News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.
The Bat Segundo Show, episode #432, has the host, Edward Champion, “basking in a pleasant tsunami of erudition” when he talks to Stephen Fry.
Among the many subjects discussed in this delightfully wide ranging conversation are Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, how to write essays for exams, the Oxford manner, the ethics of the French Resistance, absolutism, and Brave New World.
|MP3|
Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/segundo
Posted by Jesse Willis
There’s one segment of Nazi Eyes On Canada, episode 5 “Alameda” (Saskatchewan), available via Relic Radio’s Orson Welles: On The Air podcast.
|MP3|
This is one of the strangest and oldest alternate history radio programs I’ve ever heard |READ OUR REVIEW|.
Posted by Jesse Willis
When you’ve got an old paperback book that’s coming apart at the spine, with pages falling out all over the place it’s time to consider making it immortal. In order to do that, in a reasonable period of time, you must kill the book. That’s the hardest part of the process. The actual transformation is pretty easy.
To do it I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 which came with Adobe Acrobat Standard 9. Here are three videos I put together that show the process of turning a paperback into an ebook:
And here’s a PDF |SAMPLE| of the result.
Update:
John writes in to say:
I read your recent post about digitizing print books with interest. I wondered if you might be able to expand on your process a bit, as it seemed to me like a few steps were missing from your video.
Indeed, here are my answers to some specific questions:
How do you actually sever all the pages from the book?
Most of the time this can be done just with your hands, at least with paperbacks and old magazines. The only tools I’ve ever needed to use are flathead screwdriver, to pry up staples found in some mags from the 1960s and 1970s, and scissors which I’ve used to trim out glued edges. If you’re doing a hardcover with sewn binding you’d probably be able to do it with just an X-Acto knife.
When you run the pages through the scanner, does it scan both sides of the page simultaneously? Or do you have to scan them all twice?
The Fujitsu ScanSnap is not only superfast, it’s also supersmart, it scans both sides at the same time (technically the term is “duplex”).
If so, how do you collate them so the pages are all in the right order?
The bundled software, called ScanSnap Manager, allows you to customize the named output files. I usually have them just come out as 001, 002, 003, etc..
How long does it take you to digitize a single book?
Lets see I’ve just scanned the February 1976 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction which has 128 pages (64 leaves). In the scanning itself I set a stopwatch. It took 1 minute 30 seconds to scan the entire mag. The software took another 45 seconds of processing. And I spent about 30 seconds correcting orientation on a few pages. So under three minutes for 128 pages
Have you tried this on hardcovers as well, or just paperbacks?
I don’t think I’ve done more than a couple of hardcovers, they were really easy though as they were essentially unbound already.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Me with a simple MOC LEGO race-car:
A LEGO Classic Space Wafer Fighter:
My students with an afternoon of swooshable LEGO creations:
LAMLradio is a podcast about LEGO! As you can see by the images above I’m a big LEGO fan. I still have all (or almost all) of my LEGO back from when I was a kid. LEGO is a great toy because it allows you to build your own toys. But it’s more than a toy. In fact when I was talking to a professional artist last fall I was trying to convince him that it was a form of art. I’m not sure what art is, but I am sure that LEGO is a medium for sculpture.
If you’re not convinced check out this interview with one such LEGO artist known for his Maschinen Krieger ZbV 3000 LEGO creations (a style of kitbash art from Japan begun in the 1980s and inspired by WWI, WWII, the American space program, Star Wars, Blade Runner and The Road Warrior).
LAMLradio #103 – An interview with .Tromas of Prince George, BC (about Ma.K LEGO creations) |MP3|
Podcast feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/lamlradio
Selected LEGO jargon:
Classic Space – LEGO with a space theme produced between 1978 and 1987.
Diorama – A large LEGO scene or a LEGO scene built on an irregular base.
Vignette – A small LEGO scene, usually built on a base 8 studs long by 8 studs wide.
MOC – (an acronym, My Own Creation) – Any LEGO creation designed and built by a LEGO fan without instructions. Pronounced “mock.”
Swooshable – A quality that allows a LEGO creation to be picked up and flown around a room as the builder makes flying noises.
Posted by Jesse Willis
This essential interview with Philip K. Dick, conducted by Charles Platt and recorded in 1979 in Santa Ana, California, is sure to be immensely important for Dick scholars. It was recorded for Platt’s book Dream Makers: The Uncommon People Who Write Science Fiction.
Here’s the video converted back to audio, |MP3| and although it isn’t huffduffable, it is downloadable.
Notes:
-Dick was “plenty peculiar” because he read books
-he wasn’t gay despite his hanging around with gay friends
-Quakers were about the only group in the world Dick didn’t have some sort of grievance against
-Dick claims to have been kicked out of university for failing mandatory ROTC training
-Dick read The World Of Null-A by A.E. van Vogt and found in it great inspiration for his ideas about the perception of reality and reality itself
-Dick perceived his high school geometry teacher as a mechanism
–Roog and other “interior projection stories”
-Dick’s fiction can be incomprehensible if you do not accept his premise (namely that “each of us lives in a unique world.”)
–Martian Time Slip.
-When Dick went to a psychotherapist he was told he was an alcoholic (despite his being a teetotaler)
-“attack therapy”
-totalitarian communities
-why Dick writes about anti-heroes
-paranoia
-“I am inevitably persuaded by every argument that is brought to bare”
-private worlds
–The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch
–Time Out Of Joint
-artificial memories / false memories
-the influence of drugs on Dick’s writing was only in the output (using amphetamines he was completing 60 finished pages per day)
-Dick’s one real acid trip
–A Scanner Darkly
-cats and cat curiosity
-Carl Jung and “the collective unconscious”
-John Belushi (on Saturday Night Live)
-WWI and the battle of The Marne
-Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky
-WWI and the battle of The Marne
-Dick’s father fought in WWI (in the 5th Marines) and told Philip the stories about it
–All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
-“the god of this world is evil”
–Maze Of Death
–Ubik
–Eye In The Sky
-WWII
-something is terrible is wrong (when everyone cheers a burning man)
-empathy for animals (human and rodent)
-the killing of a rat (haunted Dick)
-Buddha
–Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
-lambs and sheep
–Valis (his then latest novel)
-standing on the shoulders of giants
-disorder (evil) -> order (benign)
-Dick claims to have been eccentric but not insane
-“it fired my agent, it fired my publisher” (it being the spirit that was possessing him)
-Dick’s letter to the Roman Catholic Church (about the miracle that occurred)
-conspiracies
-the Cumaean Sibyl informed Dick that the American Republic is in danger of turning into the American Empire (in 1974)
-PKD on censorship (he’s against it, unless you aren’t)
-the War Of The Spanish Lowlands
-Congressman Charles E. Wiggins got letters from Dick (written while he was possessed by the spirit of the Cumaean Sibyl)
-the Nixon tape transcripts were forgeries (according to Dick’s Cumaean Sibyl)
-the Paul Williams article in Rolling Stone on Dick
-Dick’s tutelary spirit promised to return Dick to a garden upon his deathbed
–Diana
-Norman Spinrad
-“I’m in the Portuguese States Of America”
-a Chinese finger trap
–We Can Build You
-Platt: “Do you recognize the possibility that you were talking to yourself?” Dick: “Yes.”
-multiple personalities
-Archimedes principle
–Faith Of Our Fathers
-Ursula K. Le Guin thought Dick was crazy
-pre-socratic philosophy
[via SFSignal.com and youtubemp3.tv]
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #133 – Beyond The Black River by Robert E. Howard, read by Todd McLaren (courtesy of Tantor Media’s The Conquering Sword Of Conan). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novelette (2 Hours 29 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it (by Jesse and Tamahome).
Talked about on today’s show:
Todd McLaren, Conan’s voice is confident, Balthus is the Jimmy Olsen to Conan’s Superman, Robert E. Howard’s avatar in Beyond The Black River is Balthus, “the damnedest bastard who ever lived”, “buckets of mead”, a noble death, a prominently displayed dog, barbarism vs. civilization, Red Nails, “the viking hat”, The Savage Sword Of Conan, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Tam is a Conan novice, The Last Of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, western, “alabaster skin”, the triumph of Barbarism (is the coda for the story), Texas, would the 1% agree with Howard?, Picts, the world of Hyboria, Cimmeria was a real place, history, historical romance, physical display, don’t overblow the homo-eroticism, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, autodidacts, Margaret Atwood’s interview on CBC’s Q, “occasionals”?, Walt Whitman and Henry James, The Turn Of The Screw, sword and sorcery, did Howard invent the barbarian as a character?, Genghis Khan, forbidden knowledge, Howard and Jack London, The Call Of The Wild, California, Alaska, Yukon, slavery, civilization to barbarism, “a Conan dog”, atavism, Zogar Sag is the Jesus to Jhebbal Sag’s God, secret language magic, secret symbols, Conan The Barbarian, Conan is at the height of his power, atavistic magic, “what was I missing”, chatty Conan, Brian Wood’s new Conan comic (adapting Queen Of The Black Coast), Barry Windsor Smith, “he’s busy getting revenge”, a distillation of what’s in the stories, Conan and the philosophers, Oliver Stone and John Milius, Conan The Destroyer, sword vs. sorcery, Berserk (manga), “if you were in the Hyborian age which god would you worship?”, “a Klingon god”, “who is the good guy in Beyond The Black River?”, why does Conan side with the Aquilonians?, “swarthy white men”, Conan is bronzed by the sun not swarthy, end the Jersey Shore references, “this is a war story”, Conan doesn’t believe in an external valuation, why is there only one Devil?, Gullah the Gorilla God – the hairy one who lives on the moon, Africa, Aquilonia is France, Hyboria is Europe, Hyperborea (boreal + hyper = far north), Stygia = Egypt, Texas history, the Picts are the Comanche in this story, Julius Caesar, degenerating white men, Kull, Brule The Spearslayer, “noble savage”, a “symphony of racism”, Bran Mak Morn: The Last King by Robert E. Howard, Kings In The Night, The Whole Wide World, The One Who Walks Alone by Novalyne Price Ellis, Vincent D’Onofrio as Robert E. Howard channeling Conan, photographs of Robert E. Howard, Howard was a LARPer, “Howard was a rough-hewn intellectual”, boxing, gun culture vs. cat culture, WWII, Lidice, “even a white man’s dog is worth more than seven Picts”, Bill Hollweg’s Queen Of The Black Coast audio drama, would Beyond The Black River make a good audio drama?, Lou Anders’ Hollywood Formula doesn’t work here, philosophy of the woods, audiobooks and comics are better than movies, SSOC #26 & #27, Dark Horse’s Savage Sword Of Conan, Volume 3, ostrich feathers tell a story, a frontier story, Weird Tales covers by Margaret Brundage, the Hulk, supple, Red Nails would be a good readalong, laser beams and dinosaurs.
Posted by Jesse Willis