Page 1290 – Tom Merritt .com

Top 5 Most wanted products for February 2011 – Tom’s Top 5

Ye Olde Stuff / January 25th, 2011

For Valentine’s day, consider giving your geek sweetheart one of these five highly desirable gadgets.

FourCast 64: Infinity Is Freaking Huge

Shows / January 25th, 2011

Hosts: Tom Merritt and Scott Johnson

Brain hacking will be easier when we’re always connected to the Net to watch live coverage of state secessions.

Guests: Andrew Hoover and Derrick Chen of The G Men podcast.

Download or subscribe to this show at twit.tv/fc.

Got a prediction of your own? Guest you’d like to see? Question for the show? Email us at fourcastpodcast@gmail.com.

Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show.

Running time: 1:04:12

Almost the end of the world (as we know it) – The S&L Podcast #51

Shows / January 25th, 2011

We’re almost to the end of the world in Gaiman and Pratchett’s Good Omens, but Veronica’s not quite done yet so we just give some less spoilery evaluations of the book so far and we’ll wrap it up next week. We also are trying to make room in our wallets and on our bookshelves for some excellent new SciFi and Fantasy hitting store shelves in the next couple weeks. Joe Abercrombie! Yay!

QUICK BURNS
Gene Wolfe talks dystopian futures, and the chances of star-drive in our lifetime
Among Others: extraordinary, magic story of science fiction as a toolkit for taking apart the world

BOOK RELEASES:

1/25/2011 While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished short fiction of Kurt Vonnegut – The 16 previously unpublished short stories of this collection, taken from the beginning of Vonnegut’s career, show a young author already grappling with themes and ideas that would define his work for decades to come. (Kindle)

1/27/2011 The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie (in the UK – US doesn’t get it until 2/7) Union commander Lord Marshal Kroy coordinates the fight with the aid of a motley group of incompetent, self-important officers. The strangely sympathetic Col. Bremer dan Gorst is officially a royal observer who nurses a burning desire to kill or be killed. Leading a much smaller army against the Union is Black Dow, whose grip on the throne of the Northmen is tenuous and based on fear and brutality. (Kindle)

1/31/2011 The Alchemist by P. Bacigalupi – The first foray into fantasy from Hugo winner Bacigalupi (The Windup Girl) is one of two novellas (the other by Tobias S. Buckell) set in a world where using magic has terrible consequences. Jeoz is a destitute alchemist living in Khaim, a city literally being strangled to death by bramble, a “wormy malevolence” that expands its thorny vines every time someone uses magic.

2/3/2011 License to Ensorcell by Katherine Kerr – a psychic agent and her Israeli sidekick tracking down a werewolf-murdering serial killer in San Francisco. (Kindle)

2/7/2011 Deep State by Walter Jon Williams (Kindle) – The sequel to This is Not a Game, about where alternate reality games and real life cross and meet.

Joe Abercrombie appearing in England 1/27 at Forbidden Planet in London from 6 PM, and January 29 at Forbidden PLanet in Bristol from 1 PM AD

BARE YOUR SWORD

4004 BC (possible minor spoilers)

Too many characters?

What horseman would you be?

Library Closures

BOOK CHECK-IN

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com the internet’s leading provider of audiobooks with more than 75,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature, including fiction, non-fiction and periodicals. For a free audiobook of your choice, go to audiblepodcast.com/sword.

The Alchemist and the Executioness from Audible.