Posts Tagged ‘Mur Lafferty’

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Escape Pod 1067: Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 2 of 2)

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being originally appeared in Clarkesworld 218 (November 2024). 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:10 — 58.4MB)

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Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 2)

By A. W. Prihandita

(…Continued from Part 1)

Semau made her way to the pier feeling bloated and hollow all at once.

She carried a duffel bag of medical instruments she’d stolen from the office: a stethoscope to record breaths and heartbeats, a set of syringes to take various kinds of fluid samples. These were instruments she normally used to collect data for the INT-Health model to analyze. That night, she’d put them offline, hoping against hope that a few hours of disconnection wouldn’t be enough to alarm the Medical Board.

And just in case, she’d reviewed the protocol for malpractice suspicion. The Board would have to send an overseer to lead her investigation. The nearest headquarter of the Medical Board was a system over, which meant the overseer would take a week to arrive, if Semau was ever suspected of anything. Which hopefully she never would be. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1066: Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 1 of 2)

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being originally appeared in Clarkesworld 218 (November 2024). 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:17 — 48.9MB)

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Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being (Part 1 of 2)

By A. W. Prihandita

“Doc, there’s a . . . hole growing in me,” the alien said through the spherical interpreting machine hovering over them.

Semau barely registered the word “hole,” so taken was she by the sight of the alien. If she were just a tad less caring about propriety, she would’ve let her eyes blow wide open. The alien looked impossibly transparent yet not transparent at the same time, like a mound of water. Their shape was almost humanoid: a roundish head sitting atop a misshapen lump of torso. They were visible in the way ocean waves were visible, only through folds that magnified its translucence to almost-opaqueness.

Semau glanced again at the patient form. Name: Txyzna (he/him). Species: Plyzmorynox-matori. Semau had never heard of the plyzmorynox before, and a quick lookup in the Brazs’s Database of Interstellar Species told her this wasn’t her fault. The plyzmorynox had an occurrence rate of 0.000013% of interspecies encounters, which made her impulsively count the decimal places—she’d never seen anything that small. She wanted to look up the Matori system as well—what kind of place was home to this super rare species?—but this wasn’t the time to satisfy idle curiosity. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1063: Modern Birdwatching

Escape Pod 1063: Modern Birdwatching is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:53 — 33.3MB)

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Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by Sleepphones! Use code ESCAPEPOD and get 10% off your purchase.

Modern Birdwatching

by Jeff Soesbe

I used to like birdwatching, especially hummingbirds, until the feeder on my apartment balcony started getting one-star reviews on CHURP.

CHURP
By Birds. For Birds.
/c/feeders/USA/CA_NORTH/BAYAREA/SANBRUNO
Location: 750 Glenview Drive, #206. Balcony.
Feeder Count: One.
Size: Small.
Refill Frequency: Irregular.
Average Rating: 1.5

Comments
Hummy292: Booooring. Weak syrup. Total fly-by.
UWishUCouldFlyLikeMe: If I wanted bland fluoridated water reeking of a plastic tub, I’d go back to the city park.
BeTheBlur: Can a feeder be worse than awful? YESITCAN!!!

“Those birds are so wrong!” I declared one Friday night, after two bottles of Black Butte Porter. “My feeder has been unjustly attacked. Hummingbirds don’t come by anymore. My BirdTrack ranking is plummeting.”

“Birds have smarts, and a website,” Mister Friskers, my Seal Point Siamese, said, looking out the window from his cat tree. “They’re entitled to their opinions.”

“I liked birdwatching better before birds had opinions. Or smarts. And how did *those* birds get smart anyway?”

“Genetic engineering of pets for brains and voice. Just like me, buddy.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1060: Soft Currency (Flashback Friday)

Soft Currency first appeared as an Escape Pod original in Episode 473 on December 24, 2014.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:45 — 55.1MB)

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Soft Currency

By Seth Gordon

When Cassie Levine was nine years old, her family lived in the center of Boston, Lyndon B. Johnson was President, and Cassie learned that her mother was a criminal.

The two of them sat in a parked car on Blue Hill Avenue, outside Ethel Glick’s grocery store. While Cassie ate an ice-cream sandwich, her mother smoked a cigarette. The sandwich, the cigarettes, and three bags of groceries had come from Mrs. Glick’s store. When the ice cream sandwich was half gone, Cassie asked, “Why did you change Dad’s money at Mrs. Glick’s? Why not go to the bank?”

Cassie’s mother had passed Mrs. Glick a twenty-dollar bill; the older woman had tucked the bill under the counter and handed back a stack of coupons; then, her mother had used some of those coupons to pay Mrs. Glick. Each twenty-coupon note showed a picture of Margaret Mitchell, holding a copy of Gone With the Wind. Cassie’s little brother called coupons “cootie money,” because only women and girls could use them. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1058: Riftwork (Part 2 of 2)

Riftwork originally appeared in Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls Who Invent and Imagine anthology in July 2025.

Includes tight, underground spaces.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:02 — 54.1MB)

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Riftwork (Part 2 of 2)

By C. W. Maurer

(…Continued from Part 1)

I glance back at Risa to find her backing away from the damaged support, wiping her fingers on her worksuit. She looks at me, blinking. “What do you mean, ‘water’?”

“The tunnel’s flooded. Flooding.” It must slope down from the turn, because the next 50 feet or so are submerged. “It’s not deep, but if it’s spread that far since Zef went through yesterday…”

She shudders and takes a few more steps away from the wooden support, wiping her hand again. “There must be another leak here. A small one. The wood is rotten through. That couldn’t have happened since yesterday.”

I stand at the corner, staring at the pool of water in front of me and the flat layer of gray-white sediment covering the bottom of it.

For that much sediment to have washed in overnight… (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1057: Riftwork (Part 1 of 2)

Riftwork originally appeared in Brave New Girls: Tales of Girls Who Invent and Imagine anthology in July 2025.

Includes tight, underground spaces.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:23 — 44.9MB)

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Riftwork (Part 1 of 2)

By C. W. Maurer

It’s no secret that the surfies think we’re crazy.

It’s no surprise either, when you think how thin the air is up there. With all the light and noise and space, I doubt a person could think two thoughts in a row without their attention going off-route.

How else could they misunderstand so much?

Risa told us once—during some late-night chatter in the girls’ residential node—that most surfies she grew up with think all us rifters work the periphery. Her own da thought she’d be setting up a bed in un-shored tunnels with a million tons of rock and concrete and steel and people overhead.

We apprentices won’t even see the periphery nodes until we’re journeymen.

And the journeymen might get to work in the periphery nodes, but it’s still math-practice and map-drafting and material-inventory duty under the eye of the masters for three more years.

Only the masters venture into the tunnels.

They’re the ones the surfies really mean, when they call us crazy. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1048: The Library of the Apocalypse

The Library of the Apocalypse was first published in Clarkesworld, May 2025, Issue 224.

Includes death and cursing.

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

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The Library of the Apocalypse

By Rati Mehrotra

Hunter’s Moon rises fat and golden over the burned-out husk of the CN Tower. Excitement ripples through us, making us forget, for the moment, the hunger that gnaws our insides. The sign for the Library appears only on clear, full moon nights, and it’s been months since we last saw it. Will tonight be the night we see it again? Sheila thinks so, but she is the most optimistic among us. Also the sickest, but we try not to think about that.

We wear respirators as we pick through the debris above ground, scanning the surroundings with our sensors. It’s not the coy-wolves we fear, but other humans—stronger, better armed, more dangerous. Not everyone left the city when it burned. There are too many memories beneath the rubble, too many bones. We cannot abandon them.

What will it look like this time, do you think? asks Katie as we make our way single file through a narrow alley toward Queen Street. The walls still stand here, covered with neon graffiti, glowing pink and purple in the moonlight: Resist the Invaders; Fuck America; Canada is Not For Sale. And, oddly, Free the Capybaras. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1043: The Smokejumpers

Escape Pod 1043: The Smokejumpers is an Escape Pod original.

Includes wildfires and peril.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:53 — 82.8MB)

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The Smokejumpers

By Sierra Bibi

When Fern jumps from the plane into the smoke for the very first time, she believes she has nothing left to lose. That’s not to say she’s unafraid exactly—not even hundreds of hours of simulations and dozens of practice jumps can prepare you for the reality of plummeting into the hazy unknown of an active forest fire. No, her fear is definitely there, but folded and tucked somewhere deep inside herself. Compartamentalized.

The smoke hurtles towards her, the ground below hidden. She rips her parachute—a massive thing designed to support the heft of her exoskeleton—and jerks backwards. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1030: The Smell of the Planet I Was Born On

Escape Pod 1030: The Smell of the Planet I Was Born On is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:50 — 44.3MB)

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The Smell of the Planet I Was Born On

By Rodrigo Culagovski

There are two moons visible, a large one right above us, and another smaller one about fifteen degrees below it in the star-studded night sky above the almost empty, rocky, lifeless surface of the planet. The horizon slowly takes on the slightly blue stain that comes right after the sunset.

“Still takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”

I turn to look up. Laiendro is standing behind me on the slight rise I chose to sit and enjoy the view.

“Yeah, it really does. It’s nothing like Earth, but it’s also the same, you know?” (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1025: Samantha’s Diary (Flashback Friday)

Samantha’s Diary originally appeared in Stories: All-New Tales Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio and on Escape Pod, episode 427 on December 22, 2013.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:26 — 64.3MB)

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Samantha’s Diary

By Diana Wynne Jones

Recorded on BSQ SpeekEasi Series 2/89887BQ and discovered in a skip in London’s Regent Street.

December 25th 2233

Tired today and having a lazy time. Got back late from Paris last night from Mother’s party. My sister is pregnant and couldn’t go (besides, she lives in Sweden) and Mother insisted that one of her daughters was there to meet our latest stepfather. Not that I did meet him particularly. Mother kept introducing me to a load of men and telling me how rich each of them were: I think she’s trying to start me on her own career which is, basically, marrying for money. Thanks, Mother, but I earn quite enough on the catwalk to be happy as I am. Besides, I’m having a rest from men since I split up with Liam. The gems of Mother’s collection were a French philosopher, who followed me around saying ‘La vide ce n’est pas le neant,’ (clever French nonsense meaning ‘The void is not nothing,’ I think), a cross-eyed Columbian film director, who kept trying to drape himself over me, and a weird millionaire from goodness knows where with diamante teeth. But there were others. I was wearing my new Stiltskins which caused me to tower over them. A mistake. They always knew where I was. In the end I got tired of being stalked and left. I just caught the midnight bullet train to London, which did not live up to its name. It was late and crowded out and I had to stand all the way.

My feet are killing me today. (Continue Reading…)

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