Escape Pod 207: Wonder Maul Doll

Appeared originally in From the Trenches

Rated R for violence and sexual situations.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:01 — 21.3MB)

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Wonder Maul Doll

By Kameron Hurley

We set down in Pekoi as part of the organics inquisition team, still stinking of the last city. We’re all muscle. Not brains. The brains are out eating at the foreigners’ push downtown, and they don’t care if we whore around the tourist dregs half the night so long as somebody’s sober enough to haul them out come morning. When the brains aren’t eating, they’re pretending to give us directions in the field, telling us where to sniff out organics. They’re writing reports about how dangerous Pekoi is to the civilized world.

We’re swapping off some boy in a backwater push the locals cleared out for us. We’re sitting around a low table. I pass off another card to Kep. Luce swaps out a suit. She has to sit on one leg to lean over the table. It’s hot in the low room, so humid that moths clutter aroundour feet, too heavy to fly.

The boy’s making little mewling sounds again. Somebody should shut him up, but not me. This is my hand. I’m ahead.

Escape Pod 206: Rogue Farm

First appeared in Live Without a Net, ed. Lou Anders

Now available in Wireless, by Charles Stross

Rated PG for strong language, chemical violence, and drug-abusing dogs.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:30 — 27.8MB)

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Show Notes

Recorded at Balticon 43, May 23, 2009

Read by:

Joe – Jared Axelrod (of The Voice of Free Planet X),

Maddie – J.R. Blackwell (of Voices of Tomorrow)

The Farm – Evo Terra and Sheila Dee (of Evo at 11, et al.)

Brenda the Barkeep – Dee Reed (of Nobilis Erotica),

Wendy the Rat – Laura Burns,

Art the Boy Toy – John Cmar,

Bob the Dog – Earl Newton (of Stranger Things),

Narrator – Stephen Eley

Special Thanks To:
Paul Fischer (of The Balticon Podcast) for instigating and organizing
Nobilis Reed (of Nobilis Erotica) for engineering

Rogue Farm

By Charles Stross

“Buggerit, I don’t have time for this,” Joe muttered. The stable waiting for the small herd of cloned spidercows cluttering up the north paddock was still knee-deep in manure, and the tractor seat wasn’t getting any warmer while he shivered out here waiting for Maddie to come and sort this thing out. It wasn’t a big herd, but it was as big as his land and his labour could manage – the big biofabricator in the shed could assemble mammalian livestock faster than he could feed them up and sell them with an honest HAND-RAISED NOT VAT-GROWN label.

“What do you want with us?” he yelled up at the gently buzzing farm.

“Brains, fresh brains for baby Jesus,” crooned the farm in a warm contralto, startling Joe half out of his skin. “Buy my brains!” Half a dozen disturbing cauliflower shapes poked suggestively out of the farms’ back then retracted again, coyly.

“Don’t want no brains around here,” Joe said stubbornly, his fingers whitening on the stock of the shotgun. “Don’t want your kind round here, neither. Go away.”

Worlds of Tomorrow: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:23 — 5.8MB)

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Welcome to Worlds of Tomorrow, an occasional feature we’ll be running looking at some of the best in science fiction cinema. From acknowledged classics to forgotten gems we’ll be covering them all. Some of them you’ll have seen, some you won’t, some you’ll agree with me on and some you’ll wonder what I was drinking when I watched them but that’s half the fun. Spoilers abound so if you haven’t seen the movie and want to be surprised, go rent it now, we’ll be here when you get back. Otherwise, prepare for a good night’s sleep and pay no attention to the nice men from Lacuna Corp…

Escape Pod 205: Requiem in D-minor (for prions, whale and burning bush)

First appeared in Hub #24.

Rated PG-13 for violence and mad cow disease.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:25 — 18.2MB)

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Requiem in D-minor (for prions, whale and burning bush)

By Ian McHugh

Kevin switched the audio over to the projector. The lecture hall was filled with outdoor noises. Wind hummed softly over the microphone, cattle lowed nearby, a truck accelerated in the distance.

A roan steer staggered around a concreted yard, its mute distress accompanied by clattering hooves and the fleshy slap of its thigh striking the ground when it fell. A new sound was introduced – incongruous, but familiar to Kevin’s audience.

Whale song.

Gradually, the cow’s shaking stilled, until it could stand securely. Its muscles continued to tremble, but not enough to upset its equilibrium while it listened.

Escape Pod 204: The Fifth Zhi

First appeared in Interzone

Rated PG-13 for cloning and some adult themes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:33 — 25.1MB)

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The Fifth Zhi

By Mercurio D. Rivera

Zhi 4’s scream pierces the Siberian night.

My spiked metal boots crunch through the snow as I race towards him, with Zhi 6 running at my side. The nanochip in my brainstem clicks on, and I reach out with my mind, but I can’t sense even a trace of Zhi 4. A few seconds earlier his form had been outlined by the dark turquoise glow of the force field.

We stop twenty feet short of the field’s perimeter. Beyond it, the hazy silhouette of the colossal Stalk looms, its millions of cilia undulating.

My bodysuit hums as it transmits data back to Xiang Xu Base, situated behind the Rusanov ice cap half a mile away.

My pulse flutters in anticipation and I take a deep breath to try to rein in my excitement. I — like all Zhis — have been designed with an insatiable curiosity about the Stalk’s origins and vulnerabilities. Knowing I’ve been bred to feel this way doesn’t make me feel it any less. Where did the Stalk come from? Why is it here? How can it thrive in these temperatures? I see the same questions reflected in Zhi 6’s expression.

Genres:

Escape Pod Flash: Tired

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:03 — 7.7MB)

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Show Notes

Rated PG for a worryingly low miles per gallon

Tired

By Michael Bishop

One morning, Gordon Pointer received an e-message from the left-front Goodstone tire on his old Callisto sedan. (He had bought the car used over a decade ago and retrofitted it for the intelligent interstates of the Piedmont metrosprawl.) Gordon abhorred palmflips, infraspecs, logomaniacs, microserfs, lapcops, and digital Kleenex, but he lived at the computerminal in his Callisto, journeying between office foci to talk with other human fossils like himself. He did not quail before occasional sitreps from his lead tire.

Escape Pod 203: The Legend of St. Ignatz

First appeared in Ideomancer

Rated R for religious themes, carousing, and transubstantiation of a different sort.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:39 — 40.0MB)

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Show Notes

Closing song, Jesus Clones

The Legend of St. Ignatz

By Samantha Henderson

“You’re a disgrace to your calling and your species.” The Cardinal’s words were at odds with the verging-on-seductive voice of the translator embedded in the Anturean’s Chlor-tank. From beneath lowered lashes Ignatz O’Reilly, D.D. Inter-Species, watched his superior’s mouth-tendrils vibrate, a gesture he knew denoted extreme lust or mounting rage.

Lust was out of the question, he supposed.

“Falling-down drunk at Mass. Passing out in Confession. And don’t think your little black-market dealings go unnoticed.” The Cardinal’s posterior spines flushed blue. Ignatz averted his eyes even further, studying the faint brown lines crisscrossing each other on a slate floor the color of dried blood. The mutant squid bastard really was mad this time.

“If I might be permitted to explain, Your Eminence…” Ignatz’s tongue tasted like last night’s liquor. “I indulge for purely medicinal reasons…a slight asthmatic condition…any allegations that I would engage in illegal…”

(Endorsement) Personal Effects: Dark Art

NOTE FROM STEVE: This is not this week’s Escape Pod story. This is me talking about something I like. Feel free to skip this post if it isn’t fun for you.

There are a number of good writers now breaking into the big leagues through podcasting. My friend J.C. Hutchins is one of them. I loved his 7th Son trilogy, and I jumped at the chance when he asked me to read an advance copy of his horror novel Personal Effects: Dark Art and record a reaction for him.

Here’s my initial reaction (Hutch liked it enough that he added the background music and bumper titling and such):

J.C. Hutchins’s “Personal Effects: Dark Art” – Expert Testimony from Stephen Eley on Vimeo.

And here’s the big group “vlurb” project that my piece was a part of:

J.C. Hutchins’s “Personal Effects: Dark Art” – SuperVlurb from Stephen Eley on Vimeo.

(The folks in that vlurb are all awesome and you should check out their sites: Philippa Ballantine, Scott Sigler, Seth Harwood, Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff, Christiana Ellis, Matt Wallace, James Melzer, Mark Jeffrey, Mur Lafferty, Phil Rossi and Matt Selznick.)

I read the book in PDF form. And then I pre-ordered it on Amazon, because it’s just that good. (Also because the little goodies that come with the physical copy sound like fun.) This is an unusual horror novel: it brings in a lot of conventional settings and tropes, but the characters break from formula in some surprising ways. And it’s a smart horror novel. Silliness in hats aside, I highly recommend it.

Genres:

Escape Pod Flash: One Trick Dog

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:20 — 4.5MB)

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One Trick Dog

By Bruce Boston

Read by J.C. Hutchins

Mr. Wayne was taking his daily exercise, walking Arthur around the lake in Nevley Park, when the sky darkened and a light snow began to fall. A few flakes fluttered against his cheeks. He could feel the cold through his heavy topcoat. He enjoyed the park when it was deserted, but at his age he couldn’t afford a chill. He thumbed the control in his pocket. Arthur turned left onto a bridge that would cut their return journey by a good half mile. Mr. Wayne followed.

Rated K9 for dogs at the cutting edge.