Impossibility Crow By Remy Nakamura The Kingdom Coffee Missionary Handbook tells Paulo that he should always put his guns away during a door approach. He’s heard this hundreds of times before, but the Handbook speaks with a voice of authority, deep like a luchador’s, strong like a drill sergeant’s, calm like his abuelito’s. It slides …

Vegetablemen in Peanut Town By August Marion Otto scanned the grassy countryside for any sign of marauding vegetables. The steeple he and Darby were in wasn’t quite thirty feet tall, but it was taller than any other building in Peanut Town, so it offered an unobstructed view of the surrounding farmland. There were acres and …

by Alanna McFall narrated by Amanda Fitzwater with guest host Amy H. Sturgis Welcome to the 2nd Annual Artemis Rising a celebration of women and non-binary authors This story has not been previously published. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Thank you for visiting […]

by Abra Staffin-Wiebe narrated by Diane Severson with guest host Mur Lafferty Welcome to the 2nd Annual Artemis Rising a celebration of women and non-binary authors This story has not been previously published. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Thank you for visiting us […]

by Jen Finelli narrated by J.S. Arquin This story has not been previously published. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Thank you for visiting us on Facebook and Twitter about the author… Hi! I’m Jen Finelli, and I’m a professional author, content-consultant, and ghost-writer deeply in love. Because I’m also […]

Run By C.R. Hodges The claxon blares three times: all clear. We file out of the underground shelter and up the serpentine lava tube. Our semi-annual hibernation drill, bureaucratic gibberish for run down to the emergency shelter and hide, is now monthly. I’m all for avoiding nuclear annihilation, but I wish the drills weren’t scheduled so […]

The Android’s Prehistoric Menagerie By A. Merc Rustad The world explodes. Unit EX-702 comes back online when UV wavelengths activate its solar plating. Its optics are crusted with red dust; a low-powered system scan concludes that though its left arm is missing and there is excessive oxidation damage along its chassis and helmet, as well as …

Meltwater By Benjamin C. Kinney My beloved waits for me in the flooded church. She’s died one time too many, and I can’t get her back without her help. At least, at last, it gives me a reason to see her again. The church lies at the edge of the Mediterranean fracture, below cliffs barely eight …

Safe Harbour By Kristene Perron It begins with breath. In. Wrap my hand around the handle at the bow of the kayak. Out. Drag the boat across the rocks. In and out, in time with the low moan of the fog horn in the distance. I welcome the grey of dawn though my muscles ache from …

Honey and Bone By Mads Alvey With each step she took, the girl’s leg hissed. Thump, hiss, thump, hiss, thump, hiss. Whenever she lifted her leg, the knee joint extended. Her thigh and shin pulled apart unsettlingly, reminiscent of something deeply broken. Her gait was slow, round, loping. She didn’t move with any expedience. It […]

Dr. Mbalu and the Butcher’s Daughter By Megan Chaudhuri With a raspy pop, the cell sprayer in Rebecca’s hand sputtered one last drop of fur progenitor cells. Ignoring her stiff back, she leaned over the culture vat and daubed the cells onto the pink, gel-sculpted contours of a cheetah’s back muscles. The gel rippled; Rebecca held …

What Good is a Glass Warrior? By Scott Huggins Like falling through rings of intermittent diamonds; White laser-circles of moon. Kinhang Chan Tzu chose those words to describe being me. Given that he was Earth’s poet laureate, and I am only my parents’ daughter, who am I to argue? I have never seen any of those […]

Baro Porrajmos, or Love in the Vardo By Eileen Gunnell Lee The day we left the Static was the best day of our lives. The Static had been squalid—a cold concrete building with perpetually wet floors sloping toward the drains. There had been too many of us in there, even without the men. We celebrated …

Two Steps Forward By Holly Schofield I eased myself down off the running board of the ’28 Hudson sedan then laid a hand on the hood in mute sympathy for its overheated pistons. A quick buttoning-up of my topcoat and a tug on my fedora and I felt ready to approach the farmhouse. The old …

STORY: EP538: The Starsmith AUTHOR: Jonathan Edelstein NARRATOR: James Odcombe HOST: Tina Connolly This story has not been previously published, but is set in the same universe as “First Do No Harm,” which appeared in Strange Horizons. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Thank you …

By Jeremiah Tolbert. Read by Philippa Ballantine (of Chasing the Bard). First appeared in Seeds of Change, ed. John Joseph Adams Audible.com Promotion! Get your free audiobook at: http://audible.com/escapepodsff Nobody went home to their Elderfolk while we waited for Niles to come back. That was a rule. If Niles never came back, then we wouldn’t …

By Heather Lindsley. Read by The Word Whore (of Air Out My Shorts). First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 2006. “What do you see?” he asks. I want to say a menace, but instead I tap the delivery barrel and give the context-appropriate answer. “Unused ad space.” Suddenly he’s a …

By Charles Coleman Finlay. Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 2004. Audible.com Promotion! Get your free audiobook at: http://audible.com/escapepodsff When the bus reaches the corner, they climb onboard, taking seats on their side and evening out the ride so it doesn’t feel so much like we’ll tip over. We …

By Tobias S. Buckell. Read by Stephen Eley. First appeared in Seeds of Change, ed. John Joseph Adams Audible.com Metatropolis Promotion! Download the first story from Metatropolis free at: http://audible.com/metapod The man opened the pack all the way to reveal a small arsenal of guns, grenades, explosives, and — oddly — knives. Very large knives. …

By Nancy Fulda Read by Marguerite Kenner Discuss on our forums. First appeared in Asimov’s March 2011 issue All stories by Nancy Fulda All stories read by Marguerite Kenner Movement By Nancy Fulda It is sunset. The sky is splendid through the panes of my bedroom window; billowing layers of cumulous blazing with refracted oranges …

Holding the Ghosts By Gwendolyn Clare Abby was in control of the body the first time a glitch occurred. She was “home from college for the long weekend”—that’s what the imprinted memories showed, at least—and her mother was pouring dollops of blueberry pancake batter onto the sizzling cast-iron griddle. Her father had found an excuse to …

by Andrea Phillips read by Mur Lafferty This story is an Escape Pod original, it has not been previously published. Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page about the author… Andrea Phillips is an award-winning transmedia writer, game designer and author. Her book, A Creator’s […]

By Tobias S. Buckell. Read by Matthew Wayne Selznick (of Brave Men Run). When Jerry walked out across his lawn to catch the morning bus to Effendale High, he stopped to admire the new car Mr. Atkinson had growing in his lawn. Jerry could see the doors stretching up towards the roof, small branches of …

Trusted Messenger By Kevin Wabaunsee Dr. Thaddeus Begay had been expecting a dying child in the exam room, but no one had said anything about a woman half-dead from starvation. He stepped inside and muscled the door shut—like the rest of the clinic, it was made from metal reclaimed from the original dropship, and like everything …

The Zombee Project 3.0 By Allison Mulder Jensen brought the job offer to each of them in person, like no one did anymore. She poached them from the best labs and the best apiaries, all over the world. Put everything she knew on the table, in out-of-the-way cafés and fine-but-nothing-fancy hotel rooms and home kitchens …

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 …

By Eugie Foster Read by Mur Lafferty Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Trixie and the Pandas of Dread by Eugie Foster Trixie got out of her cherry-red godmobile and waved away the flitting cherubim waiting to bear her to her sedan …

By Eugie Foster Read by: Jason Adams First appeared in Anaisdotmfk Discuss on our forums. All stories by Eugie Foster All stories read by Jason Adams “A takeover of your company with the state your market shares are in is not unreasonable.” Although Soaces was right, there’d be precious little profit, even after he’d liquidated …

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 …

By Eugie Foster. Read by cunning minx (of Polyamory Weekly). First appeared in Cricket magazine, February 2007. When I was a little girl, I thought my mother’s name was Yuki, which means snow. That was part of her name, but I didn’t learn the rest of it until the night my father died. My mother …