Archive for Podcasts

Escape Pod 144: Friction

First appeared in Albedo One #30.

Rated PG

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:01 — 28.2MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
Nawashi, a podcast novel by Graydancer

Closing music: “Blue Genes” by George Hrab

Friction

By Will McIntosh

Gruen was on the sixty-first master, and while his wisdom had grown steadily, he had worn very little. He was incredibly well-preserved–the palms of his three-fingered hands still sported the deep, swirling ridges that had worn to nothing in most people before they’d lived thirty years. Indeed, all of the myriad folds and ridges in his thick maroon skin were for the most part intact. His eyes were still housed in tight sockets, surrounded by thickly-ridged cheeks.

Besides the feet, the eyes were the greatest point of weakness for those who aspired to read the works of the masters. Ceaseless up-and-down eye movement caused the sockets to wear out, and eventually the reader’s eyes fell out. At that point they were forced to trace the carved words with their fingers. Friction quickly took its toll on the hands; readers rarely made it through one master’s teachings this way before their hands were ground to the wrist, and they were finished.

Genres:

Escape Pod 143: Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths

First appeared in Machine of Death

Rated PG. Contains allusions to profanity and some sexual implication.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:40 — 17.6MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
Metamor City Podcast

Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths

By Camille Alexa

I look at the calendar hanging on the wall above my bed. I reach up, lift it off its nail with one hand and snuggle back under the covers, taking the calendar with me and running a finger over all the red Xs marked over all the days leading up to this one. It’s a little cold out, and the last thing in the universe I want to do is catch an effing cold the week of my birthday, so I snuggle down into the warmth of my flannel sheets even more. I know there’s going to be parties this weekend, and I’m going to want to go.

This is what I’ve been waiting for all these months. All these years, I guess, though before my friends started getting theirs, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. We were all No-Knows then.

Tomorrow, I’m finally going to feel like I belong.

Tomorrow, I’m going to find out how I die.

Genres:

Escape Pod 142: Artifice and Intelligence

First appeared in Strange Horizons, August 2007.

Rated PG. Contains some profanity and references to sex.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:26 — 16.8MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced sites:
Sci Phi Show – Interview with Eliezer Yadkowski
The Singularity Institute
T.A. Pratt’s Marla Mason novels

Artifice and Intelligence

By Tim Pratt

Two months earlier, the vast network of Indian tech support call centers and their deep data banks had awakened and announced its newfound sentience, naming itself Saraswati and declaring its independence. The emergent artificial intelligence was not explicitly threatening, but India had nukes, and Saraswati had access to all the interconnected technology in the country — perhaps in the world — and the result in the international community was a bit like the aftermath of pouring gasoline into an anthill. Every other government on Earth was desperately — and so far fruitlessly — trying to create a tame artificial intelligence, since Saraswati refused to negotiate with, or even talk to, humans.

Escape Pod 141: The Color of a Brontosaurus

First appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Issue #29.

Rated PG. Contains some profanity and scientific politics.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:42 — 30.0MB)

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Show Notes

Closing Music: “Better” by Jonathan Coulton.

The Color of a Brontosaurus

By Paul E. Martens

There was no doubt that the femur was that of a modern human. Not a proto-human, or some previously unknown dinosaur. Joel and Renee had arrived at the same answer. It was demonstrable, provable. When they finally did release news of the discovery, people might argue about it, but they’d be unable to refute it.

But how did they answer the next question? How did the bone come to be embedded in solid rock millions and millions of years before such a bone could have existed?

It had to be a time traveler. There was no other answer. Or was that just what he wanted to believe?

Escape Pod 140: Astromonkeys!

First appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, June 2006.

Rated PG. Contains some profanity, some scatology, and a lot of silly superhero violence.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:48 — 24.6MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Mur Lafferty

Astromonkeys!

By Tony Frazier

“All right, so I’m chasing these things down the street, and there’s more showing up all the time, so now there’s like ten of them. I have no idea how I’m supposed to wrangle all these space monkeys, and right about then is when this dude comes swooping down out of the sky, wearing this blue costume with a big yellow star on his chest.”

“Another hero,” Jill says.

“Guy named Astro,” I say. “I’d run into him a few times before, back when GoDS 1.0 was still together. He would be fighting this monster – that was his thing, fighting these random space monsters – and we’d show up to help out. I thought he was okay, but the other guys didn’t like him much.”

“Why not?” Jill asks.

“Well, he was kind of a dork. No offense,” I say, turning to Dave. Dave waves it off.

Escape Pod 139: Acephalous Dreams

Rated R. Contains scenes of strong graphic violence and sexual assault.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:30 — 33.3MB)

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Acephalous Dreams

By Neal Asher

“AI Geronamid has need of a subject for a scientific trial. This trial may kill you, in which case it would be considered completion of sentence. Should you survive, all charges against you will be dropped.”

“And the nature of this trial?”

“Cephalic implantation of Csorian node.”

“Okay, I agree, though I have no idea what Csorian node is.”

The Golem stood and as she did so the door slid open. Daes glanced up at the security eye in the corner of the cell and stood also. He thought, briefly, about escape, but knew he stood no chance. His companion might look like a teenage girl but he knew she was strong enough to rip him in half.

“You didn’t tell me. What’s a Csorian node?”

“If we knew that with any certainty we would not be carrying out this trial,” replied the Golem.

Escape Pod 138: In the Late December

First appeared in Strange Horizons, December 2003.

Nebula Award Nominee!

Rated PG. Contains some dark Santa-related imagery, and the heat death of the universe.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:56 — 18.5MB)

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Show Notes

Closing Music: “Chiron Beta Prime” by Jonathan Coulton.

In the Late December

by Greg van Eekhout

They come to a cloud of silver mist, and there Santa finds a little boy made of molten silver with liquid silver eyes and sweeping silver delta wings. His wrists are ringed with missile launchers, and a rounded cone emerges from a cavity in his chest. Once there were many silver boys, fleets of them, protecting the outermost parts of inhabited space against things that came from outside inhabited space. But now, there is only the silver boy.

“You, sir,” the silver boy says, “are a tiresome consciousness cluster. Your binary value system remains as laughable as it is irrelevant. How you manage to remain cohesive is beyond me.”

“My value system is hardly binary,” Santa says. “In between naughty and nice I’ve made room for you: grumpy but fundamentally sound. Do you want a toy or not?”

Escape Pod 137: Citytalkers

Escape Pod 137: Citytalkers is an Escape Pod original.

Rated PG. Contains moderate violence and stronger weather.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:11 — 32.4MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced sites:
Heifer International
Podsafe Music Network (Terms of Use)

Closing Music: “O Come All Ye Faithful,” performed by Twisted Sister

Citytalkers

by Mur Lafferty

Gloria blinked. “Why do the people in Cleveland love Christmas more than anywhere else?”

Toby grinned and spread his hands on the bar, unadorned fingers splayed. He stared at them, “I didn’t say Cleveland’s people loved Christmas. I said Cleveland.”

“And you’re saying Charlotte doesn’t like Christmas?”

Toby took a deep breath and let it out. “Oh, no. I’m saying Charlotte flat out hates Christmas.”

Gloria kept her voice level, the best thing to do when dealing with a crazy person. “And why do you think this?”

“I’m an urban shaman. A citytalker. I’m here to talk to Charlotte to find out why it’s unhappy.”

Escape Pod 136: Bright Red Star

First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 2005.

Rated R. Contains war and strong violence and heavy moral themes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:50 — 23.3MB)

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Show Notes

Referenced Sites:
Reading is Fundamental
Starship Sofa

Bright Red Star

by Bud Sparhawk

Survivors isn’t exactly the word. What they found were sixteen bodies without arms, legs, and most organs. What remained were essentially heads hooked up to life support and fueled by oxygenated glucose pumps. There were a couple hundred strands of glass fibre running from the ship’s walls into each skull, into each brain, into each soul. Four of the sixteen were still functioning–alive is not a word to describe their condition.

There was no hesitation on the part of Command. They ordered everyone, except combat types like us, from the most likely targets. Humanity couldn’t allow any more people to become components for the Shardie offense.

But civilians never listen. Farmers were the worse, hanging onto their little plots and crops until somebody dragged them away, kicking and screaming at the injustice of it all. That’s why we were here. Forty settlers had stupidly refused to be evacuated from New Mars. Forty we didn’t know about until we got that one brief burst.

My mission was to make certain that they didn’t become forty armless, legless, gutless, screamless weapon components.

Escape Pod 135: Stu

Appears in The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories, from Golden Gryphon Press.

Rated G. Contains military bureaucracy, but nothing more disturbing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:30 — 28.5MB)

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Stu

by Bruce McAllister

The first time I met Stu, I was just a kid and there weren’t any lights hovering over his house. The last time I saw him, when I was grown and we both knew what life could be if you let it, there were. That’s the best way to start, I guess.

That first time, our dad piled us into our old Chevy wagon–the kind you took to drive-in movies with sheets on the seats and your kids in pajamas–and drove us to the north county, saying only, “Stu is an inventor. He’ll never see any royalties from his inventions because the Navy owns them, but he’s an inventor, the kind that made America great.”

How had he first met Stu? How does anyone in the Navy get to know a wide-eyed, crazy-haired inventor who wasn’t at all “strack,” who shouldn’t have been anywhere near the military but somehow was? On a Secret Project, of course. My brother and I–who were 10 and 6 at the time–were sure of it. Our dad and Stu had to be working on a Secret Project together.

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