SFFaudio

By Jesse WillisArts Books

SFFaudio episodes

May 26, 2014 The SFFaudio Podcast #266 - READALONG: When The Sleeper Wakes by H.G. Wells
The SFFaudio Podcast #266 – Jesse, Luke, and Juliane Kunzendorf discuss When The Sleeper Wakes by H.G. Wells
Talked about on today’s show:
Julianne’s first SFFaudio Podcast, what do we call them?, readers and talkers, 1899/1910/1923, When The Sleeper Wakes, The Sleeper Wakes, The Sleeper Awakes, Blackstone Audio’s audiobook version, the serialization in The Graphic magazine, the 1910 preface, “an editorial elder brother”, going to the original sources, a forecast of technology, technological changes between the revisions, aeroplanes and aeropiles, the introduction to the 1923 edition, “fantasias of possibility”, “suppose these forces go on novel”, H.G. Wells thought the rich were evil geniuses (prior to meeting them), “rather foolish plungers”, “vulgar rather than wicked”, Ostrog, “a nightmare of capitalism triumphant”, capitalist/socialism (kind of like Japan), The Unincorporated Man is pretty much the same story, yay Marxism!?, when Graham wakes up, Chapter 7, there only audiobooks in the future, The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling, The Madonna Of The Future by Henry James, Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, phonetic spelling, an H.G. Wells way of writing, is it the nature of a serial, the reader transplanted into the year 2100, The War Of The Worlds, suicide, Isbister, Warming, Ostrog, Lincoln, “body fag is no cure for brain fag”, “while he was breaking his fast”, the language, lying in a crystal box, a passive character, establishing the genre, space elevators, Buck Rogers has the same premise, Idiocracy, Eine Billion Dollar by Andreas Eschbach, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, the importance of money, the gilded age, wealth disparity, the labour company, a dystopia along the lines of Brave New World, the Martian invasion, The Time Machine, is this the start of the Morlocks and the Eloi?, 1984 by George Orwell, the proles, the pleasure cities, distractions, the value of work beyond being paid, a class trap, what is Wells saying?, Wells’ ambivalence towards the proles, there are no more school examinations, is this a meritocracy?, technological dystopias (like 1984), social dystopias, Brave New World is a medical dystopia, genetic dystopias, knowing you live in a dystopia, North Korea, knowledge of other societies, the time before Big Brother, Julia, the Anti-Sex League, genetically dumbified, Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes, religious dystopia, advertizing Christianity, prosperity gospels, church revivals, advertising, the babel machines, movies and television, what will this culture do to the culture?, “people don’t read”, airplanes, heavier-than-air aircraft, smashing airplanes into other airplanes, aerial ramming, flying machine vs. aeroplane vs. airplane vs. aeropile, My First Aeorplane by H.G. Wells, rocketships, the pilot’s union, the look of the airplane, the clothing, Victorian age dresses, the church, hanging in the air, the Thames has run dry, megalopolis, the building material, the Eiffel Tower, steel, concrete, plastic, glass, carbon fiber, biotech, Pandora’s Star, a coral house, 3D printing, Ikea Hacks, print on demand houses, economics, factories and automation, The Roads Must Roll by Robert A. Heinlein, The City And The Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, slide-walk, edamite, Ostrog, Ostrogoths, Lincoln, foment a revolution, race and racism, Senagalese, ostrog as “fortress”, a Serbian Orthodox Church, Ostrog will boss the show, “in bounds”, are these are revolutionary names?, Che Guevara, Abraham Lincoln’s freeing the slaves, thug force, Berlin, June 17th, 1953, the Berlin Wall, outside forces, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, Gurkhas, “see we’re all friends”, smiling bright shiny teeth, “they are fine loyal brutes”, racism is in there but it is not the point of the book, The War Of The Worlds, a little hypocritical, we can’t see the issue, massive economic suppression, calculating boys, hypnotism, economic slavery, the wealth gap, the White Council, the blaring speakers, the media firehouse, talk radio, people wearing their headphones everywhere, podcasts, each one of those streams are newspapers, a newspaper for everybody, broadsheets vs. tabolids, your newspaper tells your class, daily free newspapers, Jack The Ripper, Melville Macnaghten, Michael Ostrog (thief and con-man), the symbolism of the aircraft, the three books, Helen is the Madonna of the future, it’s a joke, the novel’s end, ‘my Graham dies without certainty of victory or defeat’, ambiguous airplanes, “literally that’s his dream”, flying dreams, cliffs and high places, Isbister and Warming -> Lincoln and Ostrog, “its fun”, “in such a fall as this countless dreams have ended”, dream falling, the different endings, the future of that future, Olaf Stapledon’s The Last And First Men, many futures, Olaf Stapledon takes what Wells does a little farther, Graham as a Christ figure, risen from the dead… etc., in Graphic detail, full colour holographic Jesus, the empty tomb moment, allusions to other literature in the Bible, Arthur C. Clarke, the Son of Man, A Story Of The Days To Come, the emptying of the countryside, the enclosures, Scotland, Canada, Glasgow, Berlin, well more than 50% of the world’s population lives in cities now, Among Others by Jo Walton, Wales, the merits of country living, the economic theory behind everything, access to internet, staring at the internet, services, live entertainment, “my choice of Christian girls was three girls”, poor Luke.

Posted by Jesse Willis
1 hr 33 min
May 19, 2014 The SFFaudio Podcast #265 - READALONG: Deus Irae by Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny
The SFFaudio Podcast #265 – Jesse, Tam, and Paul Weimer discuss Deus Irae by Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny
Talked about in this episode:
1976, “hey it’s Zelazny”, Tibor and whatnot, “The Great C.“, waking from a gnostic dream of oblivion, “the book is opaque to say the least”, “on the pilg”, recommended for super Dick-fans who like religion, New Wave (basically shitty), Christianity, Ted White, the Sector General novels, mythology and religion, 80-85% Dick, post-apocalyptic story, the local A.I., the sacrifice of the Athenians to the Minotaur, like a Jeopardy game, heliocentricity vs. geocentricity, “Benford, Bear, and Brin’s new Foundation trilogy”, Hari Seldon in a chimpanzee body, The Best Of Gregory Benford, it’s a paycheck, “If you wanna read this piece of shit that’s fine … I’m getting paid.”, cynicism, looking for the truth behind things, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Tibor’s conversations, there’s no fixed ground, Dr. Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After The Bomb, the fallout from nuclear fallout, Utah, Denver, “where are they getting this coffee?”, the socio-economic underpinnings of this book are fantasy, The Man In The High Castle, is he really worried about his bottle?, Autofac, the consequences of automated production, an economic weapon a weapon of war, Gresham’s law, The Crawlers, incs = incompletes, the thalidomide baby phenomenon, Arthur C. Clarke, Of Withered Apples (and our podcast about it), the apple tree scene doesn’t pay-off, the dog, episodic feel, the parallel pilgrimage of Peter Sands, the guy with the face problem, devil from the sky, Lufteufel (from the German words “Luft,” meaning “air,” and “Teufel,” meaning “Devil”), the class of people who engage with believers but don’t believe themselves, if you go into churches…, if there is a point to this story, representation, no photos of Jesus, does it matter if we worship a false image?, drawing a symbol, “the novel is extremely gnostic”, Zelazny’s Amber series, Islam goes the opposite way, depictions of Muhammad, believers tend not to worry about such details, the Klingons, the gnostic gloss, “it works as what it is”, the miracle of the arms and legs, a vision of the Deus Irae, what’s going on with the cow?, she’s a holy cow, the authors say?, “the cow slept and dreamed – Tibor ruminated.”, mechanical arms only (no legs), the crucifixion in reverse, the endings, Lufteufel and his daughter, dissolution, he does partake in divinity, Dr. Abernathy, Luke Daniels, the ozone in the air, an Arthurian motif, the healing of the wound, The Last Defender Of Camelot, dedicated Stanley G. Weinbaum and The Martian Odyssey, connecting the books, The Martian Odyssey is important and interesting but not great, “a classic of the field”, the first Science Fiction to come out of the 1920s, mostly junk, aliens that are just alien, where it fits in the history of Science Fiction, PKD’s favourite author was A.E. van Vogt, changing things up every thousand words, a formative influence on both Dick and Zelazny?, Eric S. Rabkin, maybe they had coffee together, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., dung beetles, the lizards (Lizzies), the talking bird, “the little black boys”, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, transformed by Am, another name for God or Popeye, evil turns into good, it’s all for the best, the philosophy behind Voltaire’s Candide, “it was good that we had a nuclear war”, the story of Noah, the ultimate Spring cleaning, religious people don’t tend to get stuck at that point, “maybe I’m wrong”, somebody is going to enjoy that sermon by Dr. Abernathy, the passing of good out of evil, internal arguments, “good” is not as strong as “evil”, a very clever sophistic argument that kind of works, a lot of German, allusions to other literature, and “the stars threw down their spears”, William Blake’s Tyger Tyger, a gnostic poem, the currency of half-forgotten poems, funerals and weddings call for the imagery and vocabulary of poetry, cultural tools for sealing social relationships, The Stars My Destination, what is gnosticism?, going out into a cave…, a vision quest, revelations, Jesus’ marriage, canonized gnosticism, religion as Jesus fan fiction, fan service, Galactic Pot Healer, a crisis of faith, a god needs help, a lack of editing, the meditation/drug thing, pastors can be grumpy without coffee and cigarettes, Abernathy is an asshole.
Posted by Jesse Willis
1 hr 9 min
May 12, 2014 The SFFaudio Podcast #264 - READALONG: The Martian by Andy Weir
The SFFaudio Podcast #264 – Jesse, Jenny, Tam, Julie, Bryan, and Mike discuss The Martian by Andy Weir.
Talked about in this episode:
Dust on Mars is too thin to allow for sandstorms; terpkristin says NASA would never build a faulty antenna; and we finally introduce the book; is The Martian science fiction?; the one-way Mars mission Mars One; reminiscent of Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky; Mike tracks Watney’s journey through Google Mars; why NASA picks boring locations to land their first missions; Andy Weir on Science Friday; the most far-fetched element of the book is its lack of budgetary concerns; Bradley Cooper in the film adaptation?; The Martian and Gravity have depressing implications; the novel’s (Heinleinian?) lack of character development; Mark Watney is in “full on Macgeyver mode”; most pilots are boring; many LOLs in the book; Andy Weir’s webcomic Casey and Andy; strong language in the novel; stoichiometry; feasibility of plot points; engineer-as-hero motif pitted against bureaucracy; Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum; Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe; Robinson Crusoe on Mars starring Adam West; The Makeshift Rocket by Poul Anderson, a spaceship powered by beer; From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and First Man on the Moon by H.G. Wells; Robinsoniad; Thunder and Lightning series by John Varley; Rocket Ship Galileo by Heinlein, featuring Nazis on the Moon!; the United States falling behind in the Space Race; Stephen Hawking on the dangers of artificial intelligence; Mars Attacks!; the novel’s lack of Earth focus makes it literally escapist; Heinlein’s prophetic Destination Moon; send more potatoes to space; pop culture references; “I’m a space pirate.”; The Case for Mars by Bob Zubrin, a non-fiction proposal for reaching the Red Planet; Red Mars and other Kim Stanley Robinson novels; Marooned starring Gregory Peck; Gravity; Apollo 18, a found-footage horror film; Falling Skies; Bruce Campbell and Martin Koenig in Moontrap; Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs; A Walk in the Sun by Geoffrey Landis; Transit of Earth by Arthur C. Clarke bears a strong resemblance to The Martian; new party game: “You an astronaut on Mars. What’s the last music you listen to before you die?”; We Who Are About To by Joanna Russ; hope in fantasy and science fiction; Jesse hopes they don’t make a sequel; locked-room scenarios; Portal; would Earth really expend so many resources to save a single human being?; Ascent by Jed Mercurio; T-Minus: The Race to the Moon; Limit by Frank Schätzing; Planetes; The Souther Reach by Jeff VanderMeer for more botanist action; The Apollo Quartet by Ian Sales; Voyage by Stephen Baxter, dramatized by BBC Radio.
Posted by Jesse Willis
1 hr 24 min
May 05, 2014 The SFFaudio Podcast #263 - AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Colour Out Of Space by H.P. Lovecraft
The SFFaudio Podcast #263 – The Colour Out Of Space by H.P. Lovecraft, read by Donal Buckley. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (68 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Mirko, and Huan Vu (the director of the movie adaptation, Die Farbe).
Talked about on today’s show:
Arkham Insiders, Die Farbe (aka The Color), The Atlanta Radio Theatre Company adaptation, The H.P.L.H.S., Die Farbe gets a shout-out in the Dark Adventure Radio Theater adaptation, the novella/novelette, Amazing Stories, September 1927, science fiction and horror together, The Whisperer In Darkness, the framing story, American soldiers running away from the colour, unjustified punishment, cosmic horror, pre-WWII Germany, the symbology, the endings, mind control, zombie ants, parasites, the science of The Colour Out Of Space, The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, a pocket spectroscope, how do we see a new color?, discovering a new color, infra-red light, the blind and the colorblind, the black and white, film doing something an audio drama never could, a companion piece to The Whisperer In Darkness, the wasp, Formicula (aka Them!), an explanation for what the colour is, The Voice In The Night by William Hope Hodgson, anthropocentric aliens, an analogy, is The Colour Of Of Space SF?, alien flapjacks, spores, a sentient cloud of gas, “the Horla” (woops I mean the Horta), Star Trek‘s The Devil In The Dark, an alien (in much of SF is really about people), alien aliens, a corrective, John W. Campbell Who Goes There?, The Thing, whose who and whats what, it’s insidious, what will happen when you flood that valley?, Arkham Springs water, fear of radiation, a nuclear contamination story, “the blasted heat” is like Chernobyl, Macbeth, the meteor, dry ice, too creepy for night reading, Lovecraft’s opinion, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, alien mind control, stealthy listening, the horror in the attic, The White People by Arthur Machen, the comic undercutting in The Dreams In The Witch-House, a mood study, Die Farbe is a wonderful adaptation of The Colour Out Of Space, the changes in the film version, the character names, Robert M. Price, a biblical reading of The Colour Out Of Space, He Am Himself, comets, reproduction, Monsters, cosmic bug spray, expanding your perspective, From Beyond, the running time, the chosen colour, Schindler’s List, you shouldn’t make evil that colour, taupe?, khaki?, a striking contrast, Sin City, color theory, signal colors, Ancient Greece, The Odyssey, “the wine dark sea”, “rosy fingered dawn”, what if my blue is your red?”, science over experience, dark matter/dark energy are placeholder words, science is mostly failure, “not optimistic at all”, if this happened in reality, the way out, The Dream Cycle Stories, going to The Dreamlands, Celephaïs by H.P. Lovecraft, To A Dreamer by H.P. Lovecraft, it’s not horror, The Dream-Quest For Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft, Lovecraft isn’t only horror, the IndieGoGo page for The Dream-Lands, The-Dreamlands.com, Die-Farbe.com, Gary Lovisi, the matchmaker.
Posted by Jesse Willis
2 hr 16 min
April 28, 2014 The SFFaudio Podcast #262 - NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS
The SFFaudio Podcast #262 – Jesse, Jenny, Tamahome, and Seth talk about NEW RELEASES and RECENT ARRIVALS.
Talked about on today’s show: We help Jesse clear off his desk by discussing books in paper (dead trees and rags), “like e-books but thicker”; Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan, second in the Lady Trent series, gorgeously illustrated, Darwin meets dragons; why are illustrations dying out, even in e-books?; Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan features good illustrations; The Raven’s Shadow, third in Elspeth Cooper’s Wild Hunt series; how many print pages in an hour of audio?; more from L.E. Modesitt Jr’s Imager series; John C. Wright’s The Judge of Ages, with allusions to Cordwainer Smith; The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, smarter steampunk?; a tangent on translating page to screen; Tam likes more fantasy in his fantasy; a tangent on Game of Thrones; a tangent on Citizen Brick and the expiration of the LEGO patent; The Revolutions by Felix Gilman; science fiction was once planetary romance; The Prestige; Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year vol. 8 edited by Jonathan Strahan, now published by Solaris, featuring a lot of great stories; and we finally reach audiobooks!; The Scottish Fairy Book, Volume 1; the timeless quality of folktales; Classics Lesson of the Day: Ovid’s a boy, Sappho’s a girl; Steles of the Sky by Elizabeth Bear; we try to puzzle out what a stele is; we praise Bear’s interview on Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy; Elizabeth Bear’s Hammered isn’t romance “because fifty-year-olds never have romance”; Without a Summer, third in Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist Histories series, expertly narrated by the author; Dreamwalker by C.S. Friedman doesn’t seem to be your run-of-the-mill urban fantasy (suburban fantasy?); Indexing by Seanan McGuire, urban fantasy with a postmodern twist; mimetic incursion and Jorge Luis Borges’s Averroes’s Search; Night Broken by Patricia Briggs, eighth in her Mercy Thompson series; a tangent on midriff tattoos and names for tattoos on other parts of the body; Jenny has created a new genre, Scientific Near Future Thrillers!; in the future, iPods will be merged into our eyebrows; science and technology don’t evolve quite how we expect; Neil Gaiman discusses the influence of Ballard and other classic SF writers on the Coode Street Podcast; Sleep Donation by Karen Russell; Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux; Boswell is Samuel Johnson’s biographer; Afterparty by Daryl Gregory is blowing up on Goodreads; pre- and post-apocalyptic fiction–no actual apocalypse this time; The End is Nigh, first in the Apocalypse Triptych edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey; the tech gremlins didn’t want us to discuss Dust, the third in Hugh Howey’s Silo series; Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor; The Forever Watch by David Ramirez, Jesse thinks the protagonist has too many jobs; “pause resister”, WTF?; Dark Eden by Chris Beckett, already reviewed here at SFFaudio; we struggle to define Pentecostal; religious opposition to the film adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass; Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s The Edge of Tomorrow (originally entitled All You Need Is Kill), Groundhog Day meets Fullmetal Jacket, film adaptation features Tom Cruise; Red Planet Blues by Robert J. Sawyer, a hardboiled detective story on Mars; Noggin by John Corey Whaley; Decoded by Mai Jia; Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones is a refresh of The Arabian Nights; Frank Herbert’s Direct Descent is about a library planet; novella is the best length for SF; Night Ride and Other Journeys by Charles Beaumont, a “writer’s writer” who wrote for The Twilight Zone; Christopher Moore’s The Serpent of Venice is an irreverent Shakespeare/Poe mashup.
Posted by Jesse Willis
1 hr 21 min
April 21, 2014 The SFFaudio Podcast #261 - READALONG: The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The SFFaudio Podcast #261 – Jesse, Tamahome, Julie Davis, and Mr Jim Moon discuss The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Talked about on today’s show:
1901, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s knighthood, fairies, the Boer War, war, Sir Henry Baskerville is a Baronet, the importance of being present in the community, stone age poverty, Goodreads, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, the mysterious silhouetted man on the moor, Agatha Christie, a locked moor mystery, the English country house mystery, The Adventure Of The Devil’s Foot, whist, the Joker did it, Cornwall, Devon, Professor Moriarty, a mystery series vs. a character series, detective fiction, “he’s Mr. Spock, essentially”, Watson is a good detective, Laura Lyons, Watson’s suspicions, the Clive Merrison/Basil Rathbone version, the bumblers ruin it, the walking stick deductions, Sherlock Holmes is making jokes, the Derek Jacobi narration, “I can feel the foil”, Dr. Mortimer (mort), Barrymore (buries more bodies), Franklin the telescopist is very frank, Lafter House, Mrs. Laura Lyons is always lying, Merripit House, Professor Challenger books, The Lost World, The Poison Belt, The White Company, LibriVox, the Crusades, inventing the mystery genre, Watson’s humour, scientific pre-occupations, astronomy, entomology, phrenology, atavism, atavistic guilt, the theme of the book, the stone age people, Seldon the Notting Hill murderer, nature vs. nurture, super-awesome writing, the Gothic tropes, ancestral curses, The Rats In The Walls by H.P. Lovecraft, The Sussex Vampire, it’s a Scooby Doo plot, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, why is this the best Sherlock Holmes story?, the most adapted movie, Tom Baker’s Hound Of The Baskervilles (1982), the Hammer movie (1959), Jeremy Brett, Peter Cushing, the new Sherlock adaptation (?), the title a hound from hell, The White Wolf (aka The Wolf) by Guy de Maupassant, “he throws it over his salad”, “gently”, the Wild Hunt, Deities & Demigods, Odin or Wotan, the origins of Santa Claus, Herne the Hunter, Wayland, the yeth hounds and the wish hounds, “hell-hound chowder”, The Woodcutter by Kate Danley, La Chasse-Galerie (aka “The Bewitched Canoe” aka “The Flying Canoe”) by Honoré Beaugrand, the document, a warning story, what season is the story set?, Charles Baskerville died in the Spring, those cheap Canadian imports were ruining England, the butterfly, cyclopides, the booming of the bittern, Leslie S. Klinger, The Baker Street Irregulars, learning the Klingon, the love story, Beryl (Garcia) Stapleton, a true love, the convict, a rich text, “ah my dear, you’re so beautiful in the moorlight”, American Hustle, Julie needs the romance to be true, did Stapleton actually die?, Baskerville nearly dies, the poor curly haired spaniel!, the two moor ponies, Stapleton’s ego, the London adventure, “there’s something very tropical about her”, the red herrings, they’re all weridos on the moor, the convict’s clothing, Holmes’ remorse, phosphorous would burn the dog to death, radium condoms, radium toothpaste, the Stapleton’s school, a consumptive tutor, “The Case Of The Vatican Cameos“, the Father Brown stories, The Aluminum Crutch, The Case Of The Cardboard Box?, Bee-keeping.
Posted by Jesse Willis
1 hr 4 min
April 14, 2014 The SFFaudio Podcast #260 - AUDIOBOOK: The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The SFFaudio Podcast #260 – The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, read by Bob Neufeld.
This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (6 hours 40 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.org. The Hound Of The Baskervilles was first serialized in The Strand Magazine, August 1901 to April 1902.
The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

Posted by Jesse Willis
6 hr 41 min
April 07, 2014 The SFFaudio Podcast #259 - NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS
The SFFaudio Podcast #259 – Jesse, Scott, Tamahome, and Seth talk about NEW RELEASES and RECENT ARRIVALS.
Talked about on today’s show: a vintage podcast with Scott, R.I.P. RadioArchive.cc, Radio Downloader app, audio drama, Brad Lansky and the Alien at Planet X is full of sound, it’s like Ruby, Richmond Smokes a Joint, The Cleansed, are movies the most respected art form?, Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization by Alexander Irvine, postmodernism, Death of the Author by Roland Barthes, The Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 4 edited by Ellen Datlow, Murder of Crows by Anne Bishop, a group of crows is murder, Night Watch #2 and #3 by Sergei Lukyanenko, the Night Watch series discussed on A Good Story Is Hard To Find #57 podcast, “a three volume novel“, Dickens serial novels, Blood Oranges by Kathleen Tierney, what Michael Jackson says at the end of songs, The Line by J. D. Horn, Jenny is studying Turkish, Sky Raiders by Brandon Mull, kids at schools love him, Raising Steam (Discworld #40) by Terry Pratchett, regular narrators for series, The Companions (The Sundering #1, Legend of Drizzt #24, Forgotten Realms) by R. A. Salvatore, Dungeons and Dragons, many Dragonlance books by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Jesse read them!, what is your D&D Alignment??, vs the Ultima eight virtues, “he’s got cool eyes”, Magic’s Promise by Mercedes Lackey, William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back by Ian Doescher, purists won’t like it, more alignment talk, Z 2135 (Z 2134 #2) by David Wright and Sean Platt, Fractured by D.J. Molles, Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper, The Rift by Bob Mayer, The Runestone Incident by Neve Maslakovic, To Honor You Call Us by H. Paul Honsinger, The Folklore of Discworld by Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson (a folklorist!), The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson, Lockstep by Karl Schroeder, who was on Geek’s Guide #106, can’t find it in my local bookstore, was serialized in Analog, His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth, Pickman’s Model by Lovecraft, guess who had that made?, H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine‘s missing chapter, The True Detective was inspired by The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, Galveston: A Novel by Nic Pizzolatto (creator of True Detective), Words Of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson is longer than all of C.M. Kornbluth’s work, Terpkristin gave it five stars on Goodreads, Luke’s alignment, Brian K. Vaughan’s Saga comic with the Lying Cat, Mask Of The Red Panda graphic novel, it’s an audio drama podcast too at Decoder Ring Theatre, Julie’s alignment, Martians Go Home by Frederic Brown, Screaming Mimi and Honeymoon In Hell as well, The Frightened Fish (Doc Savage) from radioarchives.com, Doc Savage is a comic from Dynamite too, “hair is like a helmet”, Haldeman’s Forever Peace, Work Done For Hire, Haldeman’s quote about “write what you know”, Haldeman’s Star Trek novels, Jesse thinks he’s f’ing awesome, Seth likes Neal Stephenson, Project Hieroglyph, Robert J. Sawyer’s WWW trilogy, in the optimistic axis, The Woman In Black by Susan Hill (and original film)
Posted by Tamahome

1 hr 49 min
March 31, 2014 The SFFaudio Podcast #258 - READALONG: The Star Rover by Jack London
The SFFaudio Podcast #258 – Jesse, Seth, and Maissa discuss The Star Rover (aka The Jacket) by Jack London.
Talked about on today’s show:
titled The Jacket in the UK; astral projection; what about alien past lives; the primordial ooze; the book is a laundry list of Jack London’s interests; structure resembles television flashbacks; knuckle-rap Morse Code; The Count of Monte Cristo; Seth recounts his own past-life story; Jesse and Maissa debate plausibility of reincarnation; Plato and the Land of the Forms; “little death” means something else in French; Ragnar Lodbrok based on Norse Mythology; anachronism; Korean history and turtle ships; Jesse attempts to use the Napoleon Complex to debunk reincarnation; everyman (and everywoman); does reincarnation extend beyond humanity?; “there’s only one soul”; Lucretius, star dust, and the recovery of scrolls from Herculaneum; “souls are totally bogus”; past lives as a metaphor for reading widely; prevalence of the number 40; hallucination; Jack London on surfing; multilingual reference as an indicator of fame; prison reform; interrogation, torture, and Guantanamo Bay; loosely adapted in 2005 film The Jacket; the 1923 silent film adaptation is sadly lost; comparing and contrasting with The Iron Heel; T.C. Boyle’s The Relive Box in The New Yorker; Until the End of the World, a film about reliving dreams; on cultivating sleep; frame narrative; sexism; historical basis for character names; H.P. Lovecraft, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the creative power of dreams; confabulation; Total Recall; “faith in the lordship of my mind”; the odd importance of tobacco; The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells.
Posted by Jesse Willis
1 hr 8 min
March 24, 2014 The SFFaudio Podcast #257 - AUDIOBOOK: The Star Rover by Jack London
The SFFaudio Podcast #257 – The Star Rover (aka The Jacket) by Jack London, read by Barry Eads.
This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (10 hours 1 minute) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.org. The Star Rover was first published in 1915.
The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!
Posted by Jesse Willis
10 hr 2 min

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Features discussions with SFFaudio.com contributors, cool podcasters, bloggers and scholars, conversations with people writing books, audiobooks, audio drama and comics. The episodes designated…