Reading, Short And Deep #094 – And All The Earth A Grave by C.C. McCapp

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #094

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss And All The Earth A Grave by C.C. McCapp

And All The Earth A Grave was first published in Galaxy Magazine, December 1963.

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Reading, Short And Deep #089 – The Malice Of Inanimate Objects by M.R. James

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #089

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Malice Of Inanimate Objects by M.R. James

The Malice Of Inanimate Objects was published in The Masquerade, June 1933.

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Reading, Short And Deep #085 – The Lifeboat Mutiny by Robert Sheckley

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #085

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss an episode of X Minus One that adapts Robert Sheckeley’s short story, The Lifeboat Mutiny.

The Lifeboat Mutiny was first broadcast on September 11, 1956.

Here’s a link to an MP3 of the episode.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #430 – READALONG: The High Crusade by Poul Anderson

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastDr. Dimension Master Of Spacetime Raising Mullah by S. Ron MarsThe SFFaudio Podcast #422 – Jesse, Scott Danielson, and Paul Weimer talk about The High Crusade by Poul Anderson

Today’s podcast is sponsored by Hotspur Publishing’s Dr. Dimension Master Of Spacetime Raising Mullah. Written by S. Ron Mars and narrated by Fred Wolinsky, this is a comedic Science Fiction audiobook available now on Audible.com

Talked about on today’s show:
A Canticle For Leibowitz, the framing, a thousand years later, the manuscript, make a universe as a playground to play in, feudal Englishman running rampant in interstellar space, appreciations, Eric Flint, David Drake, Greg Bear, rollicking, Astrid Anderson Bear, a rollicking romp of medieval mayhem, fun Catholicism, A Case Of Conscience where the conscience is a little lose, the horrible movie adaptation The High Crusade (1994), it could make a good movie, Monty Python And The Holy Grail, George Pal, no budget, no script, no director, John Rhys Davies, the trailer, a really good trailer, blue skin, Quest by Poul Anderson, this seems to be the Holy Grail, here’s a story where they tried, a little too sloppy, a gaming system, Ares, Poul Anderson wrote a ton of great stuff, paperback reprints, an upbeat ending, grim or ambiguous, a different tone, The Broken Sword, Three Hearts And Three Lions, Philip K. Dick’s Waterspider has Poul Anderson as a character, Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson, Avatar with fewer explosions, following in a line with Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, our knowledge, awesome mistakes, no defenses, lucky Scott, fun, super-entertaining, history, a healthy respect for factual history, not technically a lie, Babel, an undercurrent of humour from charging knights to launching nukes with trebuchets, historicity, the fall of Rome, barbarians, the Roman Empire, the creation of the dark ages, their own past and their own future, fiefdoms, the church, practicality, stiff armour costumes, almost a complete retelling of what’s going on in Europe, a local chieftain, keep the system going, pastiche, we have to buy so much, rusty axes, pretty hard to buy, a light touch, undeniably well working, L. Sprague de Camp’s Krishna novels and stories, looking for princesses, green skin aliens, an Easter egg, all their conquests, the crusades, the Wersgorix, defeat the horde of Englishmen, Saracens, ripe for a fall, what made Alexander The Great so great, technical definition: a shitshow, sacking Constantinople, attacking the wrong people, loose collectives, a charitable term, mercenary motivations, the sack of Alexandria, they too the wrong turn, the Northern Crusades, the French Crusades, Baltic pagans, holy wars, Christian jihads, radical extremism combined with mercenary avarice, he must speak Latin because he’s a demon, sharp knives and tortures and laughing, it’s all fake, not being horrified, the entire town from Lincolnshire goes to liberate the Holy Land, an enjoyable romp, edible, digestible, enjoyable, nicely, lightly, briefly, reconstructing scenes, reliability, circumstances, third hand, it’s wonderful to be an Englishman, his declensions are atrocious and what he does to irregular verbs can not be mentioned in gentle company, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, Celts in the stars, Catherine Asaro, Mayans in space, Star Trek, space Romans and space Nazis, the Traveler RPG, Traveler 3000, seeding wolves and humans, plenty of little planets, plucky humans, star empires, elves, wolves in space, building empires, dying in character creation, The High Crusade tactical board game, chits, Avalon Hill, flaws and strengths, tactics, dry ’80s-style war games, actual battles, great cover art, the idea of primitive technology defeating higher technology, Ewoks vs. the Imperial Storm Troopers, Return Of The Jedi, buckskins (Ewok skins), a comic light touch, different kinds of swords, gladius -> longsword -> rapier -> no swords, the heraldry, to learn how to run a spaceship, you don’t even know how to read to learn, ignorance, history, they’re not knowledgeable enough to think they can’t win, hand-to-hand, contrast, thrall army, fort destruction, ionic storm, heresy, playing the heresy card, history, religion, science, space battles, awesome, scenes and jokes, the workings of the physical universe, an inversion, knights with holstered ray guns, laser guns, the English learn quickly, never give up the horses, poor Ansby was left almost deserted, the loading of the ship, a Noah’s Ark story, a good idea, a lot to swallow, so much sugar, worldly goods, what happened to this village?, everybody’s gone, all the cupboards are bare, there’s a story there, “almost deserted”, I’m not getting on this thing!, other races, clever but nuts, the opening framing, a document vs. a novel, The Green Meadow by H.P. Lovecraft and Winifred Virginia Jackson, the most preposterous story ever, alien summer night, socio-technician, modern languages, creatures, thunder and blow-up, hard to believe, no rest for the wicked, impressively ancient, uncials on vellum, a prosaic typescript, home was a long way off, a mystery, pretty cute, they did well, still there, an English Empire stretching down the spiral arm, 2300 A.D., has the Holy Land yet been liberated?, a funny funny book, this book can’t really age, the alien technology of the ship feels very 1950s, their navigator is called an “astrologer”, The Enduring Chill by Flannery O’Connor, Stephen Colbert, a comedian should narrated this novel, John Cleese, the Book For The Blind, massive archives, there has never been a commercial audiobook release of The High Crusade, The Broken Sword, collections, Brain Wave, Tau Zero, Three Hearts And Three Lions, dealing with elves and trolls, Icelandic and Scandinavian myths, Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp, The Man Who Came Early, dark ages Iceland, Eifelheim by Michael Flynn, split time-lines, everything’s short, 180 pages, a big impressive story inside a few number of pages, packing a bigger punch, Harvest Of Stars, these science fiction writers in the 1960s and 1970s were doing idea exploration, The Broken Sword is a classic, Paul will wind up crying again, catharsis, faking us out, “these creatures”, the Owain treachery, the same thing in Quest, double jointed knees, more faithful than everybody else, a planet named Lancaster, there was hardly a peasant who hadn’t been knighted, Alexander’s generals, regional governors founding dynasties, hay stuck in his hair, very strange very funny, the promise of all series novels always offer, all the adventures happen between the page turns, Sir Roger’s cunning, the Wersgorix had no special affection for their birthplace, King John (and the Magna Carta), the rule of law vs. the rule of the word, “don’t you wish you had a plan?”, siege-craft, “when I had been picked up and dusted off”, no simpletons, to reap so rich a harvest, winning with cunning, courage and brute strength, a little pope, the younger people are not careful, Parvus means “little”, my nickname when I was a kid, a good catch, can we trust this document?, of course we have to trust it 100% because it’s cuter that way, why would it lose to anything?, another religious novel, a different kind of humour completely, a very dry humour, what else was nominated?, Rogue Moon by Algis Burdrys, Deathworld by Harry Harrison, Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon, The Longest Voyage, the Tor Double, To Marry Medusa, Far-Seer by Robert J. Sawyer, mini-tyrannosaurs rex, Galileo, a telescope, his “planet”, Poul Anderson’s inspiration, making marvelous wonders, a great story to build on.

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson - illustration by H. R. Van Dongen

The High Crusade - illustration by Larry Elmore

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #073 – A Practical Man’s Guide by Jack Vance

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #073

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss A Practical Man’s Guide by Jack Vance

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

A Practical Man’s Guide was first published in Space Science Fiction, August 1957.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #418 – AUDIO DRAMA: This Hour Has 17 Programs by Paul K. Willis and Michael Boncoeur

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #418 – This Hour Has 17 Programs by Paul K. Willis and Michael Boncoeur was first broadcast on CBC FM Radio, June 30th, 1984 (airing on the weekend variety show, The Entertainers, hosted by Jim Wright).

now for something completely different, Peter Gzowski, A.M. Morning, Wayne Gretzky, a musical about nuclear war: We Are Your Dead, Toronto’s new domed city ward, The Trojan Women, Morningside, Margaret Atwood, the Group Of Seven, Greenpeace, the Queen Charlotte Islands, whale songs, the letters of Noel Coward and Adolph Hitler, a book of Canadian fairy tales, Calgary, W.O. Mitchell, Lister Sinclair, the Dominion Observatory Time Signal, a farmer’s daughter’s auction, a call in show, R.S.V.P., musical requests, Sheena Easton, Kenny Rogers, a rush hour traffic report, As It Happens, Ronald Reagan’s nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, Muammar Gaddafi, Brian Mulroney, Joe Clark, Pierre Trudeau, Queen Elizabeth II, Lips Carlson (raging communist and terrible musician), Joe McCarthy, Book Time, The Fat Lady Next Door Just Fell Out The Window, Basic Black, Arthur Black, philately, The Frantics, Rick Green, the New Democratic Party, Quirks & Quarks, Jay Ingram, the destruction of the Earth, the toaster, who makes the best scientists?, Winnipeg, Danny Finkleman, the Funny Hat Festival in Nanaimo, Rita Hayworth, Sunday Morning, Ed Broadbent, Maureen Forrester sings rock songs, John McEnroe, The Margaret Atwood Exercise Book, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, Sunday Matinee, Six Days Without A Bath, Our Native Land, Gilmour’s Albums, Clyde Gilmour, The Maltese Falcon, James Mason in a teenage sexploitation movie, Cross Country Checkup, Brian Mulroney, question: Do you want to be obliterated in a nuclear holocaust?, “world peace is provincial matter”, credits, the Smothers Brothers, Steve Martin, Renegade Nuns On Wheels, All In The Family, This Is Spinal Tap

Cast and crew:
Michael Boncoeur, writer, performer
Gay Claitman, performer
Frank Daly, performer
John Disney, producer
Catherine Galant, performer
Ray Landry, performer
Cathy Parry, sound effects
Tom Shipton, technical operations
Paul K. Willis, writer, performer

This Hour Has 17 Programs by Paul K. Willis

Posted by Jesse Willis