S&L Podcast - #453 - And That's How the News Goes
/We check in on how everyone is feeling about Brightness Falls From the Air. We also feel mildly optimistic about Apple's digital narrators, and we discuss the best way to introduce someone to a series.
WHAT ARE WE EATING?
Tom: Thai-inspired shrimp curry
Veronica: Broccoli Rigatoni
QUICK BURNS
John - Apple Books quietly launches AI-narrated audiobooks
Mark: Some guy named Tom is celebrating 10 years podcasting the Daily Tech News Show
BARE YOUR SWORD
Oaken: Tom mentioned that Moorcock may have taken a cue from Tolkien or CS Lewis. From what I've read of him in interviews, it would only be as an anti-cue. Moorcock felt that Tolkien was too influential and that too much of fantasy up until that point was Tolkien-derivative. Elric was a deliberate attempt to subvert the tropes that had, until then, dominated the genre. That included Tolkien as well as Conan, et al. (He was vocal about his feelings about SF&F having become stale to the point that the old-guard felt he was deliberately trying to sideline them and they weren't happy about it.)
Iain: For me the big problem with the book is that it isn’t about Elric. Since it’s an origin story, we are watching Elric turn into will grow into himself. This is the problem with origin stories. You are actually reading about the main character.The earlier short stories and probably the subsequent stories deal with every in his prime. I mean it isn’t an alright story, unless he accidentally kills a friend/lover with Stormbringer and absorbs their soul.
Jan: The talk about the Tiptree bio was so interesting, I would love to read sometimes a bio of an interesting author for Sword & Laser!!!
And I am wondering: What other more "unusual" stuff would you love to have as a monthly read on S&L sometime, fellow Shields (or whatever we have agreed on as a term for us)?
Some ideas I would find really interesting:
- A good tie-in novel to a game, a movie or TV (like Star Trek) - or even a novelization of a science fiction or fantasy movie (like Star Wars)
- a Choose Your Own Adventure Style Book
- The Ilias or something mythology-related or very old
Any ideas?"
Hello!
I was delighted and probably a bit too excited to find that you have had discussions about Novelist over the past couple of weeks! Like Katie (Katy?), I am a librarian and I also use NoveList all the time because it is such a solid way to suggest books without having to have read them. When I can, I turn the my searching into a mini instruction session so that the patron will get an idea of how to use the database on their own.
Which reminds me, yes! NoveList is a database! What makes it special is that it is curated by librarians who are experts in readers advisory and identifying appeal factors and other story elements of books, instead of an algorithm that isn’t able to reason about those more subjective elements. For instance: I mostly read SFF (shocker), but I have found and loved books outside of those genres by searching with appeal terms.
Also, if you want to do a deep dive into NoveList’s story elements, check out this publication
It was written as a tool for librarians, but I’m pretty sure that book nerds like S&L listeners will find it useful and interesting.
Thank you again for talking about an amazing tool that so many people don’t realize is already on their belt.
~Chaos Librarian"
BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION
Check In
Brightness Falls from the Air by James Tiptree Jr.
ADDENDUMS
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