Escape Pod

Author : Jay Caselberg Narrator : Serah Eley Host : Alasdair Stuart Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Discuss on Forums Herd Mentality originally appeared on Escape Pod on July 21, 2005 on episode 011. Herd Mentality By Jay Caselberg (Excerpt) Einstein was getting old now. All of them. Not so old that he was past it, but you had […]

Author : Vina Jie-Min Prasad Narrator : Trendane Sparks Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Discuss on Forums This story was first published in Uncanny Magazine 18 (September/October 2017) Some cursing, suggestions of fanfic erotica (not explicit) Fandom for Robots By Vina Jie-Min Prasad Computron feels no emotion towards the animated television […]

Surveillance Fatigue

by Jennifer R. Donohue

Is this woman a terrorist? It’s my job to decide.

My typical first step is social media, before I delve into the emails, the school records. Fortified with overbrewed office coffee, I take an afternoon and read through all three years of her 140-character thoughts, brief conversations with other users, occasional pictures. We’re encouraged to have our own process, and my entire workload, the entire organization’s workload, takes place on glowing screens large and small. We are constantly reading, listening, watching, bionic earbuds ensconced, AR glasses feeding us a constant stream of information. At the end of the day, we stumble out into natural light like people waking from a dream. The building which houses the organization is officially something too boring to look at twice, data storage or legal processing, office upon shell office of generic secretaries designed to deflect public inquiry.

She seems to like mystery books and horror movies. Here, I diverge to the school records. Drama club in high school. She majored in Communications and got good letters of recommendation from her professors. Moved to a city where she knew no one and got hired on at the temp agency. Maybe it’s her new friends which have put her on this list, writers and artists who still photocopy zines in fluorescent-lit shops, trimming them crookedly and stapling them together to hand out at open mic events.

Her government ID photo is serious, dark skin a stark contrast to the mandated white shirt, hair braided back, smile strained and not reaching her eyes. Her government ID does not reflect who she is; few do. She posts a lot of selfies, though. Far more than I do. There is an official metric of normalcy based on how many selfies one takes and posts and I, like my coworkers, try to do slightly more than minimum so as not to stand out. Of course, we’re graded differently, because we’re in the know. We are not to take this to mean we are immune to scrutiny. The opposite is true.

Author : Tim Pratt Narrator : Amy H. Sturgis Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Discuss on Forums Tim Pratt’s Patreon, June 2017 Some cursing. Suggestions of violence and death. Anna and Marisol in Time and Space By Tim Pratt The big day came, and Anna was tempted to tie up Marisol […]

Author : Kathryn DeFazio Narrator : Summer Brooks Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Artist : Geneva Benton Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 621: Assistance (Artemis Rising) is an Escape Pod original. Assistance By Kathryn DeFazio “Would you like to discuss your coping plan?” Astor did not want to discuss their coping plan. […]

Author : Christi Nogle Narrator : Tina Connolly Host : S. Kay Nash Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Artist : Geneva Benton Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 620: Promise (Artemis Rising) is an Escape Pod original. Sex. Promise By Christi Nogle Brochures fanned across the lace tablecloth in Grandma’s dining room. Up close, I saw […]

Author : Jamie Lackey Narrators : Trendane Sparks and S.B. Divya Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Artist : Geneva Benton Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 619: A Study in Symmetry, or the Chance Encounter of an Android and a Painter (Artemis Rising) is an Escape Pod original. A few curses. A […]

Author : Bennett North Narrator : Dani Daly Host : Laura Pearlman Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Artist : Geneva Benton Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 618: All Profound and Logical Minds (Artemis Rising) is an Escape Pod original. Contains a few A-grade curses. Peril. All Profound and Logical Minds By Bennett North The space station […]

Author : S. L. Scott Narrator : Eric Luke Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Discuss on Forums Escape Pod 617: A Cure for Homesickness (Artemis Rising) is an Escape Pod original. A few instances of cursing. Sci-Fi violence. A Cure for Homesickness By S. L. Scott Krem was dead. Well, not […]

Author : Samantha Henderson Narrator : Alethea Kontis Host : S.B. Divya Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Discuss on Forums First published in Interzone, November 2016, and reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction 34, edited by Gardner Dozois. Contains frequent class-one cursing (f-bombs and the like), graphic description of murder, somewhat less graphic description […]