Science Fiction

Blog Posts

Tobias Buckell on the (New) Art of The Xenowealth Saga

In 2006, I came out with my first novel in the US, a somewhat hard-to-categorize (I’m told, I think it makes perfect sense, I wrote it after all) science fiction novel with Caribbean peoples settled on an alien world that have long since lost touch with their home world. That was Crystal Rain. I alternated between calling it Caribbean steampunk (a few years early, I think, for steampunk) and Caribbean SF. It had a cover I adored — created by the amazing Todd Lockwood, a well known fantasy artist who’s work is amazing. I have a print of the art framed on my wall:  an airship above a verdant forest being chased by another distant ship. But when the novel came out, booksellers emailed me to say that the cover looked like the book was a fantasy, creating confusion among casual browsers. Core SF readers didn’t want to pick up the book. Fantasy readers put it down when they realized what it was.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

220. Wesley Chu (a.k.a. Spymaster 1000) — The Rebirths of Tao (An Interview at CONvergence)

http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode220InterviewWWesleyChu/SandF%20–%20Episode%20220%20–%20Interview%20w%20Wesley%20Chu.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSSymbiotic organisms, trilogy monsters, and gear switching, oh my!  The always humorous Wesley Chu joins the crew at CONvergence to talk about writing a trilogy, his upcoming novel, The Rebirths of Tao, 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 220 — Download (MP3)  Show Notes: Wes’ Website Wes’ Books Wes’ Twitter Press Release for The Rebirths of Tao. 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.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

218. Live at CONvergence w/ Martha Wells and Carrie Patel

http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode218LiveAtCONvergence/SandF%20–%20Episode%20218%20–%20Live%20at%20CONvergence.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSWorld SF, the secret history of genre, and live audiences, oh my!  In this special episode, Paul, Mike, David, and Shaun are joined by Martha Wells and Carrie Patel for a live recording of show!  Shenanigans may ensue… 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 218 — Download (MP3) Show Notes: Martha’s Website Martha’s Books (one of many pages) Martha’s Twitter Carrie’s Website Carrie’s Fiction Carrie’s Twitter Angry Robot Books 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.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

217. The Happening (2008) — A Torture Cinema “Adventure”

http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode217TortureCinemaMeetsTheHappening2008/SandF%20–%20Episode%20217%20–%20Torture%20Cinema%20Meets%20The%20Happening%20%282008%29.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSTrees, wind, and Marky Mark, oh my!  You picked it, and here we are talking about one of the worst horror films ever made — assuming, of course, we can classify it as horror.  Hell, it’s probably a better idea to call it a science comedy.  Or anti-science comedy.  Or just a crappy film.  You decide. 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 217 — Download (MP3) Show Notes: The Happening (2008)(IMDB Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0).  Additional music from “Cool Vibes” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

Blog Posts

The Disquieting Guest — Bava’s Centenary

July 31 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of director Mario Bava. If  this means something to you, feel free to skip the rest of this blog. If the name is unfamiliar to you, let me bend your ear for just a few minutes.  Here are just a few of the reasons why horror (and, to a lesser degree, SF) owes him so much. 1. Black Sunday (1960). Bava’s directorial debut kicks off the age of Italian horror cinema. The film’s extraordinary beauty would be reason enough to celebrate it, but it also brought horror stardom to Barbara Steele. Steele is one of the few women to become a horror icon for playing both victim and villain — sometimes both in the same film, as is the case here.

Blog Posts

Welcome to Planet Freyja

Soooo…. I’m moving all my film and television posts to this site. Because… well… this column has long needed a theme and has suffered for it. I have a difficult enough time thinking of random interesting things to say about stuff for my own blog. I do best when I’ve a central theme to work with. So… Feminism, Science Fiction, and Fantasy Media it is. I don’t feel comfortable discussing fiction because I’m an author, and that brings up conflict of interest issues at once. Films and television? I can talk about those and feel relatively comfortable. So, that’s what I’ll do. I want to go all the way back to some classic films that maybe y’all haven’t seen or thought about in a while. I also want to talk about recent films as well. Hopefully, it’ll be interesting. The ‘title’ is a riff off of a Bloom County cartoon. I like that Freyja is a goddess of love and war which warps the original sexist concept into a nice knot. That said, here goes… ———————————— First, I’ve a post about Starz’s Outlander series here. Starz has made the first episode available for free for a short time. So far, they’ve done a great job of adapting the novel. I recommend seeing it. One thing I will say about it that I did not on my blog (at least not on that post) is that I very much like that Claire is of the 1940s. She’s not a woman of the 2000s stuffed in a 1940s world. I also very much like that Jamie isn’t a man of the 2000s stuffed in the 1700s. Gabaldon did her research from what I can tell, and she doesn’t pull punches in Outlander. I hate it when authors decide to rewrite history in order to make it more palatable. At the same exact time I hate it when history is used to say that previous to 1960, all men were sexist barbarian assholes (thank you HBO’s A Game of Thrones). Although some would argue the point with me, I always felt like Diana Gabaldon did a good job of walking that line. I give the first episode five out of five stars.

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