"Martian Chronicles": Escape Pod releases a reading of my YA story about rich sociopaths colonizing Mars

Back in 2011, I wrote a young adult novella called "Martian Chronicles," which I podcasted as it was in progress; it's a story about the second wave of wealthy colonists lifting off from climate-wracked, inequality-riven Earth to live in a libertarian utopia on Mars.

The story (part of a series of stories that use titles of famous stories as jumping off points) was published in Jonathan Strahan's excellent YA anthology Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier.

Now, it's getting a second life in podcast form, as the wonderful and venerable Escape Pod has produced a reading by Adam Pracht, whose first installment has just gone live (MP3). It came in via my podcatcher last night and I was so pleased with it. Now I'm on tenterhooks for part II!

They say you cant smell anything through a launch-hood, but I still smelled the pove in the next seat as the space-attendants strapped us into our acceleration couches and shone lights in our eyes and triple-checked the medical readouts on our wristlets to make sure our hearts wouldnt explode when the rocket boosted us into orbit for transfer to the *Eagle* and the long, long trip to Mars.

He was skinny, but not normal-skinny, the kind of skinny you get from playing a lot of sports and taking the metabolism pills your parents got for you so you wouldnt get teased at school. He was kind of pot-bellied with scrawny arms and sunken cheeks and he was brown-brown, like the brown Mom used to slather on after a day at the beach covered in factor-500 sunblock.