Musings of a Babylon Lurker

Escape Pod : “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”

Monday, November 17th, 2008 | books, podcast, scifi | No Comments

One of the fiction podcasts I listen to is Steve Eley’s “Escape Pod”. Every week a new short story reading in the Science Fiction genre. previously they had a mixture of Scifi, Fantasy and Horror, but Horror is now done by the sister podcast “Pseudo Pod” and Fantasy by “Podcastle”. If you go back into the archives you will find all three genres represented.

With so many stories it is impossible to find a story I like every week, occasionally I drop the listening after beginning listening to an episode, but mostly I listen through the story.

Some highlights for me would be Mur Lafferty’s “I Look Forward to Remember You” and the Escape Pod 100th episode was a good reading of Isaac Asimov’s classic short story “Nightfall”, first published in 1941

Episode 182 brought H.G. Wells’ “The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham”, the first time the podcast has brought a story from the public domain.

Mr Elvesham, an old and frail philosopher, takes up contact with a young student and offers him to become his heir. The youn man is, of course, cautious but is slowly drawn to the belief that this could be something.

Let’s just say, the intention of the older man is not quite what it appears, there is no happy end, but simply a cautionary tale – “no one is exactly what he or she appears to be”.

In some ways a similar story could be told today (and has been), it is interesting to note that this story is more than 100 years old. For a story publishes in 1896 it feels surprisingly modern. It makes me want to read more og H.G. Wells’ stories.

On another note : The podcast has been coming out every week since May 2005, but due to family (and other) circumstances there will be a hiatus for the rest of the month of November. Steve has a rather long entry in his blog telling the story. The main point, I think is that he may have been pushing too hard to get this going, and needs a breather to regain the fun of doing the podcast. “Pesudo Pod” and “Podcastle” are not affected.

Link :

Escape Pod

Tags: audio, HG Wells, short story