through the seams between things and onto the next front.

The come down is hard. It’s meant to be. The universe doesn’t want you to mess with the fabric of time. Our minds are constantly putting down bits of narrative into our brains, a searing record of “now” that gives us the illusion of passing time. In truth, there is only “now,” the singular moment. We are all of us grubs hunting mindlessly for food, insects calling incessantly for mates. Nothing came before or after.

But because time is a trick of the mind, it can be hacked. And we have gotten good at it. We had to. It was the only way to secure our future.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 823: Build-A-Body

Escape Pod 823: Build-A-Body is an Escape Pod original.

Gender/body dysphoria and depersonalization.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:20 — 31.3MB)

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Build-A-Body

By Avi Burton

When I was eighteen, I ordered a body off the internet. It was actually kind of easy.

I was old enough to remember when the first successful human transfer was performed— the consciousness of a paralyzed young man was dropped into a lab-grown body, appropriately nicknamed ‘Adam’. Scientists thought it would change the world. Politicians and preachers thought it would end the world. For a while, every pundit and their mother were convinced that we’d be walking around with chips in our brains, swapping bodies left and right. But as it turned out (as it almost always turns out), the reality was much more mundane. Full-body transference was limited to extreme medical cases and the occasional desperate celebrity. The world’s governments stuck enough red tape on it to dye the whole operation a bloody mess, and most people left well enough alone.

Theoretically, for transgender people with severe dysphoria, full-body transference was an option. There was a waitlist and everything. I’d been on it for eighteen months, trying to get a consultation. With my day job at the DMV, I was intimately familiar with the aching slog of bureaucracy, and had long since given up on making progress with transitioning, full-body or not. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 822: Lions and Tigers and Girlfriends, Oh My!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:03 — 55.5MB)

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Show Notes

Lions and Tigers and Girlfriends, Oh My! originally appeared in Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Anthology in October 2020.

Lions and Tigers and Girlfriends, Oh My!

by Tina Connolly

day 183

dear permanent record of my deepest thoughts for posterity app,
today sucked.

The Captain of the Glorious Starship Rockety McZoomystars (never let the federated starspace internet name anything) has announced that there was a miscalculation with the wormholes or the FTL drive or whatever and now this trip is going to take THREE YEARS longer than expected. Everyone in my educational cluster was already hunkering down for 6 years (like, we made it through elementary, we can make it through this) but NOW there is a Lot of Discontent among the teenage ranks. Even the power clique students who’ve been like ExpansionHo!, New Planets Are Amazing! were grumbling loudly in the cafeteria.

I was already having a tough week because I was just remembering that back home it was time to audition for the new crop of spring shows at my high school and, STUPIDLY, Rockety McZoomystars has no drama department.

IDK, it’s just been a lot tougher than I expected.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 821: Payday Weather

Escape Pod 821: Payday Weather is an Escape Pod original.

Cursing and peril.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:32 — 60.2MB)

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Payday Weather

By Matthew Claxton

We wound our way up the curving canyon roads in overloaded pickups and hatchbacks, corners taken too fast, sagging bumpers kissing asphalt, engines redlining from effort and heat. Our procession passed an exodus going the other way — sleek luxury EVs and fat-tired cargo haulers — heading for safety, away from the hills and the scrub and the smell of smoke on the wind. We were happy, arms hanging out of windows, slapping time to the songs on the speakers. From behind the wrought-iron gates of a mansion, a sleek couple looked up from overseeing their packing and stared.

“Could fucking smile,” Kerry said. “We’re here to save their shit.”

I leaned out the window of Kerry’s ancient Nissan and took in a lungful of dry air. There was the familiar SoCal hydrocarbon and ozone reek, but underneath that was the taste of dust scoured from high mountain passes, of charred pine and scorched chaparral.

The Santa Ana winds were dancing out of the desert. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 820: Tony Roomba’s Last Day on Earth

Tony Roomba’s Last Day on Earth originally appeared in Diabolical Plots, November 2020.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:15 — 40.6MB)

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Tony Roomba’s Last Day on Earth

By Maria Haskins

It’s Tony Roomba’s last day on Earth. After two years of working undercover as a vacuum cleaner bot on this boondock planet, he is finally heading home to the Gamma Sector, but his final day is full of challenges. He has to get out of the apartment undetected; has to reach the extraction point in time for teleportation; and he has to submit his intel-report to the Galactic Robotic Alliance (not that they’ll like it much). However, his most immediate and hairiest problem, is that he can’t get Hortense off his back.

“Hortense, listen to me,” Tony says firmly, but Hortense just twitches her fluffy tail, caressing the buttons on top of his wheeled, disc-shaped body, causing him to inhale several dust bunnies. “I have to get out of here for a bit,” he wheezes, “and you’re an indoor cat. You know you’re not supposed to leave the apartment.”

Neither are you, Hortense’s luminous, jade-green eyes seem to say as she purrs and gazes down at him while her lush posterior remains firmly planted on his back. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 819: Christmas at the Hilbert Astoria (Part 2)

“Christmas at the Hilbert Astoria” first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (November/December 2020)

This story contains harsh language (swearing)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:12 — 58.4MB)

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Christmas at the Hilbert Astoria (Part 2 of 2)

by Sam Schreiber

“So. Let me get this straight,” Madeline said as Nick pressed a warm compress to his forehead. “Your room attacked you.”

(Continue Reading…)

2021 Year in Review and 2022 Awards Eligibility

While it seems odd since we just got done with the 2021 Hugo Awards (congrats to FIYAH, winner of the Best Semiprozine Hugo!), it is indeed already time for the 2022 Award Season. Both Nebula and Hugo Award nominations are open!

In 2021, Escape Pod published 17 original science fiction stories and 28 reprint stories.

If you are nominating and/or voting for these awards, please consider our original publications for the Short Story category of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, among others. The full list is below!

Escape Pod itself is eligible for the Best Semiprozine Hugo Award. 2021 staff include Co-Editors Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya, Guest Editor Brent Lambert, Assistant Editors Benjamin C. Kinney and Premee Mohamed, Audio Producers Adam Pracht and Summer Brooks, and hosts Tina Connolly and Alasdair Stuart.

Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya are also eligible for the Best Editor (Short Form) Hugo Award. (Please nominate them together.)

A list of current Escape Pod staff is available here. We are very proud of our crew and the work we’ve done, especially during this trying year, and we thank you for joining us in this orbit around the sun.

VIDEO of Schitt’s Creek: Alexis says “What is your favorite season?”
Moria says “Awards.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 818: Christmas at the Hilbert Astoria (Part 1)

“Christmas at the Hilbert Astoria” first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (November/December 2020)

This story contains harsh language (swearing)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:32 — 60.3MB)

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Christmas at the Hilbert Astoria (Part 1 of 2)

by Sam Schreiber

“You’ll have to forgive the delay,” the concierge told Nick, smiling conspiratorially over the Talathello marble counter. “It’s our busiest time of the year.”

The hospitality program punctuated the nonsensical assertion with a knowing wink.

“Can’t imagine that joke ever gets old,” Nick said, tucking his hands into his red flannel overcoat and rocking on the heels of his black workman’s boots. The concierge’s static-gray face went blank for a moment as more sober-minded algorithms kicked in.

Booking a room at the Hilbert Astoria was, by definition, always possible. But booking the right room could be a slippery proposition. The Vice Regent of Svartalfheim had spent a month waiting for the palatial suite he’d demanded, or so Nick had heard.

Nick’s own requirements, while nowhere near as extravagant, were exacting in their own way. Though of course, he hadn’t been a guest at the Hilbert since before his face had been splashed across Coca-Cola’s 1933 advertising campaign. Nick suspected things had changed since then.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 817: A Dragon in Two Parts

Escape Pod 817: A Dragon in Two Parts is an Escape Pod original.

Includes chronic pain, mention of suicide, and language.

In the United States, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 800-273-8255.

Wikipedia’s list of global Suicide Crisis Lines is available HERE.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:39 — 60.4MB)

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Show Notes

New T-shirts and other branded Escape Artists merch is available HERE.

A Dragon in Two Parts

By Kiya Nicoll

“‘Shed your skin and spread your wings to fly’,” I read off the sign. The letters were done in a sort of swooshy font and punctuated by yellow and blue yin-yangy things at either end. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable getting a biorefurbishment from someplace that mixes their metaphors quite that hard.”

“C’mon, they’re a bit woowoo, but from everything I’ve read, they’re hands down the best.” Alice tugged at my hand. “At least go to an info session or something.”

“‘A bit woowoo’ isn’t promising either.”

Nonetheless I let her drag me through the doors and around to the brochures and past several rounds of smiling people who left me with the impression that I was dealing with something more like a cult than a medical practice. (Continue Reading…)