Coode Street podcast #113 with anthologists James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel

SFFaudio Online Audio

Notes From Coode StreetJames Patrick Kelly and John Kessel came on Coode Street Podcast #113 to have a rather spirited discussion about science fiction.  They just put out a new anthology about The Singularity — Digital Rapture.  They talked about traditional (Campbellian?) sf vs ‘mainstream sf’ (see their anthology The Secret History of Science Fiction), and traditional sf vs ‘singularity sf’.  They also praised M. John Harrison’s book Light.  I’ll have to get back to that, but I found some of the characters very unlikeable.

|MP3| of the podcast episode.

Posted by Tamahome

 

2011 Nebula Nominees Audio

SFFaudio Online Audio

nebula iconThe 2011 Nebula Nominees have been announced.  Sfsignal has a good collection of links to free online text of the shorter works.  I’ll list all the available audio versions.  I think it’s just from Clarkesworld and Lightspeed (I found a few others).  Clarkesworld should make it easier to go from their online text versions to their online audio versions.  Jenny says listen to E. Lily Yu first.

Best Novella:

Catherynne M. Valente – Silently and Very Fast (Clarkesworld) – Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Best Novellette:

Jake Kerr – The Old Equations (Lightspeed) – |MP3|

Best Short Story:

Adam-Troy Castro – Her Husband’s Hands  (Lightspeed) – |MP3|

Tom Crosshill – Mama, We are Zhenya, Your Son  (Lightspeed) – |MP3|

E. Lily Yu – The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees (Clarkesworld) – |MP3|

Ken Liu – The Paper Menagerie (Podcastle) – |MP3|

Nancy Fulda – Movement  (Escape Pod) – |MP3|

Posted by Tamahome

TWIT’s Security Now podcast science fiction episode

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Usually the Security Now podcast covers the latest stress-inducing security holes in Windows, Flash, Acrobat, and Java.  But at the end of last December in episode 333 Steve Gibson devoted an episode to his favorite science fiction.  He started with some movies:  This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet, and The Day The Earth Stood Still.  But most of the episode covered books, and Steve has good taste and likes Hard SF.  He started with Asimov’s Robot mystery novels, beginning with The Caves Of Steel.  His favorite Larry Niven is Protector, but The Mote In God’s Eye was ok too.  He also enjoyed Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker series.

And I actually learned about Peter F. Hamilton from him: the Mandel Series, the Night’s Dawn series (huge), Fallen Dragon (standalone novel), and the Pandora’s Star/Judas Unchained duology.

Next came an independent author who sells from his own site, Michael McCollum at scifi-az.com.  Michael has the Antares series and the Gibralter series.  Someone told me to check out his 1st 2 books from the 80’s.  There’s also The Sails Of Tau Ceti.  Some free short stories are available.  There’s no audiobooks unfortunately (an opportunity for someone?), unless you count some computer generated audio files.

Steve also mentioned Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series, Graham Sharp Paul’s Helfort’s War series, David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, Greg Bear’s Eon, and Gregory Benford’s Galactic Center saga.

Feed:  http://leo.am/podcasts/sn

MP3: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/aolradio.podcast.aol.com/sn/sn0333.mp3

Posted by Tamahome

Review Of Mindstar Rising (Greg Mandel, #1) By Peter F. Hamilton

SFFaudio Review

Mindstar Rising (Greg Mandel, #1)
By Peter F. Hamilton; Read by Toby Longworth
Audible Download – 14 Hours 52 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audible Frontiers
Published: December 1st 2011
Themes: / Science Fiction / Mystery / Global Warming / Psychic Abilities

It’s the 21st century, and global warming is here to stay, so forget the way your country used to look. And get used to the free market, too – the companies possess all the best hardware, and they’re calling the shots now. In a world like this, a man open to any offers can make out just fine.

A man like Greg Mandel for instance, who’s psi-boosted, wired into the latest sensory equipment, carrying state-of-the-art weaponry – and late of the English Army’s Mindstar Battalion. As the cartels battle for control of a revolutionary new power source, and corporate greed outstrips national security, tension is mounting to boiling point – and Greg Mandel is about to face the ultimate test.

This is an older Peter F. Hamilton novel, first published in 1993.  It’s relatively short compared to his later books.  Just this year it got reprinted in America with Quantum Murder as one book.  (I guess thick books sell more?)  It has also just gotten the audio treatment from Audible Frontiers.  Peter F. Hamilton is kind of a potboiler sf writer, and yet he’s really smart.  He seems to put a lot of research into his scenes, including some science.  Sometimes I feel like he’s giving too many details compared to someone like Joe Haldeman, and I get a little restless.   Maybe it’s my fault and I’m getting confused, which is easier to do in an audiobook.  But then something shocking or intense happens, and it keeps me going.  Plus his character development is above average for a genre writer.  And he doesn’t shy away from sex or violence as much as other writers.  I feel like he writes for adults.  If you thought the Night’s Dawn or Void trilogies had too many fantasy elements, you might prefer this series.  It is more straight science fiction.  That’s assuming you don’t consider psychic abilities to be fantasy.  At least they’re framed here in a scientific way.  You may encounter some libertarian political messages as well.  The setting is a post global warming world where a Leftist government has left England in shambles.  It will become important to the plot.

I happen to know that Hamilton is a plotter and outlines in advance.  I experienced the ‘Connie Willis effect’ while reading — I wasn’t sure why a certain character or location was introduced, but then it all tied together in the end.  The last three or four hours here really cooked.  He can describe beam weapons and explosions well.  (Compare the end of his The Neutronium Alchemist with the end of Samuel R. Delany’s Nova.)  Although I caution you there’s a somewhat grisly escape.  And I don’t like the word ‘tropes’, but some of the ‘cool stuff’ you’ll see in this novel are mind uploading, cybernetic brain enhancement, and genetically enhanced animals.

No messing.

Posted by Tamahome

 

Alastair Reynolds on The Coode Street Podcast

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Notes From Coode StreetGary Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan spend an hour with Alastair Reynolds, talking science fiction.  The conversation is focused, no awards are mentioned, and they talk a lot of about Alastair’s inspiration, Arthur C. Clarke, as well as his upcoming novel, Blue Remembered Earth (it’s on Wikipedia already).

Rss feed:  http://jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/feed/

|MP3|

Posted by Tamahome