Blog Posts

My Superpower: LJ Cohen

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 LJ Cohen to talk about how the power of Ninja Time Wasting relates to Derelict. —————————————– If you ask my family, they will tell you I have several superpowers. One is to fight parking tickets. But that is another story for another time (and in case you’re interested, I eventually won. Because I was right and also more stubborn than our city hall). Another is to adopt strays. This includes animals as well as people. But that’s also not relevant to my creative process. No, the superpower I want to talk about today is one that, unfortunately, hampers more than helps my creativity. I can appear to be busy and productive even as I waste time. I am a stealth ninja at wasting time.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

216. Max Gladstone (a.k.a. the Soul Merchant) — The Craft Sequence (An Interview at ICFA)

http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode216InterviewWMaxGladstone/SandF%20–%20Episode%20216%20–%20Interview%20w%20Max%20Gladstone.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSThe desire called capitalism, soul currency, and nerdgasms, oh my!  The endlessly enjoyable Max Gladstone joins us to talk about the world of  his Craft series, the wild economics of selling souls, and other nerdiness. 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 216 — Download (MP3)   Show Notes: Max’s Website Max’s Books 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.

Announcements and Errata

Announcement: Our 2015 Theme

We said on Twitter that we’d make an announcement about things to come from the show. And so here we are. Throughout 2014, we have been focused on World SF. While we plan to continue exploring the globe in 2015, we will switch our focus. In 2015, we will put our attention on the contributions of women and non-binary people to the sf field. We hope you will join us!

Blog Posts

Welcome to Planet Freyja

Soooo…. I’m moving all my film and television posts to this site. Because… well… this column has long needed a theme and has suffered for it. I have a difficult enough time thinking of random interesting things to say about stuff for my own blog. I do best when I’ve a central theme to work with. So… Feminism, Science Fiction, and Fantasy Media it is. I don’t feel comfortable discussing fiction because I’m an author, and that brings up conflict of interest issues at once. Films and television? I can talk about those and feel relatively comfortable. So, that’s what I’ll do. I want to go all the way back to some classic films that maybe y’all haven’t seen or thought about in a while. I also want to talk about recent films as well. Hopefully, it’ll be interesting. The ‘title’ is a riff off of a Bloom County cartoon. I like that Freyja is a goddess of love and war which warps the original sexist concept into a nice knot. That said, here goes… ———————————— First, I’ve a post about Starz’s Outlander series here. Starz has made the first episode available for free for a short time. So far, they’ve done a great job of adapting the novel. I recommend seeing it. One thing I will say about it that I did not on my blog (at least not on that post) is that I very much like that Claire is of the 1940s. She’s not a woman of the 2000s stuffed in a 1940s world. I also very much like that Jamie isn’t a man of the 2000s stuffed in the 1700s. Gabaldon did her research from what I can tell, and she doesn’t pull punches in Outlander. I hate it when authors decide to rewrite history in order to make it more palatable. At the same exact time I hate it when history is used to say that previous to 1960, all men were sexist barbarian assholes (thank you HBO’s A Game of Thrones). Although some would argue the point with me, I always felt like Diana Gabaldon did a good job of walking that line. I give the first episode five out of five stars.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

215. Kim Stanley Robinson (a.k.a. The Ethnographer) — Shaman (An Interview)

http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode215AnInterviewWKimStanleyRobinson/SandF%20–%20Episode%20215%20–%20An%20Interview%20w%20Kim%20Stanley%20Robinson.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSPrehistoric man, Shamans, and anthropological wonders, oh my!  Paul has his dreams fulfilled in this special interview with the legendary Kim Stanley Robinson.  We discuss his book, Shaman (now out in paperback), his Three Californias trilogy, the changing political landscape, the expository nature of genre, and much more! 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 215 — Download (MP3)   Show Notes: Stan’s Website Stan’s Books 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

Geekomancer Under Glass – Knights of Sidonia Season One

When I saw the announcement that Netflix was going to be the US distributor of the anime for Knights of Sidonia, I was intrigued. I’ve been trying to keep on top of the content wars vis a vis Netflix vs.  Hulu vs. Amazon Prime, etc. Adapted from a manga series by Tsutomu Nihei, Knights of Sidonia is a space opera that follows a seed ship of human survivors who have left the Earth after its descrution. Reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica, Macross/Robotech, and other stories, it also includes some elements of hard SF that enrich the fairly standard plot. And this, for me, is the nature of the whole series — very interesting conceptual work and worldbuilding wrapped around a fairly standard, if grim, space opera plot with mecha pilots and giant monster invaders.

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