Today we show you just why the audio podcast is different and more REAL than anything else you listen to. Then we calm down, sober up, time travel, and have a fascinating interview with G. Willow Wilson. Turns out, she is awesome. Find out why!
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
Is science fiction exhauasted? It has a had a hard century's work. We'll examine that, invite you to read some banned books, and smell Veronica's feet. Don't let that last one put you off. We also kick off Cloud Atlas.
I have always been an avid reader but not a fantasy/sci-fi reader until I started to listen to your audio podcast, I came by the way of Buzz Out Loud. Listening to ya'll talk about the Game of Thrones so much made me decide I had to give a shot, well I started reading them in July and am over half way through the 5th book now we are also watching the HBO series. I wanted to thank you for introducing me to such a great series that I otherwise would have missed and to send you some pictures that I think of every time the talk about the old gods in the weirwood trees. http://www.flickr.com/photos/82006512@N00/8037943720/in/photostream/ These pictures are from Orr Park in Montevallo, Alabama were a local artist by the name of Tingle has been carving in the deadwood trees since at least 1993. Just had to share these pics with ya'll.
Love the show,
Laura Boggs
Montevallo, Alabama
ADDENDUMS
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
It's a virtual bachelorette party of SciFi and Fantasy discussion today, with a chat about how SciFi can be interesting if it follows the laws of physics, and an interview with author Anton Strout.
WHAT ARE WE DRINKING? Tom: Kona Big Wave Golden Ale Veronica: Fruity vodka drink with Passion Fruit and stuff
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
It's that time of year again... DragonCon! If you weren't able to join us for our live show, never fear! We recorded it for you. Joining us on this episode is the wonderful R.A. Salvatore, who answered your questions and gave us some great advice for new writers.
Also, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter! We'll keep you up-to-date on all the upcoming live shows and appearances, and make sure you don't miss a video show or audio podcast!
We're going to DragonCon! Sword and Laser Podcast – LIVE We’ll do a live version of our audio podcast with a special guest author and take your questions. So get to reading! Time: Sat 02:30 pm Location: Crystal Ballroom – Hilton (Length: 1 Hour) Parsec Awards The Parsec Awards are the yearly awards for speculative fiction podcasts. I’ll be presenting, and Veronica Belmont will be hosting! Time: Sun 04:30 pm Location: International North Room – Hyatt
ADDENDUMS This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
In this episode, we learn how to control Veronica using the power of her "true name": Nathan! Like the hot dogs! We also talk about the fine art of seducing writers.
First of all, I love the show and I'm excited to be a part of your book club. I'd just like to thank you for this month's pick. I must admit I had my reservations about the novel (I'm not a huge fan of first person narration.) But I was quite surprised by how quickly the pages were turning. I was at the Half-Price bookstore and on page 13 when my brother showed me what he'd intended to buy. The Playstation version of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. Then it occurred to me I should try to read the book using Simon Templeman's voice as an older Fitz relating his childhood. The book went from pretty interesting to nothing short of awesome. The voice of Kain going through your head and narrating a tale of a boy's travails as he learns the trade of killing people? What's not to love? Anyway, I thought you'd get a kick out of that. Once again, thank you so much for the pick. I can't wait to see how it turns out. Take care guys.
Yours truly,
Dwayne.
ADDENDUMS
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
Veronica's on a beach in Hawaii but found a TARDIS or something, so we have an incredibly confusing discussion about ethics, and then an incredibly awesome discussion with author Michael Stackpole. Join us, won't you?
You are Spot On - It's impossible to carry enough fuel (in the fusion reactor, this fuel is in the form of fuseable pellets) to power a generation ship for hundreds of years at full thrust.
The Nauvoo's mid section is actually an enormous drum that creates spin gravity after the initial acceleration. This becomes an important plot point in book 3.
Best known for his Star Wars and Battletech books.
ADDENDUMS
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
We kick off Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey, debate Terry Goodkind's response to book pirates, and discuss what makes for good and kind book discussion. See what I did there? Goodkind. Good... Kind... just listen.
Tom: Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons and The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham ADDENDUMS
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
We do the show in front of a live audience at Nerdtacular 2012 in Salt Lake City! Live singing of the Reading Rainbow theme, a house motto contest and questions from the audience ensue.
I just posted this in the ""What Else Are You Reading?"" forum and wanted to make sure you saw it since I know you like supporting cool Kickstarter projects. This one is a ""techno epic/spiritual fiction"" graphic novel created by Wired magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly with several talented writers and artists and they've already completed the free-to-read book one and are looking for funding for book two.
Here's the post in GoodReads: The Silver Cord - free graphic novel
Here's the Kickstarter page: The Silver Cord -- A Techno-Epic Graphic Novel
I love the show and would love hearing about this in a future episode!
Thanks,
Dan
ADDENDUMS
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
Ha! Didn't think you were getting an audio podcast this week did you? Well, we had a chance to interview Seanan McGuire, who also writes as Mira Grant, and we jumped at the opportunity to talk about zombies, SFSqueecast and Low Men in Yellow Coats. We think you'll like hearing about it too.
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
It's a roller-coaster ride of emotions this week, as we say goodbye to one of science fiction's greatest writers, revel in swordfighting, and declare Veronica all-powerful. But there's also voting for the July book pick. Don't let all that democracy go to your head though.
In your last episode you mentioned that you noticed that fantasy seems to be more popular in later years than scifi, after which veronica immediately dissmissed the notion and attributed it to the popularity of game of thrones. It is not true, although game of thrones is extremely popular it's popularity is a simptom and not a cause.
It is a well known fact that scifi had been slowing down as a ganre for 30 years, and in the same time the fantasy ganre had been on the rise, and it seems that during the last decade these trends had became more prominent.
Love your show,
Shaul from Israel.
Keeping a candle in the window for scifi.
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ADDENDUMS
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
We set out to interview author Todd McCaffrey at BayCon 2012, but it ended up turning into a wonderful conversation about dragons, bacteria, space travel, and big ideas. Veronica also gets very flustered when asked to describe an "Anne McCaffrey dragon."
It's our 100th episode and we're having a party. But some of you are not having a party with our book pick. Well, you can just Farcast out of here! Kidding! It's OK if you Lem it. Borges tells you why.
I just found out about you guys, and Geek & Sundry, in general. I'm super stoked: to hear Gaimen and Dick being thrown out there brings warm fuzzies to my book-lovin' heart. I enjoy what (be it your personality and literary smarts) and who (the authors!) your bring to the table. Can't wait for the next installment.
As for a dragon name, how about "Gelf"?
A gelf can be a elven creature (sword); a genetically enhanced life form (laser); or can be anything you want it to be (in our line of business, imagination is everything). See Urban Dictionary for more details. A-a-a-nd, for bonus points, it was a Gelfling that merged the Skexis and urRu into one awesome whole- just like you guys have have brought the sword and laser communities together and the yet-to-be-named dragon seems to be half traditional dragon and half... MechaGodzilla. =)
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
It's an epic struggle... With The Magicians finally given our last words, and Hyperion by Dan Simmons kicked off, attention turns to the June "sword" pick. But while Veronica struggles with her penchant for democracy and her desire for supreme power, she comes up against one sobering fact: In the game of sword picks, you win or you read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
It's what is called a Frame Story - A frame story (also frame tale, frame narrative, etc.) is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories. The frame story leads readers from a first story into another, smaller one (or several ones) within it.Mimics the canterbury Tales in many ways. Stories are told on a pilgrimage.
Hyperion is in development for a 2013 release (definitely subject to change since it hasn't started production yet). According to a 2008 io9 report the writer Trevor Sands will simplify Hyperion and mash it up with the sequel Fall of Hyperion http://io9.com/375998/dan-simmons-hyperion-books-will-be-smooshed-together-into-one-movie
First, I love the show. I'm a fellow podcaster over at Guys Can Read. We do book reviews and interviews with authors like R. A. Salvatore and Daniel H. Wilson.
Also, I thought your listeners would be interested in my book launch into space! Here is the video. If you need any other media information just let me know.
Hope you guys enjoy!
Kevin
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ADDENDUMS
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers.For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
If you thought the audio podcast would get shorter because of our video show, you were not right. We have almost a full hour of discussion about why we like dark fantasy, what makes C.S. Lewis so cool, and the ups, downs, ins, and outs of Quentin Coldwater and The Magicians. Also Veronica keeps saying "lady cave" because she thinks it's funny. It's funny.
i've just watched the first video version of Sword & Laser on Youtube, and i totally loved it!
I have a small question you guys can hopefully help me out with.
I've recently sold my tablet (the poor thing was collection dust on the shelf), but now i'm finding myself getting back into e-books.
I could read them on my smartphone, but the small screen makes me want to turn it off after a few minutes.
Reading them on the computer works sometimes, but my concentration levels aren't as high as i hoped, i usually find myself surfing the web withint 10-15 minutes.
Audiobooks may be a solution, and i am currently listening to one, narrated by your first guest Scott Sigler. However, i was hoping to somehow combine this with reading e-books.
Any tips on how to make it easier to read e)books for an hour at a time without reinvesting in a tablet or any other devices would be appreciated!
Love the show, your dragon definitely needs some patting :)
Sincerely,
JP
ADDENDUMS
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers.
For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service.
For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
We realise right off the top of the show that we need to start planning for our 100th episode. Soon! We also figure out why SciFi is sometimes better than reality and dish what we thought of The Hunger Games movie. Also: GAME OF THRONES!!!
We're psyched to interview Scott Lynch, who, spoiler alert, is the Scott who gets welcomed in the new member hellos too! Plus we delve into the Ender's Game controversy and pick good audio books for road trips.
EMAIL Hey there! I am an assistant librarian at Parman Library here in San Antonio, TX. I was wondering, since you guys have quite the following, if you could have an option on your site or goodreads site where people can submit their book groups/social clubs for others to search for. For instance, I have a science fiction book group at our library called Escape the Earth! and if it were listed on your site, which gets a lot of traffic from SF fans, it would bring my community closer together in our nerdom. Just a thought… Been enjoying the podcast!
Tyler D. Lutz ---
Hey Tom and Veronica. Congrats on the video show, I'd actually always hoped we'd see a video show (though I always imagined it would have been a TWiT.TV show). Anyway I have a couple of thoughts. 1. You mentioned the video show needing to be pretty strictly PG. Do you feel this is going to have a real impact on the book choices? 2. What's going to happen with Game of Thrones TV discussion? I'd really like you to think about doing a separate small 10-15 minute audioshow after each episode and drop them in the podcast feed. Anyway really looking forward to the video show. Jason (Australia). ---
I know you cant talk about it on sword and laser because of your sponsor but I think people should know about http://librivox.org/ It is a website that is trying to record all public domain books into audio books and then publish them on the web under creative commons. People can volunteer to read books or chapters and upload them back to the site. They are all surprising well done and although not on the same level as paid versions. They are very easy to listen to, unlike computer synthesized voices. I first heard about from the roku channel on the nowhere man's privet channel page http://thenowhereman.com/roku/ I would love to know what you think about it Thanks -Andrew
We're all giddy about our new video show at Geek and Sundry, but we promise there's more to the episode than just that. Though if you have questions about what the video show means, hopefully loads of them are answered right off the top of the show. We also dig into Lies of Locke Lamora (though we don't wrap it up quite yet) and help save SciFi. Literally.
I had the honor of getting to see Tom and Veronica at the WonderCon signing this Saturday. Tom gave me a shirt and I thought it was just an XL when he gave it to me, but was elated to see it was an XXXL when I checked it later. I'm so used to free giveaways being so small on me and most people overlook us big boys. I'm a big fan of all that you and I can't thank you enough.
Literally a Big Fan,
Mike P.
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Tom and Veronica,
I'm very excited about your video podcast, and all teh geek and sundry goodness coming. But I have one concern: Is there a 'what we're drinking' section? If there is no drinking to begin the show, it can't really be an S&L podcast, can it?
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers.
For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service.
We talk about some cool SciFi maps from the US to Westeros tonight. Plus, the Syrah may get to our hosts, but they think they know both why we like heroes, and when it's OK to hate an author's politics but like his story. we also are continually impressed with Terry Pratchett.
I'm very pleased you're currently reading The Lies of Locke Lamora. I read it about a year ago and immediately followed up with the awesome sequel ""Red Seas Under Red Skies"". It was that book that got me more into the Fantasy genre and as I explored online I found your podcast. I saw this recent post on Scott Lynch's blog regarding some of his early development of the Gentlemen Bastard series and thought it would be interesting to mention on the show:
I found this post particularly interesting as I will be taking part in this years NaNoWriMo, inspired by your attempts last year, and I plan on making extensive notes beforehand.
Keep up the good work.
Matt
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Hi, this is Chris from Poland again. I wanted to mention that the Discworld Reading Order Guide that I maintain and which you mentioned once on the podcast has been updated to version 2.1 and is available on the Discworld Fanatics website. Since you sometimes mention Pratchett, your listeners might want to take a look at the new Guide.
We chat with author and magician Andrew Mayne. And we mean he's actually amagician, not just magical with stories, although also that. Plus we talk about the best ways to sign Kindle books.
Hi, this is Chris from Poland again from the ""No, I fixed it!"" debacle :-P. I'm now all caught up with the podcast. I just graduated from English Studies at the University of Warsaw. I thought I'd send you guys my MA Theis, as it deals with the cyberpunk fiction of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson (the novels "Neuromancer", "Snow Crash" and "The Diamond Age").
The Thesis explores the themes of innocence and individualism in American fiction and cyberpunk in particular. Check it out if you're ever bored enough to start reading an academic paper ;-).
This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 100,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature and featuring audio versions of many New York Times Best Sellers. For listeners of this podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook, to give you a chance to try out their service. For a free audiobook of your choice go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.
