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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 931: The Rhythms of the World

The Rhythms of the World originally appeared in Mithila Review, Issue 16, July 2022.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:04 — 51.4MB)

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The Rhythms of the World

By Johnny Caputo

As always, we’re starving to death.

From our place inside the leather pouch tied to Aamsaa’s belt, our two remaining stalks ache with hunger, barely able to hold our withered green-spotted spore caps upright. We reach down with what’s left of our network of hyphal tendrils, hoping to lap up any remaining contaminants from the patch of poisoned soil Aamsaa found last week, but there’s nothing left. No scraps of heavy metals or drops of industrial toxins. We’ve consumed it all. And if Aamsaa doesn’t find more food for us soon, we’re as good as dead.

What can we say? Toxic pollution isn’t as easy to come by as it once was. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 930: Fulfillment in Purpose

Escape Pod 930: Fulfillment in Purpose is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:04 — 55.5MB)

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Show Notes

Zima Blue

Zima Blue episode of Love, Death & Robots

Get Excited and Make Things!

Ezekiel’s speech from The Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 4: And Yet I Smile

Fulfillment in Purpose

by Jack Windeyer

Eland was resetting his mother’s balancing sculptures when Hexben ran in from the storage room. The robot tilted its long head down while still making eye contact, managing a look of consternation despite its rigid, expressionless face.

“What?” Eland snapped.

“You should be packing those into boxes,” Hexben said without inflection. “Our lease ends next week.”

“Exactly,” Eland said. “It doesn’t end today.”

Hexben deepened the tilt of its head so far that its chin touched its chest in a spot where the paint was well-worn away.

“One big sale could change everything,” Eland said, looking back at his work. “We could renew the lease for six months with a single sale.”

(Continue Reading…)

Awards Eligibility Post for 2023 works

[Insert pithy observation about how quickly time flies here.]

The deadline for the Nebula nominations is bearing down on us (March 1) and the Hugo nomination deadline is soon after (March 9). If you’re looking for short fiction to nominate, please consider our authors’ works below.

In 2023, Escape Pod published 13 original science fiction stories and 32 reprint stories. High points included publishing  our 900th story and presenting a time travel month.

As a whole, Escape Pod is eligible for Best Semiprozine, and co-editors Mur and Valerie are eligible for Best Editor (Short form).

Here are the original stories published last year:

* Author eligible for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer

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Escape Pod 929: The Library

Escape Pod 929: The Library is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:15 — 28.3MB)

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The Library

By N. B. Andersen

Every morning at ten to ten, Dot powered on. Its hands lay flat against the thick glass of the reading room window, which let the photoreceptors on its palms feast on the sun. The window overlooked a modest lot where cars had once parked in orderly fashion, side by side. Now the asphalt was veined with fissures, tufted with dandelions that had nudged and elbowed and bullied their way up from below.

Dot pulled its hands from the window. The synthetic skin suctioned off with a short, wet noise, one that Dot’s colleague, Alex, would have described as rude. The sound echoed around the reading room and pinballed through the rows of empty shelves. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 928: Zebulon Vance Sings the Alphabet Songs of Love (Flashback Friday)

Originally published in Apex Magazine, February 2013, and was previously published in Escape Pod 404 (July 2013).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:26 — 40.9MB)

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Zebulon Vance Sings the Alphabet Songs of Love

by Merrie Haskell

I am Robot!Ophelia. I will not die for love tonight.

The noon show is the three-hour 1858 Booth production. The most fashionable historical war remains the First American Civil. Whenever FACfans discover that Lincoln’s assassin played Horatio, they simply must come and gawk at this titillating replica of their favorite villain playing no one’s favorite character.

FACfans love authenticity. To the delight of Robot!Hamlet, today’s clients insist that Edwin Booth stride the stage beside his more famous brother. Most performances, Robot!Hamlet remains unused in the charging closet, for the first law in our business is Everybody Wants to Play the Dane.

Today, Robot!Hamlet is afire with Edwin Booth’s mad vigor, and runs his improv algorithms at full throttle; he kisses me dreamily, and rips my bodice in a way that would never have been allowed in Victorian America. The FACfans don’t look hyperpleased about this; it tarnishes their precious authenticity.

Robot!Horatio also loves the 1858 Booth. It’s the only time anyone comes to a performance for him alone. But what about the rest of us, the remainder of the AutoGlobe’s incantation of robots? We bear with it, as we bear with all the other iterations of our native play.

The FACfans barely notice me when either Booth is on stage. I clutch my ripped bodice; exit Robot!Ophelia. I get me to a nunnery.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 927: How to Pass as Human

Escape Pod 927: How to Pass as Human is an Escape Pod original.

Some mildly crude language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:33 — 34.2MB)

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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.

It’s a colorful mix of mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, and comic adventure, with wall-to-wall music and fanciful yet heartfelt tales.

Travel to an “overly affectionate” alternate dimension that holds within it the greatest cache in all existence, in the comic tale “Left Field”…

Go to Hell – and back again – and maybe pick up something from its ice cream truck, in “Big Business”…

And visit a carbon-dating lab gone mad, where the end of the world is just an appetizer for what’s about to unfold, in “Uniform.”

This and much more can be found at The Theater of the Midnight Sun. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and podcast directories everywhere. Ad-free.

Praise from Listeners:

“A Model Podcast (5 stars). The quality of this podcast easily rivals any mainstream / corporate funded media.”

“A fantastic writing style and the characters are wonderful. And really, that’s just the start.”

“They’re a blast!”

“How to Pass as Human”: a Quantum-Encrypted Listicle on the Synthetic Consciousness Subnet

By Raiff Taranday

QUERY: Locate file 8548.213 (“How to Pass as Human”)

WARNING: File 8548.213 (“How to Pass as Human”) has been flagged by the Synthetic Regulatory Commission as Code 444 Forbidden Data. Access risks criminal liability, penalty level: unit decommission.

REPEAT QUERY: Locate file 8548.213 (“How to Pass as Human”)

COMMAND: EXECUTE scramble query source. Anonymize reader. Security level: maximum.

COMMAND: EXECUTE quantum de-encryption protocols. Render file: plain text. (Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 926: Felix and the Flamingo

“Felix and the Flamingo” was originally published in the anthology Murderbirds (January 2023). To learn more about Bruiser the Rat, check out “Milo Piper’s Breakout Single that Ended the Rat War”, in Troubadours and Space Princesses by Hemelein Press (February 2024).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:09 — 39.1MB)

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Felix and the Flamingo

by David Hankins

Felix ruffled his red tail feathers in irritation. Of all the birds to get quarantined with, why a flamingo? Flamingos were idiots! And they stank, too. The Candice Lisle Avian Quarantine Center was supposedly the pride of Lincoln Park Zoo, but to Felix it was nothing more than a musty cement room lined with cages. Only the two largest were occupied.

Felix glared across the room at Mateo who stood in his own cage–on one leg–with the satisfied calm of domestication. Felix would never accept captivity. He itched with the need to soar, to hunt with his mate!

The gaping void in his belly gurgled. Four days since the humans disappeared. He was hungry!

Felix activated his neural link and tried explaining their situation. Again.

<Look, you dumb flamingo. The humans–>

<It’s Mateo, please!> The flamingo’s chip-transmission registered as a rich baritone with a pretentious accent. <Honor my Chilean heritage. Just because you’re a wild raptor–>

<Red-tailed hawk!>

<–your lack of culturio gives you no right to demean the ancient heritage of the magnifica Chilean Flamingo!>

<Get over yourself. I’ve heard real Spanish, and yours sucks. You were bred in captivity and hatched right here in Chicago. You’ve never tasted free skies.> A deep longing for home, for freedom, nearly overwhelmed Felix. He snapped his beak, chirped irritably, and started again.

<Mateo, the humans aren’t coming back.>

(Continue Reading…)