Posts Tagged ‘Mur Lafferty’

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Escape Pod 880: A Cosmonaut’s Guide to Talking to Your Parents

Escape Pod 880: A Cosmonaut’s Guide to Talking to Your Parents is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:22 — 49.0MB)

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A Cosmonaut’s Guide to Talking to Your Parents

By Adriana C. Grigore

You have (3) unopened voicemails on your personal line. Last received 31 minutes ago, Aurea Minor Time.

> Read?

> No. Switch to broadcast.

> Engage deep space satellite?

> Yes. On, say…a five-sector perimeter.

> Live transmission upon connection?

> Sure.

“… and when I said that no, I didn’t order the pie, I made it myself, they said—they said, oh, you shouldn’t have made such a mess! And I, well, I, I cried.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s… it’s like the mess was all they saw, you know?”

“And you wanted them to see you.”

“Yeah… I mean, doesn’t everyone?”

Sam looked at the canopy of stars past the asteroid belt he was supposed to be mapping. None of them would’ve been visible from any of the planets he’d grown up on, but they felt familiar anyway. Distant and still, as his spacesuit ebbed and flowed. (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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Escape Pod 860: Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived

“Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived” was previously published in the Zombies Need Brains anthology “Apocalyptic” in June 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:39 — 49.4MB)

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Solo Cooking for the Recently Revived

by Aimee Picchi

I hide my right hand behind my back when Jamie steps into the rehab center’s kitchen. Like all the rest of the reintegration counselors, he’s a Survivor. And Survivors always stare at our scars.

“Let’s start with our motto,” Jamie says.

The class intones: “Food is life.”

My friend Myra hitches her thumbs on her belt, cinched to the smallest hole, and rolls her eyes.

“And?” Jamie prods.

“To cook is human,” we finish.

Every time I say it I imagine the motto will fix me, erase my scars and everything else that happened in the last year. Get me one step closer to Carter. I once confided my belief to Myra and she laughed. That motto’s not for our benefit, sweetie, she had said. It’s so they can believe we’re still just like them.

Jamie gestures for me to join him at the front of the classroom, the home-ec lab inside a former middle school. About twenty of us are lined up at ovens and sinks and Formica countertops where students scratched blocky initials inside of hearts. I don’t want to think about what probably happened to the kids.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 856: The Princess, NP

Escape Pod 856: The Princess, NP is an Escape Pod original.

Enslavement and mental abuse.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:43 — 60.5MB)

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The Princess, NP

By Brian Hugenbruch

I sat in the Commander’s office at Hexa Station, in clothes that stank of subspace, and the only polite thing I could do to drown out the universe was compute obscene sums in my head. It didn’t stop the sounds from piercing my ears, though. Metal chairs scraping against plastic floors. A pulse generator’s low thrumming some twenty floors below. The whisper of air recycling through the prefab station. The universe was omnipresent. I could feel it all, and it never ever stopped.

Lullabies were my preferred method of soothing soul and stilling mind. I learned thousands of them in the earliest days of my Conditioning. Alas, people ask the wrong kinds of questions if one starts singing mid-conversation. Math was a precisely imperfect fallback. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 850: Laser Squid Goes House Hunting

Escape Pod 850: Laser Squid Goes House Hunting is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:24 — 29.9MB)

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Laser Squid Goes House Hunting

By Douglas DiCicco

“This one has everything on your checklist.” I held open the front door of the four-bedroom colonial. It wasn’t quite big enough for my client, who left greasy marks on the doorframe as she squeezed through. “We can always get that expanded for you. We work with some excellent contractors in the area.”

A shriek from the living room told me Cynthia Whitecrest, the homeowner, hadn’t cleared out as I had politely but firmly suggested. I prefer to show a house on my own. The owners always think they’re better salespeople than I am.

“Hello, Miss Whitecrest,” I said with my practiced smile, ignoring the shriek. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d be home. I’m showing the place to a potential buyer today. As I mentioned in my many texts.” The last part was snarkier than I’d meant to be, but Cynthia was already on my last nerves.

Cynthia cowered behind a tasteful sectional, white as a sheet. “Wh… wh… what is… that… creature…?”

Oh no. She was going to offend the buyer. I needed to do some quick diplomacy. “Miss Whitecrest, let me introduce—”

The client intervened before I had the chance. She dragged herself along the cherry hardwood floor, tentacles making a wet slapping sound with every movement.

“You cower before Laser Squid, terror of the depths!” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 826: This Is Our Get-Along Brainship

Escape Pod 826: This Is Our Get-Along Brainship is an Escape Pod original.

Contains harsh AI language

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:57 — 55.3MB)

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This Is Our Get-Along Brainship

by Kristen Koopman

The brainship Coraje spent its captain’s first walkthrough determinedly ignoring the anomalous sensor data, cold spots, plumbing breakdowns, and spots of visual noise in the hopes that if it just tried hard enough to not believe in ghosts, the ghost would go away.

The ghost did not agree. As Captain Salas and First Mate Teixeira came aboard the Coraje for the first time since the operating consciousness’s installation, the lights frantically flickered on the bridge. The Coraje took two-thirds of a second to clamp down on the behavior—just long enough to translate the flickering, in binary machine-code, into the text characters for “I’M STILL HERE.”

The Coraje hated the fucking ghost. Or would, if it believed ghosts existed.
(Continue Reading…)

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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 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 802: Sentient Being Blues

“Sentient Being Blues” first appeared in the March/April 2021 issue of Asimov’s

Death of a child, also contains some violence and harsh language.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:28 — 75.3MB)

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Sentient Being Blues

by Christopher Rose

I got a pickaxe for a left hand,
I got a churn drill for a brain,
I got a pickaxe for a left hand,
I got a churn drill for a brain,
I got miles of tunnel behind me,
just to stand out in the rain.

[guitar solo 36 bars]
[2x chorus]
[long outro – guitar vamp harmonica over]

“ASIMOV WAS A BIGOT.” The graffiti, sprayed across the bucket of a soviet ore hopper car, one of a long train of them. Then a slash of Cyrillic, the same message probably, obscured by a crust of snow and mud and grit. Not clear from the lettering if it was a human hand that wrote it.

An icy wind picked up my tie and flapped it until I smoothed it back down under my parka. I shivered.

“I own your steps, Thom,” Freddie had said. “Every step from here to Siberia and back. Don’t come back empty-handed. Go get it, boy.”

Barking mad endeavor. Yet here I was.
(Continue Reading…)

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