Graphic Audio‘s podcast has a very interesting and informative interview with Elizabeth Moon. They talk about the Graphic Audio adaptations of Moon’s Vatta’s War and Serrano Legacy series of novels, cochlear implants, cyborgs, facial recognition, math, horses, embryonic livestock transport, selective breeding, genetic engineering, post-traumatic stress disorder, realistic villains, faster than light travel, and a whole lot more!
Yep, it’s another post on Bill C-32, Canada’s upcoming copyright legislation. Perhaps you are already aware that C-32, as currently written, exists to enshrine legal punishments for the circumvention of “technological protection measures [TPMs].” TPM, by the way, is a less sullied acronym for the widely opposed DRM (Digital Rights Management) – which is another word, in turn, for copy protection. Here is CBC’s Nora Young interviewing David Fewer, the director of The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, for an upcoming Spark radio broadcast (and podcast).
The Canadian government is taking another crack at reforming our nation’s extremely outdated copyright laws. Two previous bills died when Parliament dissolved. But Bill C-32 is bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and before committee. How necessary are these changes? The current legislation includes mention of Beta Max machines. Meanwhile, Bill C-32 would finally make it legal to record a program on your VCR to watch at a later time. Yes – a practice that is technically illegal in Canada.
The mastermind behind SOS is Victor Gates, he asks ZA about the original Zombie Astronaut blog (which was totally awesome by the way) and his inspiration for his terrific podcast spin-off, The Frequency Of Fear (and the FOF-lite). Apparently FOF was inspired by an offhand email by a certain genius named Jesse Willis. Score!
As for Streets Of Staccato podcast, it too is a spin-off, this time of the Frequency Of Fear. SOS features the titular mustachioed douche, Sergeant Staccato, and his crew of fellow cops. Really the show is much like an audio drama version of Sledge Hammer!, a total parody of those “cop on the edge” dramas that started with Dirty Harry. Staccato, though, is more like a cop off the edge, down on t.
The interview also gives us the straight poop about the voice acting phenom named Elie Hirschman, he who voices Sgt. Staccato. Have a listen.
For his latest book tour William Gibson has been invited onto scores of radio programs and podcasts. I’ve heard him interviewed, and answer similiar questions over and over. But, CBC’s Spark programme may be the best to go with as it features the ever thoughtful Nora Young. Sez Young:
“Yesterday, I interviewed novelist William Gibson in our Toronto studio. I’ve followed his work for years, ever since reading Neuromancer ages ago. Although I’ve interviewed him a few times before, I’d never met him in person, so today was a treat. Gibson is best known as a science fiction writer, and a foundational figure in the cyberpunk genre. More recently, though, he has been writing books set in the here and now, albeit a here and now infused with a distinctly Gibsonian world view. We talked about his latest novel, Zero History, part three in a trilogy.”
Have a listen |MP3|. A shorter version of this interview will air on an upcoming episode of Spark.
Scott Westerfeld’s new book, Behemoth, has just been released. It’s the second in the Leviathan Trilogy. He sits down and talks with Alan Cumming, the narrator of his audiobook version of the same title. Westerfeld mentions on how Cumming’s voice for one of his characters from his first book in the series, Leviathan, was the voice he heard in his head as he wrote that character’s dialogue for the new book. And they talk a bit about the different pronunciations of words.
Here’s Scott Westerfeld’s interview with Alan Cumming:
And here’s the book trailer for Behemoth:
And here’s a sizable audiobook excerpt from the title:
Nearly six years ago my friend Scott Danielson reviewed a cherished cassette I had sent him in the mail: Dune: An Interview with Frank Herbert and David Lynch |READ OUR REVIEW|
It was produced by an audiobook company, Waldentapes, a division of Waldenbooks and has since become pretty darned hard to find.
But that isn’t true anymore as some thoughtful person has placed the cassette’s contents up on YouTube in a series of six parts! HUZZAH!
Graphic Audio‘s podcast has a very interesting and informative interview with Elizabeth Moon. They talk about the Graphic Audio adaptations of Moon’s Vatta’s War and Serrano Legacy series of novels, cochlear implants, cyborgs, facial recognition, math, horses, embryonic livestock transport, selective breeding, genetic engineering, post-traumatic stress disorder, realistic villains, faster than light travel, and a whole lot more! 
