Hello everyone, this is Alasdair, the voice of Escape Artists. This is our 2016 metacast to present the stories we ran in 2015 which are eligible in the upcoming Hugo nomination season.

First, a quick plug four ourselves. All four EA shows – Podcastle, Pseudopod, Escapepod and Cast of Wonders – are themselves eligible in the SEMIPROZINE Hugo category.

Not Fancast. Not Fanzine. Semiprozine.

Yes, the categories are confusing and often overlap. Fancast as a category is traditionally dominated by commentary shows and sketch based audio programs. Take at look at the finalists over the last couple of years. Whereas the Semiprozine category is home to the types of publications we consider our publishing peers.

While there’s an argument to be made we could split the shows and compete in multiple categories to increase our chances, we don’t think benefits anyone. The division would be artificial at best, extremely difficult to explain given all four of our shows have harmonized pay rates and submissions policies, and smack of gamesmanship which doesn’t interest us.

Don’t get us wrong, we LOVED seeing Podcastle and Escapepod on last year’s Hugo long lists, and we’d be honoured for one of our shows to be a finalist. But that’s a decision that rests solely in the hands of you, our fans and supporters.

And just a note, Mothership Zeta doesn’t qualify this year because they’re too new.

Update: all of our editors (Graeme Dunlop and Rachael K. Jones at PodCastle, Shawn Garrett at Pseudopod, Marguerite Kenner at Cast of Wonders and Norm Sherman at EscapePod) are themselves eligible in the Editor, Short Form category.

These show notes contain links to a few different aggregation projects, where fiction fans are building cumulative lists of those eligible in the various categories. They’re great tools, and we’d like to thank David Steffen in particular for his efforts. We’ll also link to our Wikia page, containing links to all the stories mentioned.

And with that, we present the following for your consideration:

Editor, Short Form:

Marguerite Kenner

Cast of Wonders 2015 Short Story first publications:

• Aisha Bets Her Life on Magic by Jarod K. Anderson
• There Are No Marshmallows in Camelot by Christian McKay Heidicker
• Lost Socks by Lisa Montoya
• Above Decks by Terry Ibele
• Fairy Bones by Guy Stewart
• A Troll’s Trade by Sandra M. Odell

2015 reprints:

• The Mothgate by J.R. Troughton – originally published by Shimmer
• The New Kid Is Not An Alien by Bert Lowe originally published in the July 2015 issue of Spaceports & Spidersilk from Nomadic Delirium Press