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S&L Video – #14B – Cloud Atlas Wrap-Up & Your Feedback!

Shows / October 29th, 2012

Before you head to the theatres to see the film adaptation of Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, join us in the space pub as we wrap-up our October pick and check in with everyone on GoodReads!

More about our October pick, Cloud Atlas:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49628.Cloud_Atlas

More on the Cloud Atlas film adaptation:
http://www.cloudatlasmovie.com
http://www.facebook.com/cloudatlas
Trailer: http://youtu.be/ByehYal_cCs

Discussion Threads:
http://www.goodreads.com/group/bookshelf/4170-the-sword-and-laser
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1036631-neurotagging
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/983371-ai-taking-over-the-world

Orbital Resonance review by Aaron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rl3-u4VXSo

Tech History Today – Oct. 19

Today in Tech History / October 19th, 2012

In 1832 – Samuel Morse first conceived of the electric telegraph system. At least he said later this was the day he first thought of it.

In 1941 – The Smith-Putnam Wind Turbine first fed AC power to the electric grid on Grandpa’s Knob in Castleton, Vermont, becoming the first wind machine to do so. The 1.25 MW turbine operated for 1100 hours before a blade failed.

In 1973 – The Atanasoff-Berry Computer finally got its due. US Federal Judge Earl R. Larson signed his decision that the ENIAC patent was invalid and named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer. But ENIAC still incorrectly gets the credit from many to this day.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

S&L Video – #13B – ‘Cloud Atlas’ Kick-off

Shows / October 6th, 2012

With a movie adaptation coming to theatres on October 26th, we kick-off David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, check in with the folks over on Goodreads, and giggle like schoolboys at the titles of a few of Tom’s favorite pieces of pulp fiction!

More about our October Pick, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49628.Cloud_Atlas

Discussion Threads:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/972592-renegade-read-for-august-september…
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/999082-post-your-pulp-gems
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/993638-serialised-novels-what-do-you-think

Railsea review by David: http://youtu.be/fV17ak0C0_8

Check out the Calendar for upcoming interviews and book picks:http://swordandlaser.com/calendar

S&L Podcast – #79 – Sell me this Doctor

Shows / October 18th, 2011

Wherein Tom decides to spend $1,000 on an Alastair Reynolds book, Veronica decides to become an author, and we remember “that comedian”. It’s a chatty episode, a little longer than some have been, but we hope you find it chock full of goodness.

QUICK BURNS

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (3rd Edition) goes live

Agatha H and the Airship City: Girl Genius book is a cross between a comic and a prose novel

Cover art for BLUE REMEMBERED EARTH by Alastair Reynolds — Tom’s excited about this series

SF Authors Predict Computing’s Future

CALENDAR

Oct. 18 2011
Aloha from Hell, Richard Kadrey (Harper Voyager)
Zone One by Colson Whitehead
Oct. 20 2011
The Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding
Oct. 25 2011
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Oct. 27 2011
The Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
Initiate’s Trial by Janny Wurts
Nov. 8 2011
The Alloy of Law: A Mistborn Novel by Brandon Sanderson
Stands a Shadow by Col Buchanan
Endurance, Jay Lake (Tor)

Get the full calendar

BARE YOUR SWORD

Neal Stephenson – Feminist?

Siri brings nerd humor to iPhone

NaNoWriMo 2011

TV and Movies

Sell me on Dr. Who

Who watched The Walking Dead?

Giveaway Announcement

Write a pitch for a NaNoRiMo story, we’ll pick a winner randomly from this thread. You have until October 31st to post, and you could win a Kindle!

EMAIL

Tom and Veronica,

Every once in a while Tom mentions that he’s always looking for books. I’ve also come to the conclusion from a few subtle hints that have been dropped here and there that he’s a baseball fan. So I’d like to add the following to Tom’s reading/listening queue (as the Audible version of this is a fine performance: Summerland by Michael Chabon, winner of both a Hugo and a Pulitzer (not too shabby and a thoroughly uncommon combination). YA fantasy (though as a middle-aged geek, I enjoyed the heck out of it as well) about trans-dimensional travel, elves, dwarves, magic, good, evil, and baseball. Not just baseball, but baseball as a metaphor for life.

Who knows, it might even be an excellent selection for S&L.

Love the podcast, even though I can’t always keep up on the reading.

Yours in geekdom,

George Van Wagner, occasionally known as GVDub in various places on teh intarwebs.

NEW MEMBER HELLOS

Dave, David, Louise, Mike, Amir, Jason, Ben, Cappy, Rebecca, Gregory

ADDENDUMS

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.

S&L Podcast – #77 – Ready Player One and Reamde Kick-off

Shows / October 3rd, 2011

It’s an episode chock full of twists and turns with an incredible ending you won’t see coming. Unless you’ve listened before. We end with the email address. But HOW do we get there? Well for one, we talk about video games as storytelling. For another we kick off Ready Player One and Reamde as our new books. And finally….. well that would be a spoiler.

QUICK BURNS

FLOWCHART: Navigating NPR’s Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books

Ursula K. Le Guin has a brand new reason to be scared of immortality

The Top 10 Books Lost to Time

CALENDAR

10/4/2011

Salvations Reach by Dan Abnett

Infidel, Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)

10/7/2011

Heirs of the Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky

10/11/2011

The Children of the Sky, Vernor Vinge (Tor)

Snuff, Terry Pratchett (Harper Collins)

The Cold Commands, Richard K. Morgan (Del Rey)

10/18/2011

Aloha from Hell, Richard Kadrey (Harper Voyager)

10/20/2011

The Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding

10/25/2011

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

PS The calendar is now available on the website.

BARE YOUR SWORD

Most accessible Stephenson book?

Games as Storytelling
Jason from Bethesda comments

TV and Movies

The Enders Game movie puts out casting calls for 10 characters — including Ender!

GAME OF THRONES Season 2 promo

BOOK Kick-Off

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Reamde by Neal Stephenson

EMAILS

Hey Veronica and Tom,

The reason I’m writing is because after 2 years, I finished my 3rd book, first fiction, a novella titled Trapped in My Zombie Body. The cover is being designed now, and I will have it going out digitally in mid-October, paperback in November. Moreover, I’m donating 50% of royalties to Child’s Play Charity.

Synopsis:
Imagine your body no longer listened to you. You were trapped, experiencing the world in a new way: without any control over your actions. It’s a world filled with sleep deprivation, mind games, and unthinkable acts. Welcome to my world.

By the way, I publish under my legal first name, Mario, rather than my nickname, Andy, just FYI. I look forward to hearing from you guys!

Cheers,
Mario Lurig, aka Andy in Colorado

NEW MEMBER HELLOS

York, Brandon, Kyle, Matt, Joshua, Another Brandon, Lindsey, Rob, Walter, Simon, Esther, Joe, Brian, The Duchess, Adiel, Sophie, Another Joshua

ADDENDUMS

Shadow and Claw – The S&L Podcast #53

Shows / February 8th, 2011

All is good this episode as we wrap up Good Omens, kick off the Book fo the New Sun, and learn how to properly pronounce Neil Gaiman. Plus Josh Lawrence joins us to share his knowledge of Gene Wolfe.

QUICK BURNS

RIP Margaret John

Joe Abercrombie’s new novel, The Heroes, has debuted at #3 on The Sunday Times bestseller list in the UK

SONG OF ICE AND FIRE comic on the way

io9 guide to February’s scifi/fantasy

Boston Science Fiction Film Festival Feb. 11-21

2/7/2011 (US) The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie

2/7/2011 Deep State by Walter Jon Williams

2/8/2011(2/17 on Kindle) The Bitter seed of Magic by Suzanne McLeod – unless Genny can find a way to break the fertility curse afflicting London’s fae, she knows this is just the lull before the magical storm. Then a faeling – a teenage girl – is fished out of the River Thames, dead and bound with magic, and Genny is called into investigate. As she digs through the clues, her search takes a sinister and dangerous turn, exposing age-old secrets that might be better left buried.

2/8/2011 The Scar-Crow Men by M. Chadbourne The year is 1593. The London of Elizabeth I is in the terrible grip of the Black Death. As thousands die from the plague and the queen hides behind the walls of her palace, English spies are being murdered across the city. The killer’s next target: Will Swyfte.5

2/21 UK (3/1 US) The Crippled God by Steven Erikson

Bantam Books (UK): 21 February

Tor US: 1 March

3/1/2011 The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

Gollancz (UK): 1 March

DAW (USA): 1 March

Patrick Rothfuss ON TOUR!! “San Francisco March 3rd, SF in SF Reading Series

BARE YOUR SWORD – feedback from the audience

Ever read a book where you *hated* the hero/protagonist?

We Forgive You, Veronica…

BOOK WRAP-UP

Good Omens

So, that ending…

Subversion of religious idioms.

Light entertainment – the Aziraphale and Crowley show

Could have done without Newt and Anatahema. (V would spare Shadwell for the accent)

Didn’t like Adam? Why? Was he supposed to be likable?

Would you reccomend it?

BOOK KICK-OFF

Shadow & Claw: The First Half of ‘The Book of the New Sun’

The Shadow of the Torturer: The Book of the New Sun, Book (audiobook)

Other resources

Lexicon Urthus: A Dictionary for the Urth Cycle

invaluable, but somewhat spoilery

GURPS New Sun

roleplaying campaign sourcebook based on the books, for the GURPS RPG system

mega-spoilery

Big influence on New Sun:

Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth

WolfeWiki

Where to find Josh Lawrence:

Bite Club podcast

Two Song Shot

EMAILS:

Hello Veronica and Tom,

This is totally unrelated to books but I was so excited when Veronica said she had been to a Get Up Kids show. I grew up in Kansas City and remember going to one of their first shows at a local all ages club in KC when I was in high school and their, at the time, last show at the Granada in Lawrence years later. They are still one of my favorite bands and listening to them always makes me homesick. Thanks for that extra moment of fun during the show, which was also great fun on the book-related information front.

I always enjoy the podcast, thanks for all the great work!

Cheers,

Beth

***

Hi Tom and Veronica

Longtime listener, avid forum poster… but you may have missed someone’s comment about how to correctly pronounce Gaiman so I thought I’d send it again.

From his mouth directly!

http://www.teachingbooks.net/pronounce.cgi?aid=1433

GAYman. GAYman. Not GUYman.

Hehe. I just thought we should do our living authors justice, particularly when you are growing in popularity. Who knows, maybe he would one day want to stop by for a quick interview. But only if you say his name properly!!

Cheers,

Jenny

***

Hey S&L,

I thought you might be interested to know that Terry Pratchett’s next

novel, Snuff, has been given a date! The book is coming out on October

13, 2011 (http://themorporkian.com/news/snuff-gets-a-release-date/)

and there is also what looks like a blurb for the book in the linked

piece.

Also, after hearing your discussion on whether Pratchett or Gaimen

came up with Pollution, the horseman of the apocalypse, I wondered if

you’d heard of Ronnie? Ronnie stars in The Thief of Time, and is “”The

Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, who retired before they became

famous.””

Love the show.

English John from England

ADDENDUMS

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East Meets West 204 – Borging through the universe

Shows / April 26th, 2010

Roger hosts Scott Johnson (Frogpants Network) and Ayleen Gaspar (October Toys) to chat about movie adaptations mined from our childhood. Also will the extraterrestrials ruin us? Stephen Hawking thinks they’re all borging around and we should steer clear.

Get the episode at this link: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/www.archive.org/download/EastMeetsWest204-BorgingThroughTheUniverse/eastmeetswest204.mp3

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The Forever War – The S&L Podcast #024

Shows / October 6th, 2009

It’s time to wrap up Haldeman’s The Forever War, but we still haven’t finished talking about Songs of Ice and Fire. So we start with a quick recap of our thoughts up through A Feast for Crows, then intro our new book choice, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon.

QUICK BURNS – unrelated news of the month

Octavia Butler’s Papers Preserved For Future Generations

Mary Russell has been Twittering at Veronica

October 27th will be a HUGE day for book releases

THE FOREVER WAR – Wrapup

Was it dated by having a date?

Nick W. – What did you think of the ending?

Mists of Avalon – Kickoff

1982 novel. It’s a re-telling of the Arthurian legend from a female point of view.

The book follows the trajectory of Morgaine (often called Morgan Le Fay in other works), a priestess fighting to save her matriarchal Celtic culture in a country where patriarchal Christianity threatens to destroy the pagan way of life. The book follows the lives of Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere), Viviane, Morgause and other women who are often marginalized in Arthurian retellings. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are supporting rather than main characters. A lot of people accuse the book of being anti-Christian. (Via Wikipedia)

“About the time I began work on the Morgan le Fay story that later became Mists, a religious search of many years culminated in my accepting ordination in one of the Gnostic Catholic churches as a priest. Since the appearance of the novel, many women have consulted me about this, feeling that the awareness of the Goddess has expanded their own religious consciousness, and ask me if it can be reconciled with Christianity. I do feel very strongly, not only that it can, but that it must.” – Marion Zimmer Bradley

Isaac Asimov called it “the best retelling of the Arthurian Saga I have ever read”

Turned into a miniseries on TNT in 2001.

BARE YOUR SWORD – feedback from the audience

Animated Feature-Length Film Suggestions

New Genre Humor Writers

ADDENDUMS
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