#Titanuary ‘Escape Pod’ edited by S.B Divya and Mur Lafferty

About the book…

The fifteenth anniversary of the Hugo-nominated science fiction podcast Escape Pod, featuring new and exclusive stories from today’s bestselling writers.

Finalist for the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine.

Celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of cutting-edge science fiction from the hit podcast, Escape Pod. Escape Pod has been bringing the finest short fiction to millions of ears all over the world, at the forefront of a new fiction revolution.

This anthology gathers together fifteen stories, including new and exclusive work from writers such as from Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, Mary Robinette Kowal, T. Kingfisher and more. From editors Mur Laffterty and S.B. Divya comes the science fiction collection of the year, bringing together bestselling authors in celebration of the publishing phenomenon that is, Escape Pod

Published in October 2020, huge thanks to the publicity team at Titan Books for my gifted review copy of ‘Escape Pod’

It contains a glorious introduction from Serah Eley who explains the genesis of Escape Pod which I won’t spoil but had me entranced.

The fifteen stories tell tales of birth, death, retro fitted reality and uber reality across this universe and way into the imagined futures.

Instead of being bleakly grim about humanities future, there are tales full of beauty and nuance about what it is that makes us human, and what it is that makes us keep on trying to be better, bigger, more forward thinking and accepting of who and what we are and can be.

I laughed, I was moved to tears, and I was left on the edge of my seat by tales that looked into the past to secure the future (literally midwives to their own reality in Kameron Hurley’s Citizens Of Elsewhen), cloning as an extension of uber wealth (Fourth Nail by Mur Lafferty), a dreamer’s vision of going to Mars re-written as a child’s story (Ken Liu writes like an elemental force, he makes you feel that story was written and read just for you, a superb gift). There is even a courtroom story about greedy corporations abusing a smaller, more vulnerable planet courtesy of Sarah Gailey in their tale ‘Tiger Lawyer Gets It Right.’ 

John Scalzi’s story of alien animal encounters has you reconsidering a)what does it really mean to be alien and b) may they have been here all along? It also reminds me I need to read more of his books…

Each and every one of these is a mini escape pod, it does exactly what it says, it provides a retreat, an escape, a way from something(or somewhen) to another place of reality, where you can shut the door on all the things (and there are so many of them) which weight down your daily existence. It takes you away and even for the brief moments when you are lost in another world, each of these authors creates a bit of magic that pulls you back to the joy of being read a story aloud, or the joy of being the one who is doing the reading.

And that, my friends, is a beautiful feeling.

About the editors…

Mur Lafferty

Mur Lafferty is the author of ‘Solo:A Star Wars Story’ and the Hugo and Nebula nominated novel ‘Six Wakes’, The Shambling Series series, and several self pubbed novels and novellas, including the award winning Afterlife series.

She is the host of the Hugo-winning podcast Ditch Diggers, and the long-running I Should Be Writing. She is the recipient of the John Campbell Award for best new writer, the Manly Wade Wellman Award, the Best Fancast Hugo Award, and joined the Podcast Hall of Fame in 2015, its inaugural year.

Links-http://www.murverse.com/

S.B Divya 

S. B. Divya is a lover of science, math, fiction, and the Oxford comma.

She enjoys subverting expectations and breaking stereotypes whenever she can.

In her past, she’s used a telescope to find Orion’s nebula, scuba dived with manta rays, and climbed to the top of a thousand year old stupa. She is the author of Runtime.

Links-https://sbdivya.com/

Twitter @TitanBooks @divastweets @seraheley @mightymur