Between a sick dog, family visits, crazy work schedules, adn more, we may be skipping the episode this week. Assume we wont ave one and maybe we’ll surprise you later on. We should be back next week though!

While they aren’t a sponsor, Audible.com has been kind enough to treat Sword and Laser fans to a free download of the first story from their new Metatropolis series. So we said, why not?! METAtropolis is an interesting project. It’s an original audiobook, meaning there’s no print version. The stories are published directly to audio. The first story is entitled “In the Forest of the Night” written by Jay Lake (author of “Mindspring“) and features the voice of Michael Hogan better known to many of you as Colonel Tigh from Battlestar Galatica. The complete audio book, featuring five unabridged novellas will be released on Oct. 21, 2008.

Go here to download the first story of the audio book. No credit card required, though you will have to create an account. Hey they wanna get something out of you for free.

Don’t feel like registering for an account? No problem. Audible’s also throwing in a free sample of another story from METAtropolis called “To Hie From Far Cienia” by Karl Schroder (read by Stefan Rudnicki). This isn’t the whole story, but there’s nothing required except to click to download.

Download sample of “To Hie from far Ciena”

Let us know what you think of the series, and the idea of free stuff like this in the comments!

Tom and Roger talk finances, but this is not investment advice. They also take up the issue of Washington Insiders again.

Get the episode at this link: http://www.archive.org/download/RogerChangandTomMerrittEastMeetsWest137/eastmeetswest137.mp3