Part two of my novella “Martian Chronicles” on Escape Pod: who cleans the toilets in libertopia?

Last week, the Escape Pod podcast published part one of a reading of my YA novella “Martian Chronicles,” which I wrote for Jonathan Strahan’s Life on Mars anthology: it’s a story about libertarian spacesteaders who move to Mars to escape “whiners” and other undesirables, only to discover that the colonists that preceded them expect them to clean the toilets when they arrive.

Last night, they published the conclusion in part two (MP3) of Adam Pracht’s reading of the story, along with some lovely commentary by Mur Lafferty.

I’m an enormous fan of Escape Pod and of audiobooks in general, and it’s such a treat to her my work adapted by talented readers who bring new things to the material.

“We’re all poves now, Dad.” I swallowed, looked into his eyes. It was hard to do. “We’re headed to Mars to clean the toilets. That’s the thing that we discovered. And the people Mars-side, they’re fine with that. After all, if we were too good for toilet cleaning, we would have been in the first wave. They’ll say that they’re too good to clean toilets, and they’ll prove it by pointing out that we’re all broke and the only jobs they have for us are the worst, crappiest jobs. Anyone who disagrees will be a whiner.”

That had been the real surprise, once Mars OS was running on all my devices: the message boards filled with Martians fantasizing about how great it would be once the next wave of colonists arrived, how they’d be able to “solve the labor shortage” and finally hire people at “affordable wages” to do the real work of running the colony.

Escape Pod 701: Martian Chronicles (Part 2 of 2) [Escape Pod]