by Lavie Tidhar narrated by Sarah Tolbert This story originally appeared in Aeon #14. The diner stood off the highway outside a small town optimistically called Hope. Hope was being stuck in the middle of the Northwest and wishing you were someplace, anyplace else. And Hope was also the name on the tag pinned to the dead woman [...]

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by Marjorie James read by Steve Eley Editor’s note:  this is a sequel to EP007.  Listen to it here. Flies buzzed around the edges of the huge stone block, gathering at the rivulets of blood that ran down to the floor. A bit of what looked like it might be intestine hung off one corner, drawing special attention. [...]

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by Nick Mamatas read by Kathryn Baker The trouble with knowing everything there is to know, Stephanie Dowling decided instantly, because that’s how clever she was, was that when there was something unknown out there, she had nobody to consult. And there was something unknown out there, nibbling away at the edge of the economy, and screwing with [...]

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by Garth Nix read by Geoff Michelli They were the usual motley collection of freelance vampire hunters. Two men, wearing combinations of jungle camouflage and leather. Two women, one almost indistinguishable from the men though with a little more style in her leather armour accessories, and the other looking like she was about to assault the south [...]

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by Joanne Merriam read by Rachel Swirsky Practically the first thing she did when she took in the alien was to give him a new name. He looked at her outstretched hand long enough to annoy her, and then grasped it with his four opposable fingers and hung on limply until she wrenched her hand out of [...]

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by Robert J. Sawyer read by Mike Boris ?Damned social engineers,? said Boothby, frowning his freckled face. He looked at me, as if expecting an objection to the profanity, and seemed disappointed that I didn?t rise to the bait. ?As you said earlier,? I replied calmly, ?it doesn?t make any practical difference.? He tried to get me again: ?Damn [...]

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by Marc Laidlaw narrated by Ben Phillips originally appeared in The Infinite Matrix The plan must have come to Rog fully formed that first morning, as he stepped off the elevator into the lobby of Szilliken Sharpenwright and saw the old soldier newly stationed there in his omnichair between the potted silk ferns and the coffee [...]

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by Caitlin R. Kiernan narrated by Kim the Comic Book Goddess No one hears when I ease the heavy steel door shut behind me. All the ears in the darkened workshop, all those hundreds and hundreds of ears, but still no one hears a thing. And I stand there for a while, as unmoving as they, not [...]

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by Nancy Kress narrated by Kate Baker When morning finally dawns, Rochester isn?t there anymore. Jenny stands beside Eric, gazing south from the rising ground that yesterday was a fallow field. Maybe the whole city hasn?t vanished. Certainly the tall buildings are gone, Xerox Square and Lincoln Tower and the few others that just last night [...]

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by Madeline Ashby read by Tina Connolly Violet snapped three photos of herself from various angles, sent them, and waited for her boyfriend’s response. He rang her up?a slow vibrating purr, unlike the staccato door-knocking of her mother’s ringvibe?and said: “Me likey. Now take it off.” Violet frowned. “You were supposed to dig up the backstory on the [...]

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By Robin Sloan Narrated by Stephen Eley First appeared at Robin Sloan’s blog, June 8, 2009. IT?S 2:02 A.M. ON A COLD SUMMER NIGHT. I?m sitting in a book store next to a strip club. Not that kind of book store. The inventory here is incredibly old and impossibly rare. And it has a secret?a secret that I might have [...]

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by Eugie Foster Narrated by Lawrence Santoro Each morning is a decision. Should I put on the brown mask or the blue? Should I be a tradesman or an assassin today? Whatever the queen demands, of course, I am. But so often she ignores me, and I am left to figure out for myself who [...]

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by Rachel Swirsky Narrated by Alasdair Stuart Papa and Uncle Fomba told me if I didn?t join the army, they?d kill me. They didn?t. They cut off my hands. This was after U.S. forces marched on Syria, but before we invaded Lebanon. On every city block, posters of Uncle Sam entreated every Tom, Duc, and Haroun to get [...]

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A few announcements.

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by Jay Lake read by Mike Boris When I met Skinhorse, my first thought was old. Which was weird. Nobody gets old these days. We all die young, some of us after living a long time, if we’re lucky. He was in Piet’s Number Seven, a bar-cum-caravanserai in an illegal orbit trailing far enough behind [...]

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by Genevieve Valentine Read by Kate Baker Story originally appeared in Federations. Wren Hex-Yemenni woke early. They had to teach her everything from scratch, and there wasn?t time for her to learn anything new before she hit fifty and had to be expired. ?Watch it,? the other techs told me when I was starting out. ?You don?t want a [...]

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by Ian Creasey Narrated by MarBelle This story originally appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction (February 2006). “Since we have so many new faces,” I said to the half-dozen volunteers, “I’ll start with a tools talk. Safety points for the spade — the most important is that when you’re digging, you push with the ball of your [...]

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by Tina Connolly read by Norm Sherman Closing song by Andrew Richardson We’ve got robotic arms to put the eyeballs in. Metal clamps to pulldown the eyelids. Tony, on Four, keeps the grease vats filled. Oil squirts nineteen times a minute to keep the eye sockets from squeaking. Tiny slick needles stitch on the lashes, while millions of [...]

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By Merrie Haskell Read by Sarah Tolbert Previously appeared in Asimov’s. In January, there will be an annular solar eclipse, with the path of annularity moving through the Indian Ocean and into Sumatra and Borneo. Two days later, aliens will invade Earth. No spaceships will loom large in blue skies, nor hover over our cities. At night, though, when [...]

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By Kameron Hurley Read by Kim the Comic Book Goddess Appeared originally in From the Trenches We set down in Pekoi as part of the organics inquisition team, still stinking of the last city. We’re all muscle. Not brains. The brains are out eating at the foreigners? push downtown, and they don?t care if we whore around the [...]

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By Charles Stross Recorded at Balticon 43, May 23, 2009 Read by: Joe -Jared Axelrod (of The Voice of Free Planet X) Maddie - J.R. Blackwell (of Voices of Tomorrow) The Farm - Evo Terra and Sheila Dee (of Evo at 11, et al.) Maddie - J.R. Blackwell (of Voices of Tomorrow) Brenda the Barkeep - Dee Reed (of Nobilis Erotica) Wendy the [...]

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By Robert A. Heinlein Read by Steve Eley I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time?10:17 P. M. zone five, or eastern time, November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time and date; we must. The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty?five years old, no taller than I am, [...]

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By Alasdair Stuart Read by Alasdair Stuart Welcome to Worlds of Tomorrow, an occasional feature we?ll be running looking at some of the best in science fiction cinema. From acknowledged classics to forgotten gems we?ll be covering them all. Some of them you?ll have seen, some you won?t, some you?ll agree with me on and some you?ll [...]

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By Ian McHugh Read by Frank Key of Hooting Yard First appeared in Hub #24. Kevin switched the audio over to the projector. The lecture hall was filled with outdoor noises. Wind hummed softly over the microphone, cattle lowed nearby, a truck accelerated in the distance. A roan steer staggered around a concreted yard, its mute distress accompanied by [...]

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By Mercurio D. Rivera Read by Steve Eley First appeared in Interzone Zhi 4’s scream pierces the Siberian night. My spiked metal boots crunch through the snow as I race towards him, with Zhi 6 running at my side. The nanochip in my brainstem clicks on, and I reach out with my mind, but I can’t sense even [...]

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By Michael Bishop Read by John Meagher One morning, Gordon Pointer received an e-message from the left-front Goodstone tire on his old Callisto sedan. (He had bought the car used over a decade ago and retrofitted it for the intelligent interstates of the Piedmont metrosprawl.) Gordon abhorred palmflips, infraspecs, logomaniacs, microserfs, lapcops, and digital Kleenex, but he [...]

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By Samantha Henderson Read by Ray Sizemore (of X-Ray Visions). Intro by Norm Sherman of Drabblecast. Closing song, Jesus Clones First appeared in Ideomancer “You’re a disgrace to your calling and your species.” The Cardinal’s words were at odds with the verging-on-seductive voice of the translator embedded in the Anturean’s Chlor-tank. From beneath lowered lashes Ignatz O’Reilly, D.D. Inter-Species, [...]

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NOTE FROM STEVE: This is not this week’s Escape Pod story. This is me talking about something I like. Feel free to skip this post if it isn’t fun for you. There are a number of good writers now breaking into the big leagues through podcasting. My friend J.C. Hutchins is one of [...]

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By Bruce Boston Read by J.C. Hutchins Mr. Wayne was taking his daily exercise, walking Arthur around the lake in Nevley Park, when the sky darkened and a light snow began to fall. A few flakes fluttered against his cheeks. He could feel the cold through his heavy topcoat. He enjoyed the park when it was deserted, [...]

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By Greg van Eekhout Read by Christiana Ellis First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Astronauts are people who ride rockets into space.  They must train for a very long time before they go.  Astronauts must be brave and smart. Will you be an astronaut? * * * The biggest rocket ever was the Saturn V.  On the [...]

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By Nancy Kress Read by Steve Anderson Kegelman-Ballston Corporation is proud to announce the first public release of its new drug, Halitex, which cures Ulbarton?s Flu completely after one ten-pill course of treatment. Ulbarton?s Flu, as the public knows all too well, now afflicts upwards of thirty million Americans, with the number growing daily as the [...]

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Editors Note: As you may have noticed, episode 201 is appearing before Episode 200.  We’re still working out the kinks of an agreement with the mysterious agent forces mentioned in an earlier update, but we should have that episode for you soon, and we think it’ll be worth the wait.  Rather than keep you waiting [...]

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By Greg Van Eekhout Read by John Meagher “Hey, tell me, this look like Jesus to you?” I come to Tito’s Tacos for a lot of reasons. The freeway overpass ambience, the way the old men in the kitchen wrap the burritos tighter than Cuban cigars, the shiny Kennedy 50-cent pieces you always get as part of your change. A lot [...]

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By Alasdair Stuart Read by Alasdair Stuart Welcome to Worlds of Tomorrow, an occasional feature we?ll be running looking at some of the best in science fiction cinema. From acknowledged classics to forgotten gems we?ll be covering them all. Some of them you?ll have seen, some you won?t, some you?ll agree with me on and some [...]

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By Wenonah Lyon Read by Elie Hirschman It had originally thought the goal was to hit the two small creatures in the distance. They appeared to be identical to the three creatures whom he had joined in the game. First approximation: separated by some distance, one attempts to down the group ahead of one using one of many [...]

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By Stevens R. Miller Read by Steve Anderson Her boyfriend put a slim hand to his forehead, as though shielding his eyes from sunlight, even though the sun had set some minutes before. Where the girl had pointed was a bright star, moving east. Rated PG for frequent golf horror

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By Catherine M. Morrison Read by Ben Phillips First appeared in SCIFICTION. We had an Elvis in the attic.  Again. Echoing in the ducts, his voice woke me around 2 A.M.  I hopped from bed and headed for the attic–they always it up there.  A Vegas Elvis stood by a rack of old clothes singing “Blue Christmas” [...]

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