It is not really that EscapePod ever really went anywhere, I mean really escape pods don’t go anywhere, they just get you far enough away from the ship to save you from whatever was dangerous enough for you to need to leave safety of the much bigger ship, so that you can survive for a little while. Sorry I am rambling.
Let me back up a little bit. Ok a lot bit.
When I first got into podcasts and podcasts of Audio fiction I quickly found out about EscapePod. I love short stories. I like to write them, I like to read them and I really like to listen to them, especially when they are well read / preformed. I will listen to my computer read things to me, (that is how much I like audio fiction) but if you get a good reader / performer you get a whole new level of experience. That is what EscapePod brought to the table. Really it was great, talented authors talented readers and a great variety of stories.
Shortly after EscapePod got started a whole host of other short story podcasts popped up, but most of them didn’t last very long. In some cases like, Variant Frequencies this was sad. But in other cases I was kind of glad to see them go. While it did mean that there were not as many stories to listen to, it did mean that some of the ones that were not being well produced and managed were not ruining what might have been good stories.
The problem was that somewhere around 2+ years EscapePod started having problems. The Editor an manager of the project, Steve Elly started having personal problems and the episodes started slipping. The stories were not as good and they were pretty infrequent. I thought that we were going to loose another great podcast. As a podcaster myself I completely understand that this was not his day job and that there were other priorities. At the time DrabbleCast was the only other player on the block, if you don’t count EscapePod’s “sister / daughter” Podcasts Podcastle and PseudoPod which seemed to be suffering from the same fate as the parent. While I really enjoy most of what Drabblecast has to offer, they do tend to be a little edgier in their stories. So I was really sad to see EscapePod to go.
Then it was announced that there was going to be a new editor and really a whole staff of people would be taking over in the podcast. I was pretty happy. Unfortunately, those first few months were rough. I don’t know if it was legacy from the original editor or just the new folks working out the kinks or what, but it was bad. Really bad. So bad I quit listening. (Remember that I said I will listen to my computer read things to me.) But it was not just production quality. It was story selection and a whole a host of other things, and the “sister / daughters” seemed to be suffer the same problems so I just gave up the whole thing.
Recently I was looking for some thing new to listen to so I used twitter had had the following conversation.
@jahite What do you mean by "slump?"
— Matthew Selznick (@mwsmedia) July 22, 2013
@jahite Steve's been gone 3 years. It's a pro market. It's got a circulation that rivals or surpasses Analog. I'd say there's no slump. 🙂
— Matthew Selznick (@mwsmedia) July 22, 2013
@jahite Yay!
— Matthew Selznick (@mwsmedia) July 22, 2013
The good news. I have listened to at least a couple dozen back issues and Mr. Selznick is right. There is no slump. EscapePod is back and it is doing very well.
If you like audio fiction, and you like Sci/Fi you owe it to yourself to check out EscapePod. I have very glad it is back!
The Great Hites 