Web Comic’s rock star Bryan Prindiville has created a series of web badges for Balticon 43. Get one for your website or blog. Or you can make your own.

Alien

art, author, filk, make your own, podcasting, science, web comics

 

Spaceman

art, author, filk, make your own, podcasting, science, web comics

Here’s the new promo. Feel free to play it on your podcast.

Podcast listeners will delight in the Special Guest of Honor. You may have heard of him. His name is Scott Sigler.

Here is our first promo for Balticon 43. Balticon takes place Memorial Day weekend in the Hunt Valley Marriott. See the official Balticon website for more info.

A higher quality version of this promo is available in AIF format as well.

This episode’s intro from Jon “The Vicar” Stallard, host of Geek Radio Daily.

Jeri Smith-Ready reads excerpts from her new vampire novel, Wicked Game

. 

Book Blurb:

Recovering con artist Ciara Griffin is trying to live the straight life, even if it means finding a (shudder!) real job. She takes an internship at a local radio station, whose late-night time-warp format features 1940s blues, 60s psychedelia, 80s Goth, and more, all with an uncannily authentic flair. Ciara soon discovers how the DJs maintain their cred: they’re vampires, stuck forever in the eras in which they were turned.

Ciara’s first instinct, as always, is to cut and run. But communications giant Skywave wants to buy WMMP and turn it into just another hit-playing clone. Without the station—and the link it provides to their original Life Times—the vampires would “fade,” becoming little more than mindless ghosts of the past. Suddenly a routine corporate takeover becomes a matter of life and un-death.

To boost ratings and save the lives of her strange new friends, Ciara re-brands the station as “WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ’n’ Roll.” In the ultimate con, she hides the DJs’ vampire nature in plain sight, disguising the bloody truth as a marketing gimmick. WVMP becomes the hottest thing around—next to Ciara’s complicated affair with grunge vamp Shane McAllister. But the “gimmick” enrages a posse of ancient and powerful vampires who aren’t so eager to be brought into the light. Soon the stakes are higher-and the perils graver-than any con game Ciara’s ever played…

PROMO: Geek Radio Daily

PROMO: Murder at Avadon Hill by P.G. Holyfield

SONG: Dark Lover: Love Song To A Vampire by Tempest (used with permission from Magna Carta Records)

The wonderful and talented George Hrab plays his song, ‘Ya Famous? at Balticon 42 Opening Ceremonies.

Our apologies to George. The recording started a few seconds into the song. The missing lyrics:

(spoken)

I sit in the park and play.

Folks walk up to me and sometimes say,

“Hey play something. Go on give us a show.

Is there something you’ve written that we might all know?”

And I say

(sung)

You’ve never heard of me.

No not a word from me.

Everything that I have made remains all unshown.

A title you request, must surely be in jest.

I promise you I am completely unknown.

This is the song I play to try and appease.

I haven’t got long, OK, at least you said please.

This episode’s intro from Thomas “Commandline” Gideon, host of The Commandline Podcast.

Walter Jon Williams reads excerpts from his new cyberpunk novel, Implied Spaces. This is one of the best stories we’ve ever had the pleasure of presenting.

Book Blurb:

Aristide, a semi-retired computer scientist turned swordsman, is a scholar of the implied spaces, seeking meaning amid the accidents of architecture in a universe where reality itself has been sculpted and designed by superhuman machine intelligence. While exploring the pre-technological world Midgarth, one of four dozen pocket universes created within a series of vast, orbital matrioshka computer arrays, Aristide uncovers a fiendish plot threatening to set off a nightmare scenario, perhaps even bringing about the ultimate Existential Crisis: the end of civilization itself. Traveling the pocket universes with his wormhole-edged sword Tecmesssa in hand and talking cat Bitsy, avatar of the planet-sized computer Endora, at his side, Aristide must find a way to save the multiverse from subversion, sabotage, and certain destruction.

PROMO: Two Minute Danger Theater

PROMO: The Commandline Podcast

MUSIC: Captain of the Guard by Mary Crowell

This episode we are proud to present you with a short story by author Tom Doyle. Mr. Doyle’s work has appeared here before in episode 56. His story, The Garuda Bird, is a Bollywood style romp through Indian legend and politics with just a little love and lust as added spice. He’s even got a real mad scientist.

This story originally appeared in Aeon Magazine number 3. 

This episode’s guest host is Stephen Eley the editor-in-chief of Escape Artists Inc. They present some of the best audio fiction available. And they do it for free. If you haven’t listened to an Escape Artists podcast, you’re missing some seriously great stories. For general sci-fi genre stories check out Escape Pod. For horror see Pseudopod and for fantasy your source is Pod Castle. 

PROMO: The Seanachai

PROMO: The Commandline Podcast

MUSIC: Rock @ Bollywood by AjT

The Balticon 43 flyer is now available. Download it! Share it! Get ready for Balticon 43 now!

Urban Tapestry are a Toronto-based filk/folk trio consisting of Allison Durno, Jodi Krangle and Debbie Ridpath Ohi. They’ve performed all over the world and won several Pegasus awards. Discounting all that, they’re really a trio of talented, intelligent, and fun women. This is one of the best interviews I’ve ever done, and certainly the most fun.

We talked music, friendship, and sci-fi. And best of all, they sang me a song. Urban Tapestry’s music can be found at one of my favorite music sites, CD Baby. You can go to CD Baby now and preview music from their albums Sushi and High Tea, and Myths and Urban Legends.

How they met

Their favorite song subjects

A Cappella and Instruments

My only harp joke

SONG: I am Your Friend, live by Urban Tapestry in A Cappella

PROMO: Contents Under Pressure, an Arbiter Chronicles event presented by Prometheus Radio Theater

The origin of the name Urban Tapestry

Out of print, Creative Commons, and Previews

Baltimore is for Blue Crabs

The conventions they normally attend

Play it with Moxie

SONG: Sweet Dream (are made of this) by George Hrab

Urban Tapestry‘s My Space page

George Hrab’s music is available through his website and through CD Baby