Archive for Podcasts

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Escape Pod 881: Wild Geese

This story first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (December 2020)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:53 — 45.6MB)

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Wild Geese

by Lavie Tidhar

With rustling wings the wild geese fly
Round fields long strange to hand of toil
Called by the officers in charge,
We labour on the desert soil.

—Trans. from the Shijing by James Legge (1871)

 

With the end of summer the wild geese appeared, heralding the changing of the seasons. In the bazaars on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar the usual crowds of Silk Roaders engaged in ever more heated commerce. Soon it will be winter: ice and dust storms, and the train crews grumbling and swearing on the tracks, and any sensible hobo would be long gone, to work out the winter as far south-west as possible. Now boots and fur coats made their grand appearance on the stalls of the Naran Tuul, and Silk Roaders from Tehran and Yekaterinbug, Gdańsk and Dushanbe argued bitterly with each other and haggled over wholesale prices, shipping berths and train routes.

Efrem knew they would soon be gone. Traders were like wild dandelion seeds, ubiquitous and easy to take flight. Efrem, who rode the rail to Ulaanbaatar from Yiwu the year before, considered themselves almost a local at this point. Now they chewed on a khuushuur and contemplated the chase.

The first wild goose of the season had been spotted, somewhere to the west of Dalanzadgad.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 880: A Cosmonaut’s Guide to Talking to Your Parents

Escape Pod 880: A Cosmonaut’s Guide to Talking to Your Parents is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:22 — 49.0MB)

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A Cosmonaut’s Guide to Talking to Your Parents

By Adriana C. Grigore

You have (3) unopened voicemails on your personal line. Last received 31 minutes ago, Aurea Minor Time.

> Read?

> No. Switch to broadcast.

> Engage deep space satellite?

> Yes. On, say…a five-sector perimeter.

> Live transmission upon connection?

> Sure.

“… and when I said that no, I didn’t order the pie, I made it myself, they said—they said, oh, you shouldn’t have made such a mess! And I, well, I, I cried.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s… it’s like the mess was all they saw, you know?”

“And you wanted them to see you.”

“Yeah… I mean, doesn’t everyone?”

Sam looked at the canopy of stars past the asteroid belt he was supposed to be mapping. None of them would’ve been visible from any of the planets he’d grown up on, but they felt familiar anyway. Distant and still, as his spacesuit ebbed and flowed. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 879: Triptych

Escape Pod 879: Triptych is an Escape Pod original.

Content warnings for gender dysphoria, and threats of gun violence

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:24 — 35.4MB)

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Triptych

by Avi Burton

Delaney didn’t have time to change before the men in suits came and bundled her into the car. Her dress fell crooked against her knees, and her makeup was half-applied. The sting of cold air brushed against her bare shoulders. They hadn’t let her grab a jacket, either.

The hasty exit and lack of preparation made her think this semi-willing kidnapping couldn’t be for a public appearance. Security always made her change back into men’s clothes for that, no matter how nauseous the suit and tie made her. She knew the Senator’s people didn’t approve of her aesthetic, or her, period, but they gave her the brief grace of dressing how she liked—as long as she stayed hidden. If she ever left the house, it was as Senator Marcus Delaney. She’d never been allowed out before as this disheveled, in-between creature.

Delaney sat rumpled in the back seat of the van—Janus Delivery Services, read the logo imprinted on the side—and twisted her hands in her lap. There was a guard on either side of her, and one in the driver’s seat, who was wearing sunglasses. They were all white, male, and had a military look. Maybe Marines, definitely bodyguards, and not her usual handlers.

None of them made eye contact with her. Lines of tension dragged down the shoulders and frowns of the security guards. Something unspoken fizzled in the air, like a live wire, or a fuse burning down.

“What’s going on? What do you need me for?” Delaney asked. Usually, she was allowed a briefing before they came to take her, but she’d been ordered to get in the car without any other information.

“Quiet,” said the guard on the left.

“Did something happen?”

“Look.” Sunglasses in the front sighed, twisting the wheel. The windows of the van were tinted, and Delaney couldn’t make out more than faint road passing by. “You’ll find out when you get there. Don’t panic.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 878: Budo (Flashback Friday)

This story was previously published in the Steampunk World Anthology edited by Sarah Hans and first appeared on Escape Pod Episode 517.

Violence and warfare.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:53 — 40.1MB)

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Budo

By Tade Thompson

“Being desirous, on the other hand, to obviate the misunderstanding and disputes which might in future arise from new acts of occupation (prises de possession) on the coast of Africa; and concerned, at the same time, as to the means of furthering the moral and material well-being of the native populations;”

General Act of the Berlin Conference on West Africa,
26 February 1885

There is a story told in my village about the man who fell from the sky. The British also tell this tale in their history books, but it is a mere paragraph, and they invert the details.

In October 1884 I was a Yoruba translator for a British trading outpost. This man from the sky, we called him Budo. He was in the custody of the English, who questioned him. They tortured him with heat and with cold and with the blade, but they did not know what answers would satisfy. I know this because I carried their words to him, and his silence back to them. His manner was mild and deferent at all times, but they held him in isolation. For good reason they considered him dangerous. I will explain this later.

One afternoon while most of the English were sleeping a white man arrived at the gate demanding admission. One of the Sikh sentries told me he was a scout, and appeared bruised, half-naked and exhausted. He was too out of breath to speak, although he seemed keen to give his report. Kenton, the NCO of the military contingent, asked one of my brothers to bring water while he soothed the scout. The man took two gulps, splashed some on his face, then looked up at Kenton. He said one word.

“French.”

The scout vomited over the floor.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 877: He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars

He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars was originally published in Clarkesworld Issue 178 (July 2021)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:09 — 59.7MB)

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He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars

by Grace Chan

Yennie’s new therapist started by checking his biorhythm recordings—sleep patterns, heart rate, blood pressure. Then, the therapist’s soma projection leaned into the space between them and asked what Yennie would like to talk about.

Yennie glanced out the window. An ice storm, a froth of glassy dust, was blowing in over the bone-colored hills. He was on Enceladus; his therapist was on Mars. He wanted to describe how sometimes his body felt hollow, and other times he felt his skin could not contain all that was within him—but he didn’t have the words. Half the solar system divided them, and more.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 876: Like Stars Daring to Shine

Like Stars Daring to Shine was first published by Fireside Magazine, July 2022.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:08 — 43.2MB)

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Like Stars Daring to Shine

By Somto Ihezue

When the boy opens his housing unit’s steel door and the incandescent lights pour into his face, he does not blink away. “Little suns” — this is what everyone calls them. The massive disks hover in the atmosphere, spilling streams of radiant light to the ground. The boy stares into the trees, mere meters from the door, and the forest encaving the unit stares back. A breeze finds him, whistling through the trees and into his dungarees. Threadbare with a Batman logo printed on them, the over-alls belonged to his mother when she was a child. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 875: The Hagfish Has Three Hearts

“The Hagfish Has Three Hearts” was originally published in Cossmass Infinities (September 2021)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:06 — 74.8MB)

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The Hagfish Has Three Hearts

by Monica Joyce Evans

The beacons were in the wrong place.

Noma swallowed her roasted squid and clicked, still staring at the sea. It was hard to be accurate on land, of course. She’d have a better sense once she got in the water. But the beacons had moved.

Which wasn’t possible.

She turned the squid in her hands. The water was quiet and gray under the brilliant blue sky, barely touched by the hot wind. There was always wind on the coast, cradling the thatched village and the ancient hotel and the fish market. Pairs of men and women were laying their silver catches in lines on the wet sand, amberjack and dorado and corvina. The inshore trawlers had left before dawn and were now cautious points on the horizon, keeping a respectful distance from the bright aquamarine line that marked where humans were allowed in the water.

Noma set her squid down and clicked again. Out past the trembling shoals of fish, the aquamarine line had shifted. Not quite aligned with the currents, or the tideline. Wrong.

She felt her hearts beating rapidly and took a moment to quiet them. Nobody could move the beacons, even if they wanted to. Nobody knew how. The whales could, but had no reason to do so. At least, none that Noma could think of. Whales were inscrutable. And unforgiving.

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 874: Common Speech

Escape Pod 874: Common Speech is an Escape Pod original.

This story deals with plagues and description of injuries.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:28 — 55.6MB)

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Common Speech

By Elise Stephens

Dr. Jaiyesimi Obiaka tugged at her sweat-damp collar, wiped her eyes, and tried to focus on the copied pages of the final experiment she and Ganiru had created together. Just looking over his familiar handwriting blurred her vision with tears.

Jai’s colleagues had told her to stay home, to take time to grieve, but she’d allowed herself just two days to mourn her husband’s death before donning her lab coat again. She had to be pragmatic. (Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 873: The Hazmat Sisters (Part 2 of 2)

“The Hazmat Sisters” appeared in Asimovs in July 2021 and was a finalist for their Reader’s Choice award. It’s one of three novellas that appeared in the 2020-2021 window that are all set in the same universe as the novels Dealbreaker and Gamechanger; the other two appeared in Clarkesworld and F&SF.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:57 — 47.1MB)

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The Hazmat Sisters (Part 2 of 2)

by L.X. Beckett

Another sundown, another night on the quest. Mom’s check-in is perfunctory: hand out XP, confirmation of their route. No mention of abnormal battery use, so they got away, once again, with their secret confab. She seems distracted. Things must be getting hot at the Chicago call center.

The girls push Mule along in the refugee fast lane, passing slower-moving families with kids and the occasional masked elder. Some of them are dragging smartcases. The real unfortunates are chipping the wheels off actual antique shopping carts, mile by brutal mile.

There’s no sign of Baron.

Around midnight they are crossing a bridge when the border of their hex runs up against the fairhair family, Papa Bear and his baseball bat mace and baby makes three. They’re riveted, watching something downriver.

Fee calls a stop before they get too close. She activates the infrared in her visor and shares the view with the others.

It’s a firefight. A clutch of warm bodies sheltering under a trio of armored cars exchanges fire with a thick concentration of autonomous platforms hovering over the blackly glinting river. Spotlights, tracers, and of course machine guns all pour fire into the ground position.

“Can we tell who’s who?” Wilmie subs.

Tess has shut off her display, opting to instead keep an eye on the family on the bridge. “Who cares?”

(Continue Reading…)

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Escape Pod 872: The HazMat Sisters (Part 1 of 2)

“The Hazmat Sisters” appeared in Asimovs in July 2021 and was a finalist for their Reader’s Choice award. It’s one of three novellas that appeared in the 2020-2021 window that are all set in the same universe as the novels Dealbreaker and Gamechanger; the other two appeared in Clarkesworld and F&SF.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:35 — 60.3MB)

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The HazMat Sisters (Part 1 of 2)

by L.X. Beckett

The runaway soldier comes upon their party days after they cross out of Oklahoma into Missouri, late in the afternoon when their Questmaster is on shift, as they camp in a culvert near a river somewhere near Grand Falls.

Wilmie drew last watch, shift at the end of day, through hot and humid afternoon and its build to an equally dense evening. She’s sliding in and out of a doze, heat-torpor amplified by her hay fever meds.

Pony pokes her with one of its sharps, a silent alarm that shoots Wilmie to her feet, adrenalized, raring and ready to wake the others… unless it’s a feral chicken, or a skunk. Pony’s supposed to know a coyote when it sees it, but it still flags every. Single. One.

“Unknown interloper.” Text from the bot scrolls across her augmented display.

She flicks the warning away with a gesture, linking to Tess’s Dragon and zooming with its cameras. It feeds a view of the brush direct to her goggles. No coyote this time. The man’s scrawny, but a man nonetheless. Not as big as Fee, but full grown.

He’s creeping toward them. Not blundering, not snuffling about for shelter, and moving superslow. Bidding to fool their motion detectors? Not good.

(Continue Reading…)

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