Escape Pod 259: The Lady or the Tiger

First appeared in Apex Magazine

Rated PG-13: For blood and revolution and missing fingers.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:30 — 20.3MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Sponsored by Audible – get a free book today when you sign up for your free trial!
  • Feedback for Episode 251: Unexpected Outcomes.

Next week… How fast can dreams run?

The Lady or the Tiger

By J. M. McDermott

The only thing I could think of to take my mind off of Sheila, and the crash, was asking my brother about Guj Sarwar, the tiger on the back of the great and mighty lizard, Samarkand. When I was a boy, I didn’t understand why it was the only other thing I could think about, like something was on the tip of my tongue.

And, Jiri knew everything there was to know about the wastes of the far west, the lizards, and the tigers. He was fifteen years old. Next year, he’d be driving cattle up the highway to Io Town in a flyer all by himself. I was only ten. I didn’t even have my own computer terminal yet. I had to share his when he wasn’t using it. Everything I knew about the wastes had been from the computer, and from Jiri.

“On the wastes, Simsa,” said my brother, “you can’t walk on the ground. The sand is all quicksand. It sucks you up and swallows you. You have to ride on the back of giant lizards as big as walking mountains. There’re only twenty-five lizards. They have names.”

Genres:

Escape Pod 258: Raising Jenny

First appeared in the anthology Not Of Woman Born

Rated G: Not for kids, but nothing to worry about if you listen around the kids.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:43 — 34.8MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Congrats on the Hugo winners and the Parsec winners!
  • We announce the winners of the flash contest.
  • Feedback for Episode 250: Eros, Philia, Agape.

Next week… Difficult decisions, ladies, and tigers.

Raising Jenny

By Janni Lee Simner

“I know I can’t do anything about this–” she gestured toward the tangled blankets, the hospital bed, the pale walls. “But I’ve asked the doctors to take some cells–I still have a few healthy ones left, you know, and they’ll keep for some time–“

I could guess the rest. But Susan, ever the biologist, had her lecture after all. “It doesn’t work like that.” Her voice was gentle, as if she were speaking to one of her two sons, not to Mom. “A clone isn’t the same as the original. Your clone would be no more like you than–than one identical twin is like another. It wouldn’t be–” Susan’s voice caught. “It wouldn’t be you.”

“You don’t know,” Mom said. “None of the clones are old enough to ask yet. They’re just babies.”

Escape Pod 257: Union Dues: The Sum of Its Parts

Escape Pod 257: Union Dues: The Sum of Its Parts is an Escape Pod original.

Rated PG

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:33 — 32.0MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Show your love for Union Dues at the new website!

Union Dues: The Sum of Its Parts

By Jeffrey R. DeRego.

Langton has been under lock-and-key observation since two weeks ago when he sucker punched Paul right in the middle of a publicity shoot for Stars and Stripes at a USO hall in Phoenix. The five of us almost couldn’t bring him down. The melee wrecked most of our stage props — Van De Graff Generators, Tesla Coils, a whole bunch of blinking and flashing, stuff bought from a bankrupt low-budget film studio. Frida recovered the 30 seconds, or so, of 16mm footage shot that morning. Police found the reporter a few hours later unharmed but minus any memory of the previous two days.

The DC3 taxis to the hangar. Paul joins me at the base of the control tower then the four of us walk down towards the plane.

“Hi gang,” The Corporal says and waves as he lumbers down from the fuselage to the sand. He walks right to Paul. “How’s the chin? Sorry about popping you one. I don’t remember any of it, but Frida says I was a real dope.”

Paul laughs a little. “It’s okay. No broken teeth or nothing.” He rubs his anvil-like jaw with a boxing glove-sized fist. “Next time I won’t go easy on you.”

Escape Pod 256: The Mermaids Singing Each to Each

First appeared in Clarkesworld

Rated R for violence, language, and memory of sexual violence. And Spar feedback.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:02 — 38.5MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Feedback for Episode 248, Spar

Next week… Union Dues!

The Mermaids Singing Each to Each

By Cat Rambo

“Laura,” a speaker said, as though I hadn’t been gone for six years, as though she’d seen me every day in between. “Laura, where is your uncle?”

I used to imagine her disintegrated, torn apart into silent atoms.

“It’s not Laura anymore,” I said. “It’s Lolo. I’m gender neutral.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“You’ve got a Net connection,” I said. “Search around on “gender neutral” and “biomod operation.”

I wasn’t sure if the pause that came after that was for dramatic effect or whether she really was having trouble understanding the search parameters. Then she said, “Ah, I see. When did you do that?”

“Six years ago.”

“Where is your uncle?”

“Dead,” I said flatly. I hoped that machine intelligences could hurt and so I twisted the knife as far as I could. “Stabbed in a bar fight.”

Escape Pod 255: Variations on a Theme

First appeared in Wrongworld

Rated PG for asexual reproduction and giggling teens.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:36 — 15.5MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Feedback for Episode 245, Bridecicle

Next week… Mermaids and scavengers.

Variations on a Theme

By William Meikle

They took Johnny Green from class 3a at ten o’ clock on Tuesday morning. He was the last to go. They thought I didn’t notice, but I’ve been onto them for a while now.

It started nearly two weeks ago. Teaching biology is difficult when you’ve got a teenage audience. Almost every topic on the syllabus has something about reproduction in it, and that reduces your typical youngster to giggles, rude jokes or hysteria. I’ve got used to it over the last twenty years, and have come to expect the reactions. I’ve even come to know who to expect them from.

So when Jack Doyle was quiet during my “Asexual reproduction in amoeba” spiel, I knew immediately that something was wrong. And my sense of wrongness really went into overdrive when he stayed behind after class to ask questions.

Escape Pod 254: A Talent For Vanessa

First appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Rated PG for dreams realized.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:41 — 28.0MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Feedback for Episode 246, The Bride of Frankenstein

Next week… Teaching is quite tough, admittedly.

A Talent For Vanessa

By David W. Goldman

The young woman, a Ms. Vanessa Kortright-Kingston, untwisted. “No, I mean that he just knows the date like that! As if he could look into the future.”

Marv snorted. “Calendar calculating. They all do that. Not worth a paper dollar, not even in a carnival sideshow.”

“I’ve heard of it, but — ” Her blue eyes were wide as a con man’s smile. “They can all do it?”

“Sure.” Marv tilted back, his big wooden chair squeaking. “All the Counters, anyway. It’s like the Artists — they all draw horses. Or dogs. Which is funny, because back when they got their talents you’d never see a horse here in the city. Dogs, okay, no big deal. But you ask any Artist to sketch you a horse, and blam — if the damn thing galloped off the paper you wouldn’t be surprised.”

Her gaze went a bit distant. “That’s what I’d like,” she said. “To become an artist. Or a musician.”

Genres:

Escape Pod 253: Eugene

First appeared in Popcorn Fiction

Rated PG for minor police excitement.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:47 — 16.4MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Feedback for Episode 245, The Moment

Next week… Talent agencies and regret

Eugene

By Jacob Sager Weinstein

As he puts the cruiser in gear and takes off, I calm down a little bit, and smell something that worries me. I smell Apurna on him, like always, but she doesn’t smell right. She smells of nervousness bordering on fear, and come to think of it, he does, too. It’s an old smell–I’d say from late yesterday evening, just after work–but it’s unmistakable. And there’s a hospital smell, and the smell of Apurna’s pain.

I shouldn’t say anything. Francisco doesn’t like me to pry.

But he took Apurna to the hospital.

But he doesn’t like me to pry.

But he took Apurna to the hospital.

But he doesn’t like me to pry.

But–

“What’s wrong with Apurna?” I say.

Genres:

Escape Pod 252: Billion-Dollar View

Escape Pod 252: Billion-Dollar View is an Escape Pod original.

Rated PG for peril and heartbreak and ballads.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:59 — 17.2MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

Next week… A very, very good dog.

Billion-Dollar View

By Ray Tabler

“But my name is Simon.”

Molly shook her head and chuckled. “With a head of hair like that? Nope, from now on your name is Red.”

Simon felt his young face flushing with embarrassment, which would further cement his new nickname. “What if I don’t want to be called Red?”

“Too late, should have shaved your head before I bought your contract.” Molly winked at him, executed a back flip in mid-air and launched herself out of the Labor Mart. “Come on, Red. We ain’t got all day.”

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 251: Unexpected Outcomes

Originally published in: Interzone

Rated PG for ennui and futility of life.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:05 — 24.2MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • Tim Pratt is serializing a Marla Mason novel, Broken Mirrors at his website. His first anthology is out this summer from Night Shade Books, Sympathy for the Devil.
  • Tom Rockwell’s work can be found at his personal music website, Devo Spice, The Funny Music Project, and his comedy troupe, Cirque du So What?
  • Incidentally, Tom Rockwell, myself, and many other Escape Artist writers and narrators will be at NASFiC next week, so check us out if you’re in the Raleigh, NC area!

Next week… Rescue in deep space. And guitar ballads.

Unexpected Outcomes

By Tim Pratt

But the plane just stopped, and hung there, nose tipped at a slight angle, mere feet from the building.

And that’s when the figure — the one people call the Ambassador, or the Doctor, or the Outsider, or the Professor, or a hundred other names — appeared. Just a middle-aged man in a white lab coat, with steel-rimmed glasses and graying hair. His image filled the air above the jetliner, like the dome of the sky had been transformed into an IMAX movie screen.

He said, “People of Earth, I have a message for you.”

Escape Pod 250: Eros, Philia, Agape

Originally published in: Tor.com

Rated PG for marital strife and implied child abuse.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:09:53 — 48.1MB)

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Show Notes

Show Notes:

  • This is a long one, we’re bringing occasional novelettes to Escape Pod now, and what better to launch the effort than a Hugo nominee?

Next week… Escape Pod looks at an alternate history with alternate aliens.

Eros, Philia, Agape

By Rachel Swirsky

The objects belonged to them both, but Adriana waved her hand bitterly when Lucian began packing. “Take whatever you want,” she said, snapping her book shut. She waited by the door, watching Lucian with sad and angry eyes.

Their daughter, Rose, followed Lucian around the house. “Are you going to take that, Daddy? Do you want that?” Wordlessly, Lucian held her hand. He guided her up the stairs and across the uneven floorboards where she sometimes tripped. Rose stopped by the picture window in the master bedroom, staring past the palm fronds and swimming pools, out to the vivid cerulean swath of the ocean. Lucian relished the hot, tender feel of Rose’s hand. I love you, he would have whispered, but he’d surrendered the ability to speak.