Rated G. Kids, don’t try this at home.
The thing about the Ice is, you can get really, really, really bored. I spent a whole week here yesterday. So, you know that giant slanting floe with the scoop-up at the end that I sent a picture of? Carls and I said “oh cool, that would make a great ski-jump.” Only I was dumb enough actually to try it. About two minutes ago.
Rated R. Contains profanity, some physical violence, and violence against dignity.
“Good god, who’d do something like that?” Sarah rummaged through her purse for a handkerchief but couldn’t seem to focus on the task. Her mind was consumed with images of Tony’s perforated body.
“Well, I’ve seen the Tony Autumn Show, so we’ve got an APB out on everyone with a sense of moral decency and every freak, transvestite, midget wrestler, incestuous dad, jilted lover…”
Rated G. Contains ignoble savagery and predomestic strife.
Am determined to become strong, lithe, deadly, noble cave-woman type figure, √° la Ayla of Clan of the Cave Bear. I will fashion stone tools, hunt and gather food and live pristine, pure life of Homo Erectus-type person–at one with nature. Ah. Air is so fresh. Quite lovely.
Rated PG. Contains themes of ecoterrorism and global disaster. If you can explain that to your kids, it’s family-safe.
Referenced sites:
Short-Short Stories by Bruce Holland Rogers
SciFi Dimensions
Musical guest: Red Hunter.
The only person who might understand is Sponheim, the Corrections Sociologist. He just arrived. It’s his job to understand me thoroughly and to write a report that his successors will use to decide if it’s safe to revive me. His report will help them decide if I am no longer a threat to society because society has changed enough to deal with me, or has learned to treat behaviors like mine.
“I am already remorseful!” I tell him at our first interview. “I won’t do it again!” We are sitting at a table by the water. A light mist falls. “I shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t even have thought about it. Once, I was one of the people fighting to preserve the last wild polar bears! I wanted to protect the earth!” I get myself worked up. I am close to tears.
Rated G. Important safety tip. (Thanks, Egon.)
Colleagues, ours is a uniquely demanding profession. In no other job do you endanger your coworker’s soul if you call out to him in the course of your duties. But since a demon has power over you once it knows your name, well-meant warnings such as “Buck! Behind you!” can have tragic consequences.
Genres: Queer
Rated X. Contains profanity, sexual situations, and the undead, in various combinations.
Referenced sites:
The Sci Phi Show
Tangent Short Fiction Review
The Town Drunk
Radio A.D.D.
I don’t know how it happened. I’m the last person I’d go to if I were a zombie; I’m not into the occult thing at all. But I was the only friend Mandy had in this city, so she came to me with her sob story. Lucky me. So there she was, kicked back in my bed, having herself a good, long cry and I was stuck with her, wondering how long until she began stinking. That was really unfair of me, I know, but there was a goddamn walking, talking corpse snuggled up in my good sheets and I was a little concerned about it.
Rated G. Warning: Food descriptions may be intoxicating. Do not listen before grocery shopping.
Referenced sites:
Resonance FM
The Exciting Hellebore Shew
She did not particularly care whether he paid; it wasn’t her inn. But at his words she lifted an eyebrow. “What sort of challenge?”
“A very special one.” He slipped a hand into his coat like an old-fashioned pistolero, but before Franca could worry he pulled out a bulging sack made of what looked like deerhide. He set this on the table — carefully, Franca noted.
“You are willing to follow a recipe? So many chefs of your caliber think themselves above the direction of others.”
She lifted her chin. “I was head chef for Parliament once — before that bastard Berlusconi, anyhow. While I was there I had to make Florentine dishes like a Florentine and Venetian dishes like a Venetian and the Madonna help me if I did them wrong. If the recipe is sound, I can follow it.”
Rated G. Contains non-graphic ursine violence.
Two Alaskan Kodiak bears joined a small circus where the pair appeared nightly in a parade, pulling a covered wagon. The fact that they had joined the circus was not so strange; the circus life was very popular even for the better class of bear. The strange thing was that they were both primitive mutes. This alone elevated or, in the opinion of some bears still angry about the Great Russian Dancing Bear Revolt of ’06, lowered them to the level of freak show attraction.
Rated PG. Contains some profanity. That’s it, really.
Referenced sites:
Mostly News
Escape Pod Submission Guidelines
Craphound beat me out the door, as usual. His exoskeleton is programmable, so he can record little scripts for it like: move left arm to door handle, pop it, swing legs out to running-board, jump to ground, close door, move forward. Meanwhile, I’m still making sure I’ve switched off the headlights and that I’ve got my wallet.
Rated G. Contains alien abduction, brainwashing, and conspiracy. Unless it doesn’t.
Referenced sites:
Snakes on a Plane
Something From the Nightside by Simon Green
Conrad McManus claimed he was kidnaped by aliens and replaced by an exact duplicate of himself.
But, Connie, we said, that doesn’t make sense. If you were a duplicate you wouldn’t say a thing like that.
Connie shook his head. “The aliens destroyed my body while they were doing their tests and experiments and what not and they had to make a new one so no one would know about them.”
So they destroyed everything, we asked, except your brain?
“No,” he said. “They destroyed my brain, too.”