Escape Pod 462: Women of Our Occupation
Show Notes
Recorded live at LonCon3.
Women of Our Occupation
by Kameron Hurley
[EDITOR: We don’t have the rights to post the text of this story.]
Posts Tagged ‘Mur Lafferty’
Escape Pod 461: Selkie Stories are for Losers
Show Notes
This story has been nominated for a Hugo Award.
Please, also remember our friend P.G. Holyfield and donate to his fund if at all possible.
Selkie Stories are for Losers
by Sofia Samatar
[EDITOR: We don’t have the rights to post the text of this story.]
Escape Pod 456: To Waste
To Waste
by Luke Pebler
When I wake, it is not yet hot. But it will be soon.
I am already thirsty.
I get up from the cot and go to the machine. I put my dick into the intake cup, and when my pee flows into the machine it clicks on automatically. I stretch and reach out to snag my camera by its strap. I review the shots I took yesterday while I finish going. The machine whirs while it does its work. I wait, still looking at photos.
When the machine beeps, it has produced almost eight ounces of clean warm water. I sip some of it, just enough to wet my mouth, and put the rest into a second machine.
When the second machine beeps, it has produced five ounces of hot coffee.
I crouch in the corner of the room, where the rising sun cannot find me. It is still cool here. I inhale deeply, wanting not even the steam of the coffee to go to waste. I sip.
When I look up, the boy is in the doorway, watching. I do not know how long he’s been there.
“He wants you,” the boy says.
Escape Artists Metacast
An urgent update on the status of Escape Artists, its three podcasts, our plans for the future and why we desperately need your help getting there.
Escape Artists, Inc.
P.O. Box 83
Woodstock, GA 30188
Additional music provided by D-Form – http://www.reverbnation.com/
Sound effects provided by users kasa90 (http://freesound.org/people/
Genres: Apocalyptic, Classic S-F, Space
Escape Pod 400: Rescue Party
Show Notes
All sound effects used in this episode were found at FreeSound.org on the pages of the following users: hdesbois; swiftoid; jobro; Syphon64; doubletrigger; cognito perceptu; FreqMan; ReadeOnly; csengeri
Performed by Graeme Dunlop as Alveron; Steve Eley as Rugon; Nathaniel Lee as Orostron; Mur Lafferty as Hansur; Paul Haring as Klarten; Alasdair Stewart as Alarkane; Dave Thompson as The Paladorian; Ben Philips as T’sinadree; Jeremiah Tolbert as Tork-a-lee
Rescue Party
by Arthur C. Clarke
Who was to blame? For three days Alveron’s thoughts had come back to that question, and still he had found no answer. A creature of a less civilized or a less sensitive race would never have let it torture his mind, and would have satisfied himself with the assurance that no one could be responsible for the working of fate. But Alveron and his kind had been lords of the Universe since the dawn of history, since that far distant age when the Time Barrier had been folded round the cosmos by the unknown powers that lay beyond the Beginning. To them had been given all knowledge–and with infinite knowledge went infinite responsibility. If there were mistakes and errors in the administration of the galaxy, the fault lay on the heads of Alveron and his people. And this was no mere mistake: it was one of the greatest tragedies in history.
The crew still knew nothing. Even Rugon, his closest friend and the ship’s deputy captain, had been told only part of the truth. But now the doomed worlds lay less than a billion miles ahead. In a few hours, they would be landing on the third planet.
Once again Alveron read the message from Base; then, with a flick of a tentacle that no human eye could have followed, he pressed the “General Attention” button. Throughout the mile-long cylinder that was the Galactic Survey Ship S9000, creatures of many races laid down their work to listen to the words of their captain.
“I know you have all been wondering,” began Alveron, “why we were ordered to abandon our survey and to proceed at such an acceleration to this region of space. Some of you may realize what this acceleration means. Our ship is on its last voyage: the generators have already been running for sixty hours at Ultimate Overload. We will be very lucky if we return to Base under our own power.
Genres: Cyberpunk
Escape Pod 388: Trixie and the Pandas of Dread
Trixie and the Pandas of Dread
by Eugie Foster
Trixie got out of her cherry-red godmobile and waved away the flitting cherubim waiting to bear her to her sedan chair. She wasn’t in the mood for a reverent chorus of hosannas, and the sedan chair desperately needed re-springing. She felt every jostle and jounce from those damned pandas. A day didn’t pass that she didn’t regret adopting giant pandas as her sacred vahanas. Sure, it seemed like a good idea at the time. They were so cute with their roly-poly bellies and black-masked faces, but they were wholly unsuited to be beasts of conveyance. The excessive undulation of their waddling gaits was enough to make Captain Ahab seasick, and their exclusive diet of bamboo made them perpetually flatulent. The novelty of being hauled along by farting ursines in a stomach-roiling sedan chair had gotten very old very fast. But there wasn’t a lot she could do about it now. It was all about the brand. Pandas were part of her theology. If she adopted new vahanas, she’d likely end up with a splitter faction, possibly even a reformation. Such a pain in the ass.
So she’d started walking more—well, floating really, since gods weren’t supposed to tread the earth. Appearances and all.
Drifting a hairsbreadth above the pavement, Trixie pulled out her holy tablet and launched the Karmic Retribution app. The first thumbnail belonged to a Mr. Tom Ehler, the owner of the walkway and the two-story colonial house it led to. She unpinched two fingers across the screen to zoom up Mr. Ehler’s details.
Genres: Crime
Escape Pod 373: Chandra’s Game
Chandra’s Game
by Samantha Henderson
Joey Straphos, Papa Joe, told me once that Chandra’s Game is a bitch of a city, fickle but generous when the mood strikes her. But Papa Joe was a romantic.
Chandra’s Game roots in the side of a barren asteroid moon like a tick. Over the years we’ve burrowed deeper into rock and ice until poor Chandra is mostly Game. We loop the twin wormholes, Gehenna and Tartarus, roundabout in a figure eight, ready to catch the freighters as they escape from hell’s dark maw. We strip them of goods and drink their heat, load them up and send them into another hell. It’s a profitable game, Chandra’s.
My mother smuggled me into Chandra’s Game without patronage and compounded her error by dying without permission; I was Terra-born unless she was lying, which was likely enough. I joined the other unregistereds down in the Warrens: ferals that lived off the Mayor’s Dole and by odd-jobs when that wasn’t enough. Papa Joe fed us, and sometimes the tunnels were glorious with the smell of meat, and if you were smart or hungry enough you didn’t ask from what. Where there’s humanity there are rats, and Joey wasn’t a rich man, not then. But food is food, and he’d bunk you if he could, and if all he asked in return for the latest Warren scuttlebutt or a few sticks of ephedrine off a freighter’s load, what of it? Saints are few and far between in Chandra’s Game.
Papa Joe always liked me: I stayed a bit feral, tomboy—nothing like his daughters. He had them late in life, when he got rich, and they were elegant, lux level creatures. Not like Joey, not like Mrs. Joe. She was quiet and kind, and if she knew a nano of Joey’s business she never let on. When Gregor Straphos died I died a little. But Mrs. Joe died all the way.
I’d been legit for years. I still snooped, but in an upright way. Helped the Company Men find bits of their loads that went astray between Gehenna and Tartarus, passed on Warren talk to the prefects when some smart kid got out of hand, pointed the way to speedwell labs that weren’t circumspect about what went into their product. Nothing that would disturb the delicate balance between the business of the Family, the Companies and the Mayor.
Genres: Flash
Escape Pod 372: Flash Fiction Collection
Show Notes
Awkward– Miscommunication between editor, host, and producer caused us to, within the audio, proclaim these stories as the winners of the flash contest, and they’re not, they’re stories we’ve purchased through the year. We will be showcasing the flash contest winners on their own in future episodes. I apologize for the embarrassing mistake.
Health Tips for Traveler
by David W. Goldman
Since the short time from mutual greetings of worlds, many Earther wish to visit the lovely world of the Pooquar peoples. This explainer before so will bring yourselves a voyage most lovely.
Within The Transit
The travel via cross-continuum portal will be novel to many Earther. Hydration is a paramount for not having the small problems of liver, marrow, blood tubes, and self memory. Also good before your trip is to make fat, especially under the skin. The scrawny traveler should begin preparation many week prior.
Portal going is sudden and then done. But many Earther say after that they think the journey is very very very long and never to stop. Thus is Earther brains supposed bad attuned to one or more of the interim journey continuum. For thus, non-conscious makes for most lovely travel. Means of non-conscious both pharmacological and percussive are on offer by helpful Pooquar portal agents.
Escape Pod 361: Ashes on the Water
Show Notes
Rated 13 and up
Ashes on the Water
By Gwendolyn Clare
I hoped that Ranjeet’s friends were as disreputable as promised. Ranjeet himself was late, of course. I’d asked him to park his car out on the road and meet me behind the house–my cousin is, shall we say, out of favor, and I couldn’t afford to get caught with him. So I sat on the dry, cracked ground in the shadow of the house, waiting where Father wouldn’t think to look for me. A meter away, heat rose off the sun-baked earth, wavering like water, as if the dormant land dreamed of monsoon season. I shut my eyes against the image. For years now, each summer has come harsher than the last.
Soft footsteps in the dirt, and Ranjeet strolled around the corner of the house, calling, “You’ll never make it across the border, kid.”
I stood up and brushed the dust off my jeans, annoyed. Seventeen and he still calls me a kid. “Why don’t you say that a little louder? I don’t think the neighbors could hear you clearly.”
The closest neighbors live on the other side of a one-hectare vacant field that used to be the mango grove, before the mango trees withered. I used to sit on Father’s shoulders to help with the harvest when I was small. He keeps saying we’re going to replant the grove, but nobody’s all that eager to dig up the dead roots.
Ranjeet folded his arms and leaned back against the side of the house. “You know it’s true.”
“Did you get the papers for me, or not?”
He pulled a thick envelope out of the inner pocket of his cream-colored sportcoat, but he held on to it, turning it over in his hands. “What are you planning to do, smuggle it in your shoes? You’re going to get caught.”
(Continue Reading…)
Genres: Space
Escape Pod 356: Three-Quarters Martian
Three-Quarters Martian
By C.R. Hodges
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…)