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Book Review: Girl Reporter by Tansy Rayner Roberts

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Living up to the standards of your mother is no easy thing sometimes. Especially when you are Friday Valentina, daughter of Tina Valentina. Tina Valentina broke barriers as a girl reporter interviewing the Australian superhero Solar and breaking news about Australian superheroes for decades. To this day, Tina Valentina is THE Girl Reporter. That’s a lot to live up to. Living in the 21st century, instead of writing for outfits like Women’s Weekly, Friday has a YouTube channel where she covers superheroes in her own way, like mother, like daughter. Hey, she’s just gotten one million hits on her channel. Friday’s huge! She’s also grown up in a world where superheroes are real and a thing, and she is possibly the daughter of one, or at least all the gossip and tabloids suggest so anyway. Her mother doesn’t talk about that either.  

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

Signal Boost #31: Wrapping Up the Year

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFSignalBoost31WrappingUpTheYear/Sandf–SignalBoost31–WrappingUpTheYear.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSIn our final podcast of the year, Shaun and Jen offer a quick wrap-up of all the things we loved about 2017. We share some of our favorite episodes, remind folks of our listener/reader survey, and offer up some last minute mini boosts to make 2017 just a little bit more joyful. 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):

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

344. Krampus: The Reckoning (2015) — A Special Holiday Torture Cinema "Adventure"

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode344HolidayTortureCinemaMeetsKrampusTheReckoning/Sandf-Episode344-HolidayTortureCinemaMeetsKrampusTheReckoning.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSTang, overbites, and gratuitous boob shots, oh my! In this special Holiday edition of Torture Cinema, Shaun, Paul, Jen, Alex, and Becca mix too much alcohol with a really, truly terrible movie. This one definitely comes with some language and content warnings, because the team is just so very angry that they have to watch this. They discuss how a potentially interesting premise is utterly destroyed by an awful, convoluted script, terrible production values, and some of the worst acting that the state of Arizona has ever produced. The only reason we can come up with that anyone should ever watch this film is so they know how NOT to make a movie. Happy Holidays! We hope you enjoy the episode!

Blog Posts

Book Review: The Red Men by Matthew de Abaitua

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About a third of the way through The Red Men, Matthew de Abaitua’s ravishing new-old (I’ll explain in a moment) cyberpunk nightmare, is very likely the creepiest scene I’ve ever encountered in literature. Not just in genre fiction. In literature. I’m not going to spoil it for you. You’ll know it when you hit it. And your brain will leap out of your skull and try to escape the building, flopping and squelching across the floor until it’s stuck hurling itself ineffectually against a door or gate or other obstacle. Help me. You’ll want to chase after it so you can read the rest of the book. Probably.

Blog Posts

Retro Childhood Review: The Dark is Rising

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There was an endless variety of faces — gay, sombre, old, young, paper-white, jet-black, and every shade and gradation of pink and brown between — vaguely recognizable, or totally strange… [Will] thought: these are my people. This is my family, in the same way as my real family. The Old Ones. Every one is linked, for the greatest purpose in the world. I was going to start my review of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence with the first in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, because it holds a certain place of nostalgia based on its similarity to other much loved childhood fiction like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, both being about a group of absurdly normal siblings doing something important. But as I considered what I wanted to read to finish out 2017, a year full of darkness for so many people, the only book that seemed appropriate was The Dark is Rising. Because what’s more relevant than a book about how one person can fight back the darkness by finding strength in the love and support of family, friends, and a world that is fighting with him? Especially when it’s full of winter holiday cheer.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

Signal Boost #30: Michelle Kan (No More Heroes) and Rachel Cordasco (SFinTranslation.com)

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFSignalBoost30MichelleKanRachelCordasco/Sandf–SignalBoost30–MichelleKanRachelCordasco.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSIn today’s episode of Signal Boost, Becca talks to Michelle Kan about her book, No More Heroes. They discuss what it meant for Michelle to write an #OwnVoices gender-fluid aro-ace character that included her ethnic heritage, issues with anxiety, and parkour! They also talk about how Michelle wrote No More Heroes during NaNoWriMo and how her film-making education helps her write. Then Rachel Cordasco, founder of SFinTranslation.com, joins Jen to talk about what she does at SF in Translation, what inspired her to create the site. They also discuss how much speculative fiction there really is in translation, what makes a good translation, and some of Rachel’s favorite translated works of 2017. 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):

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