Redesign!
Escape Pod is going through a redesign. I hope to make it painless, but… well, we just ask for your patience. This shouldn’t take long. Thank you!
Escape Pod 249: Little M@tch Girl
Show Notes
Show Notes:
- We’re back, we hope you liked our Hugo offering! Be sure to vote before July 31!
Next week… Escape Pod ventures into the world of novellas.
Little M@tch Girl
By Heather Shaw
It wasn’t that Em disapproved of drug use, you just had to be savvy about which drugs you took. Back before she had to get a day job, she was a M@tch girl, much to the delight of the guys on the club scene. M@tch wasn’t a wimpy drug, but it didn’t turn you into a murderous street zombie either. It was also expensive — a designer “where it’s @!” drug — that the Tweakers couldn’t afford anyway.
Genres: Aliens
Escape Pod 248: Spar
Show Notes
Show Notes:
- This particular story and narration were originally recorded by Kate Baker for Clarkesworld Magazine, and is used here with their expressed permission. Thanks very much to Baker and Clarkesworld.
- The Escape Pod Flash Contest is over! now check out the judging!
- Editor’s note: Thanks so much to Dave Thompson and Peter Wood for taking on this project of securing all five Hugo stories during the hiatus of Escape Pod. Most of the work was done before I joined, and this wouldn’t have happened without them stepping up.
Next week… We’re back to our regularly scheduled programming with a story from Heather Shaw!
Spar
By Kij Johnson
The alien is not humanoid. It is not bipedal. It has cilia. It has no bones, or perhaps it does and she cannot feel them. Its muscles, or what might be muscles, are rings and not strands. Its skin is the color of dusk and covered with a clear thin slime that tastes of snot. It makes no sounds. She thinks it smells like wet leaves in winter, but after a time she cannot remember that smell, or leaves, or winter.
Its Ins and Outs change. There are dark slashes and permanent knobs that sometimes distend, but it is always growing new Outs, hollowing new Ins. It cleaves easily in both senses.
It penetrates her a thousand ways. She penetrates it, as well.
Escape Pod 247: Bridesicle
Show Notes
Show Notes:
- Starship Sofa is the first podcast ever to be nominated for a Hugo award, in the “Best Fanzine” category. If you’re eligible to vote in the Hugos, you have less than a month left to put in your vote! Please consider Starship Sofa – it’s a fantastic show on its own merit, and it’s a HUGE credibility booster for all podcasts if it wins!
- The Escape Pod Flash Contest ends soon! It runs June 1- July 4, stories must be under 500 words. More information at the link.
- Editor’s note: Thanks so much to Dave Thompson and Peter Wood for taking on this project of securing all five Hugo stories during the hiatus of Escape Pod. Most of the work was done before I joined, and this wouldn’t have happened without them stepping up.
Next week… Our final Hugo-nominated story!
Bridesicle
By Will McIntosh
“Aw, I know you’re awake by now. Come on, sleeping beauty. Talk to me.” The last was a whisper, a lover’s words, and Mira felt that she had to come awake and open her eyes. She tried to sigh, but no breath came. Her eyes flew open in alarm.
An old man was leaning over her, smiling, but Mira barely saw him, because when she opened her mouth to inhale, her jaw squealed like a sea bird’s cry, and no breath came, and she wanted to press her hands to the sides of her face, but her hands wouldn’t come either. Nothing would move except her face.
Escape Pod 246: Bride of Frankenstein
Show Notes
Show Notes:
- The Escape Pod Flash Contest ends soon! It runs June 1- July 4, stories must be under 500 words. More information at the link.
- Editor’s note: Thanks so much to Dave Thompson and Peter Wood for taking on this project of securing all five Hugo stories during the hiatus of Escape Pod. Most of the work was done before I joined, and this wouldn’t have happened without them stepping up.
Next week… Another Hugo-nominated story!
Bride of Frankenstein
By Mike Resnick
Victor can be so annoying. He constantly whistles this tuneless song, and when I complain he apologizes and then starts humming it instead. He never stands up to that ill-mannered little hunchback that he’s always sending out on errands. And he’s a coward. He can never just come to me and say “I need money again.” Oh, no, not Victor. Instead he sends that ugly little toady who’s rude to me and always smells like he hasn’t washed.
And when I ask what the money’s for this time, he tells me to ask Victor, and Victor just mumbles and stammers and never gets around to answering.
Escape Pod Special: Solitary as an Oyster (re-record)
Many people have asked for the edit of one of our Christmas stories, Solitary as an Oyster, which suffered some technical difficulty. Sadly, with all the editorial changeover this spring, it ended up on the back burner. But now, six months from Christmas, we give you a treat in the heat of summer (norther hemisphere, anyway): Solitary as an Oyster by Mur Lafferty.
Escape Pod 245: The Moment
Show Notes
Show Notes:
- Enter the Escape Pod Flash Contest! It runs June 1- July 4, stories must be under 500 words. More information at the link.
- Editor’s note: Thanks so much to Dave Thompson and Peter Wood for taking on this project of securing all five Hugo stories during the hiatus of Escape Pod. Most of the work was done before I joined, and this wouldn’t have happened without them stepping up.
Next week… Another Hugo-nominated story!
The Moment
By Lawrence M. Schoen
One of the first generation of Krenn had lived long enough to reach the site, though none had expected to. The very first Krenn had conceived of this journey in the distant past, dedicating his life and his posterity to the pilgrimage with an ever recycling population of clones. Like their clone-father, each was an optimized collection of smart matter no bigger than a speck. Hundreds of generations of Krenn had lived and died during the voyage, their remains enshrined into niches in the very walls of the vessel that now lay shattered at its destination.
The survivors flooded out upon the steppes of the heel, rejoicing despite the crushing weight that gravity forced upon them. They settled in, constructing mansions of haze and shadow, and waited for enlightenment to come. The mission and purpose of the first Krenn remained with each of them. This place had been the site of the greatest triumph of the greatest archaeocaster in all of history. Before the beginning of the quest, Krenn—the original Krenn—had felt drawn to it. He had cultivated the tales, sifted myth from coincidence, mastered the lost language of the interview-eschewing, spatial curmudgeons of the ancient dark times, and recreated the route through dimensional puzzles to this theoretical location. The odds of success had been so absurd not a single entelechy of Krenn’s crèche dared invest time or expense in the project. And yet, here they were, nearly three hundred unique individuals sharing the template of Krenn.
Escape Pod 244: Non-Zero Probabilities
Show Notes
Show Notes:
- Enter the Escape Pod Flash Contest! It runs June 1- July 4, stories must be under 500 words. More information at the link.
- Editor’s note: Thanks so much to Dave Thompson and Peter Wood for taking on this project of securing all five Hugo stories during the hiatus of Escape Pod. Most of the work was done before I joined, and this wouldn’t have happened without them stepping up.
Next week… Another Hugo-nominated story!
Non-Zero Probabilities
By N. K. Jemisin
Her neighbor — the other one, across the hall — helped her figure it out, long before the math geeks finished crunching their numbers.
“Watch,” he’d said, and laid a deck of cards facedown on her coffee table. (There was coffee in the cups, with a generous dollop of Bailey’s. He was a nice-enough guy that Adele felt comfortable offering this.) He shuffled it with the blurring speed of an expert, cut the deck, shuffled again, then picked up the whole deck and spread it, still facedown. “Pick a card.”
Adele picked. The Joker.
“Only two of those in the deck,” he said, then shuffled and spread again. “Pick another.”
She did, and got the other Joker.
“Coincidence,” she said. (This had been months ago, when she was still skeptical.)
Escape Pod 243: I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno
Show Notes
Show Notes:
- Thanks to John Joseph Adams and Lightspeed Magazine for the opportunity to run this fantastic story at the same time as their launch. Go check out their magazine and subscribe!
- Enter the Escape Pod Flash Contest! It runs June 1- July 4, stories must be under 500 words. More information at the link.
Next week… we begin our annual Hugo short stories rundown, with five weeks of award-nominated stories! I’m taking a 4-week break from hosting, but I’ll see you in July!
I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno
By Vylar Kaftan
I knew you loved me, of course. It was written in your eyes when you looked at me, a physics problem with no clear answer. If an irresistible force meets an immovable object, what happens then?
They meet. That’s all we know. Relative to each other, they are in contact. From within the object or the force, there is no way to tell if you’re in motion.
Escape Pod 242: The Love Quest of Smidgen the Snack Cake
Show Notes
Show Notes:
- Mur will be at Balticon this week, along with Drabblecast’s Norm Sherman! Come by and say hi!
FRIDAY
- 5pm Reading
SATURDAY:
- 3pm NaNoWriMo for Noobs
- 8pm Autograph Session
SUNDAY
- 4pm Girls’ Rule Live!
- 5pm Story Improv
- 8pm ISBW Live!
- Enter the Escape Pod Flash Contest! It runs June 1- July 4, stories must be under 500 words. More information at the link.
Next week… the podcast comes on a special day: June 1. And it shows us that love is relative. And so is Reno.
The Love Quest of Smidgen the Snack Cake
By Robert T. Jeschonek
For her entire adolescent and adult life up until three weeks ago, Lynda had been the queen of junk food. Aside from the briefest blips of non-junk spending due to occasional failed diets, she had purchased only the most fattening, high-cholesterol, chemical-soaked foods available from grocery stores, restaurants, vending machines, and mail order websites.
In short, she was the perfect woman. Though she was on a diet that day, she had eaten non-nutritious foods in great quantities all her life. Though her last purchases had been salad greens and bottled water, her 250-pound body told the true story.
I knew she was just waiting for someone like me to come along.