Posts Tagged ‘Reprint’

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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 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 1049: Amrit

Amrit originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2023.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:59 — 80.1MB)

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Show Notes

Kiran Kaur Saini

https://kirankaursaini.com/

Kaushik Narasimhan

https://www.castofwonders.org/people/kaushik-narasimhan/

Alasdair Stuart

https://escapepod.org/people/alasdair-stuart/

Robot and Frank

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_%26_Frank

Void Merch

https://voidmerch.threadless.com/collections/escape-artists-inc-x-voidmerch-1

Amrit

By Kiran Kaur Saini

The doorbell rang as Fox Singh lay staring into the plumbing under the kitchen sink. “Go away!” He wasn’t expecting anybody, and if any of his neighbors ever rang, it was only to complain about the volume of his television. The joints on the p-trap looked like Fox’s knees felt—crusted over with white flake but somehow still leaking fluids all over the cabinet.

“Mr. Singh,” a voice called. “This is Amrit, your Senior Well-Being Unit.”

What? This couldn’t be. Did they honestly think he was that old and incapable? Fox hauled himself up and hobbled to the peephole. The Unit wore a hot-pink turban with leopard spots. Seriously? His beard was tucked tidily under his chin, though, much neater than Fox’s, and his glaring turban was also more streamlined: impressively crisp, each overlap at precisely the right position. In recent years Fox had resigned himself to a delivery service, and though the scanner had read the shape and measurements of his head, the turbans never fit as they would if he tied them himself. The Unit smiled and waved. He really did look almost human. Fox licked his fingers, twirled the ends of his mustache together, smoothed his beard, and opened the door. (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 1041: Love in the Time of Dust and Venom

Love in the Time of Dust and Venom originally appeared in 2013 Fiction River – Time Travelers.

Includes a form of assisted suicide.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:35 — 42.5MB)

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Show Notes

Sponsored by Mixtape Stories

Love in the Time of Dust and Venom

By Sharon Joss

Using his walker to brace himself, Keiko watched her ancient grandfather stoop beside the packed dirt path and tug at a weed. Nearby, sprinklers sang shoop-shoop-shoop in the stillness, sending cascades of water across the wide expanse of lawns. She saw his eyes twinkle as he slapped the roots against the side of his worn black trousers. The scent of moist earth joined the fragrance of lavender and eucalyptus in the quiet July morning.  The old man stood and slowly put the dandelion in his pocket. He knew she didn’t approve, but this had become their little ritual.

When he first came to live with them, he spoke rarely, and then only Japanese; a language she struggled to recall from childhood. She found him to be a man of expression, rather than words. The first time she brought him to the LA County Arboretum he spoke to her of how much he missed his wife and home.  Now they came every Tuesday morning, after she dropped the boys off at school. There was no sense of time or country here.  They’d come to think of the botanical gardens as their special place.

He toddled over to their favorite bench; the rough wooden one beneath the purple jacaranda tree with a good view of the Queen Anne Cottage. Then, as the bees hummed around them, he took her hand as he often did, and her 97-year-old grandfather began to tell her about lightpulse technology. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1037: We Who Live in the Heart (Part 3 of 3)

We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:02 — 51.4MB)

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Show Notes

Quantum Superposition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition

Cloudward Ho

https://dimension20.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Cloudward,_Ho!

Void Merch

https://voidmerch.threadless.com/collections/escape-artists-inc-x-voidmerch-1

We Who Live in the Heart (Part 3 of 3)

By Kelly Robson

(…Continued from Part 2)

Once we’re in the equatorial stream, we ride the wind until we get into the right general area. Then we wipe off the appetite suppressant, and hunger sends us straight into the arms of the nearest electrical storm.

The urge to feed is a powerful motivator for most organisms. Mama chases all the algae she can find, and gobbles it double-time. For us on the inside, it’s like an old-style history doc. Everyone stays strapped in their hammocks and rides out the weather as we pitch around on the high seas.

I always enjoy the feeding frenzy; it gets the blood flowing.

I’d just settled to enjoy the wild ride when Ricci pinged me.

Two crews tried surgical interventions on the regenerated tissue. Let me know what you think, okay? Maybe now we can convince them to let you help. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1036: We Who Live in the Heart (Part 2 of 3)

We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:39 — 53.6MB)

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We Who Live in the Heart (Part 2 of 3)

By Kelly Robson

(…Continued from Part 2)

Ricci got into my notes. I don’t keep them locked down; anyone can access them. Free and open distribution of data is a primary force behind the success of the human species, after all. Don’t we all learn that in the crèche?

Making data available doesn’t guarantee anyone will look at it, and if they do, chances are they won’t understand it. Ricci tried. She didn’t just skim through, she really studied. Shift after shift, she played with the numbers and gamed my simulation models. Maybe she slept. Maybe not.

I figured Ricci would come looking for me if she got stumped, so I de-hermited, banged around in the rumpus room, put myself to work on random little maintenance tasks.

When Ricci found me, I was in the caudal stump dealing with the accumulated waste pellets. Yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like: half-kilogram plugs of dry solid waste covered in wax and transferred from the lavs by the hygiene bots. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 1035: We Who Live in the Heart (Part 1 of 3)

We Who Live in the Heart originally appeared in Clarkesworld, May 1, 2017.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:00 — 54.1MB)

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We Who Live in the Heart

By Kelly Robson

Ricci slipped in and out of consciousness as we carried her to the anterior sinus and strapped her into her hammock. Her eyelids drooped but she kept forcing them wide. After we finished tucking her in, she pulled an handheld media appliance out of her pocket and called her friend Jane.

“You’re late,” Jane said. The speakers flattened her voice slightly. “Are you okay?”

Ricci was too groggy to speak. She poked her hand through the hammock’s electrostatic membrane and panned the appliance around the sinus. Eddy and Chara both waved as the lens passed over them, but Jane was only interested in one thing.

“Show me your face, Ricci. Talk to me. What’s it like in there?”

Ricci coughed, clearing her throat. “I dunno. It’s weird. I can’t really think.” Her voice slurred from the anesthetic. (Continue Reading…)

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