Tag: interview

Vernor Vinge interviewed on the Adventures in Scifi Publishing podcast

SFFaudio Online Audio

adventures in scifi publishingAdventures in Scifi Publishing interviews Vernor Vinge in episode 140.  You would think he would be as intense as Raymond Kurzweil, but he seems like a light and easy going guy.  Vernor describes his Zones of Thought universe.  He also likes Charles Stross’s novel Accelerando and a short story from his Toast anthology called Antibodies |Read Our Review|. His new novel The Children Of The Sky comes out this month, which is a direct (within 20 years, as opposed to the 20,000 years of the prequel A Deepness In The Sky) sequel to A Fire In The Deep.  Vernor also mentions (at 34 min) one of Poul Anderson’s Dominic Flandry books where three species form a single mind (The Rebel Worlds according to this)

Rss feed:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/adventuresinscifipublishing

|MP3|

Posted by Tamahome

Coode Street podcast #65 with Tor.com blogger Jo Walton

SFFaudio Online Audio

Notes From Coode StreetThe accented SF author and blogger Jo Walton was the guest on Notes From Coode Street podcast #65.  She talked about her new half fantasy/half autobiographical novel Among Others.  She went on to discuss her Revisiting the Hugos series at Tor.  She covers Hugos in the years 1953-2000.

Somehow this led me to obsessively clicking through each year, looking for good books that stood the test of time.  I was surprised that she hated Neuromancer (didn’t like the characters, look for bluejo in the comments), and hated The Sparrow (don’t know why).  She also has lots of separate blog posts about rereads of different novels she loved, covering plenty of C.J. Cherryh, Samuel R. Delany, and Lois McMaster Bujold.  I didn’t find a nice index, but here’s a listing of all of ‘bluejo’s’ (Jo Walton’s) Tor.com posts.  I’m looking forward to her series on Hugo-winning novellas.

|MP3| of the podcast episode.

(Note: we’re recording a Neuromancer discussion on November 12th.)

Posted by Tamahome

 

KCRW Bookworm Podcast Interviews Tom McCarthy

SFFaudio Online Audio

KCRW BookwormA great literary podcast is Bookworm on KCRW, featuring the insightful Michael Silverblatt interviewing authors about their work.  One memorable episode is with Tom McCarthy, author of C, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2010. |MP3|

The novel C follows the story of Serge Carrefax, who has grown up around an environment of invention, at a school for the deaf run by his father.  From there he travels through a period of drug-ridden military service toward his own realization of his abilities that I wouldn’t want to spoil.   The style of the writing makes the novel read as venturing into speculative fiction, maybe alternate history, without ever fully embracing either genre.  Each quarter of the book self-references other authors, which you don’t have to understand to appreciate the novel, but the interview Michael Silverblatt has with Tom McCarthy is very illuminating in that regard.

More than anything, I appreciate Michael Silverblatt’s exuberance about books and learning.

Podcast Feed: http://www.kcrw.com/podcast/show/bw

Posted by Jenny Colvin

The First Edition – interview with Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl

SFFaudio Online Audio

TVOF - The Voices Of FandomForgive me, I’ve posted part of this before, but it’s good enough to post twice. Frederik Pohl and Isaac Asimov were interviewed for a 1972 show called The First Edition. Apparently the show never aired, and was never edited.

“THE FIRST EDITION – FIRST SHOW – 1972 – Raw interview material for unfinished show”

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3|

I repost the interview, in part because of how damn cool it is, and also in part because it is just the excuse I need to post what might very well be Frederik Pohl and Isaac Asimov first appearance together in print (in the letters column of the June 1939 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories). Be sure to listen, it’s a terrific interview! In it Asimov responds to the “New Wave” and attacks neo-Luddites, and Pohl protests the takeover of Science Fiction by the “English lit majors” (Pohl didn’t finish high school).

Be sure to read the letters below in which the two Brooklyn boys, Fred and Isaac, grumble about SF. Pohl has some sharp words for the art of Frank R. Paul and Asimov swears he will eat Uranus!

Frederik Pohl and Isaac Asimov in the letters column of Thrilling Wonder Stories - June 1939

[via The Voices Of Fandom and with props to “Burbank396”]

Posted by Jesse Willis