The SFFaudio Podcast #217 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #217 – Jesse, Tamahome, Jenny, and Marrisa VU talk about audiobook NEW RELEASES and RECENT ARRIVALS.

Talked about on today’s podcast:
Hammer Chillers, Mr. Jim Moon, British audio drama horror anthology, Hammer Films, Janette Winterson, Paul Magrs, Stephen Gallagher, the official physical list, spaceship sci-fi, Honor Harrington, David Weber, Audible.com, Horatio Hornblower in space, broadsides and pirates, gravity propulsion, Steve Gibson, a telepathic treecat, Lois McMaster Bujold, Luke Burrage (The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast), David Drake, S.M. Stirling, 90% of Lois McMaster Bujold’s sales are audiobooks, Sword & Laser, a girl writer, Prisoners Of Gravity, religion, J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin isn’t Tolkien deep, secondary world, The Curse Of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, Blackstone Audio, Paladin Of Souls, Miles Vorkosigan, low magic vs. high magic, high fantasy, Westeros world vs. Harry Potter world, the Red Wedding (and the historical inspiration), the guest host relationship, John Scalzi, Redshirts, Agent To The Stars, The Human Division, The Ghost Brigades, Old Man’s War, William Dufris, Wil Wheaton as a narrator (is great at 2x speed), snarky comedic Scalzi stories, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, Kirby Heyborne, Fuzzy Nation, Andrew L., Starforce Series, Mark Boyette, military SF, Legend: Area 51 by Bob Meyer, Eric G. Dove, traditional fantasy, epic fantasy, conservative fantasy, elves princes quests, fewer tattoos more swords, Elizabeth Moon, Graphic Audio, truck drivers, comic books, westerns, post-apocalyptic gun porn, Paladin’s Legacy, Limits Of Power, elves, simultaneous release, Vatta’s War, horses in space, The Deed Of Paksenarrion, Red Sonja, non-beach armor, Elizabeth Moon was a marine, sounds pretty hot, Any Other Name, the split-world series, Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, The Assassination Of Orange, Terpkristin’s review of The Mongoliad Book 1, The Garden Of Stones by Mark T. Barnes, books are too long!, books are not edited!, cut it down, self-contained books, find the good amongst the long and the series, Oberon’s Dreams by Aaron Pogue, Taming Fire, Oklahoma, urban fantasy, Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig, Adam Christopher, blah blah blah quote quote quote, “Wow I’ve never read anything like this before!, a head like a wrecking-ball, cool artwork, Lovecraft sounds like the book of Jeremiah, Net Galley, a Chuck Wendig children’s book, Under The Empyrean Sky, The Rats In The Walls, “two amorphous idiot flute players”, Old Testament Lovecraft, Emperor Mollusc Vs. The Sinister Brain by A. Lee Martinez, lucky Bryce, Legion by Brandon Sanderson, we have sooo many reviewers!, Deadly Sting by Jennifer Estep, Jill Kismet, Flesh Circus by Lilith Saintcrow, Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors, a vampire child, B.V. Larson, The Bone Triangle, Hemlock Grove (the Netflix series), True Blood, Arrested Development, House Of Cards, House Of Lies, The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu, Angry Robot, the Angry Robot Army, a complete list, Peter Kline, in the style of Lost, The Lost Room by Fitz James-O’Brien, Myst, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Joyland by Stephen King, Hard Case Crime, Charles Ardai, HCC-013, Haven, The Colorado Kid, setting not action, mapbacks, Iain M. Banks died, the Culture series, Inversions, Player Of Games, Brick By Brick: How LEGO Rewrote The Rules Of Innovation And Conquered The Global Toy Industry by David Robertson and Bill Breen, Downpour.com, At The Mountains Of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft, Edward Herrmann, Antarctica, Miskatonic University, The Gilmore Girls, M*A*S*H, 30 Rock, The Shambling Guide To New York City by Mur Lafferty, New York, great cover!, Spoken Freely … Going Public in Shorts, Philip K. Dick, Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Turetsky, Xe Sands, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, a time-traveling serial killer, Chicago, Jenny’s Reading Envy blog, fantasy character names, Ringworld by Larry Niven, Louis Wu, The Shift Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey, The Wool Series (aka The Silo Series) by Hugh Howey, a zombie plague of Hugh Howey readers, why is there no audiobook for Fair Coin by E.C. Myers?, The Monkey’s Paw, YA, Check Wendig on YA, what is a “fair coin“, rifling through baggage, dos-à-dos, The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, Odd And The Frost Giants, The Wolves In The Walls, Audible’s free Neil Gaiman story, Cold Colors, Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar, Audible download history and Amazon’s Kindle 1984, the world is Big Brother these days, George Orwell, dystopia, BLOPE: A Story Of Segregation, Plastic Surgery, And Religion Gone Wrong By Sean Benham, The Hunger Games, Philip K. Dick, The Man In The High Castle, alternate history, Antiagon Fire by L.E. Modesitt, Jr., William Dufris, what podcasts are you listening to?, Sword & Laser, Dan Carlin’s Common Sense, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, Sword & Laser‘s interview with Lois McMaster Bujold, ex-Geek & Sundry, Kim Stanley Robinson, KCRW Bookworm with Michael Silverblatt, The Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy, Writing Excuses, A Good Story Is Hard To Find, the Savage Lovecast, WTF with Mark Maron, depressed but optimistic, Maron, Point Of Inquiry, Daniel Dennet, Neil deGrasse Tyson, S.T. Joshi, how do you become a Think Tank, a weird civil society thing, Star Ship Sofa’s SofaCON, Peter Watts, Protecting Project Pulp, Tales To Terrify, Crime City Central, the District Of Wonders network, Larry Santoro, Fred Himebaugh (@Fredosphere),

Stan
Beyond the valleys, green and grand,
Peek the frightened eyes of the weak colossal Stan,
the giant boy of infant lands.

Stan grasps with Herculean hands the pinnacle peaks,
Clutching feebly with avalanche force.
It’s azure bulky hides his enormous and titanic hulk
From the frightening lights of the big small city.

Stan’s fantastic feet,
Like ocean liners parked in port.
His colossal thighs,
Like thunderous engines resting silently for a storm to come.
His tremendous teeth like hoary skyscrapers shaking in an earthquake,
like a heavenly metropolis quivering beneath a troubled brow,
above a wet Red Sea of silent tongue.

Stan, insecure in his cyclopean mass,
Feels fear for his future beyond the warm chill range of the bowl-like hills
That house his home and heart.

Stan fears a fall filled with
Judging eyes,
Whispered words,
Of mockery and shame.

How could city slick students stand Stan’s pine scented skin?
His dew dropped pits dripping down in rivulets turned to rivers!
And what does a giant know of school and scholarship?
What can mere tests, of paper and pen, say
For the poor and friendless figure who quakes and sighs
Behind the too small mountain looming high over
A big small city to which young Stan has never been?

SFSqueeCast, vague positivity, Charles Tan, SFFaudio could use more positivity, Hypnobobs, Batman, weird fiction, Peter Cushing, The Gorgon, Christopher Lee.

Stephen King's Joyland - Mapback

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Suck It Wonder Woman by Olivia Munn and Mac Montandon

SFFaudio Review

MACMILLAN AUDIO - Suck It Wonder Woman by Olivia Munn and Mac MontandonSuck It, Wonder Woman: The Misadventures Of A Hollywood Geek
By Olivia Munn and Mac Montandon; Read by Olivia Munn
4 CDs – Approx. 5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Puiblisher: Macmillian Audio
Published: July 2010
ISBN: 9781427209825
Themes: / Autobiography / Sexuality / Oklahoma / California / Japan / Robots / Zombies / Pie /

Sample |MP3|

Today’s hottest geek and host of G4’s Attack Of The Show dishes her unique brand of humor of on everything from Star Wars, gadgets, and her love of banana cream pie. Olivia Munn is an actress, comedian and television host, best known for being the face of the G4 network. She also occasionally likes to get dressed up as Wonder Woman. SUCK IT WONDER WOMAN is her paean to Geeks everywhere. Using her trademark humor in essays like THOUGHTS ABOUT MY FIRST AGENT’S GIRLFRIEND’S VAGINA she skewers what it’s like to live in Hollywood. In “SEX: WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP YOURSELF HAVE MORE OF IT” she frankly gets down to the business of getting it on. In “WHAT TO DO WHEN THE ROBOTS INVADE (YES, WHEN!),” Olivia offers valuable information on… what to do when the robots invade! And just when you thought she couldn’t get any more Geeky, she can. This book also includes an Olivia Munn timeline of great moments in Geek history and her answers to the Unofficial Geek FAQ. Is it any wonder that Olivia Munn is quickly becoming the most powerful Geek on the planet? SUCK IT WONDER WOMAN is a humorous look at geeks, gadgets, Hollywood, and huge heapings of banana cream pie.

When this audiobook arrived I didn’t recognize the author or what exactly it was. I’d seen Attack Of The Show, and at least one of the episodes of The Daily Show in which she appeared, but something dimly pinged and I decided to give it a listen. Maybe part of it is that I’ve been a sucker for biographical audiobooks since I first stumbled across Michael Caine’s amazing reading of his autobiography What’s It All About?. Since then I’d read maybe a half dozen more. I’m sad to say most were only marginally interesting, but they never sucked, and I’ve found you can learn a hell of a lot about history by hearing about individual lives. The only biography that’s come as close to recreating that first experience was perhaps, rather strangely, a Blackstone Audio version of The Most Dangerous Man In America: Scenes From The Life Of Benjamin Franklin by Catherine Drinker Bowen. Weird huh? Yeah, Michael Caine and Benjamin Franklin have very little in common, other than being male and speakers of English. What they do share, however, is a kind of an ineffable interestingness. Caine’s story was full of a bewildering matter-of-factness, performed by the actor himself, and offered dozens of surprises and a whole lifetime’s worth of experience in the movies in less than three hours. Franklin, that auto-didactic man of letters, inventor, humorist and well … you’ll just have to go listen to the audiobook yourself … was completely and utterly amazing. Olivia Munn, and her book Suck It Wonder Woman are, on the other hand, entirely and completely effable. And by that I don’t only mean that there’s a lot of potty mouth in this audiobook.

Suck It Wonder Woman is potty mouthed and full of dirty stories about crazy people in Hollywood. There are also brief chapters on seemingly random, hip-sounding dos and don’ts. I’m not sure why these bits were added in. The audiobook works best when operating in the more serious storytelling sections. Munn’s description of herself as a child are fun and retrospectively insightful. One chapter, relating her relationship with her grandparents, is highly poigniant. That isn’t fluff. But not all of these stories are all that serious either. Her relating meetings with celebrities (named and unnamed) are surprising and frightening. And while the generalities of Munn’s life story, so far, aren’t particularly unique, she has some fun tales to tell. Munn makes for quite a sympathetic figure in all of the specifics of her life. And, her almost puppy-like eagerness to tell you about it, with her narration, is very endearing. When she relates her sadnesses, you are truly disheartened. But, as Munn reminds us, we can’t be too downcast, there’s always pie.

Posted by Jesse Willis