The SFFaudio Podcast #589 – TOPIC: WORLDCON 2020

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #589 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, Trish E. Matson, Evan Lampe, and Alec Nevala-Lee talk about WorldCon 2020.

Talked about on today’s show:
WorldCon had some panels, Hugo Awards 2020, George R.R. Martin, 3.5 hours long, we love the stories but maybe on a panel, Robert Silverberg, Jeannette Ng Astounding Award Speech that won a Hugo, Alec Nevala-Lee on John W. Campbell, bottle of scotch, Retro Hugos 1945, magazines in 1945, rules for Best Series Hugo, Arkham House, hero pulps, continue the Retro Hugos?, Leigh Brackett, Clifford Simak, C.L. Moore’s “No Woman Born”, New Zealand authors, Sir Julius Vogel Awards, Vogel Award voting packets, where was New Zealand in the award ceremony, WorldCon is a fan convention, WorldCon is a party put on by fans that we get to attend, gravitation field has shifted, mispronouncing names, award shows in general, Hugos are often tedious, fanzines have been buried – now they are all available, DIY History, University of Iowa, Leigh Brackett’s The Science Fiction Field, lists, Pellucidar better than Derleth’s contribution to Cthulhu Mythos, audience for younger writers, affording new books, R.F. Kuang, Poppy War, Lovecraft Country, The City and the City, libraries, a 35 cent book should today be $3.50, successful writers doing Patreons to help ends meet, Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire, local conventions, S.B. Divya, Becky Chambers, “Run-Time”, “To Be Taught, if Fortunate”, Wayfarers Trilogy, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, afrofuturism, Who Fears Death, Kirinyaga by Mike Resnick, Tade Thompson’s Rosewater, 2006 Worldcon, David Brin, “Killer B’s And A V”, Brin, Benford, Bear, Vinge, Karl Schroeder, get New Zealand another one, WorldCon bids, Chicago, Saudi Arabia, not feeling safe to go places, Dublin, should WorldCon have some kind of minimum standards of safety for attendees or trust voters to reject unsafe places, Memphis, Chengdu, China, travel to the United States, always expensive to go somewhere when you’re poor, kudos to CoNZealand volunteers, con panels are like podcasts every hour, Prisoners of Gravity, Fritz Leiber, Kim Stanley Robinson, doing research, lack of recordings of panels, loss of oral history of the genre, dealer’s room, do we have to have conventions?, environmental costs, Olympics ought to have one Olympic village at Athens and use it every 4 years, face to face has advantages, any future bids should include plans for a healthy and vigorous virtual component, Jesse likes podcasts better, comments better on Zoom than in person because no hijacking, Discord was used as if it were the hotel, breaking news: panels will be archived at Toronto’s Merrill Collection, CoNZealand Fringe panels, Gary K. Wolfe, near future SF, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, The Population Bomb, near future SF tends to be cautionary, writing more positive futures, Joe Haldeman, F&SF, Asimov’s, Analog, print!, the masquerade, Alec Nevala-Lee on feelings about award name change, a new Hugo category “Best Non-Fiction Work” where scholars can be recognized, what he is writing now, Buckminster Fuller, Syndromes short story collection, thanks to WorldCon volunteers.

Posted by Jesse Willis
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Podcasts: Week Ending Oct 22, 2011

SFFaudio Online Audio

Mentat Jack I’m writing about what I listen to, what it makes me think about and what you might find interesting. Let me know if you think there’s something important I’m missing and if there’s a SFF related podcast you listened to during the week (no matter when it was published) that I should spotlight here.


This week’s post is quite late, but I’m continuing to enjoy reflecting back on what I listen to.

Writing Excuses 6.20: Endings brought to mind the discussion on a recent (for me, it may actually have been the first episode) SF Squeecast, in which an affectionate bashing of Christopher Priest “everyone just walks off stage” endings ensued. Lou Anders joined writing excuses again and endings were discussed largely in relation to the Hollywood formula. Lots of info in 15 minutes and they lie. They’re all super smart. |MP3|

Adventures In SciFi Publishing continues to publish twice a week. Episode 143 discussed Amazon’s new imprint, 47North. Amazon is in a spectacular position for trend spotting and they’re flush with cash to pay for the editing/marketing/etc. needed to make a successful publishing venue. AiSFP ask a good question, will B&N carry these books? They also talk with Brenda Cooper. It’s interesting to hear a futurist talk about her fantasy time travel novel. I’ve not yet read any Cooper, but she’s always a delightful guest. |MP3|

Gary K. Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin and Jonathan Strahan (Coode Street Podcast 71) politely roast Margaret Attwood’s book, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination. This mainstream/literary vs genre discussion rears it’s head constantly (see SF signal’s latest mind meld) and in many fan’s minds Attwood is the poster child for the “I do not write science fiction” crowd. It was pleasant to hear 3 intelligent people at the core of science fiction look at Attwoods relationship with science fiction from every possible angle. |MP3|

Pony by Erik Amundsen is a pure Clarkesworld story (podcast). It’s dark, stylized and highly original science fiction. Told from the first person, this tale of wrangling genetically engineered war ships mixes SF and western so seamlessly that Firefly seems positively mainstream in comparison. |MP3|

Pseudopod is my main audio stop for straight out horror. I’d love a suggestion for another podcast of similar quality to add into the mix. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this week’s tale of a young serial killer and his abusive father. Yardwork was particularly well read. Personally, the level of abuse from the father seemed a bit over the top. I bring that up because of my comment about Radio Nowhere last week. I’m quite happy that the closest experience I have to abuse involved the occasional cruel interaction with childhood “friends.” I digress. The story sort of offers the satisfaction of Dexter, but no matter how sympathetic the protagonist is, there’s no question that he’s a very, very bad boy. |MP3|

While on Pseudopod, I REALLY loved The Cord by Chris Lewis Carter. Usually, when I encounter an idea in a story I’ve recently encountered in a non-fiction science venue, I’m reading science fiction. It’s awesome to encounter this in horror and basically makes strict genre boundaries seem particularly silly. In this case an unreliable narrator is used to great affect in a deceptively simple extrapolation from true stuff that actually happens. Even if horror isn’t normally your cup of tea, don’t miss this one. |MP3|

The second AiSFP I listened to this week involved an interview with K.V. Johansen. I think Lou Anders, her publisher, did a better job making this sound like a must read book in an earlier podcast. That said, she made the world seem like one that will take nicely to a long series and I’m intrigued by some of her earlier fiction for younger readers. Shaun is experimenting a lot with the format of the show, in this case breaking up the interview with a “from the editor’s desk” segment. I’m not sure how I feel about the contrast between a discussion of epic fantasy and a question about the state of science fiction, but the more dynamic format definitely adds life to the show. |MP3|

Episode 315 of Escapepod is Clockwork Fagin by Cory Doctorow. It’s from the new anthology Steampunk! and it’s a both a wonderful example of steampunk and just a great story. It’s full of Dickensian orphans, clockwork analytical engines, and murder – told with a maker ethic that you’d expect from Doctorow. |MP3|

Posted by Steven Klotz

The Coode Street Podcast talks novellas

SFFaudio Online Audio

Notes From Coode StreetWhat is ‘Notes from Coode Street’?  No, it’s not a superhero from Southpark, but a podcast where two sf editors, Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan, talk books.  In episode #52, they talk with the editor of Locus, Liza Trombi.  At around time 21:30, I got interested in this conversation about novellas.  Are novellas the ideal length for an author to try out an idea?  But are novels the ideal length for readers?  It almost makes want to give up novels and try novellas (about 100 pages) for a while.

Here’s the direct link to the |MP3|

Posted by Tamahome

The SFFaudio Podcast #032

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #032 – Jesse and Scott are ramifying and missling things as they talk about recently arrived and newly released audiobooks. We’ve got fists the size of baked hams in this episode so we say crazy things like:

“Soccer is cool!” – “The great thing about Laserdiscs…”

“Tele-Vision. It’s a Science Fiction-sounding word” – “…stupid Morlocks!”

We’re also asking the deep questions like: “Is there anybody more exciting than Robert Silverberg?” Indeed, it’s our most Reganesque show.

Talked about on today’s show:
Blackstone Audio, Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer, The Quitaglio Ascension, End Of An Era, Golden Fleece, CERN, Flash Forward (TV series), The 4400, WWW: Wake, Nightmare At 20,000 Feet by Richard Matheson, Infinivox, The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction edited by Alan Kaster, The Twilight Zone, William Shatner, John Lithgow, Where There’s A Will by Richard Matheson and Richard Christian Matheson, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, The Magicians by Lev Grossman, The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, Codex, B>Wahammer: Slayer Of The Storm God by , Warhammer: 40,000: Heart Of Rage by James Swallow, Danielson Kid (age 14), Major League Soccer, soccer, Audible Frontiers, The Mote In God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Lucifer’s Hammer, Footfall, The Stand by Stephen King, post-apocalypse, Timothy Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler, Fledgling, BBC Audiobooks America, 2000X: Bloodchild, Brilliance Audio, Moonrise by Ben Bova, the Grand Tour novels, Omni magazine, Analog, The Precipice, The Rock Rats, The Silent War The Aftermath, the Asteroid Wars sub-series, releasing digitally on Audible before hardcopy, the MP3-CD format is the best, VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, BluRay, digital copies, Gun With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem, Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick, The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, the Retrieval Artist series, what is noir?, detective fiction, Young Adult fiction, The Cambridge Companion Science Fiction, Brian Stableford, Gary K. Wolfe, Kathryn Cramer, Andy Duncan, Ken MacLeod, The Oxford Dictionary Of Science Fiction, neural (adj), visi-screen (noun), visi-plate (noun), ansible (noun), Kerguelen (proper noun), mind-meld (verb), mind-meld (noun), Recorded Books, Bimbo’s Of The Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb |READ OUR REVIEW|!

Posted by Jesse Willis