The World SF Tour continues with our discussion of New Zealander speculative fiction with Helen Lowe, Norman Cates, and Stephen Minchkin.  We discuss NZ publishing, the field of NZ specfic, themes and issues, and so much more.

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 193 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Helen Lowe is a fantasy author whose work has won the Sir Julius Vogel Award, the Gemmell Morningstar Award, and others.  She can be found on her website and blog; she is also on Twitter

* Norman Cates is president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand and is in charge of the 2020 New Zealand Worldcon bid, which will be updated soon. Like it via Facebook or sign up with e-mail address to get info for supporting it.

* Stephen Minchin runs New Zealand-based Steam Press, which has published award-winning works such as The Prince of Soul and the Lighthouse by Fredrik Brouneus.  He can also be found on Twitter.

Here are all the lovely authors and things mentioned during this episode (thanks to Julia for compiling it all; you win the Internet for that!):

* Sir Julius Vogel (Anno Domini 2000)

* Cherry Wilder

* Elizabeth Knox — The Vintner’s Luck was her first book–Stephen says this is the first book he’d point people towards. Her dream duology is recommended by Helen. Uses NZ landscape in a really interesting way

* The Bone People (Keri Hulme magic realism, won the Booker)

* Erewhon — Samuel Butler

* Under the Mountain (trilogy YA 1979 Maurice Gee)

* Juliet Marillier

* (Norman founded an SF club in Auckland as a teen and made prosthetics, eventually got tapped to work on LotR, chaired 2 SF cons, organized many others)

* DUFF – Down Under Fan Fund — sends people from Australasia to cons in the US

* SFNZ SpecFic NZ (focused on writing)

* A focus on environmental issues — climate and pollution seem to be big issues for authors

* The Wind City by Summer Wigmore (set in Wellington Urban fantasy using Maori mythology)

* Maori Authors

* Huia Publishers:  https://www.huia.co.nz/

* Keri Hulme (Bone People)

* Patrica Grace (Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps)

* Kelly Ana Morey (Bloom)

* Anna Caro

* Tina Makereti

* Cassie Hart

* Karen Healey’s Guardian of the Dead (very NZ specfic)

* Lee Murray

* Man Alone (1930s — common theme in NZ fiction and film, person out of mainstream, disconnected)

* Cinema of the unease — what’s happening? (what Norman calls depressing)

* Peter Jackson

* Heavenly Creatures

* The Cure (film– made in NZ through WETA

The World SF Tour continues with our discussion of Australian speculative fiction with Tansy Rayner Roberts (author and Hugo Award winner for Best Fan Writer) and Marianne de Pierres (author and Aurealis Award winner for Best Novel)

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 192 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Tansy’s Website

* Tansy’s latest release is called Ink Black Magic with Fablecroft, funny fantasy based around comic book heroes and magic going wrong.  She also writes crime with Twelfth Planet Press under the name Livia Day and is part of the Galactic Suburbia podcast.

* Marianne’s Website

* Marianne’s Angry Robot Book is coming out in May. It’s called Peacemaker. She also writes crime under the name Marianne Delacourt.  Her YA trilogy, The Night Creatures, and the Escape Club (a YA zine w/ book reviews and other features for teens — plus some recipes!) can be found here.

* Tansy’s Twitter

* Marianne’s Twitter

Here are all the lovely authors and things mentioned during this episode (thanks to Julia for compiling it all; you win the Internet for that!):

* The Madigal Beverly Macdonald

* Tony Shillitoe

* 1995 Harper Voyager imprint started publishing AUS specfic

* Sara Douglass

* Wombats! http://www.wimp.com/wombatman/

* Shaun Tan

* Richard Harland

* Jo Anderton

* Trent Jamieson

* Glenda Larke (selling better overseas, has racial diversity)

* Kate Forsyth –Bitter Greens is a Rapunzel historical fantasy.

* Jennifer Fallon

* Karen Miller

* Sean Williams (Very big profile in Australia, and writes things that relate to the landscape of South Australia)

* Garth Nix

* Trudy Canavan

* Margo Lanagan (Has international acclaim for bigger novels, but also works with small presses, and her collection in the Twelve Planets series is very Australian.)

* Justine Larbalestier

* Small presses doing excellent things:

* Fablecroft (Tehani Wessely) — Tansy is editing a book with Fablecroft called Angry Ladies of History (Kickstarter coming in March)

* Twelfth Planet Press (Alisa Krasnostein) — Julia is co-editing an anthology of diverse YA with Alisa. Kaleidoscope is set to launch at WorldCon.

* Coeur de Lion (Keith Stevenson) – has a new e-magazine ‘Dimension6’ which will launch on April 4 and which will be completely free and DRM free.

* Satalyte Publishing (Stephen Ormsby) — Adam Browne: ‘Other Stories’ released in February, one to watch out for.

* Ticonderoga (Russell B. Farr) — Jason Fischer’s ‘Everything is a Graveyard’ out now.

Magic wars, goblins, and love, oh my!  Myke Cole returns once more with another incredible work of fantasy fiction, Shadow Ops:  Breach Zone.  We dig into the complicated relationship between the military and the general public, the development of the novels in Shadow Ops series, and so much more.

Spoiler warning:  if you have not read the previous two books in the series, Control Point and Fortress Frontier, we recommend doing so before listening to this episode.  While we don’t ruin those books, we obviously discuss some of the details in their connection to Breach Zone.

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 190 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Myke’s Website

* Myke’s Twitter

* Myke’s Books

You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone.

Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0).

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

Robot fights, sand, and military advertising, oh my!  You asked for it, and here are providing it:  the latest in our Torture Cinema series, in which Shaun, Julia, Paul, and Jen take on the second Transformers movie from Michael Bay.  Prime help us…

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 190 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Transformers 2:  Revenge of the Fallen (2009)(IMDB)

* For the previous pieces of the skit, check out Episode 147 and Episode 158.

This is the thing we laughed our heads off about when Julia brought it up.  Enjoy:

You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone.

Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0).

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

Books, movies, TV, and more, oh my!  In a fit of profound genius, most of the crew got together to discuss all the lovely stuff they read, viewed, and experienced in 2013.

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 189 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes (all the things we mentioned):

Books:

* The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

* The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough

* The Other Side of the Sky edited by Athena Athenais

* Glitter and Mayhem edited by John Klima, Lynne M Thomas and Michael D Thomas

* Thunder Road by Chadwick Ginther

* Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan

* Thousand Names by Django Wexler

* Cold Steel by Kate Elliott)

* Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

* Prince of Lies by Anne Lyle

* All is Fair by Emma Newman

* Sunburnted Faces by Shimon Adaf

* Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

* Without a Summer by Mary Robinette Kowal

* A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar

* Handbook for Dragon Slayers by Merrie Haskell

* Hild by Nicola Griffith

* Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee

* Clockwork Phoenix 4 edited by Mike Allen

* Martyr’s Gem by CSE Cooney

* Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal

* “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind” by Sarah Pinsker

* Fortress Frontier by Myke Cole

* The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

* Love is the Law by Nick Mamatas

* The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar

* I Am Spock by Leonard Nemoy

Movies:

* The World’s End

* Teen Beach Movie

* Frozen

* Gravity

* Catching Fire

* Elysium

* Man of Steel

* Pacific Rim

* Captain Phillips

* 12 Years a Slave

Television:

* Hannibal

* Sleepy Hollow

* Game of Thrones

* The Walking Dead

* The Brooklyn 99

* “The Day of the Doctor” from Doctor Who

* The Bletchley Circle

* The Following

Comics:

* High Crimes by Christopher Sebela & Ibrahim Moustafa

* Hinterkind by Ian Edginton, Francesco Trifogli, & Greg Tocchini

* Batwoman by J.H. Williams, III, W. Haden Blackman, Dave Stewart, & Todd Klein

* Batgirl by Gail Simone, Ardian Syaf, Vicente Cifuentes, Ulises Arreola, & Dave Sharpe

* Batman by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, FCO Plascencia, Richard Starkins, & Jimmy Betancourt

* Avengers Arena by Dennis Hopeless & Kev Walker

* Avengers by Jonathan Hickman & Jerome Opena

* Marvel Marvel Marvel…

* Saga by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples

Video Games:

* Portal

* Portal 2

* Starcraft 2

* Civilation V:  Brave New Worlds

* Bioshock Infinite

* The Last of Us

Podcasts:

* The Writer and the Critic

* Galactic Suburbia

* The Book Was Better

For your Hugo consideration for Best Related Work:

* Episode 169:  Sharknado (2013) — A Torture Cinema Adventure

You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone.

Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by 

Assassins, space racists, secret pasts, and alien politics, oh my! Mike, Paul, Shaun, and Stina offer their thoughts on episodes 5-8 of Babylon 5 in our second ever re-watch session.

We also really want to hear what you think!  So feel free to watch along with us!  Next up, the third disc of the Season One box set!

Spoiler Alert:  the following podcast contains spoilers for the film being reviewed; if you wish to see the film without having it ruined for you, download this podcast and save it for later.

Download the episode here.

Show notes (info about our contributors can be found on the about page):

* Babylon 5 (IMDB)

* Episode 5:  “The Parliament of Dreams“

* Episode 6:  “Mind War“

* Episode 7:  “The War Prayer“

* Episode 8:  “And the Sky Full of Stars“

Comment away!

The World SF Tour continues…with an interview with Shimon Adaf, author of Sunburnt Faces from PS Publishing.  We discuss violence and children, religion, the influence of reading, and so much more.

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 188 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Sunburnt Faces on PS Publishing

* PS Publishing

You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone.

Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0).

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

Wild imaginations, 40-somethings, and adventures, oh my!  Shaun, Paul, Stina, and Rhiannon Held (our super special guest) join forces to tackle the newly released film adaptation of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, starring Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, and many more!

Spoiler Alert:  the following podcast contains spoilers for the film being reviewed; if you wish to see the film without having it ruined for you, download this podcast and save it for later.

Download the episode here.

Show notes (info about our contributors can be found on the about page):

* The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)(IMDB)

* Rhiannon’s Website

* Rhiannon’s Books

* Our previous podcast interviews w/ Rhiannon:  for Silver and Tarnished

Note:  We’re shifting over the Shoot the WISB segments from my personal blog to The Skiffy and Fanty Show.  Why?  It just makes more sense, I suppose.  If you’ve never listened to the Shoot the WISB casts, you’ll likely see them pop up in your iTunes or RSS feeds over the next few weeks.

The World SF Tour continues…with an interview with Lavie Tidhar, author of The Violent Century.  We discuss the novel’s path to publication, its themes of heroism, superheroes and the pulps, and much more.

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 187 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Lavie’s Website

* Lavie’s Twitter

You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone.

Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0).

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

The World SF Tour begins…now!  For our first episode, Julia and Shaun talked with Didi Chanoch and Rani Graff about translation, the publishing world in Israel, Israeli SF/F, and much more!

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 186 — Download (MP3)

Show Notes:

* Graff Publishing

* Graff Publishing on Facebook

* YA Graff Books

* Didi’s About Page

* Didi’s Twitter

* Didi’s Blog

* Rani’s Facebook

* Rani’s Twitter

You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone.

Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0).

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