Robert Jackson Bennett joins us on the show this week to talk about his new book, City of Stairs!

Download link here, or watch the video!

The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions—until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world’s new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself—first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it—stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy.

Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the unassuming young woman is just another junior diplomat sent by Bulikov’s oppressors. Unofficially, she is one of her country’s most accomplished spies, dispatched to catch a murderer. But as Shara pursues the killer, she starts to suspect that the beings who ruled this terrible place may not be as dead as they seem—and that Bulikov’s cruel reign may not yet be over.

We also take questions from you, the audience, and ask him what the heck was going on with the video below:

From excitement about a new book in the Old Man’s War series, to a rising demand for SciFi, things are looking up on the laser side. We also find out that Tom doesn’t use a Kindle and Veronica’s opinion on spiders.     

Download here!

WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?    
Tom: Yorkshire Gold Tea    
Veronica: Hendricks Gin and Tonic    
    
QUICK BURNS
    
Joanna: Next Old Man’s War book from John Scalzi announced. 
The End of All Things
    
SporadicReviews: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy optioned for TV!
    
Joe Informatico: FOX has committed to a put pilot* for a TV series based on the DC Comics (former Vertigo imprint) version of Lucifer, Lord of Hell. Lucifer first appeared in the Neil Gaiman-written Sandman comics before later featuring in his own Vertigo series. 

*I had to look this up. Apparently a “”put pilot”” means the network/channel agrees to air the pilot with substantial financial penalties to the development studio if they back out. This is generally a sure sign the network will pick up the pilot.   
    
SporadicReviews pointed out Pyr books in a blog post wrote: “We’ve recently heard from independent booksellers that their customers are hungry for science fiction again, despite the predominance of fantasy over these last several years. 
    
Paul: New Kindle Voyage looks cool.

PICKS
    
ShadowShow by Brad Strickland    

Book Discussion:     
Next time we’ll discuss The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan Post your thoughts to the thread and we’ll discuss more about them next time!    
    
Find more upcoming releases at swordandlaser.com/calendar    
    
BARE YOUR SWORD 
    
Good books that are driven distinctly by outstanding dialogue?    
What’s with the giant spiders?    
Peter V. Brett Calls Out DC Comics on Sexism    

BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION    
    
Kick Off Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson
S&L Podcast – #112 – Interview with G. Willow Wilson! — Sword & Laser    

Wrap-Up    

Stories of Your Life and others by Ted Chiang    
SoYLaO: The Common Thread of the Stories (Mild Spoilers)  – Carolina 
    
ADDENDUMS    
    
Support our show on Patreon    

Sword & Laser and Open Road Media went to Loncon 3! Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont took your burning questions to six great authors. 
 

We chat with Timothy Zahn about his new book Soulminder. What happens when you can store a person’s life essence separate from their body? And yes, we get in a little talk about Star Wars and the prospects for Grand Admiral Thrawn and Jaina Solo too.

Download direct link!

We dig into the first four stories from Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others, and boy do we learn a lot about ourselves and others. Plus you’ll want to take your vitamins since Margaret Atwood’s latest novel won’t be available to read for 100 years and we explore the idea of regaining your literary virginity.

Download direct link

WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?    

Tom: Lipton Diet Citrus Green Tea    
Veronica: B12 in water    
    
QUICK BURNS   
    
From Sandra: Legendary TV has acquired the rights to John Scalzi’s novel “Lock In” to adapt into a pilot for a potential series.

Legendary TV Buys John Scalzi Novel ‘Lock In’
    
From Joe Informatico: The Man in the High Castle TV series has cast its lead actress. Alexa Davalos, of Angel and Chronicles of Riddick fame, will play Juliana.     
    
Also from Sandra the newshound! – Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s 1990 novel Good Omens is to be adapted for Radio 4 by Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy director Dirk Maggs.    
    
Margaret Atwood is writing a new book, but you won’t be able to read it this century. She will be storing her next novel for 100 years in a library in Norway as part of a project organized by Scottish artist Katie Paterson.    
    
PICKS    
    
For the next six weeks we’ll be highlighting picks from supporters of our Kickstarter. Look for threads to be posted in the Goodreads Group once every two weeks. We’ll collect your thoughts and comments on the books then toss one around on each show until we’ve covered all six. These aren’t official book club picks, just a way to expose folks to a few more options for things to read. We’d especially love to hear from folks who’ve already read these!    
Our first pick comes from Jonathan Strickland. Post your thoughts to the thread and we’ll discuss more about them next time    
Book Discussion: ShadowShow by Brad Strickland    

BARE YOUR SWORD
    
What do you want to see in the store?! Also, we have a store!    
    
Litterarius Virginitas – what?    
    
For the love of Stanislaw Lem    

—

Hey guys! I’m a fan of your work and I recently subscribed to the podcast. I was wondering if you have already read “”The Commonwealth Saga”” by Peter F. Hamilton. I found it to be a great read (or listen, since I consumed it through Audible).

The whole universe it portrays is fascinating and I found myself devouring all 5 books as fast as I could. The last three books (“The Void Trilogy”) combine sci-fi and fantasy in a great way and I think you will enjoy it.

Thanks and keep up what you’re doing with S&L and your other projects because they are great.    

Rodrigo

—
    
I’m writing to plug an anthology that I helped put together along with the rest of my Clarion Workshop class (UCSD 2012). We released it yesterday, we worked hard on it, and we’re proud of it. It has 17 stories, one from nearly every person in my class, and they run the gamut from dark to light, satire to serious, sf to horror to fantasy. Several of the authors are award-winners, including Sam J. Miller, who won this year’s Shirley Jackson Award for his story “”57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides.”” Our Week 1 teacher Jeffrey Ford graciously provided the foreword.

It’s a diverse tome that was more than a little inspired by the success you guys had with the S&L Antho. We’re trying to do our own little Humble-Bundle-style, pay-as-you-can thing with this. 100% of the net proceeds are going to the Clarion Foundation to support future workshops. There’s more info at http://awkwardrobots.org. 

Luke Pebler   

—
    
BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION    
For next month: Veronica started a thread to brainstorm    
    
Stories of Your Life and others by Ted Chiang    

    

Want a signed copy of The Clockwork Dagger by Beth Cato? We’ve got three to give away! All you have to do is be a member of the Info Beam. Sign up below by Friday, Sept 12th to be entered to win! 

The Clockwork Dagger is the story of a gifted young healer, Octavia Leander, who sets off on her first mission. Her goal is to get to a plague-ridden village and help the people there, but a series of strange occurrences—including murder—rock the airship she is traveling on. The dashingly attractive steward may be one of the infamous Clockwork Dagger assassins, her cabin-mate hides secrets (and an alarming penchant for writing pulp novels), and Octavia is beginning to discover that her magical gift for healing may be even more powerful than anyone thought. In short, this airship voyage is much  more eventful than Octavia expected, and she’s stumbled into the midst of a conspiracy that may reach the crown itself.

The Info Beam



The S&L Newsletter 

• Name:

• Email:

• 
  
  subscribed:
  1275
  
  
  

• We respect your privacy

• 
  Email Marketingby GetResponse

We talk with Naomi Novik, fanfic writer, Ruby on Rails coder and author of the Temeraire series, from DragonCon 2014 in Atlanta! Then, we wrap up Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

Download link here!

WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?    
Tom: Dos Perros     
Veronica: Blackstone Pumpkin Ale    
Naomi: Hap and Harry’s Original Tennessee Ale    
Thanks to Les for bringing us the beer!    

Blood of Tyrants came out in mass market paperback July 29 and look for Uprooted coming June 30, 2015.

ADDENDUMS

We time travel and wrap up The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Next time we’ll kick off Stories of Your Life and others by Ted Chiang

And check out our new STORE!

DragonCon was awesome as always, but Tom and I are thrilled that we won a Parsec Award for Sword & Laser! Specifically, the award for Best Speculative Fiction Fan or News Podcast (General). 

Thank you to the Parsec Committee, all the voters, and of course our listeners! Here’s the list of all the finalists and winners for 2014.

If you’re in Atlanta this weekend and headed to DragonCon you MUST join us in the Crystal Ballroom of the Hilton at 2:00 PM (Eastern) on Saturday afternoon August 30th. Why?

BECAUSE we’re doing a live Sword and Laser episode and interviewing the incomparable Naomi Novik! You cannot miss it. So DON’T!  See you there.  

Time: Sat Aug. 30, 02:30 pm Location: Crystal Ballroom – Hilton (Length: 1 Hour)

We congratulate all the winners of the Hugos and chat with Aidan Moher about how he took home the best fanzine Hugo for A Dribble of Ink. Veronica milks him for info on how to win, and then we learn a way you can help more people become better writers and win more Hugos!

Download direct link here!

WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?

Tom: Third Shift Amber Lager
Veronica: Hell or High Watermelon

QUICK BURNS

Louie: Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice (Orbit) took the top prize of Best Novel. No surprise there. I believe Veronica called this result, months ago. What do you think about the other winners? How many of the nominees have you read?

Best Related Work: We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative by Kameron Hurley (A Dribble of Ink) and Best Fanzine: A Dribble of Ink edited by Aidan Moher

Alain: The class of 2012 Clarion writers work shop is raising money for the non-profit Clarion Foundation.  The Clarion workshop is a six week course/session where aspiring writers who want to write Science Fiction and Fantasy can hone and improve their craft. Many now famous writers in the field have attended here is a far from exhaustive list. Anyway the class of 2012 have put together an anthology to raise funds. It’s a name your price kinda of thing for .99 cents upwards. Luke R. Pebler who appears in the S&L anthology has a story in here as well as 16 other writers. A very cheap way to check out some up and coming writers.

Paul: July is biggest comic month in history making $53 million and the number one selling comic? Rocket Racoon #1. Rack up another one for the “Unknown Property” of Guardians of the Galaxy. P.S. Groot debuted in November 1960 in Tales to Astonish #13. Years Before Spider-Man, The X-Men or every one of the Avengers except for the original Captain America series (March 1941). Just For Posterity Ronan The Accuser (August 1967). The Original far future Guardians of the Galaxy which was a completely different team (January 1969). Adam Warlock (The already announced GotG 2? 🙂 (April 1972) Drax (1973) Gamora (1975) Star Lord and Rocket Racoon both (1976)

terpkristin: Jennifer Lee, who co-wrote Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen, has been tapped to work on the screenplay for a live-action version of A Wrinkle in Time. I loved loved loved loved this book when I was a kid and am cautiously optimistic about this project…

George R.R. Martin Says Game of Thrones Readers Have Already Predicted the Series Ending

Syfy’s Childhood’s End Adaptation Gets Closer and Closer to Happening

PICKS

Lindsay writes: Prior to reading The Name of the Wind, I read: Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis: Picked it up after listening to an interview with the author on the Skiffy and Fanty show and it was excellent YA Fantasy. Every time the main character blinks his perspective switches to a girl in a secondary fantasy world.

August 26 – The Broken Eye (Lightbringer) by Brent Weeks and Echopraxia by Peter watts (continuing on from Blindsight) Lock in by John Scalzi

September 2 – Sleeping Late on Judgement Day (Bobby Dollar) by Tad Williams

Find more upcoming releases at swordandlaser.com/calendar

BARE YOUR SWORD

SFF Art for framing?

Finally got my @swordandlaser Anthology! Love the dedication. #swordandlaser #book #anthology #scifi #fantasy http://t.co/9rOcCHVKVN

Sword and Laser do #LonCon3 ! @swordandlaser http://t.co/ahzB5y3SXf

@swordandlaser Just got this. Looks like a fantastic lineup. http://t.co/V2Bg71q3qJ

BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION

Next Month’s book pick! Stories of Your Life and others by Ted Chiang

This month’s Pick:

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

The always important casting thread

Theories from: The Re-Readers’ Thread posted by Jack

ADDENDUMS

Sign up for the newsletter to enter to win a copy of Half a King by Joe Abercrombie! See form on the right-hand nav on the website here!