Nora Young‘s uncut interview with Robert J. Sawyer, recorded for an upcoming episode of CBC Radio One’s Spark podcast, is available for download |MP3|.
Yesterday, Nora interview the award-winning Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer. He’s just published the third installment of his WWW trilogy, called Wonder. It speculates about a possible world in which the web develops consciousness and becomes “Webmind.”
Bonus: A three part video interview with Sawyer in Hungary.
Sawyer talks about: FlashForward, other Sawyer-related TV shows, dinosaurs, awards, his upcoming book (Triggers), memory, research, assassination, ebooks, Japan, piracy, DRM, advice to aspiring writers, teaching writing, the University Of Toronto, travel, translations and RJS book covers from around the world.
According to this Wikileaks document, an embassy cable from the United States embassy in Ottawa to the U.S. government in Washington, the United States was heavily pressuring Canada’s Conservative government ministers to pass their DMCA-style copyright legislation.
Despite the pressure, which included placing Canada on a “Priority Watch List”, the Conservatives weren’t able to please their U.S. advisors by delivering a DMCA-style copyright law. This failure is attributable to the Conservative’s minority government status and a growing opposition (public awareness). According to the cable neither attempt, Bill C-32 nor Bill C-61, was brought to a vote because the Conservatives knew it might cost them the 2008 election or the next (Monday’s). One of the more interesting lines, in the fascinating document, is this one:
On February 25, however, Industry Minister Prentice (please protect) admitted to the Ambassador that some Cabinet members and Conservative Members of Parliament – including MPs who won their ridings by slim margins – opposed tabling the copyright bill now because it might be used against them in the next federal election.
Despite Industry Minister Jim Prentice’s protected status he will not be running for re-election.
It may have been in a bid to curry such protection “an [unnamed] influential Liberal MP on intellectual property issues” told the U.S. embassy that “the copyright bill would receive widespread support from the Conservative, Liberal, and Bloc Quebecois parties if and when the GOC [Government Of Canada] sends it to Parliament.”
WOW! The Liberals and the Bloc would have supported Bills C-61 and C-32. Nice to know.
Perhaps this is due to the “inherent inferiority complex of Canadians” toward the U.S.? That’s detailed in this cable about how the U.S. needed to stay out of Canada’s last federal election. Will the trend be overturned on Monday? Maybe the “orange wave” can prevent whatever successor copyright legislation that comes after the election from being written wholly with U.S. interests in the foreground.
In the U.S. blue stands for the Democrat and red stands for the Republican. In Canada red stands for Liberal and blue stands for Conservative. No matter which side of the border, though, both red and blue are the parties of big business.
Individual people, small business owners and the self employed are not served by voting red or blue. The funding for all four red and blue parties comes from big business, they are honourable and so they do what they are paid to do – serve big business. But unlike our American cousins we have a second option in Canada. We have a choice of either blue/red or orange. Sure, maybe having green would be a good idea one day too – but right now we really only have a choice of either red/blue (big business) or orange (people). Please be a person on Monday and vote-in an orange government.
Gregg Taylor, the creator and writer of Decoder Ring Theatre, is a creative genius, the quality and scope for which we have seen very few before. He is writer of genuine superbness, on the level of J. Michael Straczynski and Rod Serling. But unlike Straczynski, who wrote 92 of the 110 episodes of Babylon 5, and unlike Serling, who wrote 92 of 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone, Taylor has written 42 out of 42 episodes of Black Jack Justice and 70 out of 70 episodes of Red Panda Adventures. I don’t think there is any kind of precedent for this in the history of scripted drama, not on work of this quality or superfluity.
Battlestar Galactica, the recent TV series, ran 73 episodes. Writing credits for that show go to more that a dozen different writers. People think that Joss Whedon wrote Firefly. He did, but he didn’t do it alone. He wrote or co-wrote maybe only half the episodes of that short series. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Nobody is doing anything like what Gregg Taylor is doing with scripted series, and I’m not sure anybody ever has, not on radio or TV. Taylor has, unbelievably, released a full cast production episode of both of his full cast series every two weeks, fall through to the spring, every year since 2005. That’s a stunning, stunning achievement.
I could go on and on and on. But if you just go and listen to the shows yourself I’m sure you’ll get as caught-up in them as so many fans of these independently produced shows have. Maybe start with the fairly standalone-ish episode #70 of the Red Panda Adventures |MP3|. Here’s the episode description:
There are some situations that you just can’t prepare for. You can be the cleverest mystery man on the block, there will still be days that you just never saw coming. Those are the moments that cry out for a fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty… well, you know…
The talented Thomas Perkins, who does the covers for the Red Panda novels*, created this awesome “lobby card” art for the episode:
*Yes, Gregg Taylor is writing novels set in the Red Panda world too. And no, they are not mere reworkings of the scripts – theses are true canon series novels that fit into the chronology like so many Star Trek novels written for hire never did, and like the Babylon 5 novels claimed they would.
I’ve known Julie Davis since at least 2007. I think I found her through her wonderful Forgotten Classics blog and podcast. Although, perhaps, I first heard her recordings for StarShipSofa. It’s kind of odd that we’re friends. We’re completely different kinds of people. Julie’s totally Catholic, I’m completely heathen. She’s a happy wife and mother. I’m a cynical childless bachelor. Yet we are friends because we both have very small-c catholic tastes in books. We’ve traded more than five hundred emails over the years. She’s been a frequent and valued guest on the SFFaudio Podcast (with at least ten appearances in 100 episodes). She’s recorded stories for me and for the world. She even started a wonderful podcast with my SFFaudio buddy Scott. So, I was happy to hear that my catholic Catholic book loving friend had written a book on her catholic Catholic tastes. Now I’m doubly happy, she sent me a signed copy. Thanks Julie!
Happy Catholic: Glimpses Of God In Everyday Life
By Julie Davis
Publisher: Servant Books
Puiblished: April 15, 2011
ISBN: 9780867169744 As she does in her blog, Happy Catholic, Julie Davis taps into quotes not only from Scripture and John Paul II but from The Simpsons and The Princess Bride, and doing so she discovers that all around her are glimpses of God. Her reflections on pithy quotes such as the one by famed rocker, Alice Cooper (“Trashing your hotel room is easy, but being a Christian – that’s rebellion”) draw back the veil, letting you connect with God in unexpected ways . With unique and inventive perspective Davis’s reflections will help you: – reflect on the strange economy of suffering – live with gusto – see the big picture – explore the value of quirkiness – learn the truth about happy and unhappy families
Robert Sheckley’s Warrior Race was briefly mentioned on last week’s SFFaudio Podcast (#104). It’s available in audiobook form as on part of LibriVox’s Short Science Fiction Collection Volume 41. As is usual with so many of the Sheckley tales recorded for LibriVox it’s read by Gregg Margarite. YAY! And since we all seem to be in a pretty good Sheckley groove right now I thought I’d follow through with a pretty |PDF| edition of the story – it was constructed from a scan of the original Galaxy publication pages. This should be a fun read and listen!
Warrior Race
By Robert Sheckley; Read by Gregg Margarite
1 |MP3| – Approx. 27 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 26, 2010
|ETEXT| Destroying the spirit of the enemy is the goal of war and the aliens had the best way! First published in the November 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.
Jeremy Brett was Sherlock Holmes and Stacy Keach is Mike Hammer. I’ll brook no arguments to dispute either claim. See, I’ve been a Stacy Keach fan since I was a kid. Sure Ralph Meeker was an absolutely terrific Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly, no question there, but that was not the defining portrayal. That started with Keach in the Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer 1984/1985 TV series. Two more Mike Hammer TV series followed, and then it propagated into several of the 1980s audiobooks (I’ve still got Keach’s reading of I, The Jury somewhere around here). So now you know why I was so excited to see that Grover Gardner, himself recently a guest on SFFaudio Podcast #093, had posted a truly engaging new interview with Stacy Keach on the Blackstone Audio blog.
They talked about Blackstone’s Kiss Her Goodbye, a new Max Allan Collins/Mickey Spillane novel, the ongoing The New Adventures Of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (Volumes 1, 2, 3) audio drama series (which I shamefully still haven’t heard) and they even touch on Keach’s new boxing/crime/family drama TV show Lights Out in which he plays the cagey patriarch to a pair of boxer sons.
Nora Young‘s uncut interview with Robert J. Sawyer, recorded for an upcoming episode of CBC Radio One’s Spark podcast, is available for download |MP3|.
According to this 
Robert Sheckley’s Warrior Race was briefly mentioned on last week’s SFFaudio Podcast (
Warrior Race
