Posts Tagged ‘Norm Sherman’

Escape Pod 299: Plus or Minus

Originally appeared in Asimov’s

Rated appropriate for older teens and up for sexual situations and violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:20:10 — 55.1MB)

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Show Notes

Nominated for the Hugo Award for Novelette, 2011.

Plus Or Minus

By James Patrick Kelly

Everything changed once Beep found out that Mariska’s mother was the famous Natalya Volochkova.   Mariska’s life aboard the Shining Legend went immediately from bad to awful.  Even before he singled her out, she had decided that there was no way she’d be spending the rest of her teen years crewing on an asteroid bucket.  Once Beep started persecuting her, she began counting down the remaining days of the run as if she were a prisoner.  She tried explaining that she had no use for Natalya Volochkova, who had never been much of a mother to her, but Beep wouldn’t hear it.  He didn’t care that Mariska had only signed on to the Shining Legend to get back at her mother for ruining her life.

Somehow that hadn’t worked out quite the way she had planned.

For example, there was crud duty.  With a twisting push Mariska sailed into the command module, caught herself on a handrail, and launched toward the starboard wall.  The racks of  instrument screens chirped and beeped and buzzed; command was one of the loudest mods on the ship.  She stuck her landing in front of navigation rack and her slippers caught on the deck burrs, anchoring her in the ship’s  .0006 gravity.   Sure enough, she could see new smears of mold growing from the crack where the nav screen fit into the wall.  This was Beep’s fault, although he would never admit it.  He kept the humidity jacked up in Command, said that dry air gave him nosebleeds.  Richard FiveFord claimed they came from all the drugs Beep sniffed but Mariska didn’t want to believe that.  Also Beep liked to sip his coffee from a cup instead sucking it out of a bag, even though he slopped all the time.  Fungi loved the sugary spatters.  She sniffed one particularly vile looking smear of mold.  It smelled faintly like the worms she used to grow back home on the Moon.  She wiped her nose with the sleeve of her jersey and reached to the holster on her belt for her sponge. As she scrubbed, the bitter vinegar tang of disinfectant gel filled the mod.  Not for the first time, she told herself that this job stunk.

She felt the tingle of Richard FiveFord offering a mindfeed and opened her head.  =What?=

His feed made a pleasant fizz behind her eyes, distracting her. =You done any time soon?=  Distraction was Richard’s specialty

=No.=

=Didit is making a dream for us.=

(Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 294: The Night Train

Originally appeared in Strange Horizons.

Rated R

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:09 — 29.7MB)

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The Night Train

By Lavie Tidhar

Her name wasn’t Molly and she didn’t wear shades, reflective or otherwise.

She was watching the length of the platform.

Hua Lamphong at dusk: a warm wind blowing through the open platforms where the giant beasts puffed smoke and steam into the humid air, the roof of the train station arching high overhead.

Her name wasn’t Noi, either, in case you asked, though it’s a common enough name. It wasn’t Porn, or Ping. It wasn’t even Friday.

She was watching the platform, scanning passengers climbing aboard, porters shifting wares, uniformed police patrolling at leisure. She was there to watch out for the Old Man.

She wasn’t even a girl. Not exactly. And as for why the Old Man was called the Old Man . . .

He was otherwise known as Boss Gui: head and bigfala bos of the Kunming Toads. She got the job when she’d killed Gui’s Toad bodyguards—by default, as it were. (Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 286: The ’76 Goldwater Dime

Originally published in Residential Aliens in July, 2010

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:21 — 14.8MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Feedback for Episode 278
  • Next week… a taste of time.

The ’76 Goldwater Dime

by John Medaille

I started in 1962, that’s when I became a numismatist. You know what that is? It’s the study of… well, it’s not the study of anything. It’s coin collecting, is what it is.

I was ten in 1962, and Christmas I got my first coin album. I didn’t actually get it. My father gave it to my brother. It was, you know, you’ve seen them, a sturdy cardboard folder with slots punched out that you put the coins in. Behind the slots, the empties, it had a backing of blue felt, I remember that. My dad gave it to my brother, I guess maybe thinking it would straighten him out. But coins, you know, they don’t really have that power. He wasn’t interested. He gave it to me. Me, I was interested.

The album was for Lincoln pennies, 1909 to 1959. I had five cents in the world then and each of the five fit in the slot. It only took me five more days to get the other forty-five. I would do anything for those pennies and slot it in its slot. Anything, anything. When I got my last penny, wow. It was a 1943 steel mint penny, a ‘steelie.’ They had to use steel instead of copper that year cause they needed the copper for all the bombs. I was so proud.

(Continue Reading…)

Escape Pod 228: Everything That Matters

First appeared in Interzone #219

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:13 — 39.3MB)

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Show Notes

Closing music: “Heartache Over Innsmouth” by Norm Sherman.

Sponsored by SleepPhones – Pajamas For Your Ears

Everything That Matters

By Jeff Spock

“I have done over fifteen hundred dives,” I said, and let that sink in. The number was astronomical for a guy my age, even for a professional. “I have done free diving down to eighty meters. I have worked as a commercial diver and in commercial salvage.”

They were listening and nodding, concentrating on me while recording the conversation. “Then you, of all people, should have known better,” said the little guy.

“I did know better!” They were acting like the shark was the victim, not me. “How many people in the whole fucking galaxy could have come up alive, huh? How many would have had the technology and experience and conditioning?”

“If you want our congratulations, you got ’em,” said Odenny. “But we’re more interested in what you were doing.”

Genres:

Escape Pod 209: On the Eyeball Floor

Escape Pod 209: On the Eyeball Floor is an Escape Pod original.

Rated PG for for angry awakening sentience and some swearing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:38 — 25.8MB)

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Show Notes

Closing song by Andrew Richardson

On the Eyeball Floor

by Tina Connolly

We’ve got robotic arms to put the eyeballs in. Metal clamps to pulldown the eyelids. Tony, on Four, keeps the grease vats filled. Oil squirts nineteen times a minute to keep the eye sockets from squeaking. Tiny slick needles stitch on the lashes, while millions of different irises get stamped in magenta and yellow and cyan, so no two will ever be alike, just like us.

All that, and they can’t engineer anything—or anyone—to take over my job. People in Organs go home coated with grease and vinegar; people in Bones have lost fingers to the machines, and still nobody wants the job where a hundred half-live cyborgs line up in rows, twitching when your back is turned. Waiting for someone to talk to them, feel for them. Transcend them to life.

There are safety signs around the factory. “Scrub Up.” “Know Thyself.” “Don’t Blink.” That last is the best piece of advice, here on the eyeball floor.

Escape Pod 140: Astromonkeys!

First appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, June 2006.

Rated PG. Contains some profanity, some scatology, and a lot of silly superhero violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:48 — 24.6MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Mur Lafferty

Astromonkeys!

By Tony Frazier

“All right, so I’m chasing these things down the street, and there’s more showing up all the time, so now there’s like ten of them. I have no idea how I’m supposed to wrangle all these space monkeys, and right about then is when this dude comes swooping down out of the sky, wearing this blue costume with a big yellow star on his chest.”

“Another hero,” Jill says.

“Guy named Astro,” I say. “I’d run into him a few times before, back when GoDS 1.0 was still together. He would be fighting this monster – that was his thing, fighting these random space monsters – and we’d show up to help out. I thought he was okay, but the other guys didn’t like him much.”

“Why not?” Jill asks.

“Well, he was kind of a dork. No offense,” I say, turning to Dave. Dave waves it off.

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