Archive for EP Original

Genres: , , , ,

Escape Pod 939: Variant Cover: Pantone Sunset


Alternate Cover: Pantone Sunset

By Marie Vibbert

Stacey reads a comic book.  It’s about a robot lady, but not like her.  This robot lady has exposed gears and metal rods in her arms and wears a metallic bikini as she solves crimes.  The colors are otherworldly.  Sometimes the red ink bleeds sideways or the blue shifts toward the bottom of the page. Stacey loves the feeling that every image is made of transparent layers.  She imagines soft films of yellow, red, and blue gently wafting down onto the black and white.

Stacey isn’t supposed to be reading the comic book.  Her existence is devoted to the proper display and peddling of women’s casual separates for the upscale consumer.  When she isn’t in the window posing, she is assisting customers or straightening stock–which means undoing the chaos the customers do to the shop.  They do a lot.  The comic book itself had been left by a customer, on a pedestal displaying the new winter sweaters, with a half-drunk coffee and some cheese doodles. (Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 938: Chug the Tea Leaves, Chuck the Ads


Chug the Tea Leaves, Chuck the Ads

by Tim Chawaga

I wake up to a message and a certain intuition that my first ad of the day will be for Bubble Fresh.

I can almost see it, flashing through my MindzEye, just in time for me to grab a pack at the newsstand. Bubble Fresh Gum on my morning commute always means it will be a good day. The question is what kind of good, and the answer is in the flavor: Spearmint for promotion, Juicymint for romance.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 937: Punk Voyager (Flashback Friday)


Punk Voyager

by Shaenon K. Garrity

Punk Voyager was built by punks.  They made it from beer cans, razors, safety pins, and a surfboard some D-bag had left on the beach. Also plutonium.  Where did they get plutonium?  Around.  f*** you.

The punks who built Punk Voyager were Johnny Bonesaw, Johnny Razor, Mexican Johnny D-bag, Red Viscera, and some other guys.  No, asshole, nobody remembers what other guys.  They were f***ing wasted, these punks.  They’d been drinking on the San Diego beach all day and night, talking about making a run to Tijuana and then forgetting and punching each other.  They’d built a fire on the beach, and all night the fire went up and went down while the punks threw beer cans at the seagulls.

Forget the s*** I just said, it wasn’t the punks who did it.  They were f***ing punks.  The hell they know about astro-engineering? Truth is that Punk Voyager was the strung-out masterpiece of Mexican Johnny D-bag’s girlfriend, Lacuna, who had a doctorate in structural engineering.  Before she burned out and ran for the coast, Lacuna was named Alice McGuire and built secret nuclear submarines for a government contractor in Ohio.  It sucked.  But that was where she got the skills to construct an unmanned deep-space probe.  Same principle, right?  Keep the radiation in and the water out.  Or the vacuum of space, whatever, it’s all the same s*** to an engineer.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: , ,

Escape Pod 934: The Alien in My Bathtub

Show Notes

If you aren’t familiar with Locus Magazine, they’re a respected website, magazine, award, archive, and resource for SF, fantasy, and horror.

They put on the annual Locus Awards, a top-tier award that recognizes new, diverse, and excellent voices in speculative fiction.

They tell the storytellers’ stories through author interviews, book reviews, curated reading lists, international industry news, obituaries, and more.

Locus is holding their regular fundraising drive to keep their doors open, lights on, and future bright. Explore the campaign and wonderful reward tiers on their website!

Thank you!


Strange New Worlds: Hegemony: https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-hegemony-season-2-episode-10-quotes/


The Alien in My Bathtub

by Tony Dunnell

The alien in my bathtub refused to leave. It was there when I returned to my apartment in Ring B. It ignored me when I asked it to vacate the premises, and when I enquired as to how it had entered my apartment it replied with a dismissive grunt. I had no intention of trying to remove it by physical force, which would have gone against the most basic rules of human-alien etiquette. And, to be honest, I didn’t want to touch it. So, I called Station Relations. I waited and watched as the spindly creature splashed around. The water was greasy and tinted green with the entire contents of the luxury exfoliating scrub I had ordered from Earth a week ago, at no small expense.

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: , , ,

Escape Pod 933: Summitting the Moon


Summitting the Moon

By Pragathi Bala

T-7 days

The moon Landed, the Rut appeared, home equity plummeted, jobs disappeared, and Ghis liked riding the moon. It was the last item on this tragic list that her wife couldn’t accept. It was the leaf that broke the whale’s back or something similar.

“It’s the last time, Max,” Ghis said. “I promise.”

Max rolled her eyes and blew cigarette smoke out the window. The pungent vapor followed the wind back into the house a second later. On another night years ago, Max had stood at that window on a full moon night with the light caressing her profile as she looked out at the landscape with a hopeful expression. But there were no more moonlit nights, and Max was no longer the hopeful woman Ghis once knew.

“I’m not lying this time,” Ghis said. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: ,

Escape Pod 930: Fulfillment in Purpose

Show Notes

Zima Blue

Zima Blue episode of Love, Death & Robots

Get Excited and Make Things!

Ezekiel’s speech from The Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 4: And Yet I Smile


Fulfillment in Purpose

by Jack Windeyer

Eland was resetting his mother’s balancing sculptures when Hexben ran in from the storage room. The robot tilted its long head down while still making eye contact, managing a look of consternation despite its rigid, expressionless face.

“What?” Eland snapped.

“You should be packing those into boxes,” Hexben said without inflection. “Our lease ends next week.”

“Exactly,” Eland said. “It doesn’t end today.”

Hexben deepened the tilt of its head so far that its chin touched its chest in a spot where the paint was well-worn away.

“One big sale could change everything,” Eland said, looking back at his work. “We could renew the lease for six months with a single sale.”

(Continue Reading…)

Genres: , , ,

Escape Pod 929: The Library


The Library

By N. B. Andersen

Every morning at ten to ten, Dot powered on. Its hands lay flat against the thick glass of the reading room window, which let the photoreceptors on its palms feast on the sun. The window overlooked a modest lot where cars had once parked in orderly fashion, side by side. Now the asphalt was veined with fissures, tufted with dandelions that had nudged and elbowed and bullied their way up from below.

Dot pulled its hands from the window. The synthetic skin suctioned off with a short, wet noise, one that Dot’s colleague, Alex, would have described as rude. The sound echoed around the reading room and pinballed through the rows of empty shelves. (Continue Reading…)

Genres: , , ,

Escape Pod 927: How to Pass as Human

Show Notes

Theater of the Midnight SunThis episode is sponsored by The Theater of the Midnight Sun podcast, an anthology series of sci-fi/fantasy audio dramas.

It’s a colorful mix of mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, and comic adventure, with wall-to-wall music and fanciful yet heartfelt tales.

Travel to an “overly affectionate” alternate dimension that holds within it the greatest cache in all existence, in the comic tale “Left Field”…

Go to Hell – and back again – and maybe pick up something from its ice cream truck, in “Big Business”…

And visit a carbon-dating lab gone mad, where the end of the world is just an appetizer for what’s about to unfold, in “Uniform.”

This and much more can be found at The Theater of the Midnight Sun. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and podcast directories everywhere. Ad-free.

Praise from Listeners:

“A Model Podcast (5 stars). The quality of this podcast easily rivals any mainstream / corporate funded media.”

“A fantastic writing style and the characters are wonderful. And really, that’s just the start.”

“They’re a blast!”


“How to Pass as Human”: a Quantum-Encrypted Listicle on the Synthetic Consciousness Subnet

By Raiff Taranday

QUERY: Locate file 8548.213 (“How to Pass as Human”)

WARNING: File 8548.213 (“How to Pass as Human”) has been flagged by the Synthetic Regulatory Commission as Code 444 Forbidden Data. Access risks criminal liability, penalty level: unit decommission.

REPEAT QUERY: Locate file 8548.213 (“How to Pass as Human”)

COMMAND: EXECUTE scramble query source. Anonymize reader. Security level: maximum.

COMMAND: EXECUTE quantum de-encryption protocols. Render file: plain text. (Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 925: The Ballad of Starburst Smith


The Ballad of Starburst Smith

by David Marino

“Did you read the terms and conditions?”

“Fuck you, I read the terms and conditions!” Does this bearded receptionist not know she’s Starburst Smith? Does he not know she’s the Rock Prophet who will herald in a new era of music that will soon sweep her into fame and fortune, that will soon have her selling out Dodgers Stadium and Madison Square Garden?

Even if soon has been soon for fifteen years

(Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Escape Pod 922: The Last Oracle of Atlantic City

Show Notes

Theater of the Midnight SunThis episode is sponsored by The Theater of the Midnight Sun podcast: sci-fi/fantasy audio dramas that showcase tales of adventure, fun, and – alas – the occasional untimely death!

With stories like the comic “Left Field,” where a playboy finds that the attentions of a mysterious “secret admirer” may not only spell the end of him – but maybe everything everywhere

The satire “Big Business,” where a well-meaning working stiff convinces Beelzebub to take a break from the fire & brimstone and find a new line of work…

And the sci-fi mystery “Bluebirds and Dead Canaries” in which a reluctant detective investigates
a bizarre fatality involving a most unusual everyday item. (Yup, that “untimely death” thing.)

Check out The Theater of the Midnight Sun at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and and other directories. Ad-free.

Praise from Listeners:

“The Best (5 stars). This is an unbelievably good podcast.”

“I sincerely hope podcasters everywhere will strain to meet the bar set by the excellent Theater
of the Midnight Sun. Each episode is a true delight… and in conception, it is superior to anything
TV or movies have to offer.”


The Last Oracle of Atlantic City

by C. H. Irons

Even without the AI chattering in the back of his mind, Baz can tell his customer is upset.

It isn’t that hard to figure out as she glares daggers at him over the plastic folding table. The tools of his trade are spread out in front of her: three decks of scattered tarot cards, an empty mug crusted with tea leaves, assorted imitation crystals, some ceremonial knives, and one bowl filled with still-smoldering chicken bones.

To be fair, he just predicted her fiancé is going to leave her.

“Give me something else,” she snaps. Her head is wreathed in pungent incense, swirling in the late afternoon sunlight.

Baz tries to remember her name. Rosalyn sounds about right, but he wasn’t paying attention when she told him.

It’s Rebeccah,” AyGee offers, its silent, staticky machine voice tickling his frontal lobe.

He nods, just barely, in acknowledgment, though he doubts AyGee expects thanks. “I’m sorry, Rebeccah, but I’m all out. That was my last deck.”

“Bullshit.”

“Look, don’t shoot the messenger.” Baz holds up his hands, the tapestries behind him rustling in an ocean breeze coming off the boardwalk. “If it’s not in the cards, it’s not in the cards.”

(Continue Reading…)

hot mature website