Hey fans, narrators, and authors of Escape Pod! I don’t have a kaffeklatch this year at WorldCon, so I’m just setting up an Escape Pod meetup. I’m going to say we should meet up at 4pm on Saturday at the Big Bar in the Hyatt. If things change, check here or my twitter handle (@mightymur).
I haven’t been to the Big Bar, but it looks like a good meeting place for mid-afternoon. If it doesn’t work out, we can go somewhere else.
Genres: Artificial Intelligence
Rated 15 and up for language
The bicycle noticed someone was following before Kurt did. Watching for a tail was a habit he’d finally broken himself of, but not before the bicycle’s impressionable brain had picked it up. Its low warning hum sent a thrill of adrenaline through him, giving power to the part of his brain that wanted him to sprint away.
Kurt glanced back down the single track. The trees were already beginning to turn fall colors around the edges of the forest, but here along the narrow trail the foliage was green and thick. Resisting the urge to pick up the pace, he continued on, looking back when he could take his eyes off the trail, and after a few moments caught sight of what the bicycle had seen.
“It’s just another cyclist,” Kurt said, reaching down to pat the bicycle’s yellow-and-black, hornet-striped frame. The bicycle didn’t understand–its brain was small and lacked the regions for understanding speech–but Kurt’s tone of voice calmed it and the warning hum grew softer and less anxious.
The end of the trail, a scenic overlook above the Vermillion River, was not far ahead, but the overtaking bicyclist was approaching even faster. The polite thing to do would be to find a place to pull off the trail and let the cyclist past. But there were no surveillance devices in the forest, and Kurt couldn’t face meeting someone out of sight of some sort of watching eyes. At just the thought of it, his adrenaline surged again.
Letting his brain chemistry have its way with him, Kurt leaned low over his handlebars and pedaled hard.
(Continue Reading…)
Salvador Dalí took his pet ocelot to a New York restaurant, where a woman protested that wild animals were being allowed in. Dalí replied it was only a cat he’d painted in op-art style. The woman looked closer: “Now I can see it’s a cat,” she said. “At first, I thought it was an ocelot.”
Seated near the swimming pool in the artist’s retreat in Port Lligat, a BBC interviewer said that he had “heared that Dalí was unkind to animals. Was that true?”
“Dalí cruel to ze animal?” The artist exclaimed, “Nevair!” After which he picked up his pet ocelot and hurled it into the swimming pool.
—Eccentric anecdotes;
I SEE HER arriving in her private vacuum zeppelin, flying over the rewilded mountains of the Nagasaki peninsula, while I’m tending the extreme bonsai wine garden on top of my farmscraper. Expertly manoeuvering through the photovoltaic city forest, the zep berthes at the telescopic docking station. It gives me time to change from my gardening attire into something more formal.
Originally, she found me through my hyperdense pinot noir à la bonsaïe, almost two decades ago. Back then, I proudly showed her my grotto garden, but she quickly decided that she liked my ecological acumen better than my micro bonsai specimen. Today, for the second time only, she comes unnanounced.
I come prepared, but even my Icho’s ‘the power of light and shadow’ complemented with a pair of Peron & Peron’s is no match for the way Afri Kamari makes an off-the-shelf, demure business suit look like haute couture. Above ebony cheekbones: deep brown eyes that see straight through you. Under a head of long, thick, fine curls: a brain that never shifts from top gear. Inside a very conservative skirtsuit: an animated sensuality that puts any anime girl to shame. (Continue Reading…)
Fans of True Blood know Ryan Kwanten as Sookie’s buff but not too bright brother, Jason Stackhouse. He plays the role really well, and the writers do a good job with him. But Kwanten isn’t just eye candy. Sometimes, he plays a man with cripplingly-bad social anxiety disorder who just wants to be invisible.
This man is named Griff, and the movie about him is called Griff the Invisible, which I watched last week.
I received this message that Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency is looking for authors! So check them out and see if they might be a good fit for you!
Dear listeners,
We’re writing to introduce you to The Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency and to let you know we are actively seeking clients in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. We are a full service agency, representing writers at every stage of their career.
The agency opened in 1984 and has always had an interest in both genres. We’re privileged to represent a number of top talents in science fiction and fantasy such as John Scalzi, Karen Miller, Sharon Shinn, Gail Z. Martin, Ian Douglas/Bill Keith, Kay Kenyon, Mel Odom, and the recently signed James Cambias for whom we just sold his first novel. We are also proud to represent the estate of Gandalf Grand Master Award winning author Andre Norton.
Our success in this area is not confined to the adult market, either. The agency has negotiated publication deals for young adult fantasies by Karen Miller, Mel Odom, Sharon Shinn, and Ed Willet as well.
We are a very active, successful seller of translation rights with agents in all foreign markets and a track record of approximately fifty new licenses per year. We also successfully license film rights, audio-book rights, e-book rights and rights for publication in the United Kingdom.
The ideal submission for us is an introductory letter, synopsis and the first three chapters of manuscript. We welcome electronic submissions to fantasy AT ethanellenberg.com. We also welcome submission by mail with a self-addressed, stamped envelope for response. Please check our website (ethanellenberg.com) and follow the submission guidelines carefully.*
We remain upbeat, active and committed to the highest standards of professional conduct
and representation. We are members in good standing of the Association of Author’s Representatives and consistently receive high marks from all the top professional writers’ organizations. We look forward to your submission.
Sincerely,
Ethan Ellenberg, President
Evan Gregory, Associate Agent
Genres: Space
The first man to walk on the moon was a hero to five generations. The first woman to walk on Mars was forgotten even before her boots plunked into the red dust.
“Hey,” a husky voice said in the dark.
I ignored her: the Swedish hockey team was calling to me from the sauna.
“Anna-Jing.” Same voice. A large hand grasped my shoulder.
I was losing my battle to recapture the fading dream.
“Wake up,” commanded a new voice in a rich brogue, “now.”
I took a deep breath, tasting the dust in the cool air, then slowly opened my eyes. Pulling the threadbare blanket around me, I sat up in my hammock.
Kaiza, the first and likely last aboriginal Australian to teach planetary astrophysics at Stanford, gently removed her hand from my shoulder. “Trouble in Florida.”
“The launch isn’t today.” I said, still groggy. Our resupply rocket was scheduled to lift off from Cape Lee in a week. We needed this one—the last launch, from Kazakhstan, had crashed in West Korea.
“There won’t be a fecking launch,” said Mick, our mission commander. He gestured at the wall screen, which snapped to life. Grainy footage showed a giant rocket lying on its side like a beached whale, next to a familiar gantry. A dozen old pickups were parked beyond the shattered nosecone. Scores of horses and four oxen grazed nearby, a web of cables and ropes leading back to the rocket. A horde of men and women in shorts and tank tops, flip-flops and baseball caps, were prying metal panels from the side of the rocket. Hundreds more lay dead on the ground, interspersed with the bodies of gray vested soldiers.
“Where are the pitchforks and torches?” I asked. No reply.
A helicopter arrived, ten commandos zip lining to the ground just meters from the camera crew. Seventy looters went down in the first minute, but then flight after flight of arrows from unseen archers decimated the commandos.
“Goodbye freeze-dried steak and potatoes,” said Mick.
“Goodbye replacement mini reactor.” I pointed at the four oxen dragging a sledge with a brightly marked container the size of a large desk.
“Gotta crank the thermostat down again,” said Mick. He lumbered off to make it so.
The last image we witnessed before a sword crashed down on the camera lens was a line of children siphoning kerosene from the rocket’s fuel tank into buckets. Goodbye civilization. (Continue Reading…)
A few days ago, I came across this article on BoingBoing about author Holly Lisle and the issues she was having with getting iBooks to carry one of her how-to books because in it she mentions Amazon — which is one of the biggest revenue sources for self-published writers.
I think Ms Lisle’s story opens up a much bigger can of worms, and it starts with this: in the novel I’m writing, the main character uses a Kindle. What happens if I want to get my book in the iBookstore? Do I have to have her use an iPad instead? And, more importantly, how will that change the character?
I’m not thinking that Apple’s going to reject my book out-of-hand just for that reason, but it’s certainly conceivable, right? I mean, I might get a little leeway because, in Chapter Four, she does throw the Kindle against the wall in frustration*, but still — it could happen.
Our flash contest on the forums was so popular a while back that we thought we’d do another! It opens for submission on August 1 and you can read all about it on the forums!
The Escape Artists forum is proud to present the third official flash story contest!
Twice before the forum has hosted flash story contests to a resounding success. The last flash contest, which was divided into three sub-contests, one for each forum, lasted nearly six months from announcement until completion and featured over 300 story submissions between the three podcasts. It was a great experience for all but by the end people were clearly getting a bit fatigued. So, this time round, we decided to space things up a bit more, and we will be running separate contests for each podcast, with a few months for everyone to recharge their writing/voting batteries between.
So, without further ado, here are the official rules and regulations for the third Escape Pod flash story contest:
This review contains spoilers for both the filmed and televised versions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
#
Twenty years ago today, a film called Buffy the Vampire Slayer opened in theaters to unimpressive reviews (and only a 32% on the Tomatometer). At that point, no one could possibly have expected that Joss Whedon’s story about a California valley girl would morph into a television show that even today is still impacting fans in powerful and meaningful ways.
From the most humble beginnings, eh?
Most people called her Phoenix. Her former crew used “Captain” before that and “Sir” afterward. Ruby and Ada respectively called her “mother” and “g’ma.” Her hair was silver – not white, but genuine, metallic silver, a long fall against her pale blue skin, the color of a shadow on a piece of willow ware, that made her seems ageless despite the century and more that lay upon her, not to mention all those decades of pirating.
They said she’d been the best slideboard rider of her time, and perhaps the best battleship pilot of all time, back before her parents and sister were killed and she turned rogue.
They said she had done terrible things in her pirate days.
They said she’d been ruthless in her rise to power, moving up the chain from god knows where, an origin she’d never, ever spoken of to anyone, not even her own daughter. She’d killed some captains, slept with others, called in favors and maneuvered and betrayed and seized power with a brutal efficiency that still underlay what now seemed a calm and orderly, rules-bound government that she and Mukopadhyay had created.
They said she had killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people — sometimes at a distance, sometimes up close, with knife or fist. They said she’d killed a crew member when the shuttle she was in needed its mass reduced and the man hadn’t even argued, just nodded and stepped into the airlock, never said a word as the door closed and the lock cycled, staring in at his captain as she stared back.
They said time had mellowed her. They said working with Mukopadhyay, even though he was crazy as a spiral comet, had mellowed her.