The Skiffy and Fanty Show

Information, challenging assumptions, and celebrity politicians, oh my! Paul interviews Malka Older, author of Infomocracy, about the second book in her Centenal Cycle, Null States. Malka shares how her experiences as an NGO worker in Darfur helped shape Null States, how having a global perspective is crucial to exploring micro-democracies, and the differences between campaigning and governing.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show!

Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

Episode 333 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Malka Older’s Things:

* Malka’s Website

* Malka’s Twitter

Our new intro music comes “The Launch” by Chronox (CC BY 4.0), which has been slightly modified to include sound effects and for length purposes.

That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

Suggestive spaceships, gin dispensers, and giant crystals, oh my! Paul and Jen are joined by one of our frequent victims, Michael J. Martinez, to discuss the 1980 Seven Samurai inspired space-sploitation(TM) film, Battle Beyond the Stars. Honestly, we probably should have known what to expect based on the producer (spoilers), but the sheer inconsistency of the plot and world-building, the offensive tropes, and the completely inane earnestness of the main character still had us scratching our heads and groaning in dismay. BUT AT LEAST WE GOT GEORGE PEPPARD!

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show!

Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

Episode 332 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)(IMDB)

* Michael J. Martinez’s Stuff:

* Mike’s Website

* MJ-12: Shadows (Mike’s latest novel from Night Shade Books – GO BUY IT!)

* Mike’s Twitter

Our new intro music comes “The Launch” by Chronox (CC BY 4.0), which has been slightly modified to include sound effects and for length purposes.

That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

On today’s Signal Boost, Shaun and Jen discuss a few things that had them either shaking their head “WTF?” or screaming “WTF?!,” including the rise and fall of a wanna-be NYT Bestselling YA novel, agism directed at a dear friend, and the conservative military SFF community’s response to the upcoming Space Marine Midwives Anthology. Warning, there is colorful language in this one.

Once they get their anger out, they share this week’s Mini-Boosts — a couple of fundraisers and a couple of fun things!

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show!

Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

Signal Boost #17 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Lani Sarem & Handbook for Mortals

* NYT Pulls Book From Best-Seller List Over Suspicious Sales

* The Brief, Tumultuous Reign of An Erstwhile Best-Seller

* Blues Traveler’s John Popper on the New York Times best-seller scam: ‘Justice was done’

* Author Removed From New York Times Best-Seller List Fires Back at Critics

* Sarah Chorn the Awesome

* Bookworm Blues

* Sarah’s Twitter

* Space Marine Midwives Anthology Submission Guidelines

Mini-Boosts:

* Shaun’s Boosts:

* Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Prime Meridian Fund Drive

* An Excess Male

* Jen’s Boosts:

* Strange Horizons Fund Drive

* 17776 – A Football Story

Our new intro music comes “The Launch” by Chronox (CC BY 4.0), which has been slightly modified to include sound effects and for length purposes.

That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next time.

In today’s episode of Signal Boost, Fran Wilde, author and tech consultant, joins Paul to dive into the final book in her Bone Universe series, Horizon. Fran and Paul discuss some of the worldbuilding and where this newest book takes us. Then Bogi Takács, writer of short-form speculative fiction, joins Jen to talk about Transcendent 2: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, and anthology they just edited for Lethe Press. Bogi talks about how they got involved, what it means to them, and the kinds of stories that you’ll find in the anthology.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Fran Wilde – 0:55 – 20:45

Bogi Takács – 21:08 – 36:26

Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show!

Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

Signal Boost #16 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Fran Wilde

* Fran’s Website

* Fran’s Twitter

* Horizon (GO BUY IT!)

* Bogi Takács

* Bogi’s Website

* Bogi’s Twitter

* Bogi’s Patreon

* Transcendent 2: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction (GO BUY THIS TOO!)

Our new intro music comes “The Launch” by Chronox (CC BY 4.0), which has been slightly modified to include sound effects and for length purposes.

That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next time.

Rampant misogyny, batipi, and failed plots, oh my! Shaun, Paul, and Alex join together to absolutely destroy the mess that is Luc Besson’s newest film, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. They REALLY hated this movie, guys. From the wish-fulfillment misogyny of Valerian himself to the wasted potential of Rihanna’s character (and virtually everything else), they found a lot of things that just went horribly wrong with this CGI extravaganza.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show!

Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

Shoot the WISB #61 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Our new intro music comes “The Launch” by Chronox (CC BY 4.0), which has been slightly modified to include sound effects and for length purposes.

That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

On today’s psuedo-Signal Boost, Shaun, Paul, and our resident WSFS expert, Alex, recap the Helsinki WorldCon WSFS Business meeting LIVE from WorldCon (ok, so not exactly live, but it’s as close as we get). Alex shares the nitty-gritty, the grim and ugly, the wonderful and the strange, that occured at the Helsinki WSFS business meeting, including the news that we now have a YA award (which is, as of now, nameless)! Yay! Also, an update on all the fun of the anti-slate voting measures that were put into place. A lot of stuff happens at the WSFS meetings regarding the Hugo Awards, so it’s worth paying attention to and getting involved with if you can. The team also share their impressions of the Helsinki Convention as a whole!

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show!

Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

Signal Boost #15 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* WorldCon 75 in Helsinki

* The World Science Fiction Society

* WSFS Website

* Helsinki Business Meeting

* Alex Acks’ WSFS Business Meeting Recaps

Our new intro music comes “The Launch” by Chronox (CC BY 4.0), which has been slightly modified to include sound effects and for length purposes.

That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next time.

Boats, Bungie Headquarters, and organizing, oh my! Shaun was honored to be able to interview Guest of Honor Tobias Buckell at NASFiC in San Juan, Puerto Rico, last month. It was a great conversation about Tobias’ history and identity as a Caribbean writer, what it’s like to write tie-in novels for Halo (which he’s a total geek for), and The Tangled Lands, his new book co-written with Paolo Bacigalupi. There are audience questions at the end to delve into even more fun tidbits! This was a live recording, so please forgive the audio quality.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show!

Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

Episode 331 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Tobias Buckell’s Things:

* Tobias’s Website

* Tobias’ Twitter

* North American Science Fiction Convention

* NASFiC

* NorthAmeriCon ’17 in San Juan

Our new intro music comes “The Launch” by Chronox (CC BY 4.0), which has been slightly modified to include sound effects and for length purposes.

That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

In today’s episode of Signal Boost, Elsa Sjunneson-Henry and Dominik Parisien join Paul to talk about the Uncanny Magazine Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction and Year Four Kickstarter. Elsa is the Non-Fiction Editor and Dominik is the Fiction Editor for the special edition of Uncanny Magazine focusing on disability representation in Science Fiction and Fantasy. They talk about why this issue is important to them personally and to the field of SF&F, the perks of backing the kickstarter, and the awesome contributors they’ve already lined up. Then Dave Robison, co-host of the podcast formerly known as Roundtable, joins Paul to talk about the reboot of his podcast in conjunction with his new story mapping software, Archivos, which goes into beta on September 1, 2017.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show!

Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

Signal Boost #14 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Uncanny Magazine

* Uncanny Magazine‘s Website

* Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction and Year Four Kickstarter

* Uncanny Magazine on Twitter

* Elsa Sjunneson-Henry

* Elsa’s Website

* Elsa’s Twitter

* Dominik Parisien

* Dominik’s Website

* Dominik’s Twitter

* Archivos

* Archivos Website

* Archivos Podcast Network

* Archivos Story App Twitter

* Archivos Podcast Twitter

Our new intro music comes “The Launch” by Chronox (CC BY 4.0), which has been slightly modified to include sound effects and for length purposes.

That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next time.

Killer comets, zombie scientists, and arcade game rivalries, oh my! Jen, Alex, and Paul are joined by the wonderful Keith Manuel to discuss the 1984 post apocalyptic film, Night of the Comet! A film which is really not all that torturous even when you consider it has absolutely no logical consistency to how a killer comet kills everyone on earth… except teenagers who like malls and guns. Also, a baby Chakotay doing sit-ups. Yum.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show!

Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

Episode 330 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Night of the Comet (1984)(IMDB)

* Keith Manuel’s Stuff

* Keith on Twitter

* Keith’s Website

Our new intro music comes “The Launch” by Chronox (CC BY 4.0), which has been slightly modified to include sound effects and for length purposes.

That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

In today’s episode of Signal Boost, Nicky Drayden (a debut author!) joins Stina (in her debut as host!) to talk about the crazy genre mash-up, The Prey of Gods, the journey to becoming a debut author, and how she’s working on a pipeline to encourage Black speculative fiction writers through ArmadilloCon. Then, Jen is joined by Wendy Wagner, associate/managing editor of Lightspeed & Nightmare magazines, to talk about her new novel, An Oath of Dogs; they also talk about why she chose to focus on blue-collar workers in Science Fiction, explore man’s relationship with dogs, and what it took to make the jump from Pathfinder novels to one set in her own world.

(And yes, it’s a total coincidence that we happen to have on two authors whose titles are palindromes of each other)

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show!

Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

Signal Boost #13 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Nicky Drayden’s Stuff

* Nicky on Twitter

* Nicky’s Website

* The Prey of Gods

* Wendy Wagner’s Stuff:

* Wendy’s Twitter

* Wendy’s Website

* An Oath of Dogs

* ArmadilloCon Writer’s Workshop

Our new intro music comes “The Launch” by Chronox (CC BY 4.0), which has been slightly modified to include sound effects and for length purposes.

That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next time.