Posts Tagged ‘dystopia’

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Escape Pod 1014: Here Instead of There (Part 2 of 2)

Here Instead of There was originally published in COMMUNICATIONS BREAKDOWN, 2023, Jonathan Strahan, Ed.

Includes some grade-A cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:21 — 47.6MB)

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Here Instead of There (Part 2 of 2)

By Elizabeth Bear

(… Continued from Part 1)

With the launch gone, there was just one rubber dinghy with an outboard motor stowed under the floor of the hangar, along with two kayaks, a sailboard, and a jet ski in an abjectly terrifying state of disrepair. There were twenty-three human souls on the pod, plus Henry.

Doc and her wife went up and down the steads alerting our neighbors that they needed to clear out. By the time they came back, we’d gotten the fugs organized into evacuation groups. We packed six people into Doc’s boat, in a space meant for four. Four more into the dinghy with one girl who was sober enough to steer and seemed competent to run the motor.

That left Kai, Miriam, Henry, me, and ten dirtbags. I didn’t even suggest that we give the Filth Is A Protest girl one of the kayaks and turn her loose, a level of self-restraint I was smugly proud of. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1013: Here Instead of There (Part 1 of 2)

Here Instead of There was originally published in COMMUNICATIONS BREAKDOWN, 2023, Jonathan Strahan, Ed.

Includes some grade-A cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:58 — 43.0MB)

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Here Instead of There (Part 1 of 2)

By Elizabeth Bear

Waking up sick in a punk house shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody so I don’t know why it always came as a surprise to me. My head throbbed so bad I couldn’t tell the difference between the hangover, my sinus headache, and Kai pummeling their drumset over in the yacht hangar.

The Kai part also wasn’t unusual. The Crash’s drummer is our early riser. That’s the Devil’s pre-Hell punishment on us all. But even hungover, I never woke up with a head this full of pain.

Henry must have seen me twitch, because five people racked out between me and the galley all said “Oof!” in a row. Suddenly my arms were full of wriggling beagle mutt and stank. At least the sov-cit types who left this pod a wreck before we squatted in it didn’t leave it full of fleas as well as trash and feces. (I choose to believe that the feces were from a dog rather than a toddler.) And there aren’t any ticks this far from shore. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 941: The Concept Shoppe: A Rocky Cornelius Consultancy

Escape Pod 941: The Concept Shoppe: A Rocky Cornelius Consultancy is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:30 — 65.7MB)

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The Concept Shoppe: A Rocky Cornelius Consultancy

By Andrew Dana Hudson

“This place is trash, garbágio, blechalicious,” Rocky Cornelius said appreciatively. “All we gotta do is, as they say, sublevel the vibe.”

“Really? You think so?” The greengrocer, Franklyn, wrung his hands—still caked with black soil from showing her the beet rows in aisle five—a sure sign that Rocky’s negging, one of the most reliable techniques in her consultant toolbox, was working.

They stood in the canned goods section of Primal, soon to be Westwood’s newest and hippest boutique bodega slash survival goods retailer. The paper labels on the tins had been artfully patinated by some design school dropout, ripped and torn to leave just a slash of Roma tomato picture here, a glimpse of fava bean logo there. The shelves looked half-caved in, but were in fact quite secure, welded into place at zig-zag angles. Simulated California sun streamed, dappled, through an ivy-frosted, hole-in-the-roof-shaped skylight.

The idea of this ‘concept shoppe’ was to make shoppers feel like they were looting an abandoned store in a post-apocalyptic, collapseporn paradise. Rocky quite liked the idea. No one wanted to be a “consumer” these days. People—especially Californians, who had lately been through so much—wanted to think of themselves as “survivors,” disaster-hardened protagonists in a return-to-their-roots story of rebuilding and social rejuvenation. It’s just that, if they could afford one of the new quake-proof condos springing up in Westwood, they wanted to do so without having to worry about tetanus, botulism, scurvy, or gluten. (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…)

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Escape Pod 894: The Uncool Hunters

Escape Pod 894: The Uncool Hunters is an Escape Pod original.

NSFW Language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:59 — 36.2MB)

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The Uncool Hunters

By Andrew Dana Hudson

Before she settled down into publishing in Minneapolis, before she got taken for a ride by the Chicago AltNormLit scene, before she flared spectacularly out of Silicon Alley, and had her pilot shoot C&Ded by the City of Santa Barbara, and narrowly avoided cryptocollar prison in the floodzone formerly known as Tampa, Rocky Cornelius was a fucking uncool hunter.

She always said it like that, with the “fucking,” because it was important for people to understand how dangerous and difficult the job was. Anyone could hang out in Bed-Stuy, Kichijoji, or the 5th Arrondissement. Anyone could find dope shit, hot trends, hip sub-viral memeplexes. It took a different moxie altogether to trawl the dull edge of the economic machete and actually come to grips with the materiality of majoritarian modern life.

Way Rocky figured, the whole mid-21st century culturesensing apparatus had been fine-tuned to surface niche in-group productpractices that could be brought to masser markets. But inequality had metastasized, and societal fragmentation had reached a critical stage. Global capitalism was a bigass dinosaur with two distant brains. There was a major industry blindspot for what the hell was actually going on in the middle American consumer consciousness. In other words: what nobody was looking at was the stuff everyone was looking at. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 882: Hey, George

Escape Pod 882: Hey, George is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:50 — 44.2MB)

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Hey, George

By Elizabeth Guilt

“Hey, George.”

I remind myself that that is not my name; it never was. I will myself not to react, not to break stride, as I stroll along beside the beach.

Old habits die hard, and the best neuro-reset in the world can’t overcome years of routine. Whoever called out could, had they been watching closely, have seen my tiny hesitation. But they are not calling me.

I hear footsteps behind me, running steps, getting closer.

“George!”

I stop walking and take a deep breath. I assume a politely blank expression, and turn around.

And then I see her. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 873: The Hazmat Sisters (Part 2 of 2)

“The Hazmat Sisters” appeared in Asimovs in July 2021 and was a finalist for their Reader’s Choice award. It’s one of three novellas that appeared in the 2020-2021 window that are all set in the same universe as the novels Dealbreaker and Gamechanger; the other two appeared in Clarkesworld and F&SF.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:57 — 47.1MB)

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The Hazmat Sisters (Part 2 of 2)

by L.X. Beckett

Another sundown, another night on the quest. Mom’s check-in is perfunctory: hand out XP, confirmation of their route. No mention of abnormal battery use, so they got away, once again, with their secret confab. She seems distracted. Things must be getting hot at the Chicago call center.

The girls push Mule along in the refugee fast lane, passing slower-moving families with kids and the occasional masked elder. Some of them are dragging smartcases. The real unfortunates are chipping the wheels off actual antique shopping carts, mile by brutal mile.

There’s no sign of Baron.

Around midnight they are crossing a bridge when the border of their hex runs up against the fairhair family, Papa Bear and his baseball bat mace and baby makes three. They’re riveted, watching something downriver.

Fee calls a stop before they get too close. She activates the infrared in her visor and shares the view with the others.

It’s a firefight. A clutch of warm bodies sheltering under a trio of armored cars exchanges fire with a thick concentration of autonomous platforms hovering over the blackly glinting river. Spotlights, tracers, and of course machine guns all pour fire into the ground position.

“Can we tell who’s who?” Wilmie subs.

Tess has shut off her display, opting to instead keep an eye on the family on the bridge. “Who cares?”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 872: The HazMat Sisters (Part 1 of 2)

“The Hazmat Sisters” appeared in Asimovs in July 2021 and was a finalist for their Reader’s Choice award. It’s one of three novellas that appeared in the 2020-2021 window that are all set in the same universe as the novels Dealbreaker and Gamechanger; the other two appeared in Clarkesworld and F&SF.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:35 — 60.3MB)

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The HazMat Sisters (Part 1 of 2)

by L.X. Beckett

The runaway soldier comes upon their party days after they cross out of Oklahoma into Missouri, late in the afternoon when their Questmaster is on shift, as they camp in a culvert near a river somewhere near Grand Falls.

Wilmie drew last watch, shift at the end of day, through hot and humid afternoon and its build to an equally dense evening. She’s sliding in and out of a doze, heat-torpor amplified by her hay fever meds.

Pony pokes her with one of its sharps, a silent alarm that shoots Wilmie to her feet, adrenalized, raring and ready to wake the others… unless it’s a feral chicken, or a skunk. Pony’s supposed to know a coyote when it sees it, but it still flags every. Single. One.

“Unknown interloper.” Text from the bot scrolls across her augmented display.

She flicks the warning away with a gesture, linking to Tess’s Dragon and zooming with its cameras. It feeds a view of the brush direct to her goggles. No coyote this time. The man’s scrawny, but a man nonetheless. Not as big as Fee, but full grown.

He’s creeping toward them. Not blundering, not snuffling about for shelter, and moving superslow. Bidding to fool their motion detectors? Not good.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 871: The Contrary Gardener (Part 2 of 2)

The Contrary Gardener originally appeared in Eclipse Online, October 2012 and has been reprinted in:

  • Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2013, ed. Rich Horton, Prime Books, 2014.
  • The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, ed. Jonathan Strahan, Night Shade Books, 2014.
  • Telling the Map: Stories (Small Beer Press collection, 2017)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:49 — 55.1MB)

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The Contrary Gardener (Part 2 of 2)

By Christopher Rowe

(Continued from Part 1)

Even in the ‘Ville, even in a family of master cultivators, tickets were not easy to come by, so it was not unusual that Kay Lynne had never been to the Derby. What was unusual was her absolute lack of desire to attend the race.

Kay Lynne genuinely hoped that her instinctive and absolute despisal of the Derby and all its attendant celebrations was born of some logical or at least reasonable quirk of her own personality. But she suspected it was simply because her father loved it so.

“You managed to get two tickets this year?” she asked him, and was surprised that her voice was so steady and calm.

“Just this one,” he replied, turning his back on her before she could hand the ticket back. “I decided this year would be a good one for you to go instead. There’s a good card, top to bottom.” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 870: The Contrary Gardener (Part 1 of 2)

The Contrary Gardener originally appeared in Eclipse Online, October 2012 and has been reprinted in:

  • Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2013, ed. Rich Horton, Prime Books, 2014.
  • The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, ed. Jonathan Strahan, Night Shade Books, 2014.
  • Telling the Map: Stories (Small Beer Press collection, 2017)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:17 — 35.2MB)

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The Contrary Gardener (Part 1 of 2)

By Christopher Rowe

Kay Lynne wandered up and down the aisles of the seed library dug out beneath the county extension office. Some of the rows were marked with glowing orange off-limits fungus, warning the unwary away from spores and thistles that required special equipment to handle, which Kay Lynne didn’t have, and special permission to access, which she would never have, if her father had anything to say about it, and he did.

It was the last Friday before the first Saturday in May, the day before Derby Day and so a week from planting day, and Kay Lynne had few ideas and less time for her Victory Garden planning. Last year she had grown a half dozen varieties of tomatoes, three for eating and three for blood transfusions, but she didn’t like to repeat herself. Given that she tended to mumble when she talked, not liking to repeat herself made Kay Lynne a quiet gardener. (Continue Reading…)

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