Coming Soon: Episode 200…LIVE!
That’s right. To celebrate our 200th episode, we’re going to record it LIVE on Google+/YouTube. That means you’ll get to listen to and/or watch us act like crazy people for several hours, which we all know will be a lot of fun, right? When and where? Monday, April 21st at 6:30-8:30 PM EST (we will post here and Tweet a link to the YouTube stream as soon as it goes live; the time is arbitrary and may be slightly short or slightly longer depending on need) What should you expect? Celebrating 200 episodes, a world sf discussion, and a trivia game! What can you do? You can watch the live episode, for one. And you can share the news! You can also submit trivia questions via this form (please read it before submitting) Put it on your calendar!
Mining the Genre Asteroid: THE DRAGON WAITING by John M. Ford
It’s the 15th century, but not the 15th century we know. Julian the Apostate was no apostate in this world, and Europe, from Wales to Byzantium, is pagan. The aforementioned Byzantines are strong and vibrant, with much of Italy and France under their boot, as well as the Balkans and Middle East, and now looking greedily at the British Isles. The British Isles are wracked by a civil war between two noble houses, and, thus, are ripe for the taking; if the right outsider might be groomed for the role and given backing. Henry Tydder, bearing the symbol of a red dragon, seems like a perfect candidate for Byzantium’s plans.
Book Review: Heirs of Grace by Tim Pratt
Rebekah Lull, a Chicago art student, has gotten an offer she can’t refuse. Not without traveling to North Carolina and seeing what its all about anyway. A foundling at birth, Rebekah discovers she’s been named the heir to the estate of Archibald Grace, her biological father. This estate comprises a rambling mansion in the hills of Appalachia and some money that could make life easy for a couple of years. The money’s the easy part. The cute local lawyer? Rebekah’s got him figured. The House, even if it seems to be full of secrets, locked doors and bona fide magical objects, is a little harder to manage, but Rebekah’s game. The relatives, the other would-be Heirs of Grace? Now they are going to be the tricky part.
On Recent South(east) Asian SF/F by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Guest Post)
When I first started publishing in 2012, I felt I’d come into an already established community, one thriving with international writers. It’s an environment that I’ve always found welcoming, and doubly so once I started discovering and meeting (online) other writers from my region, wherever in the world they are based. So I’d like to give an overview of what I’ve been seeing in this regard — any excuse would do to talk about these wonderful writers! — and talk a little about my publishing experiences these last couple years, though only a little; it’s not too charming to harp on about myself! I’m covering Southeast Asian and South Asian writers, though (as everyone who follows the state of short genre fiction would be) I closely follow mainland Chinese ones as well, most of whom we’re now seeing in Lightspeed and Clarkesworld through the diligent translations by Ken Liu. Some of the most recent are the lyrical Invisible Planets by Hao Jingfang and the fairy tale-like Grave of the Fireflies by Cheng Jingbo.
Book Review: The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher
Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland is a hero, but he certainly doesn’t feel like one. His gambit at Tau Retore to defeat an immense Spider ship was, charitably, a pyrrhic victory. Worse, he has a bum mechanical knee from the experience. Also, in keeping with tradition, instead of being immediately cashiered out of the Fleet, he has been given one final mission. There’s a space station around a mysterious star that radiates an almost evil, alien sort of light. It’s being decommissioned, and ‘Ida’ has been given the task, the privilege of overseeing that decommission. But why does no one on the station know that he is a hero? And why are people disappearing or just acting strangely? And most importantly, who and what is that signal Ida is getting in a forbidden radio band on his homemade radio set?
My Superpower: Kip Manley
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 Kip Manley to talk about how knowing he doesn’t know a damn thing relates to City of Roses. ———————————————– There’s this proverb, and you have to imagine I’m opening a drawer as I say this, in the cheap pressboard desk between us, and I’m pulling out a bottle with a little green label, and a plain white paper cup, and where are my manners? Would you like some, too? Rye whiskey, but you know what they say: makes the band sound better. I don’t know how it got such a reputation as rot-gut. Is it really such an acquired taste? Maybe it’s just that it’s hard to make well, and bad rye’s just that much worse than bad scotch, or bad bourbon. Anyway. Ice is in the bucket there, if you like, and would you look at that: there’s a second paper cup, just for you.
