My most oft-listened to podcast, Escape Pod is the literary magazine of the internet science fiction and fantasy scene. There are multiple types of episodes: Escape Pods, Escape Pod: Flashes, Escape Pod: Reviews, and the occasional Escape Pod: Metacast (links below). The weekly fare, Escape Pods, are released on Thursdays (or early on Fridays) and form the core of the podcast feed itself. These are novellas (I take a broad definition of novella) of approximately half-hour (technically defined as the length of an average commute) duration with additional material before and afterward. Stephen Eley, the “host” of Escape Pod, will frequently discuss goings on in the world-at-large, the podcasting community, and his family in terms of messages from the podella content. It should be noted that Stephen Eley also reads most of the works, but there are guest readers every now and then.
There are a few traditions in Escape Pod including the following: Jeffrey R. DeRego’s Union Dues stories (since Escape Pod 027 in September 2005), Mur Lafferty Christmas stories (since Escape Pod 033 in December 2005), the annual short story nominees for the Hugo Award (since Escape Pod 053 in May 2006), and a children’s series, Squonk the Dragon (Escape Pod 070 in September 2006 and Escape Pod 109 in June 2007).
Escape Pod had its first hiatus that ran from late 2008 through early 2009, during which only a scant few episodes were released irregularly. Since that time, Escape Pod has resumed a regular programming schedule.
List of Escape Pod episodes:
Probable time involvement: Less than 1 hour per episode.
Escape Pod 001 to Escape Pod 025
001: Imperial
001: Imperial [Resampled]
002: Feng Burger
If fast-food stands were designed by a feng shui
master, would anything happen?
003: Three Wish Habit
004: In His Footsteps
005: Snow Day
Household robots and 20 feet of snow. What
could possibly go wrong? Nothing really, just a whole lot of right.
006: Jenny Nettles
007: The Trouble With Death Traps
008: Lachrymose and the Golden Egg
009: Jack
010: The Girlfriends of Dorian Gray
011: Herd Mentality
012: Clean Up Your Room!
013: The Once and Future Dentist
014: Tis the Season
015: Hell Notes
016: Seamstress
017: The Life and Times of Penguin
018: Some Girlfriends Can
019: Implications
020: The Burning Bush
“And then my pubes caught fire.”
‘Nuff said.
021: Platypus Girl
022: Don Ysidro
023: The Dream Factory
024: The Death Trap of Dr. Nefario
025: The Great Old Pumpkin
Escape Pod 026 to Escape Pod 050
026: The Ludes
027: Union Dues: Iron Bars and the Glass Jaw
028: Your Corporate Network and the Forces of Darkness
Wait, you mean to tell me that corporate networks
aren’t run by the forces of darkness.
029: Crystal Balls
030: Aliens Love Oranges
031: Robots and Falling Hearts
032: Alien Animal Encounters
033: Santa In My Pocket
034: Free Will, Baby
035: Hero
036: Connie, Maybe
037: Craphound
038: L’Alchimista
One of my favorite pieces. A master chef
exiled to the restaurant of a small hotel is employed by a mysterious
patron to create dishes from magical ingredients in order to prove her
ability before she is given the recipe for eternal youth.
039: My Friend is a Lesbian Zombie
One of the few Rated X pieces that Escape
Pod has released.
040: Even Vadsø Thaws
041: Ambient Sleaze
042: Practical Villainy
043: Little Worker
044: Show and Tell
045: Are You Ready For the End of the World?
046: Natural Order
047: Poet for Hire
048: Soul Food
049: Union Dues: Off White Lies
050: The Malcontent
Escape Pod 051 to Escape Pod 075
051: Is You Is / Is You Ain’t?
052: Single White Farmhouse
053: Seventy-Five Years
054: Tk’tk’tk
055: Down Memory Lane
056: The Clockwork Atom Bomb
057: Chuckles Mulrooney, Attorney for the Damned
058: Shadowboxer
059: Anyone Can Whistle
060: Creature For Hire
061: I Look Forward To Remembering You
Why hire a prostitute (male or female) to service
you now? Why not send one back in time instead and make your first
time one to remember?
062: Union Dues: The Baby and the Bathwater
063: Observations From the City of Angels
064: Head of State
065: A Green Thumb
066: The King’s Tail
067: Life in Stone
068: Depth of Field
069: Her
070: Squonk the Dragon
071: The Capo of Darkness
072: Joe Steele
Joseph Stalin was a Democrat...
072: Joe Steele [Reissue]
This reissue includes the song which inspired the
piece in the outro.
073: Barnaby in Exile
074: Paradox & Greenblatt, Attorneys at Law
Time traveling tourists take the time to try to
tamper throughout time. And then they get sued.
075: Nano Comes to Clifford Falls
When practical nanotechnology comes along, how
will society react when everything you could ever want can be created with
the push of a button?
Escape Pod 076 to Escape Pod 100
076: The Dinner Game
An epic tale told in 40 minutes.
078: The Shoulders of Giants
We’ve seen it before: sleeper (cryogenic) ships
set off for distant stars, only to find, upon awakening, that other humans
got there first. That said, though, this piece is still worth a
listen.
079: Mountain, Man
080: Union Dues: Cleanup in Aisle Five
When superheroes become marketable emblems and
open supermarkets, what could possibly go wrong?
081: Margin of Error
082: Travels With My Cats
A very moving fantasy piece in which a man falls
in love with the long-forgotten author of a self-published travelogue.
083: Ulla
In The War of the Worlds, humanity
wins. Why, though, did the aliens attack us in the first place?
084: Smooth Talking
085: Merry Christmas from the Heartbreakers
086: When We Went to See the End of the World
In the race to keep up with the Joneses, what
would you see if you time-traveled to the future as a tourist?
087: Authorwerx
088: Blood of Virgins
Everyone knows that dragons like to feed on
virgins, but if you were a college-age virgin, how would you feel about
sharing your campus with a bunch of dragons? Believe it or not, this
is a touching love story between the aforementioned virgin and the girl of
his dreams.
089: Bean There
090: How Lonesome a Life Without Nerve Gas
091: The Acid Test
092: The Boy Who Yelled “Dragon”
093: {Now + n, Now - n}
If we could know what was going to happen in the
future, why wouldn’t we tell ourselves and make a fortune? Would we
give it up for love?
094: The Last Wave
095: Blink. Don’t Blink.
096: Job Qualifications
097: Cinderella Suicide
098: Just Do It
099: Start the Clock
100: Nightfall
The Isaac Asimov classic comes to Escape Pod in commemoration
of its 100th episode. This episode is far in excess of the length of
an average commute.
Escape Pod 101 to Escape Pod 125
101: The 43 Antarean Dynasties
As someone who has done research in tourism, it
pains me to admit that the depiction of the human tourists on an alien
world will probably be accurate for millennia to come.
102: The Angle of My Dreams
103: The Watching People
104: Lust for Learning
How one envies the lucky students who are given
implants and conditioning such that learning new and complex concepts can
create a sexual high.
105: Impossible Dreams
106: The House Beyond Your Sky
107: Eight Episodes
108: Kin
109: Squonk the Apprentice
110: Frankie the Spook
111: Mayfly
112: The Giving Plague
113: Ishmael in Love
Love is a powerful motivator. What could
the unrequited love of a dolphin do?
114: Cloud Dragon Skies
115: Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush
116: Ej-Es
117: Reggie vs. Kaiju Storm Chimera Wolf
118: The Veteran
119: Aliens Want Our Women
120: The Sundial Brigade
121: The Snow Woman’s Daughter
122: Transcendence Express
123: Niels Bohr and the Sleeping Dane
One of a series of stories about golems that
aired across the Escape Artists, Inc. feeds, apparently coincidentally.
124: Save Me Plz
125: End Game
Escape Pod 126 to Escape Pod 150
126: The Sweet, Sad Love Song of Fred and Wilma
127: Results
128: Union Dues: Send in the Clowns
A long-awaited chapter in the Union Dues
saga. The rules of the Union are set in stone and not always
designed for the on-the-ground or in-the-field usefulness.
129: Immortal Sin
Immortality is and has been the quest of
many. For one man, a murderer, immortality will become a hell of its
own as he seeks to save his immortal soul from damnation.
130: What We Learned From This Morning’s Newspaper
131: Hesperia and Glory
If thought can bend the fabric of reality, what
world would spring forth from or be rejected by the minds of madmen?
132: Sparks in a Cold War
133: Other People’s Money
134: Me and My Shadow
Commit a crime and have your personality erased.
135: Stu
A touching story of a kid and a side-lined
military scientist.
136: Bright Red Star
In a losing war with an alien race, soldiers must
perform their duty to save a supposedly evacuated colony.
137: Citytalkers
Mur Lafferty’s Christmas tale of how Charlotte,
NC wants to kill itself.
138: In the Late December
“Santa Claus versus the heat death of the
universe.” ‘Nuff said.
139: Acephalous Dreams
140: Astromonkeys!
141: The Color of a Brontosaurus
A [modern] human leg bone was found amidst a
dinosaur fossil. Proof of Biblical Creationism? A hoax?
Or proof of time travel?
142: Artifice and Intelligence
When an AI spontaneously is born in India, the
world tries to create another one... from ghosts.
143: Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths
We all remember our high school cliques.
What if they were determined by how you were going to die?
144: Friction
A cleric attempting to read the collected wisdom
of his people before he succumbs to frictional wear realizes that all is
not as it seems when another comes to ask for his help.
145: Instead of a Loving Heart
146: Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk
147: Pressure
148: Homecoming at the Borderlands Café
149: Union Dues: All That We Leave Behind
150: This, My Body
Escape Pod 151 to Escape Pod 175
151: Behind the Rules
152: The Big Guy
153: Schwartz Between the Galaxies
154: Union Dues: Freedom With a Small f
155: Tideline
The first of the 2008 Hugo stories.
156: Distant Replay
The second of the 2008 Hugo stories.
157: A Small Room in Koboldtown
158: Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?
159: Elites
160: Kallakak’s Cousins
161: Alien Promises
162: God Juice
163: Revolution Time
Time travel, Marx, violent revolution, and
romance.
164: The Right Kind of Town
165: Those Eyes
The human gaze is a powerful thing and it is said
that whatever we behold is destroyed. Does this explain why we never
see UFOs?
166: The Something-Dreaming Game
Autoerotic asphyxiation as a way to contact the
last members of a dying alien race? Not, I repeat, NOT, for
children.
167: Love and Death in the Time of Monsters
Is family more important than the monsters
destroying the East Coast when you live on the West Coast?
168: Family Values
A shorter story featuring alien politics,
reproduction, morality, and scandals. What more could you ask for in
a single story?
169: How I Mounted Goldie, Saved My Partner Lori, and Sniffed Out The
People’s Justice
Jonathon Sullivan returns to Escape Pod with a
story about an uplifted canine cop (played by Steve Eley). Stick
around for the flash piece at the end (a discussion board post about
EP163).
170: Pervert
171: Fenneman’s Mouth
172: Union Dues: Tabula Rasa
Jeffrey R. DeRego continues the Union Dues saga
from inside a pyramid. When the arrogant asshole leader of a team
suddenly loses his memory, how long can he go undiscovered and what
will happen when he is?
173: Robots Don’t Cry
I doubt that anyone is holding their breath for a
Mike Resnick story that isn’t a tear-jerker.
174: Private Detective Molly
175: Reparations
American time-traveling medics provide aid in
Japan in 1945.
Escape Pod 176 to Escape Pod 200
176: How The World Became Quiet:
A Post-Human Creation Myth
177: Usurpers
In a world of genetic modifications, one
un-enhanced athlete vows to prove himself before the world.
178: Unlikely
179: Arties Aren’t Stupid
In an Escape Pod first (for me at least), I
actually read a piece by an active author (thank you Sony PRS
giveaways).
180: Navy Brat
181: Resistance
Like EP 179, I have also read this before
hearing it (seeing as both stories were in Seeds of Change, this
is not surprising).
182: The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham