Blog Posts

My Superpower: Ken Liu (Grace of Kings)

My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Ken Liu to talk about how the power of tax enthusiasm relates to Grace of Kings. My superpower is the ability to get readers excited about taxes. Taxes are critical in my silkpunk epic fantasy, The Grace of Kings. This is the story of two unlikely friends, a duke and a bandit, who join together to overthrow tyranny only to find themselves on opposite sides of a deadly rivalry over how to create a more just society. There are all sorts of cool things in it:  soaring battle kites and airships based on Chinese prototypes from antiquity; unyielding heroes, kennings, and litotes in the mode of Anglo-Saxon epics; magical books that read minds; jealous gods who are concerned with the value of Pi; a street urchin who becomes the greatest battlefield tactician of her generation and teaches women to fight in the skies; ladies and princesses who plot and fight alongside lords and princes; and giant water beasts who bring storms and tempests to human affairs.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

#32. Agent Carter (Episodes 1-4) — A Shoot the WISB Subcast w/ Raven Oak

http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/ShootTheWISB32AgentCarterEps14/ShootTheWisb32–AgentCarterEps1-4.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSClever gadgets, super spies, and awesome 1940s women, oh my!  Our “Women and Non-Binary in SFF” theme continues with this special discussion of the first half of the Agent Carter miniseries.  Raven Oak joins us to talk about the show, its influence, its themes, and all the reasons why it is just plain awesome. 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! Spoiler Alert:  the following podcast contains spoilers for the film being reviewed; if you wish to see the film without having it ruined for you, download this podcast and save it for later.

Giveaways

Giveaway: The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

What’s that?  We have two copies of Ken Liu’s much-anticipated new novel, Grace of Kings?  That’s right, and we’re going to give them away to two of our lucky listeners/readers. To enter, all you have to do is one simple thing.  Leave a comment on this post which answers the following question: If you could recommend one lesser known science fiction or fantasy writer to a friend, who would you recommend and why? That’s it.  The contest will run until 12 PM EST on Sunday (April 12th).  Winners will be announced on Monday. Have at it!

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

265. The Black Hole (1971) — A Torture Cinema “Adventure” (Childhood Destruction Edition)

http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode265TortureCinemaMeetsTheBlackHole/SandF%20–%20Episode%20265%20–%20Torture%20Cinema%20Meets%20The%20Black%20Hole.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSRobot blenders, mad scientists, and snarky companions, oh my!  In this special “childhood destruction” edition of Torture Cinema, the crew tackles one of Paul’s favorite childhood movies, The Black Hole. 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): Episode 265 — Download (MP3) Show Notes: The Black Hole (1971; dir. Gary Nelson)(IMDB) The Listener Survey Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0). That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

Blog Posts

Short and Sublime: March 2015 Round-Up

March has been a month of unusual settings, stories of alienation and loss, and meditations on the nature of time. Tade Thompson’s “The Monkey House” (Omenana #2), dystopian horror, is a story about what it means to be trapped inside a system, and the horrors one must overlook to be a part of that system; what happens when the ability to ignore horrors both natural and fantastical is seized from you and you alone? The protagonist is an unreliable narrator — or is he far more reliable as a narrator than the characters that surround him? — and holds a banal job as a paper-pusher with an insidiously creepy company whose purpose is obscured. This dystopia is set not in the future but in the eighties and follows the Orwellian tradition while being rather Kafkaesque, but adds enough facets, from dark fantasy elements to the chronic illness of the protagonist, to create something entirely new.

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