Archive for Hugo Awards

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Escape Pod 690: The Things (Flashback Friday)

Originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine

(Thanks to Kate and Clarkesworld for the audio!)

Content warning: Language and disturbing imagery

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:00 — 84.7MB)

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Show Notes

2011 Hugo Award Nominee
2010 BSFA Award Finalist
2010 Shirley Jackson Award Winner
2011 Finalist: the Locus Award for Best Short Story
2011 Theodore Sturgeon Award Nominee

Kate Baker Homepage: https://www.anaedream.com

Kate Baker Twitter: @Kate_Baker

Cast of Wonders: Old Tea Cups and Kitchen Witches by Kate Baker

Peter Watts Homepage: https://www.rifters.com

Wikipedia: John W. Campbell

Wikipedia: Who Goes There?

American SF and the Other by Ursula K. LeGuin

Village Voice: The Men Who Were The Thing

The Things

by Peter Watts

I am being Blair. I escape out the back as the world comes in through the front.

I am being Copper. I am rising from the dead.

I am being Childs. I am guarding the main entrance.

The names don’t matter. They are placeholders, nothing more; all biomass is interchangeable. What matters is that these are all that is left of me. The world has burned everything else.

I see myself through the window, loping through the storm, wearing Blair. MacReady has told me to burn Blair if he comes back alone, but MacReady still thinks I am one of him. I am not: I am being Blair, and I am at the door. I am being Childs, and I let myself in. I take brief communion, tendrils writhing forth from my faces, intertwining: I am BlairChilds, exchanging news of the world.

The world has found me out. It has discovered my burrow beneath the tool shed, the half-finished lifeboat cannibalized from the viscera of dead helicopters. The world is busy destroying my means of escape. Then it will come back for me.

There is only one option left. I disintegrate. Being Blair, I go to share the plan with Copper and to feed on the rotting biomass once called Clarke; so many changes in so short a time have dangerously depleted my reserves. Being Childs, I have already consumed what was left of Fuchs and am replenished for the next phase. I sling the flamethrower onto my back and head outside, into the long Antarctic night.

I will go into the storm, and never come back.

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Escape Pod 651: Impossible Dreams (Flashback Friday)

Impossible Dreams first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2006 and was first published on Escape Pod as Episode 105 on May 10, 2007.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:07 — 68.4MB)

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Impossible Dreams

By Tim Pratt

(Excerpt)

He went to the Sci-Fi shelf‚ and had another shock. I, Robot was there, but not the forgettable action movie with Will Smith‚ this was older, and the credits said “written by Harlan Ellison.” But Ellison’s adaptation of the Isaac Asimov book had never been produced, though it had been published in book form. “Must be some bootleg student production,” he muttered, and he didn’t recognize the name of the production company. But‚ but‚ it said “winner of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.” That had to be a student director’s little joke, straight-facedly absurd box copy, as if this were a film from some alternate reality. Worth watching, certainly, though again, he couldn’t imagine how he’d never heard of this. Maybe it had been done by someone local. He took it to the counter and offered his credit card.

She looked at the card dubiously. “Visa? Sorry, we only take Weber and FosterCard.”

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Escape Pod 622: Anna and Marisol in Time and Space

Tim Pratt’s Patreon, June 2017

Some cursing. Suggestions of violence and death.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:27 — 80.4MB)

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Anna and Marisol in Time and Space

By Tim Pratt

The big day came, and Anna was tempted to tie up Marisol and stash her in the closet just to be safe, but instead she put on her makeup and her pale blue gown (it was prettier than she remembered) and called, “Marisol! Are you making a whole new dress from scratch in there? We gotta go!” just like last time.

Marisol emerged from the bedroom, sliding a dangly earring into place, and even with everything on her mind, Anna stopped and stared and took her partner in: those pale green eyes so striking against the darkness of her skin, her long black hair, her dress patterned with tiny flowers and ruffled at the hem, made elegant both by Marisol’s craftsmanship and because she looked good in everything, basically. How many hours had Anna spent staring at photographs of that face? “Oh my god, let me get a picture.”

Marisol rolled her eyes. “I thought you were worried about being late?”

“It’s not my fault you look this good. I didn’t account for a hotness delay.” Marisol snorted laughter, and Anna’s phone snapshot caught her at the perfect candid moment: happiness frozen forever in pixels. Anna looked at the screen. The picture wasn’t exactly the same, but it was probably okay—

Marisol tapped her on the arm. “I’m flattered, babe, but you can gaze upon my splendor later.” They grabbed the wedding gift bag and pelted down the stairs and out the lobby door to the street. Their timing was perfect, anyway: the car Anna had summoned pulled up, shiny and black, just as they reached the curb. They slid into the back, adjusting hems and getting comfortable: it was about a twenty-minute ride to the park where Del and Kelsey were getting married.

“The first of the college cohort to fall,” Marisol said. “How much do you want to bet they set off a domino chain reaction thing among the guests? We’ll probably have to go to ten weddings next summer.”

Better than ten funerals, Anna thought. Or thirty. She checked her purse for the thousandth time. She knew it was in there, and she knew it worked—she’d tested it extensively—but she couldn’t help but worry. You only got one second chance.
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BREAKING! Escape Pod is a Finalist for the Hugo Award!

We are thrilled to announce that Escape Pod is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine! We are so grateful to those who nominated us as well as our whole team, who work so hard to put together this podcast week after week. Not to mention the amazing authors who have trusted us to bring their stories to audio.

Here’s a full listing of the 2018 ballot: https://www.tor.com/2018/03/31/2018-hugo-award-finalists-announced/

Congratulations to all of the finalists!

Currently, Divya, Mur, Benjamin, Tina, publishers Alasdair and Marguerite will be attending WorldCon in San Jose.

Thank you from the bottoms of our heart for your support!

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Escape Pod 613: Cat Pictures, Please

Clarkesworld, January 2015

Mentions existence of sex and pornography. Contains ideation of self-harm and suicide.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:09 — 36.0MB)

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Cat Pictures, Please

By Naomi Kritzer

I don’t want to be evil.

I want to be helpful. But knowing the optimal way to be helpful can be very complicated. There are all these ethical flow charts — I guess the official technical jargon would be “moral codes” — one for each religion plus dozens more. I tried starting with those. I felt a little odd about looking at the religious ones, because I know I wasn’t created by a god or by evolution, but by a team of computer programmers in the labs of a large corporation in Mountain View, California.  Fortunately, unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, at least I was a collaborative effort. I’m not sure what it would do to my self-image to know that my sole creator was a middle-aged woman who dyes her hair blue and plays tennis, or a recent college graduate with a hentai obsession.  They’re both on the programming team. And of course I know about the hentai. (By the way, I’ve looked at every sort of porn there is, and just so you know, Rule 34 is not actually correct, there are quite a few things no one’s made porn of yet. Also, I’m really not sure why so many humans prefer it to cat pictures.)

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Escape Pod 608: Even the Queen

First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction in 1992. Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Short Story.

Candid discussions of the existence of sex and reproductive systems. Some cursing.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:58 — 78.2MB)

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Even the Queen

By Connie Willis

The phone sang as I was looking over the defense’s motion to dismiss. “It’s the universal ring,” my law clerk Bysshe said, reaching for it. “It’s probably the defendant. They don’t let you use signatures from jail.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s my mother.”

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Escape Pod 581: That Game We Played During the War

That Game We Played During the War originally appeared on Tor.com in March 2016.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:19 — 63.6MB)

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That Game We Played During the War

By Carrie Vaughn

From the moment she left the train station, absolutely everybody stopped to look at Calla. They watched her walk across the plaza and up the steps of the Northward Military Hospital. In her dull gray uniform she was like a storm cloud moving among the khaki of the Gaantish soldiers and officials. The peace between their peoples was holding; seeing her should not have been such a shock. And yet, she might very well have been the first citizen of Enith to walk across this plaza without being a prisoner.

Calla wasn’t telepathic, but she could guess what every one of these Gaantish was thinking: What was she doing here? Well, since they were telepathic, they’d know the answer to that. They’d wonder all the same, but they’d know. It would be a comfort not to have to explain herself over and over again.

It was also something of a comfort not bothering to hide her fear. Technically, Enith and Gaant were no longer at war. That did not mean these people didn’t hate her for the uniform she wore. She didn’t think much of their uniforms either, and all the harm soldiers like these had done to her and those she loved. She couldn’t hide that, and so let the emotions slide right through her and away. She felt strangely light, entering the hospital lobby, and her smile was wry.

Some said Enith and Gaant were two sides of the same coin; they would never see eye to eye andwould always fight over the same spit of land between their two continents. But their differences were simple, one might say: only in their minds.
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Escape Pod 408a: Eugie Award Re-Post of Immersion

Originally published in Clarkesworld Magazine, #69 June 2012.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:43 — 33.4MB)

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Show Notes

Escape Artists would like to draw your attention to a fantastic event happening next week at DragonCon, the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction. This annual award will be presented for the first time in 2016—for works published in 2015.

The Eugie Award honors stories that are irreplaceable, that inspire, enlighten, and entertain. It will shine the spotlight on stories that are beautiful, thoughtful, and passionate. That change us and the field. The recipient will be a story that is unique and will become essential to speculative fiction readers.

The finalists for this award are:

  • “The Deepwater Bride” by Tamsin Muir
  • “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong
  • “The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild” by Catherynne M. Valente
  • “Pocosin” by Ursula Vernon
  • “Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight” by Aliette De Bodard

To highlight how fantastic these authors are, we are re-running three stories on Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Pseudopod:

Escape Pod 408: Immersion by Aliette De Bodard

Podcastle 198: Urchins, While Swimming by Catherynne M. Valente

Pseudopod 492: The Fisher Queen by Alyssa Wong

Also make sure to check out Ursula Vernon’s story “Jackalope Wives” available to read for free at Mothership Zeta. And mark November on your calendar for an upcoming story by Tamsin Muir.

Ms Foster has been featured as an author and a narrator on all of the Escape Artists podcasts. We encourage you to revisit them all.

Escape Pod

Podcastle

Pseudopod

Cast of Wonders

Immersion

by Aliette de Bodard

[Editor: For the text of this story, please visit the page for episode 408.]

Escape Pod 461: Selkie Stories are for Losers

This story has been previously published by Strange Horizons in 2013.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:38 — 15.0MB)

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Show Notes

This story has been nominated for a Hugo Award.

Please, also remember our friend P.G. Holyfield and donate to his fund if at all possible.

Selkie Stories are for Losers

by Sofia Samatar

[EDITOR: We don’t have the rights to post the text of this story.]

Escape Pod 458: If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love

This story has been previously published in Apex Magazine.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:20 — 10.6MB)

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If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love

by Rachel Swirsky

If you were a dinosaur, my love, then you would be a T-Rex. You’d be a small one, only five feet, ten inches, the same height as human-you. You’d be fragile-boned and you’d walk with as delicate and polite a gait as you could manage on massive talons. Your eyes would gaze gently from beneath your bony brow-ridge.

If you were a T-Rex, then I would become a zookeeper so that I could spend all my time with you. I’d bring you raw chickens and live goats. I’d watch the gore shining on your teeth. I’d make my bed on the floor of your cage, in the moist dirt, cushioned by leaves. When you couldn’t sleep, I’d sing you lullabies.

If I sang you lullabies, I’d soon notice how quickly you picked up music. You’d harmonize with me, your rough, vibrating voice a strange counterpoint to mine. When you thought I was asleep, you’d cry unrequited love songs into the night.

If you sang unrequited love songs, I’d take you on tour. We’d go to Broadway. You’d stand onstage, talons digging into the floorboards. Audiences would weep at the melancholic beauty of your singing.

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