The National Endowment for the Arts presents a complied interview piece on Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard Of Earthsea.
Contributors include Michael Chabon, Kelly Link, Orson Scott Card, Walter Mosley, R.L. Stine and Le Guin herself!
|MP3|
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Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #158 – Last week’s podcast was an unabridged reading of The Syndic by C.M. Kornbluth. This week Jesse discusses it with the narrator, Mark Douglas Nelson!
Talked about on today’s show:
SciPodBooks.com, the SciPodCast, The Syndic by C.M. Kornbluth, The City At World’s End by Edmond Hamilton, the virtues of democracy, Oath Of Fealty by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, H. Beam Piper, Space Viking, a wealth of ideas, Frederik Pohl, the story as a straw man, Robert A. Heinlein, telepathy, witches, dystopia, utopia, polo played with jeeps (mounted with 50 caliber machine guns), the syndicate vs. the mob, Ireland, Iceland, libertarianism, the Prometheus Unbound review of The Syndic, polyandry, an economy run on alcohol, sex, and gambling, laissez faire capitalism, monopolies, robber barons, taxes vs. shakedowns, “a real mess of a book”, should a society compromise its ideals to save itself?, is the joke on us?, a velvet gloved invisible hand, The High Crusade by Poul Anderson, the children’s crusade, WWII, rule by mob vs. rule by mobsters, Ron Paul, the sustainability of a war based economy need not much concern the arms manufacturer, Isaac Asimov, The City At World’s End has a real plot, disaster stories, new ideas trump big flaws, “writing by the seat of your pants”, space opera, E.E. “Doc” Smith, respect for science and scientists, Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein, The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose Farmer, LibriVox.org, Riverworld series, rolling ships, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, the problem of endless series, StarShipSofa, The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman, A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay, “philosophy, philosophy, philosophy”, it starts with a séance, C.S. Lewis, Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves And Wooster, Leave It To Jeeves, LibriVox’s new funding (from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), Orson Scott Card, Harlan Ellison, Airborn by Kenneth Oppel, Gregg Margarite, Lone Star Planet by H. Beam Piper, Kevin J. Anderson, Principles Of Economics, iambik audio, Wonder Audio, All Or Nothing by Preston L. Allen, The Tattoo Murder Case by Akimitsu Takagi, Toshiro Mifune, Akira Kurosawa, High And Low, Netflix, Sweet And Lowdown, One O’Clock Jump by Lise McClendon, A Is For Alibi by Sue Grafton, Talents Incorporated by Murray Leinster, goofy, the William Woodsworth Microphone Showdown, do expensive mics make great narrators?
Posted by Jesse Willis
William H. Patterson, Jr., author of Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century a new biography of Robert A. Heinlein, is the speaker in this Cato Institute video from 2010. Here’s the official description:
Robert A. Heinlein is regarded by many as the greatest science fiction writer of the 20th century. He is the author of more than 30 novels, including Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and the libertarian classic The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. According to biographer William H. Patterson Jr., Heinlein’s writings “galvanized not one, but four social movements of his century: science fiction and its stepchild, the policy think tank; the counterculture; the libertarian movement; and the commercial space movement.” This authorized biography, reviewed enthusiastically by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post, is the first of two volumes, covering Heinlein’s early ambition to become an admiral, his left-wing politics, and his first novels. Heinlein later became strongly libertarian.
The speech itself is short, and isn’t particularity exciting, but Patterson gives some very detailed and interesting answers to audience questions. Some are about the connections between Ayn Rand and Robert A. Heinlein, the philosophy of Heinlein, socialism in the U.S.A., and Heinlein’s mysticism.
But one question asked, about how to rebuff arguments that Heinlein’s ‘Starship Troopers is fascist’, has Patterson point to the compulsory military service in Switzerland. He equates it with being a part of Swiss citizenship. However, military service is only compulsory for Swiss men. In South Korea, where the threat of war is much more pressing, compulsory military service works the same way – only men are compelled. In fact compulsory military service works, and has worked, that way just about everywhere – including in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. A much better example of equating military service with citizenship would be Israel, where compulsory military service includes both men and women – and there aren’t very many exemptions. Problem is, this isn’t what the book, or the movie, has. Heinlein has voting rights for veterans – soldiers can’t vote and anybody who doesn’t join the military can’t vote. That’s not fascism. I don’t know what it’s called but it is not fascism.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Worthy of FIVE EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!! Here’s the trailer for The Delivery (the only movie ever made about audiobooks):
And here’s the description:
“Reading is boring; and audiobooks are worse!”
That’s what Celia thinks. Celia loves to dance, hates to read. She has a book report due on Monday; if she does not deliver, she doesn’t get to be in the Spring Dance Recital. In an effort to secure a pre-written paper, she takes on a delivery to a local audiobook studio.
Simple, no? Not really.
Her delivery catapults her into a journey through a warren of studios which are inhabited by temperamental actors, ghostly apparitions and overtaxed producers. Upon reaching the final studio, her imagination tumbles her headlong into an full blown 1830 enactment of Lewis Carroll’s Mad Tea Party.
Through her wondrous adventure, Celia learns that listening to audiobooks will help her “deliver” her assignment, and open up a whole new part of her imagination!
A short film written and directed by Gabrielle de Cuir. Produced by Stefan Rudnicki
Stars:
Harlan Ellison
John Rubinstein
Orson Scott Card
Sir Michael York
Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.
Stephanie Zimbalist
Scott Brick
Emily Janice Card
The movie is available on DVD as a part of Blackstone Audio’s Lewis Carroll boxed set.
Posted by Jesse Willis
One of the blogs I follow is FiveBooks, a segment of The Browser: Writing Worth Reading. The site features a daily interview of a renowned authority, invited to discuss his or her area of expertise and provide his or her choice of the best five books to read on that topic. It ranges from fiction to non-fiction, across all genres and subject matters. I like having it in my Google reader because I can just skip the topics that don’t interest me, while those that do have added to my to-read list exponentially.
Recently, Orson Scott Card was given this opportunity. He chose five books that will get readers hooked on science fiction, even if they are new to the genre. Card also briefly discusses the development of the genre itself. Check it out and tell me if these are the five you would have chosen. I thought it might be a slight cop-out to choose two anthologies as two of his five selections, except I keep hearing about one of them as a volume that drew science fiction fans into the genre as children.
Posted by Jenny Colvin
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.
Have a listen |MP3|
Podcast feed: http://www.sfbrp.com/?feed=podcast
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.
Posted by Jesse Willis
