Escape Pod 78: The Shoulders of Giants
Show Notes
Rated PG. Contains minor profanity, and very tame references to populating new worlds. Hey, someone’s got to.
The Shoulders of Giants
by Robert J. Sawyer
The Pioneer Spirit was a colonization ship; it wasn’t intended as a diplomatic vessel. When it had left Earth, it had seemed important to get at least some humans off the mother world. Two small-scale nuclear wars–Nuke I and Nuke II, as the media had dubbed them–had already been fought, one in southern Asia, the other in South America. It appeared to be only a matter of time before Nuke III, and that one might be the big one.
SETI had detected nothing from Tau Ceti, at least not by 2051. But Earth itself had only been broadcasting for a century and a half at that point; Tau Ceti might have had a thriving civilization then that hadn’t yet started using radio. But now it was twelve hundred years later. Who knew how advanced the Tau Cetians might be?
About the Author
Robert J. Sawyer
Robert J. Sawyer — called “the dean of Canadian science fiction” by The Ottawa Citizen and “just about the best science-fiction writer out there these days” by The Denver Rocky Mountain News — is one of only eight writers in history (and the only Canadian) to win all three of the science-fiction field’s top honors for best novel of the year:
- the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Award, which he won in 2003 for his novel Hominids;
- the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Nebula Award, which he won in 1996 for his novel The Terminal Experiment;
- and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, which he won in 2006 for his novel Mindscan.
According to the US trade journal Locus, Rob is the #1 all-time worldwide leader in number of award wins as a science fiction or fantasy novelist. Recent honors include the first-ever Humanism in the Arts Award from Humanist Canada, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal from the Governor General of Canada, the Hal Clement Award for Best Young Adult Novel of the Year (for Watch), and a Lifetime Achievement Aurora Award from the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association — the first such award given to an author in thirty years, and only the fourth such ever bestowed.
About the Narrator
Serah Eley
Serah Eley is a chaos spirit who first appeared in 2013, from the right cerebral hemisphere of a former podcaster named Steve Eley. Best known as the founding editor and host of Escape Pod, with the famous signoff “Have Fun,” Steve realized he was having more fun as Serah and gave her the body for transition and general mayhem. Now much prettier than Steve and at least seventy percent weirder, Serah lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her spouse Sadi and collects stories too fantastic to be fiction. If you ask nicely she may even tell some of them. Very nicely.
