The SFFaudio Podcast #416 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #416 -Jesse, Paul Weimer, Mr Jim Moon, and Bryan Alexander discuss Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson.

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, June-July 1939, The Midnight Meat Train, the audio drama from Suspense (Blue Hours), Los Angeles, a truly underground story, how far the infection has spread, like Russian nesting dolls, Pickman’s Model, Pickman’s painting entitled “Subway Accident”, Death Line (1972) (aka Raw Meat), The Terror Of Blue John Gap by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a rabbit warren, movie adaptations, C.H.U.D. (1984), Escape From New York (1981), they’re everywhere, very 80s, atrocious dialogue and logic, an old dodge, John Carpenter, the 59th street bridge, the society of CHUDs, female inmate, a mini-romance, how most people interact with this story, I could barely get through it and I really liked it, weird pacing, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), the camera as observer, Christopher Lee and Donald, “There are monsters in the tunnel inspector!”, a film out of its time, the old boy’s network (is also from Far Below), a mean bully thief sexist, looting the place, two different movies, it somehow works, so garish, quite murky, incredible tunnels in the London Underground, ghost stations, Creep (2004), ghost stories/urban legends, the monsters are descendants of the survivors of a tunnel construction collapse, The Descent (2005), the man aka the cannibal, “mind the doors”, an exploitative horrible monster mess movie, she’s pregnant, keep the community going, a family crypt, a tragedy horror, is Creep (2004) a remake of Raw Meat (aka Death Line)?, where does folklore come from?, a secret medical experiment facility, he’s always preceded by rats, The Graveyard Rats by Henry Kuttner, The Gruesome Book, a race of subterranean beings, a dead body animated by rats, The Gripping Hand and The Mote In God’s Eye, the watchmaker moties, Gremlins (1984), the tendrils out of Lovecraft grow deep, Mimic (1997), Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim, a mad scientist with other responsibilities, giving your right arm, I’m not quite there yet, a reasonable depravity, the Duke Of New York is A#1, a little smoke break, calling forth the CHUDs, we follow Kurt Russell following that guy, Franka Potente looking for George Clooney, empathy for a rapist, it’s all connected, a theme of degeneration in the dark, she’s a bitch, a horrible manipulative person, a nice symmetry, social satire, black humour, this is horrible and great as well, Syria and Russia, this is why the Indians sold Manhattan so cheap, where is The Descent supposed to take place?, they’re albino cave dwellers, Monsters (1990) TV show adaptation of Far Below, The Midnight Meat Train, Clive Barker’s obsession with raw meat, Bradley Cooper, Limitless,
the wrong carriage, butchered bodies, the butcher, the true city fathers, who is the narrator talking to?, you’re going to eat my wife, a choice ending, a deep cut, a new recruit, they weren’t allowed to report on this, a student, a photographer, a vegan, ultra-horror, he’s grain fed!, starting with an image, holding on vs. hanging from, Mahogany, the mythological ferryman, their damnation until they can pass it on, The Books Of Blood by Clive Barker, Dagon (the fanzine), he hadn’t read any Lovecraft at that point, Bryan may have lived Far Below, The Warriors (1979), Death Wish (1974), the Washington, D.C. subway system, Fallout 3, Death Line (Raw Meat) 1972, Escape From New York (1981), C.H.U.D. (1984), sewers, Monsters (1990) TV show, Creep 2004, The Descent (2005), attested by every country in the world and every people, ghouls in the bible?, J.R.R. Tolkien has it, the barrow wights, Edgar Rice Burroughs, white furry monster, the Morlocks, H.G. Wells invented CHUDs (in The Time Machine), The Midnight Meat Train (2008), the vein, going deep, Journey To The Center Of The Earth by Jules Verne, monks are more heavenly, the Wizard Knight worlds, Gene Wolfe, angels, burrowing into mother earth, the long tradition of the earth as maternal, All Quiet On The Western Front, WWI, Château-Thierry, Verdun, bleed France white, “they shall not pass”, the Balrog, delving too deep, a battlefield map, battlefield commander, Vimy Ridge, 12 kilometers of tunnel, Passchendaele (2008), Thompson, the Maxim gun, domestic life, Carl Akeley, taxidermy, big game hunting, apes, killing a leopard with his bare hands, Indiana Jones, The American Museum Of Natural History’s Akeley Hall, Heart Of Darkness, Apocalypse Now, Friedrich Nietzsche on the abyss, ghouls like in Pickman’s Model, hinting, Pickman’s Model is the fictionalized version of Far Below, part simian part canine part mole, Nyarlathotep darkness, The Rats In The Walls, howling blindly, idiot flute players, the dark pharaoh, August Derleth, Cthulhu Water, The Facts In The Case Of Arthur Jermyn And His Family aka The White Ape, it’s not the family, Greek vs. Biblical, the acme of human progress tears itself to bits, national or familial genealogy, the family business, plump Captain Norris, the Morlock connection, staring into the abyss, the hidden race sub-genre, Richard Sharpe Shaver, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, they colonize us, The Mound by Zealia Bishop and H.P. Lovecraft, an inverted high-tech monstrous civilization, let’s see where it goes, less genetic and more philosophical, the description of the funding, NYC Mayor Jimmy Walker, Tammany Hall, childhood power fantasy, for our own safety, you’d understand, carte blanche, you can’t handle the truth, he’s the bad guy, in the warm light of day, taking precautions, the deepness rotting at the core of the Earth, involving the feds, the classic American cop story, NYC police corruption, Prince Of The City with Treat Williams, the War on Terror, At The Mountains Of Madness, Boston subway stations, Bram Stoker, high-tech, nascent technology, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, the telephone, it’s a tasty story, the thing was upon us, out of the darkness, Supernatural Horror In Literature, I learned a lot from Lovecraft, Quiet Please: The Thing On The Fourble Board, they dug too deep!, listen at night in the basement, things that are digging up, Jon Petwee era, Doctor Who: Inferno, Star Trek’s Mirror, Mirror, the Brigadier’s eyepatch and Spock’s beard, evil Captain Archer, green gas causing degeneration, environmentalism, The Green Death another minging story, The Silurians, Call Ghostbusters (1984)!, Edge Of Darkness (1985), Homer, Polyphemus he only sleeps in a cave, neanderthals, and the niter, it grows!

Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson

Mister Mystery - The Subway Terror

Escape From New York's CRAZIES

Dead Of Night 3 April 1974

Tomb Of Darkness 9 July 1974

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #350 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #350 – Jesse, Scott, Jenny, and Tamahome talk about new audiobook releases and recent audiobook arrivals.

Talked about on today’s show:

Childhood’s End, The Expanse, The Magicians book adaptions on Syfy tv, Caprica, Star Wars: The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster, Alien by Foster is Scott’s favorite adaptation, Scott liked the Revenge of the Sith audiobook, The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl, (circled back to the Childhood’s End adaption), Arthur C. Clarke’s Guardian Angel, the original short story, on the pdf pageKing of Shards by Matthew Kressel, Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany, narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, is it a literary marvel?, Golden Fleece by Robert. J. Sawyer is a murder mystery on a generation starship, Sawyer’s dinosaur book End of an Era, cover of Far-SeerThe Long List Anthology [of Hugo nominations], The Year’s Top Short SF Novels 5, audiobooks are the new ebooks, audio that comes before print, Welcome to Night Vale:A Novel by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, zombies are mentioned, A Borrowed Man by Gene Wolfe, sounds like Dixie Flatline from NeuromancerThe Bands of Mourning (Mistborn #6) by Brandon Sanderson, The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher, scary fables, The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, the lost episode about On Stranger Tides, I reviewed itPenric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold, old audiobooks on cassette, a whole lotta Philip K. Dick short stories, what is the order?, how to consume short story collections, alien sex books!, approaching 100% PKD audio saturation, Podkayne of Mars by Robert A. Heinlein, has a feisty girl, humble-bragging, 19 Great Northern Audio titles, The Coming by Joe Haldeman, why Haldeman is good for Jesse’s brain, skim reading, SFBRP #294 – Elizabeth Moon – Trading in Danger

far-seer
Science Fiction Alien Sex Anthologies

Posted by Tamahome

The SFFaudio Podcast #230 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Red Room by H.G. Wells

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #230 – The Red Room by H.G. Wells, read by Simon Vance. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (24 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Luke Burrage, Bryan Alexander, and Simon Vance.

The Red Room (aka The Ghost Of Fear) was first published in The Idler, March 1896.

Talked about on today’s show:
Are there any supernatural elements in The Red Room?, what is the genre of this story?, Gothic Fiction, a deconstruction of the gothic, the ultimate psychological horror story, the apparatus of gothic horror, a psychoanalysis of horror, what we do to ourselves, we scare ourselves, the scary clothes horse, “as long as this house of sin endures”, what happened to the candles, Luke’s theory, what is the sin?, the old people, bad candles?, trick candles?, a Scooby Doo interpretation of the story?, coincidence, how reliable is the narrator?, the origins of the horror are in a fake scare, the changing description of the men, distorted and crouching, the man with the shade, shadow?, ghost?, a blue phial, a green shade, a story of generational transfer, the rising generation of science, the significance of the narrator’s age (28 years), what’s up with the gun?, an impossible sturdiness, the unknowableness of your own mind, the final word – or is it?, The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James, Eric S. Rabkin, an evil relationship, Ganymede with an eagle (Zeus), cup-bearer is a euphemism, does the Chinaman statuary represent the Yellow Peril?, clothing fashioned in dead brains, the generational interpretation, the grotesque, why not three norns?, the three disabilities, a tremendous tremor, 150% spillage, a mocking shadow, a pro-science story, fire = knowledge, the light of science, the return of ignorance with the return of darkness, why is the narrator there?, is this a Hound Of The Baskervilles situation, the previous tenant, the glass before the fire, the three mirrors, Mise en abyme, “your own choosing”, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, what side in the public debate of new spiritualism, it felt modern to Luke, The Pit And The Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe, Dracula is a contemporary of The Red Room, the subterranean passage, Eric is a big Freudian, a meticulous forensic analytic description, this isn’t Mulder this is Scully, Simon Vance has voiced Dracula twice, Fangland (a modern 60 Minutes style retelling of Dracula), updates to Dracula, The Dracula Tapes, The Stone Tape (1972), byte by byte, Nigel Kneale, The Quatermass Experiment, Lorraine Castle, generic European castle, skeptics haunted by a ghost that isn’t a ghost, a modern Gothic horror story, is it the carbon monoxide coming off the fungus?, the stone as a medium, solid state recording, a scientific explanation, a Lovecraftian pre-human recording, it may not be need to be remade, Quentin Tarantino remakes bad movies as a good movies, haunted digital media, Alien, MOTHER is basically HAL, Demon Seed, the anti-Japaneses bias as a more modern Yellow Peril, the medium of the tale, the staircase, “it’s not there’s nothing there”, the good-time gal, the wrong interpretation, The Crawling Chaos by H.P. Lovecraft and Winifred V. Jackson, becoming lost in your own head, he brought the ghost into the room, spirits as ghosts, why is it a red room?, red in the flames, it’s like the grate is a prison, a slick tunnel to the red room, a womb like room, a beige room, Ash spurting sperm everywhere, a haunted castle in space, Alien as the opposite of Star Wars, the science hero angle, gothic explique, teasing out a Gothic reading, in medias res, Freudian spaces, on this night of all nights, its like their casting a spell, is he a journalist?, Simon thinks the narrator is the new owner, Christopher Priest, The Prestige, why Christopher Priest is not as popular as he should be, his head and his lips are bloody, a bashed face, The Door In The Wall by H.G. Wells, is the story open, Luke is skeptical about the openness and the double blooding, belying the begrudgement, the curious escape,”H.G. Wells is a genius writer”, The War Of The Worlds from the alien perspective, Little Wars, “a heavy blow at last upon my forehead”, an almost 2nd person POV shift, “global warming is a fake”, the haunted man not the haunted room, Gene Wolfe, gothic markers, Henry James, Boon, the judgements of history, Wells’ agenda, The Time Machine, The Chronic Argonauts, horrific jellyfish and rabbits, nameless characters, minimal information, the Wells-Wolfe connection, The Shadow Of The Torturer, the always unreliable narrator, Understanding Comics by Scott Mccloud, Hello Kitty, part of the appeal of the Twilight books is in how badly drawn Bella is, inviting blankness, Things To Come.

The Red Room by H.G. Wells

The Red Room by H.G. Wells

The Red Room Word Cloud

Understanding Comics - Amplification Through Simplification

The Red Room by H.G. Wells

Art for the cover of DC Comics GHOSTS Limited Edition Collectors Edition

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #213 – READALONG: The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age by Stanisław Lem

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #213 – Scott, Jesse, and Tamahome talk about the Audible.com audiobook The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age by Stanisław Lem

Talked about on today’s show:
reality shows, Duck Dynasty, about words, puns, rhyming, nothing, negative, was Lem a robot?, modern or timeless?, H.G. Wells, full of great ideas, fables, fairy tales, The Brothers Grimm, royalty,

“Have it compose a poem- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter S!!” …

Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.”

shooting an arrow at a barn, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Robert Sheckley, robots, the Google Doodle tribute to Stanisław Lem, a metaphor for our reality, the Wikipedia entry on Fables, Aesop’s Fables, Eric S. Rabkin, Scott is interested in Lem, Karol Wojtyła (aka Pope John Paul II), Poland, a small interesting country, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, Audible’s audiobook, why did Jenny “Lem” this Lem?, Fox is not necessarily always the same fox, distant past? distant future?, “mostly harmless” palefaces, Princess Crystal, everybody’s a robot, a suitable suitor,

“Your Highness, my name is Myamlak and I crave nought else but to couple with you
in a manner that is liquid, pulpy, doughy and spongy, in accordance with the customs of
my people. I purposely permitted myself to be captured by the pirate, and requested him
to sell me to this portly trader, as I knew the latter was headed for your kingdom. And I
am exceeding grateful to his laminated person for conveying me hither, for I am as full of
love for you as a swamp is full of scum.”
The princess was amazed, for truly, he spoke in paleface fashion, and she said:
“Tell me, you who call yourself Myamlak the paleface, what do your brothers do
during the day?”
“O Princess,” said Ferrix, “in the morning they wet themselves in clear water, pouring
it upon their limbs as well as into their interiors, for this affords them pleasure.
Afterwards,
they walk to and fro in a fluid and undulating way, and they slush, and they
slurp, and when anything grieves them, they palpitate, and salty water streams from
their eyes, and when anything cheers them, they palpitate and hiccup, but their eyes
remain relatively dry. And we call the wet palpitating weeping, and the dry—laughter.”
“If it is as you say,” said the princess, “and you share your brothers’ enthusiasm for
water, I will have you thrown into my lake, that you may enjoy it to your fill, and also I
will have them weigh your legs with lead, to keep you from bobbing up …”
“Your Majesty,” replied Ferrix as the sage had taught him, “if you do this, I must
perish, for though there is water within us, it cannot be immediately outside us for longer
than a minute or two, otherwise we recite the words ‘blub, blub, blub,’ which signifies our
last farewell to life.”
“But tell me, Myamlak,” asked the princess, “how do you furnish yourself with the
energy to walk to and fro, to squish and to slurp, to shake and to sway?”
“Princess,” replied Ferrix, “there, where I dwell, are other palefaces besides the
hairless variety, palefaces that travel predominantly on all fours. These we perforate until
they expire, and we steam and bake their remains, and chop and slice, after which we
incorporate their corporeality into our own. We know three hundred and seventy-six
distinct methods
of murdering, twenty-eight thousand five hundred and ninety-seven
distinct methods of preparing the corpses, and the stuffing of those bodies into our bodies
(through an aperture, called the mouth) provides us with no end of enjoyment.
Indeed,
the art of the preparation of corpses is more esteemed among us than astronautics and is
termed gastronautics, or gastronomy—which, however, has nothing to do with
astronomy.”
“Does this then mean that you play at being cemeteries, making of yourselves the
very coffins that hold your four-legged brethren?”

the poet robot,

Trurl adjusted, modulated, expostulated,
disconnected, ran checks, reconnected, reset, did everything he could think of, and the
machine presented him with a poem that made him thank heaven Klapaucius wasn’t
there to laugh—imagine, simulating the whole Universe
from scratch, not to mention
Civilization in every particular, and to end up with such dreadful doggerel! Trurl put in six
cliche filters, but they snapped like matches; he had to make them out of pure corundum
steel. This seemed to work, so he jacked the semanticity up all the way, plugged in an
alternating rhyme generator—which nearly ruined everything, since the machine
resolved to become a missionary among destitute tribes on far-flung planets. But at the
very last minute, just as he was ready to give up and take a hammer to it, Trurl was
struck by an inspiration; tossing out all the logic circuits, he replaced them with
self-regulating egocentripetal narcissistors. The machine simpered a little, whimpered a
little, laughed bitterly, complained of an awful pain on its third floor, said that in general it
was fed up, though, life was beautiful but men were such beasts and how sorry they’d all
be when it was dead and gone. Then it asked for pen and paper. Trurl sighed with relief,
switched it off and went to bed.

Men are such beasts but we’ll be sad when they’re gone, the paperbook, kudos to narrator Scott Aiello, satire of something, Mandrillion the Greatest, ruler of the Multitudians, the perfect advisor, fantasy with Science Fiction language, lawyer soup, Escape Pod, Peter Swirski, A Stanislaw Lem Reader, reviews, people who review Lem, Lem = genius, sitting in awe, “Imagine a mixture of Borges, Calvino, Saint-Exupéry, Pynchon, Douglas Adams, Samuel Beckett, L. Frank Baum, Dr. Seuss, Lewis Caroll, and perhaps a little Philip K. Dick. That’s what this is like, sort of.”, complete impatience with reading “another one of these or another one of those”, A Perfect Vacuum, a big show-off, the ideas per story quotient, Gene Wolfe, Jorge Luis Borges, meta, overwhelming wordplay, digressions aplenty, format and rules, classic Hard SF, the hyperdrive handwaviumed away, all of language is handwavium, Sodium stars with an N, we think when we’ve named something we’ve understood it, make sense out of nonsense, stardust into toilet seats:

Feeling dismay rather
than disappointment at this neglect, I immediately sat down and wrote The Scourge of
Reason
, two volumes, in which I showed that each civilization may choose one of two
roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course
of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of
stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this
because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into
Something Fathomable, and will not stop until the nebulae and planets have been
processed to cradles, chamber pots and bombs, all in the name of Sublime
Order, for only a Universe with pavement, plumbing, labels and catalogues is, in its sight, acceptable
and wholly respectable.

the are no rules in The Cyberiad, owookiee’s 1 star review of The Cyberiad, a Droopy cartoon as directed by Tex Avery, The Perfect Imitation adapted, saggy biologicals, Daniel Mróz’ illustrations, Tobias Buckell’s blog post about The Fate Of Today’s Book Bloggers, the way Luke Burrage reviews books, a constructed object vs. a piece of art, conversations between writers, how books should be talked about, the SFSignal new releases posts, zombie novels, you’re reading the books wrong, you should read by author, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Telling Lies For Fun And Profit, Philip K. Dick, George R.R. Martin, Fred Himebaugh (@Fredosphere), Twitter fight!, looking for reasons not to read books, Your Movie Sucks by Roger Ebert, if a book sucks you usually stop reading that author entirely, Neal Stephenson, positive that tell you nothing about why it’s good, wandering through the woods eating rocks and bark, moods, Star Wars fans, get meta, reviewing novels vs. short stories, in the context, negative reviews tell you a lot more about a book than positive reviews, this book has too much science, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, panspermia and ancient astronauts, the finite and the infinite, iTunes U, characters on Battlestar Galactica are always confronted the question “what is human?”, synthesis, the enemy is the ally, the enemy is indistinguishable from one’s self, a space fable, Caprica, Sumerian Aramaic Sanskrit and Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Firefly, a gift of kindness, Porco Rosso, Hayao Miyazaki, what is IT Tam?

Audible - The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age by Stanislaw Lem

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #169 – TALK TO: Jonathan Davis

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #169 – Jesse and Luke Burrage (from the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast) talk to audiobook narrator Jonathan Davis.

Talked about on today’s show:
Not the Jonathan Davis of Korn, favourite audiobook narrators, Luke’s real job (juggling), how to become an audiobook narrator (or a professional juggler), acting, theatrical acting, voice over, New York, Testament by John Grisham, Brazil, Portuguese vs. Brazilian Portuguese, Gone For Soldiers by Jeff Shaara, long form narration, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, urban samurais and Aleutian assassins, binaural recording, The Shadow Of The Torturer by Gene Wolfe, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, London, Paris, Iowa City, Thailand, genetic engineering, Japan, accessory dogs, GMO food, graphic sex scenes in mid-juggle, Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis, Zoolander, American Psycho, a 12 page sex scene, Star Wars, Genghis Khan And The Making Of The Modern World by Jack Weatherford, straight readings vs. impersonations, Yoda, Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Luke re-edits Star Wars, alien languages, Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer, When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger, Ian Mcdonald, North Africa, Egypt, Arab Spring, Bedouin, narration styles, straight narration vs. theatrical performance vs. cinematic narration, Michael Caine, scalpel vs. laser, Mike Resnick’s Starship series, voice based books, Star Trek, David Copperfield, Oliver Sacks, The Watchers by Jon Steele, Kirinyaga, The Scar by Sergey Dyachenko and Marina Dyachenko, Starship: Mutiny, Elinor Huntington, existential resonance, Harry Potter, conspiracy, dystopia, Ray Bradbury, Cool Air by H.P. Lovecraft, Starship: Rebel, no research, just fun, language, audiobooks as a collaboration between an author, a narrator and a listener, Walking Dead by Greg Rucka, espionage, comics, Neil Gaiman, Catch And Release by Lawrence Block, Hex Appeal, Jim Butcher, The Dresden Files, studio time, The Book Of The New Sun, “do your homework”, “suddenly revealed to be a Texan”, an Aleutian Rastafarian, Hiro Protagonist, Minding Tomorrow, revealing voices, American Gods, George Guidall, “the perfect audiobook experience”, Woden (aka Odin aka Mr. Wednesday), The Stand by Stephen King, reading with your ears, preferred narration styles, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, racism, Dune, Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, Johannesburg, South Africa, fantasy fiction shouldn’t have an American accent, Luke’s SFBRP review of The Scar, House Of Suns by Alastair Reynolds, an Arkansas accent, inner monologue vs. dialogue, the Sling Blade voice, Casaundra Freeman, audiobook narration is difficult, learning the characters over a series, George R.R. Martin, A.J. Hartley, Act Of Will, Will Power, working with authors, Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh, Book Of The Road, male and female narration, Gabra Zackman, Jonathan is the infodumper, Full Cast Audio, a one man show vs. theatrical collaboration, Scott Brick, Feyd-Rautha, a Jamaican brogue?, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, do you like computer games?, Max Payne 3, Tron, “that’s my neck fat”, Vladamir Lem, Armando Becker.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Podcasts: Week Ending Oct 29, 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.


I’m still catching up on the SF Squeecast. This week I listened to Episode Two: Dystopia A-Go-Go!. It’s a stretch to wrap the label of dystopia around the particular squeeables, much less the places the discussion wanders, however they cover some fun stuff. I like their coverage of David Louis Edleman’s Jump 255 series. I read and loved Infoquake. I really should go back and read the rest. I love how passionate and detailed reviews of music (even music I may not care for) can be. In this case, our panel of designated squeers really bring David Bowie‘s Outside to life. I’ll definitely be giving this concept album a listen. The post-apocalyptic novel The Chrysalids by John Wyndham and an episode of the cartoon Phineas and Ferb round out the discussion. |MP3|

I listened to two Beneath Ceasless Skies stories this week. Both dealt with ways in which magic users are oppressed. The magic in Gone Sleeping by Heather Clitheroe |MP3| had horrific cascading consequences. It’s interesting how we assume a naive child narrator to be unreliable, but she’s been told stories and been given warnings… The Magick by Kristina C. Mottla |MP3| involves slavery. It’s a slavery built on fear of the other, but much like in Gone Sleeping it is magic users that are feared. The magic is more controlled in this story, but obviously there are two meanings for control in this case. These are both decent fantasy stories, but they’re even stronger side by side.

I’m not sure if the Angry Robot Podcast, hosted by Mur Lafferty, is still a going concern. It’s definitely not playing nice with Google Listen and the last episode was released in July. Huffduffer may have to come to the rescue. I listened to episode #11, an interview with Lavie Tidhar. I’ve really enjoyed Lavie’s short fiction and he gives a great interview. Definitely need to read one of his novels. The interview focused on Camera Obscura, sequel to The Bookman (both from Angry Robot), but also discusses HebrewPunk, other books, and Lavie’s status as an international man of mystery. |MP3|

Two from Drabblecast:

  1. Episode 217 is Followed by Will McIntosh. It uses zombies as an allegory for externalized human cost. This is the type of story that’ll drive mad anyone too set in their mind about what zombie fiction is supposed to be, but it’s a great story. It drives home a difficult moral point. |MP3|
  2. Episode 219 is The Big Splash by George R. Galuschak. The oceans have risen and a lone alien smokes out on the beach observing humanity. Splash is as light as Followed is heavy, in spite of the shark attack and dying dog. |MP3|

SFBRP #138 is a review of Gene Wolfe’s The Sword of the Lictor, 3rd in The Book of the New Sun. This is the first episode of this podcast I’ve listened to. While I was listening, I thought possibly that the podcaster, Luke Burrage, might me insane. I hoped that he was playing around with the unreliable narrator concept that’s one of the important components of this series. It turns out the latter was the case. For the record, Gene Wolfe is a master at this technique – Luke Burrage: not so much, but it was an amusing review. |MP3|

The Coode Street Podcast always provides a spectacular reading list. Gary and Johnathan mention scores and scores of books in a podcast, most of which they make me want to read. The same thing happens when they interview someone. In the case of episode #72 that would be Ian McDonald. His latest is the first in a young adult multiverse adventure called Planesrunner. This has been mentioned before on the podcast and sounds like a ton of fun. The discussion was pure gold for those of us that are fascinated by the publishing aspects of genre fiction. McDonald’s River of Gods, which was followed by the acclaimed progressively nearer future novels: Brazyl and The Dervish House, was published in the US by Pyr and marketed 100% as science fiction. However in the UK it was marketed as mainstream fiction by Simon & Schuster. Even if the mechanics of publishing bore you, McDonald has a very cool Bibliography and you’ll come out of this podcast wanting to read all of it. |MP3|

Writing Excuses 6.21 was hilariously awesome. All 4 brainstormed the kernel of a story from the same collection of random elements. Each of their processes are different and unique voices come through. Great stuff/Small package as always. |MP3|

There’s not much story in Joe Haldeman’s Never Blood Enough (Starship Sofa 208). The world building is pretty intriguing and the main character is as well developed as space allows, however, the story is murder mystery. What could the murderer be on a planet of dangerous lifeforms? Possibly a dangerous lifeform… As a subplot in a larger work, this might have more meat. There’s more than just one story in an episode of Starship Sofa. I’m quite surprised how much I enjoy the Poetry Planet feature. It was good to hear that Tobias Buckell’s Kickstarter program worked and he’ll be writing the rest of his space opera series. I quite enjoyed all 3 of the previous novels Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin and Sly Mongoose. Be sure to check out the sneak peak of Apocalypse Ocean he gave us in Placa del Fuego. |MP3|

Sometimes, listening to two new voices on a podcast it’s difficult to tell them apart. Andy Duncan and Jeff Ford (Locus Roundtable Podcast) have VERY distinct accents so this wasn’t even vaguely a problem. I’d just read Ford’s Bright Morning that was mentioned near the end of the podcast, so it was quit interesting to hear the discussion of writers inserting themselves into their stories. The discussion was heavily weighted in the direction of “what can be done with fiction” vs “how does it happen.” I’m realizing more and more that that’s an important distinction. The more I write about discussion podcasts the more I want a better vocabulary for what TYPE of discussion podcast it is. I’ll explore this in a dedicated post. |MP3|

PodCastle Miniature 66: The Witch’s Second Daughter by Marissa K. Lingen: A vague yet elegantly described magic system explored to a logical conclusion. |MP3|

And the final podcast for the week, SFFaudio #97. I listened to this as the sun set while literally parked on the 405 (I was about 100 yards away from a motorcycle vs big-rig accident that had shut down the freeway), so I probably payed a bit more attention to it than I otherwise would have. They discussed Jose Luis Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths and Fair Game by Philip K. Dick. I was introduced to the Borges story by my academic adviser during a quantum mechanics class he was teaching and I was not groking. Interestingly I was introduced to Borges for the first time during a mathematics seminar by a visiting professor who specialized in the math underlying String theory. Borges’ writing is fractal. The deeper you dig into it the more you find and the more it makes sense (or the more confused you get – most often both if you really understand the issues he’s wrestling with.) Grab a collection of Borges Collected Fictions. And keep it close at hand for when you need some mental exercise. Fair Game sounds neat too. |MP3|

Posted by Steven Klotz