You can find out more about Justin on his websites www.thebeandom.com/spaceturtle and www.thespaceturtle.com.

Today’s story is PG13 for language and adult topics

You can find out more about today’s author at his website www.robertreedwriter.com

Everyone is an unmitigated failure.

And then success comes, or it doesn’t. When I was still an unpublished author, I wrote a long story about an average fellow wandering through his relentlessly unremarkable life.  His world wasn’t particularly different from mine, ecept for being set in some down-the-road future. The plot was minimal, the sf ideas scarse.  Yet something about the narrative….

audio engineering by Bruce McDonald

Music by Robert Farmer

Happy New Year from everyone at clonepod.  Today we are releasing the promised Flash Fiction piece that we had intended to release for Christmas before we knew we could run the wonderful steampunk story, Cold Duty for Christmas.  

The author of today’s story, Jonathan Lowe, has a website that includes interviews and reviews of audio books.  We recommend checking his work out at Justsaynoway.com.

 I was in the air en route to Jamaica once when the guy next to me said:  “We aliens like to fly first class.”
         I looked at him, closely.  He winked.  Twice.  On the second wink I spewed the gin and tonic I’d been sipping all over him.  Luckily, the old folks sitting across from us were asleep, precluding embarrassment.  Although I did have a good excuse for it.  After all, the guy doing the winking had two eyelids, the second resembling an icky green jelly-like membrane.  Other than this rather minor oversight he could have passed for any insurance salesman.

Audio engineering by Bruce McDonald

Music by Robert Farmer

Leslie Ann Moore works in the healing profession and is the author of Griffin’s Daughter.  She is part of the clonepod team as an editor and a frequent narrator for clonepod’s stories.  You can listen to the podcast of her exciting book at http://leslieann.podomatic.com.

Invisible explores a world so obsessed by youth that people literally become invisble when they age…

Audio Engineering by Bruce McDonald

Music by Robert Farmer

Ending Song  ”Re: Your Brains” by Johnathan Coulton

Parental Guidance Strongly Suggested

No tricks today, only a treat – a new Union Dues story!  Also included is a Halloween Song which we love and hope you will too.

Most of our listeners are familiar with Jeffrey DeRego’s Union Dues series both on escapepod and now his new series of the Team Shikaragaki on our podcast.  If you haven’t yet been infected with the Union Dues bug, you will have the joy of getting to go back into our archives and escapepod’s Union Dues archives to catch up with the stories

I’m on my second Martini when I feel Miss Jennifer enter the Jumpin’ Catfish Lounge: Home of the Buck-Fifty Draft. The bar is attached to a seedy little candlepin bowling alley wedged between an abandoned church, Baptist I think, and a dirt parking lot stuffed with pickup trucks. The walls are papered with posters for low-rent country cover bands, amateur wrestling, and The World Famous Solomon Brothers Traveling Circus. A wagon wheel chandelier throws enough light that I can’t even blend into the shadows so she’s sure to see me.

I’ve got an ear-worm and the gin is dulling it some but not chasing it away. This isn’t a regular ear-worm, you know, like the first two bars of a TV theme song that perpetually cycle through your head like some supernatural torture. No, this is a stray thought.

Audio Engineering by Bruce McDonald

Matthew Johnson has published stories in markets such as Asimov’s Science Fiction and Strange Horizons as well as anthologies including Best New Fantasy 2 and Fantasy: The Best of the Year (2007 and 2008 editions.) ‘Outside Chance’ was first published in the Summer 2006 issue of On Spec.

       Jacob watched the future fade from view as he triggered the relay. He was not sad to see it go; it was a bad one, like a Beckett play come to life. It wasn’t hard to imagine Vladimir and Estragon bickering in this wasteland, or Hamm and Clov playing tug-of-war at the end of the world.

      Outlines were like that, often as not. It was his job to find out how they got that way, what chain of events had led to the particular doom each future embodied, and to bring back anything that might help ensure the survival of the present. He did not, as much as possible, talk to the people. They didn’t really exist, after all; that is to say, they wouldn’t.

We are fortunate to have another Union Dues story upcoming.  We will release as soon as we can do it justice and again ask our listeners to help out an author who has given so much enjoyment.

Thanks for listening!

Read by Bruce McDonald

Music by Robert Farmer

Audio Engineering by Bruce McDonald

The Invisible Man is Innocent was originally published at McSweeneys.net

He has had other humor pieces published at McSweeneys
Online Tendency, The Big Jewel, MonkeyBicycle, The
Morning News, Weird Tales, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination and
Talebones.  You can find Mr. Gamelli at http://webpagewithlinks.blogspot.com/

Regarding today’s front-page story:  I’m surely just one of
thousands dismayed to read that Mayor Pendleton’s pants slipped
down around his ankles during last night’s address at City Hall.
However, while I think we can all agree it was unfortunate (and
no doubt humiliating), I must take issue with your reporter,
Alan Hendale, who went out of his way to label the incident
“suspicious.”

We all know what he was implying.

If you play the most recent episodes using the flash player on the page, you’ll be hearing Chipmunks. They do play properly in other players and if you download it to play on your computer it should be fine.

We are aware of the problem and are working to fix it.

Thanks for you patience.