Exhalation

Where “Evil Robot Monkey” touched my heart, “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang engaged my brain. No, wait. It stole my brain and turned it inside out in one long thought experiment.  The reading on Escape Pod perfectly matches the dry tone of the narration. Opening with the jarring image of exchanging lungs for freshly charged ones [...]

Evil Robot Monkey

“Evil Robot Monkey“, by Mary Robinette Kowal presents yet another talking animal for me to fall in love with.

Standards

Told as the rejection letter from a science journal, Standards, by Richard K. Lyon, is full of deft hints of adventure and dry put-downs of the sort of mad genius who submits patents for perpetual motion machines and trisects angles in his sleep. And I think that sentence is almost as long as the story. [...]

Reparations

If you’re looking for a moving story about sacrifice that’s not related to the holidays, you might appreciate “Reparations” by Merrie Haskell, in an excellent reading on Escape Pod. Like “Wikihistory” it involves time travel to Worrld War II, but it’s the polar opposite in tone.

Private Detective Molly

On the surface, “Private Detective Molly,” by A.B. Goelman seems to your basic SF detective story, with a contrived bad guy who wants to cheat sweet little Dorothy. And the only wise-cracking detective standing in the way is a six-inch doll, who says:
I’m a sucker for a crying girl. You can call it programming if [...]

Love and Death in the Time of Monsters

I have mixed feelings about “Love and Death in the Time of Monsters,” by Frank Wu. It has a great title. The presentation on  Escape Pod is fun. But I have to say I preferred the realistic elements to the scifi elements.

Homecoming at the Borderlands Café

While it’s not as graceful as “Family Values,” “Homecoming at the Borderlands Café,” by Carole McDonnell manages to create a world while the narrator, Mike, is sitting in the café eating dinner with his parents. It’s so static, most of the story is in his thoughts. But it takes place in a world where it’s [...]

Family Values

In a wonderful example of graceful worldbuilding,”Family Values“, by Sara Genge plunges you into an alien society without stopping to explain. An alien society where females gain power by bearing children and keeping house, and teachers are high status? That’s different. An alien society where males aim to ingratiate themselves with breeding females? That’s familiar. [...]

Edward Bear and The Very Long Walk

I seem to be encountering a lot of bears lately. A couple friends of mine are working on stories about bears. I am discovering that I like stories by Elizabeth Bear. And recently I heard a delightful reading on Escape Pod of “Edward Bear and The Very Long Walk,” by Ken Scholes. It begins [...]

The Something-Dreaming Game

The first third of “The Something-Dreaming Game,” by Elizabeth Bear is utterly frank about how young people seek unusual sensations, enough that I can see why some people might be uncomfortable listening to it on Escape Pod. The narrator’s daughter, Tara, developed RSD, after breaking her arm. She gets an implant that keeps the [...]