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Around the Podosphere #6: Podcasts of Note for 2/23/15

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As always, a lot of nifty stuff is going on in the podcasting world.  Below, you’ll find some of the things our crew has been enjoying in the last few weeks! On Television: In the latest episode of StarTalk Radio, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Leighann Lord answer questions about Star Trek.  Previously, Tyson had talked to Travis S. Taylor about the Rocket City Rednecks! On Movies: What did the Sci-Guys think about Gattaca (1997)?  Well, their 170th episode is all about it! Have you seen Seventh Son (2015)?  You may not have to if you listen to the We Hate Movies crew discuss it.  Then again… The Incomparable crew are on a movie binge, too, it seems.  First, they covered the absurdist disaster comedy, The Core (2003).  Then they talked about Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” and “Rope.” Enjoy! How Did This Get Made takes a stab at Zardoz (1974).  Of course, we covered that one a long time ago… On Writing: The last two Coode Street Podcast episodes have featured discussions on writing inside and outside genre w/ Eileen Gunn, William Gibson, and Chris Brown and on writing for young readers w/ Joe Abercrombie and Sean Williams. The Outer Alliance Podcast talks to Cat Rambo about being Vice President of the SFWA, her new novel, and more. On Literature: Terminator: Salvation (2009) may not have been a great movie, but was the book adaptation worth reading?  Find out in the latest The Book was Better podcast. The fine folks at Sword and Laser Podcast talk to Brian McClellan about his latest novel, The Autumn Republic. Justin Landon of Rocket Talk interviewed Myke Cole, Daniel Polansky, and Elizabeth Bear about their most recent work.  Two of these amazing people will be on our show, too! On Conspiracies: Kevin Lux is at again.  This time, he’s got a lot to say about population control conspiracies.  Tune in to find out more! The New: There’s one really cool new podcast in town:  The Fangirl Happy Hour.  Go on, subscribe! What have you been enjoying?  Let us know in the comments!

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Geekomancer Under Glass – Awesome Women in Comics

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Skiffy and Fanty’s theme for 2015 fits in really well with the world of comics, which has been making conscious strides to feature more stories by women and about women, from the independent comics world (long the home of more diverse storytelling) to the Big Two, and across all ages and genres. So for this post, I’m going to share some quick recommendations for comics by and/or about women.

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My Superpower: N.P. Griffiths (Isabella’s Heiress)

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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 N.P. Griffiths to talk about how the power of patience relates to Isabella’s Heiress. What is my superpower? Hmmm…this is a difficult one. I’m pretty sure everybody can write, and most people have an imagination which they use for anything from choosing an exotic location for a holiday to picturing their team winning a title or holding up a trophy. Admittedly, that last one requires a more active imagination for some than others (tragically, this includes me, as being a West Ham United and Houston Texan’s fan is a painful combination if ever there was one), so it’s not either of these. I suppose I could say that it is a clear vision of what it is I want to bring to the page, but that isn’t true either as I am never too sure what’s coming next when I write. That is constantly informed by the character’s actions before I reach that stage.

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Book Review: The Galaxy Game by Karen Lord

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Rafi is a sometimes unwilling student at the Lyceum, a school for the psionically gifted. Such powers are dangerous, and Rafi is an object of control and political manipulation.  Seeking freedom from the Lyceum and those who would control him, Rafi’s personal journey, and the personal journeys of his friends, take him outside the bounds of the Lyceumto worlds and places where he and his friends can try to find themselves. And perhaps get in a little Wallrunning too. And yet the personal story of a psionically gifted student and his friends is set against the backdrop of a planet and a galaxy undergoing severe social change. Psionics, mindships and galactic politics are all part of  Karen Lord’s The Galaxy Game.

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Book Review: The Very Best of Kate Elliott

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Fans of Kate Elliott will have a good idea what to expect from Tachyon Press’ The Very Best of Kate Elliott, a 2015 collection of twelve short stories, some set in the numerous worlds she has invented over the last two decades, as well as four essays. In these richly imagined worlds, intimate scenes take place among friends, lovers, mentors, and families — and the prominent characters are always women. In these stories, a young woman rides to escape an arranged marriage, a widow travels to save her village, and a woman fights to defend her honor. In her introduction, Kate Elliott discusses the landscape of the fantasy and science fiction worlds she fell in love with, grand stories focused almost exclusively on men.  Comparing the river of stories to the river of her home, Elliott writes that “Narrative gets engineered until we start to believe it has always run this way.”  Again and again in The Very Best of Kate Elliott, stories full of women show other ways for the narrative to flow.  The plot of “Riding the Shore of The River of Death” is almost immediately recognizable as a straightforward fantasy story:  a group of young warriors on a hunt to prove their manhood encounter an obstacle and then a powerful sorcerer.  Their companions follow and there is a confrontation among a circle of standing stones.  At the end, the protagonist must make a choice.  Almost a straightforward story, except that one of the hunters, and the sorcerer, are both women.  The companions who follow include the hunter’s betrothed, a mighty hero who will nevertheless trap her in a life she does not want.  With this story, Elliott adds to and reclaims the simple heroic fantasy so many of us grew up with.

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Short and Sublime: Dream Houses by Genevieve Valentine

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Genevieve Valentine’s Dream Houses, a suspenseful but thoughtful 2014 novella from WSFA Press & Wyrm Press, opens with protagonist Amadis awakening early from hibernation on the junky spaceship she’s a low-ranking crew member for — and the rest of the crew are dead in their hibernation pods. This makes her the de facto captain with no one for company except the ship’s creepy A.I. on a six year trip with no real communication options and not enough food. The narrative dips back and forth in time over the course of Amadis’ journey, and the reader gets to know and mourn the small crew as well as Amadis’ fraught relationship with her brother. The particular run is a simple cargo transport to a far-off, barely habitable planetary outpost and thus attracts crew that are a little dodgy, or just can’t stop running — except for the captain Lai, who’s something of an enigma. Amadis and her brother love each other in a way that’s tainted with the traumatic horrors of their past and the resultant divergent goals of their present.

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