Last week, EscapePod.org posted its 200th episode. 200 podcasts. Plus their flash fiction pieces and reviews. The best part is that they are excellent pieces of short fiction. These are some of the best stories published to date read for you with clean audio recording.
The podcast mostly focuses on science fiction, but in their early days they also had fantasy and horror as well. Since then they spun off those into PodCastle.org and PseudoPod.org, respectively. These are also excellent, but I prefer science fiction. For I have listened to the tales by Mike Resnick and have shed tears to Down Memory Lane and Robots Don’t Cry. I remember the joy and sorrow I felt when I first listened to a human-robotic love tale about Fred and Wilma (rated X). I still enjoy listening to a piece on a lesbian zombie (also rated X). I cannot get enough of the Union Dues tales; my favorites are EscapePod episodes 49, 154 and the origins story of 185. Searching all of them out is well worth it. And then there are the Mur Lafferty stories. Mur is my all time favorite author, period. I learned to love you work by listening to her stories on EscapePod (and her I Should Be Writing podcasts, but that’s for another blog post) and have been listening to her and reading her work ever since. Her Christmas stories are something of a tradition there. My favorites of hers are “Santa in my Pocket” and “I Look Forward to Remembering You“.
There are many, many other wonderful stories there. If you have a long commute to work or if you work all day on a computer and have plenty of free “ear” time, you owe it to yourself to download some of their stories. It will reignite your love of fiction and your love of science fiction in this busy world of ours. And remember to donate if you can. If you cannot, listen anyways. I cannot recommend them enough.
Jon Brazer Enterprises 