S&L Podcast - #253 - A Tale of Two Styles

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The Hugos are out! We leave the drama to the side for this one and celebrate the novel nominees. But we didn't waste the drama... we just saved it for our evaluations of TV show and movie-based SFF books! We even brought a little to season our conversation about The Fifth Season and A Darker Shade of Magic. It's OK to like different styles of writing, folks!

Download direct here!
    
QUICK BURNS
    
John: The Hugo Finalists are out
    
Thane: Jerry Pournelle wins the Heinlein Memorial Award from the National Space Society.
    
Dara: Mark Rylance joins Ready Player One film adaptation (as Oasis creator James Donovan Halliday)
    
Rob: Bobbie Draper has been cast! (Frankie Adams. She’s been a local star in NZ for a while and played a variety of parts and is also an amateur female boxer. )    
    
Rob: Neil Gaiman is writing a 6 part mini-series adaptation of Good Omens
    
David: TOR.com has published a list of (Almost) Every SFF Adaptation coming to Television / Movie Theatres. Nice to see our current book selection on the list! (Along with several other S & L picks) 
    
BARE YOUR SWORD
    
"Hi Tom and Veronica,

In the most recent episode of Sword and Laser you dropped a hint that if any listeners were doing inkshares projects that we should drop a line to your email. I fit that description! :)

My name is Rue Lazzaro, and I'm currently working on Thunder in Marrow: A Weird Western Fantasy novel. What is a ""Weird Western Fantasy"", you ask? It's orc barbers, whiskey magic and demon slaying cowgirl mercenaries. If you or any of your listeners can spare the $10 for a preorder on inkshares, you can find ""Thunder in Marrow"" on Inkshares at https://www.inkshares.com/books/thunder-in-marrow 

Thanks for the plug if you're willing to help me out, and good luck to Pilot X making its next goal!

Rue Lazzaro"    
    
BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION    
    
Next month's book: Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson    
    
WRAP UP    
    
A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab    
Regarding White London, a small anecdote  
Book, or movie treatment?   
    
    
The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin
The r-word" (I tried to avoid spoilers)
Subduction Recapitulates Orogeny
When Style is more than just Cool" 
    
ADDENDUMS    

 Our show is currently entirely funded by our patrons at patreon.com/swordandlaser Thank you to all the folks who back our show and if you would like to support the show that way head to patreon.com/swordandlaser.
    
You can also support the show by buying books through our links! Find links to the books we talk about and some of our favorites at swordandlaser.com/picks.
    

S&L Podcast - #251 - How Veronica Tamed Tyrion

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Statistics dub Tyrion the main character of George R. R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords and Veronica got to talk to him! Well, she talked to Peter Dinklage anyway, who plays him on the TV show. She reports back on his handshake and reveals what Arya Stark did to her. Plus, we kick off our April books!

Download direct here!
    
QUICK BURNS
    
FINALISTS: 2016 Aurora Awards
    
Here Are the Winners of the 2015 James Tiptree Jr. Award
    
Paul: "Statistical Analysis Has Revealed Game of Thrones' True 'Main' Character"

Veronica on the Game of Thrones red carpet. 
     
Joanna: Geek & Sundry is having a hard scifi contest on Inkshares.
    
Thane and Tamahome: DragonCon is announcing its own genre award. 
AND Nominations for the Parsec Awards are open! 
    
Tamahome: New Kindle with battery case coming
    
BARE YOUR SWORD
    
Hi Tom / Veronica,

You may be interested in: ‘Philip K Dick Tweets’.  This will play out the entire life of Philip K Dick in around 600 tweets, over the course of about 6 months.
It’s starting off right now at:
 
http://twitter.com/DoAndroidsTweet
 
It is just for its own sake, there is no PR campaign or commercial affiliations etc.  I’m just a Philip K Dick fan who would like to share the story of his fascinating life.  I did the same sort of thing for Wittgenstein (http://twitter.com/WittTweets) and Oppenheimer (http://twitter.com/OppieTweets). 
 
Both of these projects attracted a huge amount of interest from people who told me they were really thankful they were aware of it and following it right from the start.  I would be massively appreciative if you could share the news of this Philip K Dick project, so that as many people as possible can enjoy it.  It’ll clearly appeal to any hardcore Philip K Dick fan, but I think any sci-fi fan really.
 
It’s very much based on Lawrence Sutin’s (1989) biography of Philip K Dick and I’ve attempted to make it as accurate as possible. I give more information here:
http://zephauerbach.com/pkd
So please feel free to share the link @DoAndroidsTweet.  If you have any ideas on how to publicise this project more, please let me know.
 
Thanks!
 Zeph Auerbach
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BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION    
    
Vote on June's Laser pick

April Picks
A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab    
The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin
 
 ADDENDUMS    
    
Thanks to everyone who pre-ordered Pilot X on Inkshares! On our way to the full publishing goal.
    
Our show is currently entirely funded by our patrons at patreon.com/swordandlaser Thank you to all the folks who back our show and if you would like to support the show that way head to patreon.com/swordandlaser.
    
You can also support the show by buying books through our links! Find links to the books we talk about and some of our favorites at swordandlaser.com/picks.

March Madness has ended in a TIE!

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Four rounds, thousands of votes, and it came down to two: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin and A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab.

And then they tied. 

Supreme Laser explains:
There appears to be white smoke emanating from the chamber.... wait no I see black smoke too... and pink... and what is that? Violet? And fuschia? Oh that is definitely ultramarine. And now some russet... and hmm how did they nail burnt sienna smoke. Well it is burnt. I suppose that was easy. And forest green. Beautiful. OK so it's basically a unicorn farting a rainbow.

I'm consulting the great book of Empressal Emanations and Statistical Manual V and it says here......Both.

I guess we're doing both.

Veronica and I will start reading A Darker Shade of Magic since we've never done a book from Ms. Schwab before. And The Fifth Season will be the ALT read and our second Ms. Jemisin pick! We'll both make our best effort to read it as well and it will have its own discussion section for those who'd like to make it their primary book.

So there you go. Who could have predicted???

Thanks everybody for participating. This was a lot of fun and I'm glad most of you had fun with us. We'll definitely do it again! 

Thanks for playing, everyone!