Description
To celebrate its fifteenth year anniversary, the Hugo Award-nominated podcast Escape Pod published its first anthology of science fiction short stories. Editors Mur Lafferty and S. B. Divya curated Escape Pod: fifteen stories from fifteen authors, award-winning writers who contributed their craft to the podcast. Highlighting the differences in oral versus written fiction, only one of the stories has been featured in the podcast.
Many stories take a serious tone, touching on social issues like classism and racism. Characters vary from time-traveling midwives to space-traveling theater geeks, to teddy bear spiders. Sarah Gailey’s Tiger Lawyer Gets It Right is an alien planet court drama about the struggles of taking on big corporations but with an actual tiger as the defense attorney. Greg Van Eekhout’s Spaceship October, Escape Pod episode 775, takes place on a generational spaceship where the privileged have all the advantages and the have-nots will do anything to survive.
Diverse authors highlight the evolution of the sci-fi genre. Anyone who survived 2020 would find common ground with N.K. Jemsin’s heroine and pet dragon, as they battle the lazy, mediocre leaders of The Towers.
Podcast fans will undoubtedly enjoy this book, as they experience stories written by their favorite “escape artists.” For the uninitiated in the Escape Pod universe, consider this anthology as an invitation to the new fiction revolution.
