I came to a startling (for me, anyway) realization a few weeks ago. It was this: of all the entertainment channels available to me in this media-saturated world, the one that I actually spend most time being entertained by is podcasts. Yes, I spend more time listening to podcasts than I do reading, watching TV, whatever.
The reason’s pretty obvious, when you think about it. Audio is the one form of entertainment you can slot into a multi-tasking arrangement, so I can consume podcasts while driving, walking, shopping, picking my nose etc. Now I could do the same thing with radio, of course – and to some extent I do – but being a podcast junkie is like having in my pocket a constantly available radio station wherein every single bit of content has been personally selected by me to conform to my eclectic tastes. Awesome, in short. I’ve thought for a long time that podcasting is one of the more under-rated wonders that the internet has delivered to us.
So, I thought I’d embark on an occasional series of posts here highlighting podcast episodes I’ve listened to and enjoyed recently.
My favourite recent edition of an often interesting podcast, in which knowledgeable folks discuss a question of interest to armchair astronomers, science fiction fans and writers alike: What If Something Was Different? By which they mean, what would be the implications for Earth, life and everything if some of the circumstances surrounding our planet’s location, evolution or condition had been different. They address all sorts of stuff from the cosmic – what if the Earth’s Sun had been one of those formed in the very, very early stages of the Universe’s life? – to the more local – what if Earth had a different number of moons?
It’s mind-expanding stuff, not only in making you think about seriously big picture stuff and providing a bit of pretty accessible cosmological education, but also in marvelling at the capacity of the human species to ask, and at least partially answer, questions like this. If you feel your mind could do with a bit of expansion today, do go give it a listen.
I have, on occasion in the past, produced a miscellanies of assorted nonsense here in honour of the festive season. I do like to keep a tradition going, so here we are. This time around, just a randomish concoction of audio-visual amusements.
Audio first.
In the science category, the Astronomy Cast is a relatively new discovery for me, and I commend to you a recent special edition they did concentrating on Strange Stuff in Spaaaaace. Lots of their episodes are fun and informative too, so give them a browse.
In the fiction category, not one but two Christmas stories (this year and last) from Tim Pratt (one of my favourite short fiction writers) and Heather Shaw, courtesy of Podcastle: the 2011 one is The Ghost of Christmas Possible, that from a year ago (probably my favourite) is a bonkers romp entitled The Christmas Mummy.
And in the ‘Writers Talking’ category, here’s a properly substantial interview with Steven Erikson, creator of the properly enormous Malazan series that began with Gardens of the Moon. I found it extremely interesting, for all sorts of reasons which can perhaps best be summed up under the single heading of: ‘here’s a writer of epic fantasy who has thought deeply and seriously about what he’s doing’. It’s an education in how much can be going on in an author’s head, and why their books turn out the way they do. Also, it sounds like I’ve been mentally mispronouncing ‘Malazan’ all this time. Who knew?
Books. Kind of.
The book trailer is finally starting to come of age, I think. Good ones are still extremely rare, but in recent weeks I’ve noticed a few pretty enticing ones showing up here and there. I’ve absolutely no idea whether these things actually make a difference to sales, mind you; someone must think they might, though, or they wouldn’t exist.
Both of at those achieved at least this much: I’m curious about the books. (Although I have to admit, I was already curious about the second one).
Clips, clips, clips
The last issue of SciFiNow I read had a loooong list of funny/interesting geeky clips that have appeared on the internet over the years. I shamelessly (and lazily) harvested their suggestions to bring to you the following, which I offer without further comment. (And apologies for any irritating ads that may precede the start of the stuff that’s potentially funny or interesting).
Okay, suspending the no further comment thing for a moment, this next one’s an amazing thing to find buried in a list of geeky clips: the legendary Fritz Lang, creator of Metropolis, talks about his encounter with the Nazi propaganda machine. Did I say this is amazing?
Because you can never have too many links, right? And they don’t even all have to be about me … though some of them are, of course.
Let’s flag a couple of reviews of The Edinburgh Dead, first.
Neth Space likes it ( ‘a very good historical gothic mystery horror urban supernatural thriller’ !)
So does Civilian Reader ( ‘a superb, slow-burning horror suspense. Very highly recommended.’ !)
Come to that, so do the folks at RT Book reviews, who’ve got it listed as a nominee in the Fantasy category for their annual awards. That’s nice, don’t you think?
And here’s something that tickles me. As regular visitors here may have noticed, I’m a big, big podcast fan, so it’s particularly nice to be able to report my own podcast debut. It has to be said, life is full of small lessons in humility, and one of them for me is hearing my own voice as others do: never fails to chip away at my self-image. I did have a bit of a head cold at the time of recording (fully congealed sinuses, if you must know), but sadly I have a feeling I always sound much like this. Ho hum.
Anyway, of all the places I thought I might end up talking about one of my books, the venue for my first podcast appearance wasn’t one of them, but it was a jolly pleasant experience: the National Review’sBetween the Covers podcast. You do, of course, come away from a quick, unedited interview like that with your brain buzzing with all the things you should have said and didn’t, but I don’t think I said anything that invites legal action or anything, so that counts as some sort of success in my book.
Now, on to some less self-serving content netted out of the great ocean that is the internet.
First, two podcasts of possible interest to those, like me, with a near-limitless appetite for learning more about history:
The Seige of Tenochtitlan got talked about on BBC radio’s In Our Time programme recently – available on BBC iplayer here, or you can probably find a downloadable version in this list. Difficult to think of a more extreme example of clashing cultures in all of human history, really …
And Max Hastings talks at some length about the Second World War on the BBC History magazine podcast – direct link to audio here, or find it in the list here (it’s the 21st October edition). I found it interesting mostly because he concentrates on some of the details that often get overlooked or ignored in discussions about the war (like how many Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed … i.e. a very, very large number).
And now one of the most remarakble demonstrations of fan dedication and craftsmanship I’ve ever encountered. The ultimate Star Wars documentary, in that you get to watch the film while simultaneously getting deluged with background information, annotations, creator interviews etc. etc. Very, very clever and entertaining, and all the more remarkable because the same fan has done the same thing for Empire Strikes Back and Jedi. Here, for your viewing pleasure, then, is Star Wars – all of it! – as you’ve never seen or heard it before.
I mean, seriously: that almost justifies the entire existence of the internet by itself, doesn’t it?
But let’s end on a less cheery note and dip our toes into the muddy waters of the impending bookpocalypse. It’s mesmerizing, watching the turmoil into which the whole publishing industry is descending bit by bit. Here’s two markers along the way to wherever it is we’re heading that caught my notice recently:
Ewan Morrison asking Are books dead, and can authors survive? The answer to the first bit of that is clearly Not Yet. Print books are clearly going to fade into a niche, but e-books aren’t going to be dying any time soon. The answer to the second bit, I’m not so sure about. The folks who sell really, really big numbers of their books are going to be just fine, of course. The rest of us? Actually: maybe not.
The picture Morrison paints is the worst case scenario, and I can’t really buy into it unreservedly, but … but … there are more than enough folk out there around the internet hailing the digital revolution as the best thing since sliced bread, and I increasingly find myself inclining towards a much darker prognosis, not only for publishers (turmoil hardly covers what they’re looking at) and writers (I strongly suspect if – like me – you’re not a bestseller, things are about to get uncomfortable, to say the least) but also for readers (be careful what you wish for … low prices and an explosion in self-publishing don’t come without consequences).
The weird thing is, there’s so much going on that looks at best inadvisable and at worst potentially disastrous if, like me, you value the work of writers and the survival of a diverse and high quality output of books, and yet … I can’t think of a single thing anyone involved could do, or is likely to, that would change the outcome. Pretty much everyone is coming at this from the point of view of their own individual best interest (personal or corporate), and that’s entirely reasonable and justifiable when looked at at the level of each specific decision, but the overall effect, seen in big picture terms, is … well, alarming just about covers it, I guess.
Did a little summer-cleaning of the Links page, so thought I’d just replicate here some new additions that might be of interest:
The Coode Street Podcast – Serious (mostly) discussions of the spec fic field, covering sf, fantasy and horror; interesting stuff for those who take their sf fanhood seriously.
SF Signal – Pretty much the most comprehensive and consistent general speculative fiction blog out there, I think; and with a podcast, too, for added fun.
Thought I’d resurrect an old tradition around here – not that something that’s only happened once before, long ago, really qualifies as a tradition – and provide a randomish smorgasbord of odds and ends to mark the festive season. So, without further ado:
For Movie Fans (and Superhero Fans), the trailer for one of the latest in the apparently endless sequence of movies based on comic books. Thor, which I confidently predict will be the highest grossing superhero-fantasy-Norse mythology mash-up of 2011:
Considerably more promising than I thought it might be when I first heard it was in the pipeline, but I’m saying that from a position of low, low expectations. Vastly more promising, in my humble yet obviously expert opinion, than the other big budget superhero trailer doing the rounds at the moment: Green Lantern. Still, trailers are only trailers; who knows how the final products will measure up.
For Book Fans, and in a somewhat self-serving spirit entirely out of tune with the season, my author copies of the Subterranean Press Speculative Horizons anthology edited by Patrick St-Denis turned up the other day, and things of compact but considerable beauty they are too.
The limited edition signed copies are very pleasing, with a whole page of signatures bound into the book. Enough to make a chap giddy, to be keeping such august authorial company:
For Podcast Fans, I offer a couple of the more unusual items from the long list of stuff I’m subscribed to, in case there’s someone out there who shares my peculiar combination of interests.
The Norman Centuries. An excellent, straightforward narrative history of the Normans. For fans of medieval history, this is rich pickings. Most folk – round here anyway – know the Normans as the conquerors of England, but less generally known is their habit of conquering all sorts of other folks, wherever they went: the French, the Italians, the Byzantines, the Sicilian Muslims. Just about everyone they came across, really.
The Ink Panthers Show. Exactly the kind of thing, in many ways, podcasting was invented for. Two guys, with occasional semi-random guests, talk to each other about … well, about almost anything they feel like talking about, really. They’re both comics creators, so that comes up now and again, but a lot of it is just about what’s going on in their lives and families. I find them pretty personable, articulate and funny. Once – if – you get on their wavelength, it’s a pleasant listen. It’s mostly quite family-friendly, but sometimes strays into slightly more adult or non-PC areas, so consider yourself so advised.
For Fans of Ye Olde Classical Music … well, this (in case any overseas visitors don’t know, by the way, the chap introducing things is Matt Lucas, one of the current movers and shakers of British comedy):
You can only wonder what the neighbours thought …
And, come to think of it, I’m going to repost the musical clip from that long ago first iteration of the Christmas Miscellany, just because I still think, as I did then, that it’s one of the nicer sounds on the web and sounds to me suitably restful, reflective and contented for the holiday season. How’s that for keeping a tradition going?
And For Everyone Else: well, just my best wishes for the festive season, however you choose to spend it, or celebrate it, or ignore it. I’ll be back and blogging once the inevitable gluttony-induced lethargy and inertia wear off. Happy Christmas!
Three unrelated items, except that they’re all very loosely about writing, I guess. Sort of.
First, a wise and insightful (by which I mean complimnetary about my work, obviously) review of Speculative Horizons, Patrick’s St Denis’ anthology coming from Subterranean Press in a couple of months or so. Apparently orders made through the Subterranean Press website get priority, so that should probably be your first port of call if interested, but it does seem to now be avilable for pre-order through the usual online channels (such as here and here) and they should be able to fill your order assuming it doesn’t sell out elsewhere first. Either way, get your orders in! Buy, buy buy! Or not. No pressure.
Second, one of the things I like listening to on my tiny little mp3 player: recordings of convention panels. Yeah, I know. Most folks like up to the minute tunes from popular musical combos; I like convention panels. What can I say? (In fact, the truth is, to my knowledge there is not one single piece of music on my mp3 player. Not a one. It’s podcasts from top to bottom. Weird, huh?) Anyway: panels. You never quite know what you’re going to get with them, but that’s part of the fun. Wordpunk radio has put out a few recordings from the recent Alt.Fiction event in Derby (which I’d recommend, by the way: I was at the 2008 version, and it was good fun.). Here they are:
It’s just like you were there yourself! Virtual conventioneering! There might be more to come for all I know, but those are the ones they’ve released so far.
Third and finally, I wasted a good two minutes with the entirely pointless I Write Like gizmo. Here’s the verdicts:
First chapter of Winterbirth: I write like Margaret Mitchell.
Second chapter of The Edinburgh Dead: I write like James Joyce.
The blog post preceding this one: I write like Dan Brown.
So there you have it … wait, What? Winterbirth is stylistically indistinguishable from Gone With the Wind? Holy cow. And as one of the legions of well-intentioned folk who’ve started but never finished Ulysses (and I even quite liked the bits of it I read, just couldn’t bring myself to see it through to the end, and my attention span’s much, much too short these days to launch another attempt on it – in fact, come to think of it, there’s a blog post somewhere in the category: ‘books I really quite like, but despite that never finished’) … anyway, I promise – promise – you The Edinburgh Dead is not remotely Joyceian. Not remotely. And surely if my blog posts were Dan Brown duplicates, I’d have an awful lot more readers, wouldn’t I? And a bigger house, come to that.
Heard about this on the Wordpunk podcast (which I heartily recommend to those who like a bit of UK-oriented sf and tech chatter), and just thought it was kind of cool. World’s most expensive car.
It’s a 1936 Bugatti, recently bought at auction for … wait for it … over $30 million dollars. That, in case you were wondering, is a great big pile of money. Can’t possibly be worth it, you might think, but of course anything is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it, and I do think it’s a rather wonderful hunk of metal. Those 1930s designers (and 1920s ones, come to that) really had some fantastic instincts.
The other thing of note is that as soon as I saw it, my first thought was exactly the same as the guys on Wordpunk Radio: it’s the Batmobile! Or at least it’s got a startlingly similar vibe to certain iterations of Batman’s ride in movies and cartoons over the years. Shame there are apparently only 2 or 3 of these in the world. A few more of them on our streets would add a veneer of spectacle and class.
Just a very brief pointer towards some audio entertainment:
I’ve recently subscribed to the feed for the Beneath Ceaseless Skies podcast. Some nice stories in there, and quite a few of them are short enough to fit into the limited listening windows I have these days. They publish lots more stories in text form online too, but I just can’t get into the reading on screen thing (or the print it out and read it on paper thing) so I stick to the audio.
The ever reliable Escape Pod podcastis still going strong too. A recent listen I enjoyed: Garth Nix’s Infestation. A fairly straightforward vampire story (with enough of a twist on the trope to make it just a little different) that’s got a strong movie-like vibe to it and some entertaining violence.
And on the non-fiction side, BBC radio is doing a looong series of short daily shows telling The History of the World in 100 Objects. The objects in question are items from the collection of the British Museum, and it’s narrated by the boss of said institution (who has a slightly plummy English accent of the sort you don’t hear all that often these days, which I note not as criticism but just because I find it sort of sweet and cosy in a funny sort of way). Anyway, the episodes are pleasingly brief and to the point, and I’ve found much of interest in there. Struck me that almost every episode, particularly these early ones that deal with the very distant past, has the seed of a story in it when listened to with the ears of a writer.
So, everyone: welcome to 2010. (A week late, I know, but it’s the thought that counts, right?) I hope you enjoy it, and that it delivers at the very least a respectable portion of all that you hope for.
Starting a new year with a new experience can’t be a bad thing, I reckon, so you won’t hear any complaints from me about the wintry onslaught that has subjugated the British Isles. There’s been no sign of the grass on the lawn outside my window for over three weeks now, buried as it is beneath a gleaming white blanket of snow. Nothing remarkable for many of you, of course, including those living at the same latitude as Edinburgh (approaching 56 deg N, for the record – roughly the same as Moscow and the Aleutian Islands), but it’s exceptionally unusual round here, where the peculiarities of climates both macro- and micro- mean most winters are all but snow-free. In fact, I don’t remember seeing anything quite like it in my life.
I’m a big fan of the big freeze. Everything looks just that little bit unfamiliar and exotic. It feels like we’ve all travelled to some other place – one quieter, more beautiful and imbued with a faint, cold magic – without having to move. The sound of deep snow crunching underfoot seems to me vaguely romantic and wild and fantastical.
A new computer arrived in my house. I didn’t really want one, but the old one was accumulating software glitches and idiosyncracies that nothing seemed to rid it of, and to be fair it was a few years old, so I bit the bullet and went shopping. Turns out PCs have got a whole lot better since I last bought one. Who knew? I mean, have you seen these flat screen things? They’re all … flat and stuff. Amazing.
Anyway, one consequence has been a big clean out and reorganising of my feeds, which gives me an excuse to flag up some new, newish or not new at all podcasts that might be of interest:
1. Tor.com has added a new podcast – the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy – to complement their existing audio fiction one. Both can be found here. The G’s G to the G promises to cover a wide spectrum of geeky interests, so should be worth following. (First episode doesn’t do much for me, since it’s mostly about Left 4 Dead 2, and my gaming days are more or less behind me, sadly, but I’m not letting that put me off).
2. The iFanboy Pick of the Week podcast is my graphic novels and comics-related listening of choice. For any of you out there with a liking for that medium, it gets a great big thumbs up from me. (As does their video podcast, if you’re a visually oriented sort).
3.Naked Archaeologyoffers monthly news and views on archaeological research and discoveries. Quite interesting, if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s a spin-off from the very well known and jolly good Naked Scientistspodcast, as is the newer and potentially interesting (but I haven’t actually listened to it yet, so don’t blame me if it’s rubbish) Naked Astronomy.
And lo, the new year brings a new look for Fall of Thanes. This is the cover for the US mass market paperback edition, due out very soon. And it is, IMHO, a thing of beauty. Possibly my favourite ‘look’ for any of the trilogy so far. And that’s saying something, since all the way through, I’ve really been jolly well taken care of by the Orbit folks responsible for prettying up my books.
The new year also brings free pdfs of books. Free pdfs of 11,000 books to be precise, including quite a lot of famous ones (and a great many not very famous at all ones, I suspect). They’re available at The Book Depository. Now, personally I can’t read novel-length stuff in pdf form. Can just about manage a short story, but that’s about my limit in that format (and even then, I’ll be hoping it’s a short short story). But you might be different, so go knock yourself out. It doesn’t look that easy to actually find some of the freebies, admittedly, but even right there on the front page, there’s links to free Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling and others.
Talking about e-books (I did mention the one dollar Winterbirth e-book, didn’t I?), a few other fragments of the discussion about the technology that have come to light recently:
Orbit’s own Tim Holman talks at some length about e-books on the Dragon Page podcast. It’s well worth a listen. Anyone who doubts that publishers are expending a lot of precious brain time on this whole area will quickly be disabused of such notions. Anyone who thinks publishers actually know what’s going to come of all the changes infiltrating the industry will be similarly disabused. But knowing isn’t what’s important; preparing flexibly and imaginatively for unpredictable change, and being willing to try stuff and see what works, is what’s important. I think.
Another publisher – this time a new one, Angry Robot Books – wants to know how much an e-book is worth to you, the reader. It’s not a brilliantly designed survey (says he huffily, knowing only just enough about survey design to make him wildly over-confident and huffy), but the basic question is obviously at the heart of where this technology is going. And it’s a tough one to find a fair answer too.
Just how tough is evidenced by … the 9.99 e-book boycott on Amazon. At the time of writing, irritated readers have now tagged over 800 e-books on Amazon.comas being unjustifiably expensive. Not an unreasonable sort of price point for the protestors to settle upon, you might think (and I sort of agree), but check out the commenters on that original GalleyCat post. Not everyone is onboard, and there’s no doubt the situation is not as clear-cut as a lot of the protestors probably think.
This one’s going to run and run and run. The tough questions certainly aren’t going to go away, indeed I suspect they’re only going to get tougher as time and technology advance. I have no clue what the publishing industry and the world’s reading habits are going to look like twenty years from now. I remain somewhat unconvinced that anybody else does either, and I still think all the amazing opportunities opening up before us are balanced by definite risks in the medium term. Which makes it all jolly interesting, if nothing else.
And mildy related: by coincidence I had two folk e-mail me this week asking, in their different ways, whether an audio version of the Godless World trilogy was available, or ever likely to be. Short answer is that such a thing doesn’t exist at the moment, and as far as I know isn’t likely. I’m almost certain – I could check my contract to be absolutely sure, of course, but it’s filed away, I’m feeling lazy right now and I expect someone will correct me if I’m wrong – that the rights to such a version reside with Orbit, so they are probably the people to ask about it, if there’s an army of you out there craving Wintebrirth in your ears.
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