S&L Podcast - #228 - Is Present Tense for Baby Brains?
/This week, things really go nuts when Veronica realizes that she likes Tom's book pick more than Tom does, which causes Tom to question everything he has ever known. Meanwhile, over on Goodreads, Thane questions whether present tense is the bane of genre fiction! Hmmm...
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WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?
Tom: Yorkshire Gold Tea
Veronica: Candy Peaches (eating)
QUICK BURNS
Thane: Looks like BBC is doing The City and the City. A 4 part adaptation. The City & the City
Tamahome: I didn't know Octavia Butler's Dawn would be adapted to tv either.
Trike: Amazon is saying the first season of The Man in the High Castle will be available November 20, 2015. If you haven't seen the pilot, I highly recommend it. And I'm known as The Guy Who Hates Everything. (Which isn't true. I only hate MOST things. But this I love.)
Jason is referring to Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti, when he says: I just found this tidbit on tor.com. This sounds exciting, the novella is read by Robin Miles and she worked closely with the author to get the right sounds and inflection to world build. Here's the synopis: "Binti is a brilliant young woman who is the first of the Himba community to be offered a place at the galaxy’s finest institution of higher learning." There is also a spooky race of bad guys. Has there ever been a collaboration with an author to make a book sound right? " ---(Tamahome found the Tor link)
Stephen: Mark Lawrence has started a new story on Wattpad. It is a free western fantasy told in 19 parts.
Elizabeth: Turns out Uprooted may contain True Facts: io9. Medieval Skeleton Found Dangling From the Roots of a Fallen Tree.
BARE YOUR SWORD
Present Tense - Can you dig it?
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Dear Tom and Veronica,
I recently stumbled across a super-rad book from the University of Pennsylvania Press, ER Truitt's Medieval Robots, and I thought, what could be more Sword and Laser than that? I mean, ok, Space Dragons, maybe, and also actual laser swords. But still, Medieval Robots are probably the third most sword-and-lasery thing in existence. The title sounds like that of a really generically titled pulp, but it's actually a survey of automata in the Western Medieval world-- the fictional robots that feature in Medieval Romance and legend, the pseudo-fictional robots that feature in travelogues (turns out, the Middle East? Filled with robots!), and real, historical robots that were installed as curiosities in courts. Anyway, it's so rare that nonfiction stuff is relevant to the show that I thought I should share.
Rob S.
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I recently started listening to NPR's Ask Me Another, where Jonathan Coulton is the house musician, and heard one of their older episodes. On their July 31, 2014 show, Saladin Ahmed was a guest. This reminded me of your Bonus Interview with Saladin in 2012. I have not seen a video of Ask Me Another, so we cannot be sure whether Saladin/Jonathan are one person, but we do know that there is proof that they have been in the same place at the same time.
In case you have the time, I have included a link to that episode. The clip in question is "Can't Place the Place Name."
Enjoy.
-John
BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
ACFL: Walter Miller Jr.
A Science-Fiction Classic Still Smolders
ADDENDUMS
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