Forgive me, I’ve posted part of this before, but it’s good enough to post twice. Frederik Pohl and Isaac Asimov were interviewed for a 1972 show called The First Edition. Apparently the show never aired, and was never edited.
“THE FIRST EDITION – FIRST SHOW – 1972 – Raw interview material for unfinished show”
I repost the interview, in part because of how damn cool it is, and also in part because it is just the excuse I need to post what might very well be Frederik Pohl and Isaac Asimov first appearance together in print (in the letters column of the June 1939 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories). Be sure to listen, it’s a terrific interview! In it Asimov responds to the “New Wave” and attacks neo-Luddites, and Pohl protests the takeover of Science Fiction by the “English lit majors” (Pohl didn’t finish high school).
Be sure to read the letters below in which the two Brooklyn boys, Fred and Isaac, grumble about SF. Pohl has some sharp words for the art of Frank R. Paul and Asimov swears he will eat Uranus!
KCUR, Kansas City’s NPR station, recorded an interview with Noël Sturgeon, James Gunn and Elspeth Healey talking about “the life, works and literary papers of Theodore Sturgeon.” Here’s the file |MP3|
Of the many podcasts I’m subscribed to the one that I take the most for granted, and mention the least, is BrokenSea Audio’s OTR Swag Cast. OTR, of course, stands for Old Time Radio. But there are at least a dozen old time radio podcasts and I don’t really like any of them except for the OTR Swag Cast. One of the reasons I love it so much is that the host, Bill Hollweg, has a passion for audio drama that’s truly infectious. Moreover, he picks interesting, obscure and excellent OTR. The latest show, which isn’t actually hosted by Hollweg, features the first episode of a 1949 Mutual Network series called “John Steele, Adventurer.” It’s a really terrific episode! Titled “Cargo Unknown”, it introduces the John Steele, a former WWII fighter pilot who runs a one man airline that carries cargo to all points around the world. And in this episode it puts him into a dangerous situation straight away. The cargo he carries is of course both deadly and beautiful and the show makes for really terrific listening. The only sadness here is some sort of digital compression artifacting that can drown out some of the quieter scenes. The OTR Swag Cast typically runs over an hour, and so after that first half hour of excellence there’s their regular welcome backup feature, The Avengers!
If you haven’t heard the OTR Swag Cast before, pick it up with this episode, you’ll love it! |MP3|
Kristian Nairn, the actor who plays ‘Hodor’ on The Game Of Thrones tv series was interviewed on The Sword And Laser podcast this week. He’s kind of a Luke Burrage Renaissance Man, equally dividing his time between DJ’ing, acting, and World Of Warcraft. I believe he was not in character, so the interview was longer than one word. Hodor. Interview starts at 17:08. |MP3|
Luke Burrage’s Science Fiction Book Review Podcast has another episode out (#135) titled Total Recall by Gordon Bell. But it’s not a Science Fiction book and he doesn’t really review it as much as discuss it and the topic of futurism with Tamahome and me.
Here’s what we talked about: Science Fantastic with Michio Kaku podcast, Jesse doesn’t like Michio Kaku, “anybody who does futurism is a bullshit artist”, the future will be different from the past, Total Recall by Gordon Bell, “get your ass to Mars”, Triangulation podcast #17, Leo Laporte, “internet famous”, pioneers of the internet, oral history, My Life Bits (a Microsoft research project), life journal, OCR (optical character recognition), body heat, respect level going up for Microsoft, Luke keeps everything, “is he weighing his shit as well?”, your life in 100 terabytes, “don’t bother reading the book”, maybe that’s why I hate futurism, it should have been a biography, “if you want good futurism that isn’t going to be proved wrong in ten years…”, Science Fiction is about the human condition, futurism is technology in isolation, Luke just wants to have a conversation with Gordon Bell, the European Juggling convention, your sister’s wedding, proposing on Skype, a successful marriage of convenience, Skype text chat logs go way back, Skype crash!, saving every email that you receive, presumable AIs, “That was fast”, “you better be careful what you say to Luke”, “in ten years time…”, Luke lives publicly and openly on the internet, how many people have an hour long discussion of every book they’ve read this year?, the benefits of living life on the internet openly, extracting entertainment value, “this is terrible”, Robert J. Sawyer‘s Hominids was a Hugo award winning novel, Startide Rising (Jesse hates it), Connie Willis just won the Hugo, “this is a horrible novel”, Connie Willis is good at getting Hugos, she needs an editor, A Good Story Is Hard To Find podcast, Luke was expecting more than crass futurism, “where the fuck did you pull that number from? was it from your ass”, Fu Manchu, Sunshine is a piece of shit (and not Science Fiction), Moore’s Law, “in ten years time”, William Gibson’s “the future is here it just isn’t evenly distributed yet”, bunk, it’s not falsifiable, SFsignal.com, Tam’s expurgated comment, Real Time with Bill Maher, the guy knows less about nuclear physics than I do (based on what he said on the show), burn that whole nuclear site, Chernobyl, Bikini Atoll (actually it was Enewetak Atoll – specifically Runit Island), Google Maps, the hydrogen bomb, Neil deGrasse Tyson is a lot better, the Hayden Planetarium, “when he talks I get more facts (and he doesn’t do futurism)”, string theory, Jesse doesn’t like Michio Kaku, Luke doesn’t like podcasts that run more than an hour, “that’s a whole separate podcast”, a nerdy internet guy, pocket protectors (are awesome) (see?), a condom for you pocket (they are handy), Revenge Of The Nerds, geek vs. nerd, the Functional Nerds podcast, Patrick Hester, Geek Nights podcast, nerding vs, geeking, “I don’t have nerdgasms”, hot rodding your computer, history geeks, enthusiasts, professionals vs. nerds, Star Trek nerds, they misunderstood Scotty’s origin, red matter is nothing, Star Trek movie made Luke cry, i09, “the top 10 suicide missions in SF”, ramming speed, WWII, “submarmine”, ram the “submarmine”, the Titanic, in 38 years everyone will be ramming other ships, health and safety, 1919, “I can’t believe the way this conference is going…”, futurism works in a story, the internet vs. cyberspace, Snow Crash, the blogsphere (discussion boards) were predicted (?) by Orson Scott Card in Ender’s Game, The Huffington Post, Luke really has to go now.
Forgive me, I’ve posted part of this before, but it’s good enough to post twice. Frederik Pohl and Isaac Asimov were interviewed for a 1972 show called The First Edition. Apparently the show never aired, and was never edited.
Kristian Nairn, the actor who plays ‘Hodor’ on The Game Of Thrones tv series was interviewed on 
