Harry Harrison – Page 4

SFBRP #134 – A Science Fiction Book Review Podcast Review Podcast

SFFaudio Online Audio

Our friend Luke Burrage, of the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, has a new episode up (SFBRP #134) that features a discussion of other book reviewing podcasts. Writes Luke:

“This episode I invited Jesse and Tamahome from the SFFaudio Podcast to review other podcasts that review, or at least talk about, science fiction and fantasy novels and other literature. This was inspired by an overcrowded and shallow look at podcasts on a recent episode of the SF Signal podcast that Jesse took part in, and we all agreed we had more to say on the subject.”

Have a listen |MP3|

Podcast feed: http://www.sfbrp.com/?feed=podcast

Here’s what we talked about:
Luke’s been busy, reviewing podcasts about science fiction book reviews, Tamahome comes from Fushigi Yûgi, The SFFaudio Podcast, writing a blog is slower than talking on a podcast, SFFaudio readalongs are like a book club, talking with authors, TOPIC episodes, FOOD in Science Fiction, STUPIDITY AND INTELLIGENCE in SF, chatting about SFF literature, Luke is not much on comics, TV, or movies, Tamahome adds colour, “a three-body problem”, Robert J. Sawyer, rape, Hominids, “copious shownotes”, a movie is a footnote to the book, When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger, Children Of Men by P.D. James, I Am Legend, pretending there is no movie, Luke doesn’t totally agree with his own argument, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, “it’s The Matrix problem” (sequels), Blade Runner, destroying the sense of wonder, this is why religions eventually collapse too (drilling down), lot’s of hippies having a rave doesn’t interest Luke (or me), gnosticism shouldn’t or can’t be known, sequel-itis or sequel fatigue, it seems as if the only books on store shelves today are series, SFBRP reviews are about just one book per episode and only books, Luke get’s great feedback, Goodreads.com, Amazon.com, SFBRP community is self serving but with wonderful externalities, Luke’s Creative Podcast, A Good Story Is Hard To Find, Scott D. Danielson, Julie Davis, Eifelheim, Catholicism, spoilers, A Good Story Is Hard To Find may be the best podcast out there, SFBRP is irregular, Serenity, Stories Of Your Life by Ted Chiang, Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke, East Of Eden, The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey, historical fiction, Fantasy, mystery, Quiz Show, “the traces of one reality”, the Writing Excuses guys are three Mormons?, SFSignal Podcast #70 with Jesse, podcast lists with no discussion (and no women), The Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy podcast #42 (an interview with Eoin Colfer), [**Eoin should be pronounced “Oh-Ehn”**], the purpose of sequels is to milk the back catalogue, Isabel Allende, the Douglas Adams estate, The Dirk Gently TV series (trailer), John Joseph Adams, David Barr Kirtley is pretty damn good, philosophy, bring the interviewee into the discussion, sycophantic interviews, Jack Womack, Requires Only That You Hate, The Sword And Laser Podcast is a book club podcast, a casual book club, The Jane Austen Book Club, Rim and Scott, The Geek Nights Book Club, board games and computer games, comics and manga, World War Z, The Lies Of Loch Lamora, The Prince Of Nothing, the Geek Nights forum, “speller and gramming”, Rim and Scott (and Luke) are frequent guests on the Friday Night Party Line podcast, Beyond The Door, The Hanging Stranger by Philip K. Dick, Fair Game by Philip K. Dick and The Garden Of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges, the Lightspeed podcast (has spoiler introductions), Jack McDevitt, “he doesn’t want you to worry”, Minding Tomorrow by Luke Burrage, time travel, Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds, The Things (Sffaudio post) by Peter Watts, Courtney Brown of Emory University, the Science Fiction And Politics podcast, Foundation by Isaac Asimov, “all I’m here to do is make you guys argue”, Janelle Monáe, Darwin’s Radio by Gregg Bear, Dan Simmons (Tam was thinking of Darwin’s Blade), Snow Crash, bringing a different spin, The Kick Ass-Mystic Ninjas, Harry Harrison, spoilers don’t necessarily really spoil anything, medieval Germany, when walking a tight-rope Luke strikes a balance, the Gweek podcast, Mark Frauenfelder has a genuine enthusiasm that’s infectious, Ready Player One, Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing format is broken for me, the Paul The Book Guy podcast, it’s a panel show with sound effects and jingles, the segments are way too brief, “books, audiobooks, audio drama”, “a series of commercials” it’s overproduced, The Skiffy And Fanty Show, John DeNardo, Geek Night’s competition for the worst podcast on the internet, War Of The Worlds 2, “Torture Cinema”, Shaun Duke and Jen Zink, “book mountain”, “this podcast is all about me and my slurpee”, picking crappy movies on purpose, “a little bit shallow”, having a barrier to entry, there aren’t as many podcasts about books as one would hope, SFBRP is highly placed on iTunes, The Dragon Page podcast, Arizona, Web Genie, Adventures In Scifi Publishing, podcasts about publishing don’t interest Jesse, stop sending Luke books to review, the many TWiT podcasts, claims of “we’re not shilling” = shilling, do you need to compromise your art for $50?, professional podcasters provide a service, Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft made a product that is free, great, and works?, Leo Laporte is has a genuine personality, Jeff Jarvis, Audible ad segments on TWiT have value (and should be compiled), Andy Ihnatko, Macbreak Weekly, the SFBRP:RP, (Tam forgot to mention Coode Street/Galactic Suburbia)

[**Thanks also to Kate O’Hanlon**]

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: The Stainless Steel Rat audiobooks

SFFaudio Commentary

BRILLIANCE AUDIO - The Stainless Steel Rat SERIES

I’m not a fan of series, normally, but I’m utterly enthralled by this one. More than fifty years in the writing The Stainless Steel Rat series is completely available, for the first time, as series of audiobooks from Brilliance Audio.

James Bolivar diGriz (aka Slippery Jim diGriz) is the protagonist of the series and the titular Stainless Steel Rat of the title. He’s an anti-hero you’ll be wholly in favour of. He’s slick and quick and fast with a quip as he tells his own tale, in first person (past tense), like an adventurer out of some long forgotten future age.

As the first novel, The Stainless Steel Rat |READ OUR REVIEW|, begins diGriz is a low down and completely immaculate criminal, an uncatchable super-thief and con-man who has earned his name for never being caught. But before too long he’s soon baited, corralled, and ensnared by an insidious interstellar agency that’s been tracking the resourceful rodent and means to draft him!

By the end of the first story-arc the reluctant recruit has settled down (and married) the psychopathic arch-criminal that he’d been chasing after. Then, moonlighting on his extended honeymoon (the next couple books), he proceeds to traipse across both time and space as an interstellar (and inter-epoch) troubleshooter.

You’d think it’d be hard for diGriz to play good guy, but this galahad in grey steel still has his fun. In fact, he funds all of his galactic gallivanting by good old fashioned bank robbery! And when not actually in the act of larceny he never fails to luxuriate in the finest of hotels (or the finest cave of his own construction). Soon he’s snuffing out a intragalactic coup-d’etat, getting grief from his honey and back to stealing all of his boss’s finest cigars right before existence ends. Then it is all: ‘Quick give me a copy of your mind, and yours too, and all those weapons there and this equipment there! I’ve got to travel back in time to a planet called “Dirt” to prevent all this nothing from happening.’

Amazingly, the stories just work. The universe which Harry Harrison has created is one in which anything that can be imagined exists. There’s mind wiping, personality reconstruction, sleep gas grenades, mind and memory transfer, immortality, gravity belts, atomic compressor tools, faster than light travel and robots robots robots everywhere! Harrision invents the tech for the Rat to play with but never fully describes it. And so it never seems old-fashioned, becomes all the more plausible and you can just go with the action. The characters are fresh and perky with personality. The plots, which are grandiose but never very central to the immediate action, serve to provide scene after scene of hilarious problem and ingenious solution for the wily Stainless Steel rodent to navigate. The novels aren’t long, and make for great fun between heavier books by the likes of H.G. Wells and Joe Haldeman.

To me, narrator Phil Gigante has become Slippery Jim diGriz. He’s playful, full of accents for all the colourful characters and he pitches every scene just how it should be – fun, funny and fast.

If you’re looking for a series that won’t let you down, you’ve got to try this one. I’m absolutely loving it!

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #114

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #114 – Scott, Jesse and Tamahome talk about recent arrivals and new releases

Talked about on today’s show:
SFFaudio gets ‘slashdotted’ by Windows Weekly, get Go The F To Sleep for free (and see video), Scott’s stack of new audiobooks (2:15), The Initiate Brother by Sean Russell has a nice cover, Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein, time travel with nuclear bombs, castration, Dark Mist Rising by Anna Kendall has no tattoos, Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okarafor is heavy, Nnedi was on Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, should we have note timestamps? (13:41?), Luke does notes like us on his new podcast, discussions are more fun than interviews, can you link to a time offset of an mp3?, youtube subtitles, search the text in podcasts (podzinger or podscope?), the Warriors anthology by Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin is split up (into 3 actually), A Game of Thrones tv show, Peter Dinklage rocks as Tyrion, Warriors audiobook could be an Sffaudio Essential, Shadowchaser by Alexey Pehov is Russian fantasy, Kevin Hearne’s Hounded (cover) and Hexed, hopefully they’re fantasy, a triptych from Harry Harrison: The Stainless Steel Rat Sings The Blues (#8), The Stainless Steel Rat Goes To Hell (#9), and The Stainless Steel Rat Joins The Circus (#10), what’s the right order??, John Barnes’s Daybreak Zero, pay attention!, Selected Stories Of Philip K. Dick (vol 1 & 2), Jesse’s big paper stack (32:34), graphic novels: Locke & Key Volume 1: Welcome To Lovecraft by Joe Hill (it’s not just one issue, I was wrong), Invincible by Robert Kirkman (creator of The Walking Dead) , “his mom would see those heads being chopped off”, Fresh Ink comics review video podcast, Robert E. Howard’s Savage Sword, Jesse got some nice book deals (36:14), Jolly Olde Bookstore received $12,000 worth of books, Star Science Fiction Stories #3, The Best of Henry Kuttner, 4 Philip K. Dick Ace Doubles, also finished Ex Machina (graphic novel) by Brian K. Vaughan, the series that isn’t Y: The Last Man, Runaways, The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones — interviewed on I Should Be Writing #202, some ‘dirty’ magazines, more Scott stuff (45:55), Scott on LibraryThing.com, LibraryThing Early Reviewers, The Generation Starship in Science Fiction by Simone Caroti, Heinlein generation starship novel (it’s Orphans of the Sky), Wall-E, Scott starts new releases (51:23), Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, fantasy author name and science fiction author name, “system opera”, The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon (about autism), Chicks Kick Butt anthology, no list of short story titles…again, different urban fantasy butts, Audible micro-credits?, our weekly plead to get Ted Chiang on Audible, Free Apocalypse Al, Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris gets a direct translation (before it was Polish->French->English), The Cyberiad robot short stories, wait…Jesse has more books (59:19), We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, lured by the introduction, Other Worlds, Other Gods: Adventures In Religious Science Fiction anthology edited by Mayo Mohs, perfect for Scott’s podcast, clockwork Jesus, next readalong?, Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl, “he knows which side his bread is oiled on”, Scott’s having a shootout, “big dying words”, quality of The Marching Morons and C.M. Kornbluth, Hex by Allen Steele, “why is there a hole?”, Allen Steele’s article on whatever.scalzi, what it means to finish

Fantasy And Science Fiction Magazine
Ace Doubles

Posted by Tamahome

How The Old World Died by Harry Harrison

SFFaudio Online Audio

Added sound effects, and real rush job on the reading don’t detract too much from the appeal of this cute short short story by Harry Harrison (its just five pages). Here’s the description from MisterNizz’s blog:

“A self-replicating machine is, as the name suggests, an artificial self-replicating system that relies on conventional large-scale technology and automation. Certain idiosyncratic terms are occasionally found in the literature. For example, the term “clanking replicator” was once used by Drexler to distinguish macroscale replicating systems from the microscopic nanorobots or “assemblers” that nanotechnology may make possible, but the term is informal and is rarely used by others in popular or technical discussions. Replicators have also been called “von Neumann machines” after mathemetician John von Neumann, who first rigorously studied the idea. In this short story, Harry Harrison depicts a future in a world transformed by Von Neumann machines.”

After listening to the story it sounds like a macro scale precursor to the grey goo problem to me.

How The Old World Ended by Harry Harrison How The Old World Died
By Harry Harrison; Read by Walt O’Hara
1 |MP3| – Approx. 10 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: misternizz.podbean.com
Podcast: May 26, 2011
This is how the world ended – and this is what will happen next! First published in the October 1964 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.

[via Mister Nizz’s HuffDuffer.com]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #101 – RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #101 – Scott, Jesse and Tamahome talk recent arrivals

Talked about on today’s show:
The Wise Man’s Fear is long, ♪ Hellhole ♪, The Road To Dune |READ OUR REVIEW|, quality of Dune series, Adjustment Bureau, Twilight Zone, A Kind Of A Stopwatch, The Stainless Steel Rat For President, The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted, Richard Matheson, Other Kingdoms, (parentheses), Richard Christian Matheson (son), I Am Legend comic, Splatterpunk, some Masters Of Horror tv episodes, James Tiptree, Jr., The Screwfly Solution, Lovecraft, Dreams In The Witchhouse, Ambrose Bierce, Damn Thing, John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns episode, incontinence, Alex Bledsoe, Dark Jenny, Sword-Edged Blonde, Blood Groove |READ OUR REVIEW|, Alex H And The Airship City, Girl Genius Online comics, Airship Fantasy, William Gibson, Count Zero, Necromancer?, Normads Of Gor, Assasins Of Gor, Warlord Of Mars, Elvin Blood, cover of Warlord Of Mars #5 comic, comics vs trade paperbacks, 3 YA titles, Sweep: Book Of Shadows, don’t worry the title isn’t Wicca, Liparulo’s Whirlwind, Guardians of Ga’Hoole Book 9: The First Collier, would owls be good pets?, Shadowfever has a soundtrack, Darkfever used to be on Podiobooks, Moning is not George R. R. Martin, Fevre Dream, The Armageddon Rag, March In Country, Lifeforce the movie, The Executioner series, E. E. Knight at Graphicaudio, “I Am Batman!”, Batman: Inferno at Graphicaudio, Kings Of The North, borderline sf, Clive Cussler, The Jungle, aural noir, Andrew Vachss, rhymes with tax, child protection, Only Child, Down Here, Hard Looks comics, Shaken, Jacq Daniels, drink names, Tequila Mockingbird, Lucky Stiff, a million honeybees, this is noir romance, Romeo And Juliet spoiler, horoscopes, David Suzuki, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Radio Drama Revival, Anita Blake #1 (Guilty Pleasures), Death Cloud (young Sherlock), Fountains Of Paradise, Fade To Blonde, Gilgamesh The King |READ OUR REVIEW|, The God Engines |READ OUR REVIEW|, fiction where “stuff happens”, Roy Dotrice world record, The God Engines review gender controversy

Posted by Tamahome

(note by poster: listening to yourself is weird)

The SFFaudio Podcast #098 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #098 – Scott and Jesse talk with Luke Burrage about the new audiobook releases. And we also play Philip K. Dick’s “Preserving Machine” game in which you pick a piece of music and transform it into an animal.

Talked about on today’s show:
New releases, The Adjustment Bureau by Philip K. Dick, Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review, Roger Ebert, “Meet Cute”, Phil Gigante, The Stainless Steel Rat, Gregg Margarite, Russian Ark, Hermitage, The SFBRP Podcast, Your Movie Sucks, Dune, “This movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time.”, Korean movies mix humor, horror, drama, “the tone is off” in Shakespeare too, Unknown (a special edition of Out Of My Head), Berlin, Bronson Pinchot, Richard Matheson, On Stranger Tides, Bronson Pinchot has “a whole crew full of pirates in his mouth”, Audible.com, Beverly Hills Cop, Gideon’s Sword by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Arthur C. Clarke’s Richter 10 by Mike McQuay, a Gene Wolfe writing exercise, The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin |READ OUR REVIEW|, “trickster, prodigy, master thief”, techno-thriller-ish, Planet Of The Damned by Harry Harrison, West Of Eden, Bill The Galactic Hero, Long After Midnight by Ray Bradbury, Tantor Media, Michael Prichard, Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds, The Odyssey of Homer, “he’s in a boat, Poseidon hates him, then he’s home”, the origins of Necromancy are in The Odyssey, Philip K. Dick was directly inspired by The Odyssey, An Improvised Life: A Memoir by Alan Arkin, James Randi, The Black Widowers, The Trapdoor Spiders, Isaac Asimov, the Amazing Larry, Luke jumps on giant balloons |VIDEO|, Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Physics Of The Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny And Our Daily Lives By The Year 2100 by Michio Kaku, Art Bell and Coast To Coast AM, Jesse thinks string theory is bullshit, 2012, Higgs boson, Tachyons, what’s wrong with futurism, Popular Mechanics/Popular Science and the flying car, filtering metastases, The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell, Cynical-C, Kenneth Branagh as Wallander, the relationship between Science Fiction and detective fiction is that both allow the reader to participate in them, who-dun-it? vs. what happened?, Sherlock Holmes vs. Columbo, Agatha Christie vs. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself, The Writing Excuses Podcast, The Orbit Books Podcast #1, Jack Womack, Tamahome, sycophantic interviews are bad, Robert J. Sawyer, “the best stuff happens after the interview”, Richard K. Morgan’s article on Tolkien, The Space Dog Podcast, Ballentine Books, The Fountains Of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke, Lester del Rey, Utopia by Sir Thomas More, Simon Prebble, Gulliver’s Travels, dystopia, A Truly Golden Little Book, No Less Beneficial Than Entertaining, of the Best State of a Republic, and of the New Island Utopia, Steen Hansen, “immersed in Americanism”, The United States vs. Canada, American utopianism vs. Canadian muddling through, British North America Act, the long gun registry, Winston Churchill, did Winston Churchill write SF?, Newt Gingrich as an alternate history novel, Plato’s The Republic, Mein Kampf, Dianetics, Meatball Fulton (aka Tom Lopez), Ruby, Lady Windermere’s Brass Fantabulous, Part 2, “purposefully ridiculous”, new Audible.com releases, Audible Frontiers, When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger, Jonathan Davis, The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds, “grimy and grungy and punky”, Pushing Ice, mining the Oort cloud, Century Rain, Journey To The Center To The Earth, Gulliver’s Travels, Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Kenneth Brannagh, Jorge Luis Borges, Stromboli, The Wise Man’s Fear (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 2) by Patrick Rothfuss, Random House Audio, The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published edited by Otto Penzler, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, undeadliest, Dreamsongs by George R.R. Martin, Heart Of Darkness, Alas Babylon by Pat Frank, Heavy Time by C.J. Cherryh, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, Sri Lanka, Death Cloud by Andrew Lane, Venus by Ben Bova, The Children Of Dune by Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert, “talented readers” is a compliment?, “horribly unreadable” “throwthemacrosstheroomable”, family curse, Christopher Tolkien and Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, Saga Of Seven Suns, Hellhole, sickmyduck, The Preserving Machine by Philip K. Dick |ETEXT|, Doc Labyrinth, Mozart bird, Beethoven beetle, Wagner animal, this is Dick talking about music, “Hey Jesse you must be the coolest teacher out there”, what would The Beatles be, put Lady Gaga in out comes Lady Gaga?, Vampire Weekend into meercats, what gender is this website?, Band Of Horses would yield themselves, “Weird Al” Yankovic?, “I wonder what will happen next?”, A Scanner Darkly, Radiohead would be an owl, if the term “sellout” applies to anyone in the universe it applies to Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert, planetary romance vs. space opera, Greenland vs. Iceland, Berlin means bogtown, are Malad residents are Malodorous?

Posted by Jesse Willis