Archive for Meta

Artemis Rising 2 Print Available Now

Artemis Rising is the month-long celebration of female and non-binary authors in genre fiction run across three Escape Artists podcasts PodCastle for fantasy, EscapePod for science fiction, and PseudoPod for horror.

In a couple days, Escape Pod will be releasing its first Artemis Rising 2 episode. At the same time, we will be starting a thread here to track the AR episodes from all of the Escape Artists shows so you can get links to them all in one place that you will be able to refer back to easily for as long as this site exists.

This year we have commissioned a special art print by legendary illustrator Galen Dara. The print will be available for purchase through Society6 until March 31, 2016.

Artemis Rising 2 FINAL
Galen likes monsters, mystics, and dead things. She has created art for Uncanny Magazine, 47North publishing, Skyscape Publishing, Fantasy Flight Games, Tyche Books, Fireside Magazine, Lightspeed, Lackington’s, and Resurrection House. She has been nominated for the Hugo, the World Fantasy Award, and the Chesley Award. When Galen is not working on a project you can find her on the edge of the Sonoran Desert, climbing mountains and hanging out with an assortment of human and animal companions. Her website is www.galendara.com plus you can find her on Facebook and Twitter @galendara.

For Your Consideration

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In our first 2016 metacast, we present the Escape Artists (EA) stories that ran in 2015, which are eligible in the upcoming Hugo nomination season.

A quick plug. For us. All four EA shows – PodCastle, Pseudopod, Escape Pod and Cast of Wonders – are themselves eligible in the SEMIPROZINE Hugo category.

Not Fancast. Not Fanzine. SEMIPROZINE. Yes, the categories are confusing and often overlap. “Fancast” is traditionally dominated by commentary shows and sketch-based audio programs.

There’s an argument that we could split the shows and compete in multiple categories to increase our chances. We don’t think that benefits anyone. The division is artificial at best, and extremely difficult (at worst) to explain, given all four of our shows have harmonised pay rates and submissions policies. It would smack of gamesmanship, which doesn’t interest us.

Don’t get us wrong, we LOVED seeing PodCastle and Escape Pod on last year’s Hugo long lists, and we’d be honoured for any one of our shows to be a finalist.

But that’s a decision that rests solely in the hands of YOU, our fans and supporters.

(And just a note, Mothership Zeta doesn’t qualify this year because they’re too new.)

Below are links to some aggregation projects, where fans are building lists of those eligible in the various categories. They’re great tools, and we’d like to thank David Steffen for his efforts. We’ll also link to our Wikia page, containing links to all the eligible Escape Artists stories.

Please listen to this MetaCast for the Escape Artists entries!

Escape Pod Flash Fiction Contest 2016

The next wave of the fourth incarnation of the Escape Artists Flash Fiction Contest is coming. Escape Pod is landing in early 2016. Every author may submit one original story of 500 words or less for consideration between January 15 and February 15. Sharpen your pencils and get your stories ready to submit. The three winning stories will be purchased and run as an episode of Escape Pod. Stories will be published on a members-only section of the forums, so first publication rights will not be expended by participating in the contest. It’s easy to be become a member. Transparency is important to us, so all the pertinent details and rules will be posted under “The Arcade”. May the odds be ever in your favor!

http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?board=236.0

Escape Pod Flash Fiction Contest 2016 – Rules

EA Metacast, October 2015 (Part 1)

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Hello everyone, Alasdair here. We tend to do a metacast every year around this time, and this year we’ve done something a bit different. This one was recorded LIVE at WorldCon in Spokane in August 2015!

In the past, you’ve let us know our metacasts are too long, so we’ve split this one into three parts:

  • In part one I introduce you to some of the staff at EA, we talk about Mothership Zeta, and there’s a special announcement! If you only want to listen once to get an update on what’s in store for Escape Artists in 2016, you want to listen to this.
  • In part two we’ve more of the Q&A session, along with a great flash story, “Final Corrections, Pittsburgh Times-Dispatch” by M. Bennardo, narrated by Wilson Fowlie. We talk a bit more about what’s been going on behind the scenes at Escape Artists this past year.
  • In part three we offer a special treat: a live narration by Podcastle’s own M.K. Hobson! She reads her original story “The Last Unenlightened”.

Enjoy!

Alasdair

Flash Fiction Contest 4: Bloodlines

The original paraphernalia for the Flash Fiction Contest had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Stuart, the oldest man in town, was born. Mr. Lieberman spoke frequently to the forum members about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as little tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here.

Mr. Garrett and his oldest son, Nick, hold the black box securely on the stool until Mr. Lieberman can stir the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of the ritual had been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Lieberman had been successful in having slips of paper substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr. Lieberman had argued, had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more easily into the black box.

The fourth incarnation of the Escape Artists Flash Fiction Contest is coming. Pseudopod is leading the charge this time. Every author may submit up to two original stories of 500 words or less for consideration. Submissions are open now until September 15. Head to Pseudopod’s special Submittable portal to exercise your civic duty in the lottery.

The competition will begin in October 2015. The three winning stories will be purchased and run as an episode of Pseudopod. Payment will be $30 so this will be considered a pro sale. Stories will be published on a members-only section of the forums, so first publication rights will not be expended by participating in the contest. It’s easy to be become a member. Sign up for a forum account and make a single post so we know you’re not a bot. This is a good thread to start with. From there, all the pertinent details will be posted under “The Arcade”. Visit forum.escapeartists.net for rules and details.

The Season

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It’s a new year!  Celebrations and congratulations all around, as we have successfully survived, both as a species and as individuals (presuming you are reading this text from a computer and not, like, Valhalla).  That means, however, a new awards season is coming.  If you want to support Escape Pod, then please, feel free to nominate us for awards such as the Hugos, the Nebulas, or the Parsecs.  Escape Pod publishes both text and audio, so that gives some flexibility in how you nominate us.  For example, with the Hugos we are eligible for Best Fancast and Best Semi-Pro-Zine.

We’d also love to see some of the authors we publish see their own work highlighted.  The stories are, after all, the whole point of the exercise.  With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of the award-eligible fiction we ran in 2014.

The following short stories were originally published in EscapePod in 2014:

“That Other Sea,” by William Ledbetter

“Kumara,” by Seth Dickinson

“An Understanding,” by Holly Heisey

“To Waste,” by Luke Pebler

“Rockwork,” by R. M. Graves

“The Sky is Blue, and Bright, and Full of Stars,” by Edward Ashton

“Checkmate,” by Brian Trent

“Trash,” by Marie Vibbert

“Inseparable,” by Liz Heldmann

“Shared Faces,” by Anaea Lay

“The Mercy of Theseus,” by Rachael K. Jones

“Soft Currency,” by Seth Gordon

“The Golden Glass” by Gary Kloster

The following stories were originally published somewhere else in 2014, but reprinted in Escape Pod that same year. (If you want to nominate any of these, please do so naming the original venue, even if you heard them first with us.):

“The Transdimensional Horsemaster Rabbis of Mpumalanga Province,” by Sarah Pinsker, originally published in Asimov’s

“A Struggle Between Rivals Ends Surprisingly,” by Oliver Buckram, originally published in F&SF

“Repo,” by Aaron Gallagher, originally published in Analog

“Enjoy the Moment,” by Jack McDevitt, originally published in the anthology “The End is Nigh”

“This is as I Wish to Be Restored” by Christie Yant, originally published in Analog

Hat tip to datameister David Steffen of Diabolical Plots for volunteering to help put this list together!

 

Escape Artists Metacast Update

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Escape Artists MetacastThis quick episode is a round-up of the results of our recent Metacast to ask for subscriptions and donations hosted by Alasdair Stuart.

Thank you so much for the initial response to the problems at Escape Artists!

To review:

1. Escape Artists has a major cash problem. This has been caused by a massive increase in the amount of listeners which has not been accompanied by an increase in donations. In fact those have started to decrease. This situation is unsustainable and we will close at the end of 2013 without a major increase in subscriptions.

2. Click anywhere on this line for the original 44 minute meta-cast from all three shows explaining this.

3. We need money. There are two ways to do this either by donating or subscribing. One off donations are lovely and we’re incredibly grateful. Subscriptions cost you much less and raise our base level of funds on a monthly basis. Those are going to help much more in the mid term.

4. This is Escape Pod’s Homepage. Click on the DONATE or SUBSCRIBE buttons on the right hand side.

5. This is Pseudopod’s Homepage. Click on the DONATE or SUBSCRIBE buttons on the right hand side.

6. This is the Podcastle Homepage. Click on the DONATE or SUBSCRIBE buttons on the right hand side.

7. Click here to donate via Dwolla. Our ID is 812-527-2340

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