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The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

175. Religion and Genre Fiction w/ Max Gladstone & David Levine (A Discussion)

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode175ReligionAndGenreFictionWMaxGladstoneAndDavidLevine/SandF%20–%20Episode%20175%20–%20Religion%20and%20Genre%20Fiction%20w%20Max%20Gladstone%20and%20David%20Levine.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSGods, moral dilemmas, and deus ex machine, oh my!  Authors Max Gladstone and David Levine join David (Dave) and Shaun to talk about religion in genre fiction, how they all have used religion in their work, religious conflicts in fiction, 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 175 — Download (MP3) Show Notes Max’s Website David’s Website Max’s Books (Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise — buy them!) Old Mars edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (David’s story is in this!  Get it!) You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone. 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.

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MINING THE GENRE ASTEROID: Way Station by Clifford Simak

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Mining the Genre Asteroid: Way Station and the works of Clifford Simak Enoch Wallace has a secret. Okay, he actually has two. Almost a century after the Civil War, this veteran of that divisive conflict has been quietly living in the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin. He has some strange neighbors (including a family whose deaf-mute daughter has some rather strange abilities) and only uses his gun in a virtual reality simulator. His second secret, though is even bigger than the first. Enoch Wallace hides an interstellar transfer point for aliens to travel through the galaxy. It is his charge to keep this important facility safe, and secret. But now the U.S. government is very interested in Enoch, enough to go snooping around. Furthermore, the Galactic Council that set up the transfer point  is fracturing and falling apart. Oh, and Enoch’s use of alien mathematics is leading him to conclude that nuclear war is coming, soon. All this means an uncertain future for both Enoch and his Way Station.

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LitBits: The Politics of Author/Work Separation

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I’ve been thinking about this problem a lot recently, firstly for some obvious reasons (a certain movie) and secondly because of some of the things I’ve been discussing with my students in my American Literature course.  And one of the questions that keeps coming up for me is this:  how do we know when we have crossed the line by holding a writer accountable for the controversial things they write? As an example, I am currently teaching Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Wild Meat and Bully Burgers.  This particular novel is not all that controversial, though it certainly has its issues, but her later book, Blu’s Hanging, was the cause of much controversy in 1997/1998.  The Asian American Studies National Book Award she received was later annulled after public outcry; many critics and academics have written about the incident since.[1]  One of the problems Asian American (and other) critics had with the book was its representation of Filipinos in Hawai’i (they are dirty, morally questionable, violent, and/or pedophiles) and the complete absence of indigenous Hawaiians in the novel.  Effectively, critics charged Yamanaka with failing to self-censor herself in a stereotypical context; in

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

174. Cassandra Rose Clarke at Worldcon (an Interview of Sorts)

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode174CassandraClarkeAtWorldcon/SandF%20–%20Episode%20174%20–%20Cassandra%20Clarke%20at%20Worldcon.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSMad scientists, assassins, and publishing, oh my!  Cassandra Rose Clarke joins Jen and Shaun in a mysterious San Antonio restaurant to talk about her novels, writing, the fantasy genre, galactic empires (well, Shaun talks about that), and much more!  Plus, there may be a few half-truths in here.  We’ll leave you to figure them out! 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 174 — Download (MP3) Show Notes Cassandra’s Website Angry Robot Books You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone. 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.

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Out-Brutalling the Last Guy: “Grim and gritty, yes … but make sure it’s doing some honest work” by K.V. Johansen

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I’ve written some reasonably grim stuff. The hero of Blackdog does tend to go for the throat on the battlefield and the assassin hero in my forthcoming series, Marakand, has a past that is decidedly Not Nice (his present just gets worse). Violence, horror, fear, pain, death — these are all part of epic fantasy, which almost by definition is going to deal with war at some point along the way and will certainly throw its characters into nasty situations, both as active doers of deeds and as suffering victims. Sometimes detailed physical description is what you need to do what the story needs done. Sometimes it isn’t. When it is, the detailed physical description alone shouldn’t be the point of the exercise. I was talking about this just last night with the Spouse, and then, while procrastinating on Twitter this morning, I wandered into a conversation with Juliet E. McKenna and Tom Lloyd that touched on the same ideas. This led me to wonder if, as we see the increased brutality inflicted in books praised as some kind of standard that is supposed to be achieved, we fantasy writers don’t sometimes get the feeling that we’d

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Business Time: Ebooks are here to stay. Now what?

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Hello, my business-savvy Skiffy and Fanty folk. Continuing on the thread of talking about the business side of publishing, I wanted to spend today talking about digital distribution, both generally and more specifically. Ebooks are really new as far as the publishing business is concerned. They’ve been around longer than they’ve been important, and now that they’re important, things have been changing very quickly. Ebooks have gone from 19% of Unit Sales in Science Fiction in 2010 to around 43% by latest reports (my ‘now’ data is from early 2013). And these days, we don’t just read ebooks on e-ink readers or on our computers. We have tablets and mobile phones. I still prefer to read physical books when I can, but I’ve gotten great use out of my e-ink reader, thanks to the fact that it doesn’t contribute as much to eye strain (I spend a *lot* of time looking at glowing screens). Oyster is a ebook service that’s trying to apply the Netflix model to books. For a monthly subscription rate of $9.95, members can read an unlimited selection of the ebooks Oyster has in their library on iPhone and iPad. The selection is currently limited, but only in the way that Netflix’s selection was limited when it

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