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Around the Podosphere #3: Podcasts of Note for 12/22/2014

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Here’s what we’ve been enjoying this week: On History: On Stuff You Missed in History Class, they talk about the “Great Henge,” which involved the British East India Company’s efforts to stop salt smuggling.  Yes.  SALT smuggling. On Books: The Sword & Laser crew discuss Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. The second episode of Midnight in Karachi features an interview with Patrick Ness. The amazing folks at The Writer and the Critic discuss Nicola Griffith’s Hild and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. On Writing: Dan Wells discusses translating fiction to the stage in the latest episode of Writing Excuses. What are you enjoying?

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Diversity in SF Film: Things to Come (1936)

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This is my third post on diversity in Science Fiction films. I started with Metropolis (1927), and then skipped two decades to The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Largely, my reason was that there weren’t any options for the 30s or 40s available on Netflix. Apparently, there aren’t very many SF films within that twenty year period.[1] I’ve decided to skip Frankenstein — although the novel is one of the first, if not the first, SF novels — because the classic film has more in common with horror than SF. I feel much the same about King Kong. Therefore, I settled on Things to Come (1936), which is based upon the H.G. Wells’ novel published in 1933 entitled The Shape of Things to Come. I know I’m risking a bit of confusion by going backward here, but I felt it was too important to skip. Also:  keep in mind that I don’t think I read the novel. At least, I don’t remember having read it.[2] So… Things to Come.

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Around the Podosphere #2: Podcasts of Note for 12/17/2014

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Here’s what we’ve been listening to in the podcast world.  What about you? On Writing: Tina Connolly and Brad Beaulieu guest star on Tor.com’s Rocket Talk podcast and discuss writing and selling short fiction. Speculate! also discusses writing short fiction (with special guests Brenda Cooper and Martha Wells). On Books: The folks at The Three Hoarsemen discuss William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland with Karen Burnham. Episode 61 of Galactic Chat is an interview with Kameron Hurley. The first episode of Midnight in Karachi interviews Audrey Neffenegger about her work. The Incomparable crew look at Ben Winters’ The Last Policeman. On Movies: The Incomparable podcast discuss the parody classic, Galaxy Quest. Do you need a fix of nostalgia?  Read It and Weep tackles Duck Tales for all you old enough to remember watching it on the tube! Super Mario Bros.  The folks at We Hate Movies talk about it.  What else is there to say? In traditional holiday fashion, The Book Was Better takes a bite out of Jack Frost. On Conspiracies: The 18th episode of Doorway to the Hidden World takes a second stab at the mysteries of Atlantis. On Gaming: Episode 119 of Ken and Robin Talk about Stuff covers Salvador Dali and creating supporting characters for games (useful for writers, too)

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Shorty on Friday: Omenana

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Omenana, a bimonthly speculative fiction magazine edited by Mazi Nwonwu and Chinelo Onwualu, includes short fiction, essays, and art by and about people from the African continent. Its debut issue appeared on November 30, and the stories within work very well together. Two are more traditional narratives, while two are more experimental; there are contemporary settings and futures near and far, nods to Nigeria’s literary legacy, and a love letter to Lagos. The essays are powerful and the art is lovely. The tl;dr of this column is that you should alter your weekend plans as necessary to read the first issue.

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My Superpower: Erik Williams (Demon)

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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 Erik Williams to talk about how the power of verisimilitude relates to Demon. —————————————— My superpower?  Where do I begin?  I have so many, you see… Chief among them is BS.  Outside of my ability to BS, I’d say my most important superpower in writing my book was verisimilitude. You see, I wrote this novel Demon.  It’s about a CIA assassin who finds himself hunting down a real, true blue demon in war-torn Iraq.  A demon that pretty much causes anyone within a few feet of it to go crazy and kill each other.  It doesn’t even do it on purpose.  It’s his presence, by Jove!

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Book Review: Nobody’s Home (An Anubis Gates Story) by Tim Powers

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Tracking the murderer of her fiance through 19th century London’s darkest warrens, Jacky Snapp has disguised herself as a boy. But the disguise fails when she tries to save a girl from the ghost of her jealous husband. Jacky soon finds that she has made herself visible to the ghosts that cluster around the Thames… And one of them is the ghost of her fiancee, who was poisoned and physically transformed by his murderer and unwittingly shot dead by Jacky herself. Jacky and the girl she rescued, united in the need to banish their pursuing ghosts, learn that their only hope is to flee upriver to the barge known as Nobody’s Home — where the exorcist whose name is Nobody charges an intolerable price.

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