Archive for Podcasts

Escape Pod 134: Me and My Shadow

First appeared in Unauthorized Autobiographies and Other Curiosities, 1984.

Rated R. Contains violent crime, violent imagery, and themes of violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:00 — 25.4MB)

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Me and My Shadow

by Mike Resnick

Of course, even if we had met before, they couldn’t recognize me now. I know. I’ve spent almost three years trying to find out who I was before I got Erased — but along with what they did to my brain, they gave me a new face and wiped my fingerprints clean. I’m a brand new man: two years, eleven months, and seventeen days old. I am (fanfare and trumpets, please!) William Jordan. Not a real catchy name, I’ll admit, but it’s the only one I’ve got these days.

I had another name once. They told me not to worry about it, that all my memories had been expunged and that I couldn’t dredge up a single fact no matter how hard I tried, not even if I took a little Sodium-P from a hypnotist, and after a few weeks I had to agree with them–which didn’t mean that I stopped trying.

Erasures never stop trying.

Escape Pod 133: Other People’s Money

First appeared in Forbes Magazine, October 2007.

Rated G. Contains Byzantine finance and potentially disturbing art.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:20 — 16.0MB)

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Other People’s Money

by Cory Doctorow

Which is why she was hoping that the venture capitalist would just leave her alone. He wasn’t a paying customer, he wasn’t a fellow artist — he wanted to *buy* her, and he was thirty years too late.

“You know, I pitched you guys in 1999. On Sand Hill Road. One of the founding partners. Kleiner, I think. The guy ate a salad all through my slide-deck. When I was done, he wiped his mouth, looked over my shoulder, and told me he didn’t think I’d scale. That was it. He didn’t even pick up my business card. When I looked back as I was going out the door, I saw his sweep it into the trash with the wrapper from his sandwich.”

The VC — young, with the waxy, sweaty look of someone who ate a lot of GM yogurt to try to patch his biochemistry — shook his head. “That wasn’t us. We’re a franchise — based here in LA. I just opened up the Inglewood branch. But I can see how that would have soured you on us. Did you ever get your VC?”

Escape Pod 132: Sparks in a Cold War

First appeared in Future Wars, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff.

Rated PG. Contains violence, mayhem, and politics.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:30 — 32.0MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
SFF Audio

Sparks in a Cold War

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

“We’re all committing a crime,” Audra said, leaning back and closing her eyes. “That’s part of what we’re paying you for.”

Technically, she was right. Extreme Safaris took their clients to unsanctioned or dangerous worlds, trips which could result in serious fines or, in Bryer’s case, the loss of his ship’s clearance for those areas. So far, Bryer had managed to avoid the fines simply by having his clients sign a document that said they had insisted on a trip to the unsanctioned area. He had never had his clearance removed, but he figured it wouldn’t be a serious problem. He could always charter another ship.

“You shot a sentient being,” he said. “You didn’t pay for that right.”

“Oh?” She tilted her head toward him. “Is there a higher fee for that?”

Escape Pod 131: Hesperia and Glory

First appeared in Subterranean Magazine #4.

Rated G. Contains classic Martian action/adventure and potentially hazardous philosophy.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:00 — 23.4MB)

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Hesperia and Glory

by Ann Leckie

Escape Pod 130: What We Learned From This Morning’s Newspaper

First appeared in Unfamiliar Territory, 1973.

Rated G. It’s slightly safer to listen to than the New York Times.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:45 — 25.3MB)

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What We Learned From This Morning’s Newspaper

by Robert Silverberg

I got home from the office as usual at 6:47 this evening and discovered that our peaceful street has been in some sort of crazy uproar all day. The newsboy it seems came by today and delivered the New York Times for Wednesday December 1 to every house on Redbud Crescent. Since today is Monday November 22 it follows therefore that Wednesday December 1 is the middle of next week. I said to my wife are you sure that this really happened? Because I looked at the newspaper myself before I went off to work this morning and it seemed quite all right to me.

At breakfast time the newspaper could be printed in Albanian and it would seem quite all right to you my wife replied. Here look at this. And she took the newspaper from the hall closet and handed it all folded up to me. It looked just like any other edition of the New York Times but I saw what I had failed to notice at breakfast time, that it said Wednesday December 1.

Is today the 22nd of November I asked? Monday?

It certainly is my wife told me. Yesterday was Sunday and tomorrow is going to be Tuesday and we haven’t even come to Thanksgiving yet. Bill what are we going to do about this?

Escape Pod 129: Immortal Sin

First appeared in Tales of the Unanticipated, November 2005.

Rated R. It’s our Halloween episode. Expect to be disturbed.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:27 — 31.9MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
Broad Universe
The DrabbleCast

Immortal Sin

by Jennifer Pelland

Alex stumbled from the confessional, through the church, all the way to the curb. He had to get out of there. He couldn’t sit in the house of God anymore. God didn’t want him there. That was abundantly clear. Forty-one years of perfect mass attendance. Six years as an altar boy. A childhood spent praying for his grandmother’s soul to hasten her time in Purgatory. A spotless record of weekly confessions for the past twelve years. He’d even stopped having sex with Alison two years ago after she’d gotten a tubal ligation so he wouldn’t be committing fornication. He’d followed the rules when he could, and asked for forgiveness when he couldn’t. But none of it mattered. He would die unshriven.

Unless he didn’t die.

Escape Pod 128: Union Dues: Send in the Clowns

Escape Pod 128: Union Dues: Send in the Clowns is an Escape Pod original.

Rated PG. Contains superhero violence and organizational politics.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:00 — 28.9MB)

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Union Dues: Send in the Clowns

by Jeffrey R. DeRego

Tina tugs on Kindred’s bullet-tattered red cape. “What kinda tricks do you do?”

Kindred shakes her head as if bewildered by the question. “Tricks?” She glances back at Megaton, who now juggles three Jersey barriers about a hundred meters out in the devastation.

“Let it go Kindred. We’ve been through a lot.”

“Well that’s good. So now you’re free to put on a carnival. Get everyone together and onto the jet now. And I mean now!” Her voice is so loud it draws everyone’s attention away from the show.

Megaton drops the Jersey barriers and the ground shakes.

Kindred lowers herself to one knee beside the little girl. “My trick is special,” she says, “I can make the whole circus disappear. Abracadabra…”

Escape Pod 127: Results

First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, December 2000.

Rated PG. Contains serious themes involving family planning and childbearing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:33 — 21.0MB)

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Show Notes

Special closing music: “Faithful” by The Shillas.

Results

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

She should have called her folks last night. They paged her three separate times after the test. But she wanted to wait until she had results, until she had something new to say instead of going over the same old arguments. She’s twenty-five, old enough to make her own choices. Old enough to make her own mistakes.

Her parents thought the testing was mistake number one. It certainly was expensive enough, but the doctor said he advised it for any couple about to get married. If they’re genetically incompatible, he’d said, they have the choice of terminating the relationship, planning for an expensive future, or tying tubes — practicing irreversible infertility, as one of her friends called it.

Options. That’s what her parents don’t get. It’s all about options.

And results.

Escape Pod 126: The Sweet, Sad Love Song of Fred and Wilma

First appeared in Science Fiction Age, November 1994.

Rated X. Contains explicit sex of several kinds. Not recommended for younger audiences.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:00 — 30.2MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Books:
A Small and Remarkable Life by Nick DiChario
Magic Feathers: The Mike and Nick Show, by Nick DiChario and Mike Resnick

The Sweet, Sad Love Song of Fred and Wilma

by Nick Dichario and Mike Resnick

So there you have him, Frederick Bannister, tripping across the highways and byways of of life, stubbing a toe here, bruising an elbow there, spilling this, dropping that, and managing to make it to the halfway point without too many major accomplishments or disasters.

And what of Wilma?

She possessed massive storage capacity, and no fourth-level equation, no matter how complex, was beyond her, but whether she was bright or merely well programmed is a moot point. Or at least it was in the beginning.

Escape Pod 125: End Game

First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April 2007.

Rated R. Contains profanity, sexual innuendo, and chess-related violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:00 — 25.4MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
2007 Podcast & New Media Expo
California Brunch Meetup 9/30/07
Better Late Than Never (Stardust review)

End Game

by Nancy Kress

“What exactly happened in the seventh grade?” I found myself intensely curious, which I covered by staring at the board and making a move.

He told me, still unembarrassed, in exhaustive detail. Then he added, “It should be possible to adjust brain chemicals to eliminate the static. To unclutter the mind. It should!”

“Well,” I said, dropping from insight to my more usual sarcasm, “maybe you’ll do it at Harvard, if you don’t get sidetracked by some weird shit like ballet or model railroads.”

“Checkmate,” Allen said.

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