geek dad 2:25

In my rant against Escape Pod host Steve Eley's political assumptions, it would be easy to overlook the fact that I called Escape Pod a great show. It's a science fiction short story audio magazine, and it has helped me get through much of the manual labor of home renovation. (It and also Spaceship Radio, which replays old radio plays from the 1950s.)

As I've lost my interest in science fiction novels, these podcasts have helped me rediscover the short story format, which was, as Eley points out, the way most of us came to science fiction, once upon a time.

Science fiction and fantasy are the genres of ideas, and the short story format is perfect for such a genre.

None of which has anything to do with what I'm going to point you to.

The Creative Commons license doesn't allow me to edit the audio I wanted to share, so instead I have to suggest you just listen to the first 2 minutes and 25 seconds of this episode.

If you're interested in Escape Pod itself, I don't recommend you start with this episode. Instead I'd recommend Imperial, Robots and Falling Hearts, or L'Alchimista. Or if you don't have much time, you can look through the list of flash fiction (short short stories).

For now, the podcast is listener supported, which is an honorable model. I recommend donating.

My fear is that Eley considers "art grants" more honorable than for-profit models, which (in a world where the big grants come largely from taxes) means he'd rather have dollars taken by force than rendered willingly, though I'm positive that's not at all how he thinks of the issue. The more we voluntary listeners give voluntary support for these things voluntarily, the better our chances of reducing the number of "art grants" that others are coercively forced to support. (See, I can't seem to stay away from rant-mode. Sorry.)