Signal Boost #19: A Conversation about SFF Canon
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFSignalBoost19SFFCanon/Sandf–SignalBoost19–SffCanon.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSOn today’s Signal Boost, Jen remembers that we have a listener suggestion form, and so we FINALLY talk about the questions that one intrepid listener is dying to know! Actually, it’s mostly Shaun talking about the answers while Jen nods sagely. What are those questions? Well, listen to the episode and you too will know the truth about SFF canon. Or at least Shaun’s version of the truth. Especially since the conclusion we come to is that basically we all get to make our own canon. So, HA! After Shaun is all done ranting talking about canon, we get to our Mini-Boosts! 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):
334. Bisexuality in SFF — A Discussion w/ Cat Rambo, Cecilia Tan, and Matt Weiteska
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode334BisexualityInSFF/Sandf–Episode334–BisexualityInSff.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSUnicorn ninjas, terminology, and David Bowie, oh my! Cat Rambo, Cecilia Tan, and Matt Weiteska join Julia Rios and Alex Acks to discuss Bisexuality in SFF. To accidentally celebrate Bisexual Visibility Month, our hosts and amazing guests discuss how important positive representation was to them in discovering their own sexuality, the difficulty in portraying bisexuality without succumbing to the tropes, what terminology to use when writing about bisexual characters, and what they hope to see in the future. 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):
Guest Post by Stephanie Burgis: Alternate History: Taking a New Path
I love historical fantasy, both as a reader and a writer – which won’t surprise anyone who’s read any of my first five novels. Three of them (forming the Kat, Incorrigible trilogy) were frothy, fun MG adventures set in Regency England; two of them (Masks and Shadows and Congress of Secrets) were dark, romantic adult fantasies set at different historical points in the Habsburgs’ Austro-Hungarian empire. My first three MG novels and my first two adult novels have been very different in tone from each other, but there was one thing all five of those novels had in common: They all approached historical fantasy as a secret history, in which magic worked discreetly behind the scenes of our real history books. (For instance, the opera house at Eszterháza Palace really did burn down in the historical year I wrote about in Masks and Shadows – but in reality, I very much doubt it was burned down by an act of dark alchemy! Or at least…that certainly wasn’t the official explanation that landed in any of the history books I read. 😉 )
Book Review: Skyfarer by Joseph Brassey
You’ve kind of heard this story before, or elements of it. Young trainee in a new power, from a sheltered backwater land, gets caught up in a struggle against an implacable tyrannical foe sweeping all comers against it. Young trainee is talented, perhaps more than they know, but the opposition is led by a charismatic and implacably evil head who would stop at nothing to get what they want, including using a doomsday weapon to get the Macguffin first. Magic, battles, intrigue, adventure and full-color glorious epic as forces collide and the fate of a world hangs in the balance. Off the shelf components in some cases, maybe, but infused with a mixture of fun and adventure, such a combination can be darned entertaining. Skyfarer is the debut novel by Joseph Brassey. The worldbuilding drew me in hard and early in the novel. We need a word for this kind of setting, since here at Skiffy and Fanty one of my fellow bloggers, Kate Sherrod, recently reviewed An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors. That novel’s universe features a set of floating continents in a Jovian planet’s atmosphere. Airships fly from continent to continent, with different cultures and polities on them. The roleplaying game Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies had a world like this, with a variety of layers of skies that islands from the small to continent sized drift in, and can be reached with ships made of a wood that defies gravity. And then there is the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game where one of the Elemental Planes, the Elemental Plane of Air, is mostly an empty sky dotted with floating islands of various sizes. The Larry Niven novels The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring, set in a giant oxygen bearing atmosphere in free fall, is an early example of this.
Signal Boost #18: Michael J. Martinez (MJ-12: Shadows) and Patrick Hester (Samantha Kane: Into the Fire)
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFSignalBoost18MikePatrick/Sandf–SignalBoost18–MikePatrick.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSIn today’s episode of Signal Boost, Michael J. Martinez, author of The Daedaelus Trilogy, joins Paul to talk about the second book of his Majestic-12 trilogy, MJ-12: Shadows. They discuss how truth is crazier than fiction and how that led to Mike writing a secret history instead of an alternate history. Then Patrick Hester, a Hugo award winning podcaster and Skiffy and Fanty Arch-Nemesis, joins Jen to talk about his urban fantasy novel, Samantha Kane: Into the Fire. They talk about how Patrick found the voice of Samantha Kane and how Into the Fire sets itself apart from most urban fantasy with its focus on family relationships. 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):
Book Review: A Passport to a Nation of Talking Slugs by Andrew Kozma
In all honesty, this should really be called a booklet review, or, to be fancier, a chapbook review, because this is a slight little thing that a person could easily read all the way through while waiting in line at the DMV, still having time to start on another short story collection or anthology before her number was called. Which is to say that A Passport to a Nation of Talking Slugs could actually fit into a passport, as its amusingly apt cover might suggest. But though it be little, it is fierce, is this collection of Kafka-meets-Ionesco-as-Introduced-by-Borges bits. With just four wee stories, Kozma manages to sneak a few emotional wallops among what seems like whimsy, and, to readers like me who have been trained on Gene Wolfe for so long, he’s managed to suggest a degree of intertwined meaning that he might not have intended but feels like it’s there.
