A dip into the pond of my podcast subscriptions to see if anything of any interest to someone else might turn up. Nothing in here that podcast veterans won't already know about, I suspect, but you never know ...

PodCastle: the fantasy sibling of the long(ish) established EscapePod (sf) and PseudoPod (horror) fiction podcasts. Haven't managed to listen to more than a handful of the stories they've put out, but there's been some good stuff. I liked, for example, The Osteomancer's Son by Greg van Eekhout, partly from a technical point of view: takes a clever writer to effectively sketch in as much context and backstory as you'd expect in a modest novel without crippling a short story. Plus, the central idea of doing magic with bones is nicely spun, I thought.

Adventures in SciFi Publishing: lots of author interviews, sf/f publishing news etc. etc. For some reason I can't quite pin down, I just find this one really, really easy and relaxing to listen to. Possibly something to do with having aurally personable hosts and a tone that's enthusiastic without becoming over-excited or feverishly fannish.

In Our Time: the heavy duty end of the podcasting spectrum. This is a BBC radio programme which basically consists of academics discussing their specialist subjects. Covers a huge range of stuff: history, science, philosophy, literature. Often more accessible than it sounds, though it does rattle along at a fair pace, and you have to been in the right kind mood. If it's on a subject you're curious about, worth checking out. Recent ones I've listened to: The Library of Nineveh, The Black Death, Lysenko. (None of which I seem to be able to link to directly, unfortunately - past episodes seem to get scrubbed from the website, so I guess you need to subscribe to the feed and grab anything you want as it shows up.)

Starship Sofa: the long-running podcast on sf writers has gone through big changes in recent months. It's now putting out a mid-week sf 'audio magazine' with one or two bits of fiction, some non-fiction, even poetry. An interesting venture - I'm flabbergasted by the amount of effort various people must be putting into this podcast, and others, for basically zero financial reward. It's a real 'for the love' thing, and more power to their audio elbows, I say.

Labels: Podcasts

For anyone in the Edinburgh area next week: a great big free book swap on Tuesday 1st April (I know the date's suggestive, but this really is real.)

For everyone else: download a free Jeff VanderMeer novella.

As I might have mentioned here before, I have an intermittent love affair with podcasts - intermittent only because I just don't have enough time to listen to as many of them as I'd like. Until I discovered the blessed technology of the podcast, I never really gave much thought to audio fiction. Now, I find myself making time to squeeze in an audio short story now and again. Forget all that music stuff: this is what mp3 players were made for. So I thought I'd just offer a round of applause for one or two of my favourites:

In The Late December by Greg Eekhout, on Escape Pod. A Christmas story with a difference: Santa Claus at the end of the Universe, in apocalyptic conflict with entropy. Seriously. Loved it.

Impossible Dreams by Tim Pratt, also on Escape Pod. A beautifully balanced and paced story, I thought, blending romance, parallel worlds and movies. If you're a film buff, it's made for you.

Shark God vs Octopus God by Jeff VanderMeer, on StarShipSofa. A fairly simple but perfectly-formed little number riffing on what sounds like Polynesian mythology.

And finally, The Onion is funny: Novelists Strike Fails to Affect Nation Whatsoever. (via UK SF Book News).

Labels: Books, Podcasts

At the risk of becoming a bit random, a few more pointers to how I've been spending my (increasingly limited) online time in the last week or so.

A handful of feeds I've subscribed to recently:

FreakAngels. An online comic written by Warren Ellis, distributed in weekly chunks. The comics industry, like book publishing, is still trying to figure out what the digital age means for it; this is one of the signs of change, I guess. I think it's got an 'adult content' warning, by the way.

Alt.Fiction Day. A blog for the one-day sf/f/h event in Derby this April. The early versions of the programme I've seen are full of good stuff. Big names like Charles Stross, Ramsey Campbell, Mike Carey doing their things: well worth a ticket if you're in that neck of the woods, I should think. I should be there, doing the panel thing and generally milling about, so say hello if you bump into me.

Best of Natural History Radio. I like me some wildlife, so this BBC podcast is overdue as far as I'm concerned: features on all kinds of things that crawl, fly, grow and eat each other.

Stephen Fry's Podgrams. Stephen Fry is one of those rare people who can talk for 25mins without a script and be conversational, coherent and engaging. (He's a very well-known and ostentatiously clever UK actor, writer and presenter, for any non-Brit visitors who've never heard of him). This is his new podcast, starting off with a report on what it's like to smash your arm to pieces in the middle of the Amazonian nowhere (answer: not much fun).

And don't forget you can find a feed for this very blog here, if you've got an itchy subscription finger.

A couple of links to stuff I've noticed recently:

Neil Graf offers a list of notional Tintin titles fit for the 21st century. My favourites are probably Tintin in Darfur and Tintin Parties at the Everest Base Camp, not because they're particularly funny but because I can immediately all but see those comics: perfect topics for dark, seriously twisted takes on Tintin's world. I think someone should write/draw them. Someone unafraid of litigation, probably.

Another minor signpost on the road to the end of liertature as we know it: fiction originally written on, distributed by and read on mobile phones dominates Japan's bestseller lists. Japan doesn't always play its tune to the same beat as the rest of the world, so this might not catch on elsewhere, but it's still a sign of the times. It's all quite entertaining, the multi-stranded digital Ragnarok that seems to be slowly closing in on the worlds of publishing and writing. God knows where it will all end up, but I expect things'll come out OK in the end. Majorly different, perhaps, but OK. The world does get destroyed at Ragnarok, I know, but a new one comes along shortly thereafter (albeit with a rather different set of Gods, which undeniably might be a bit worrying if you're a current God of publishing).

And finally, this, for no good reason other than that I found it curious enough to watch twice. What firefighters get up to when there're no fires to fight:

Labels: Comics, Podcasts

Alt.Fiction is a one day spec fic jamboree in Derby on Saturday, April 26th. Sort of a mini-convention. I will be there, but fortunately so will a whole host of much more interesting and famous folk. Those who have been in previous years tell me it's a good day. If you like the look of that list of attendees, why not come along?

Here's one of the most deserved blog-to-book deals I've ever heard of: Strange Maps is to be immortalised in print. I predict a big success, especially if the publisher's got the muscle to get some offline publicity going.

Advance notice of a potentially cool addition to the podcasting world: the long-delayed PodCastle will finally be starting April. If the quality matches that of its stablemates PseudoPod and Escape Pod, it should be good.

This here is a pretty good comic. Just saying.

I mentioned Public Lending Right a few posts ago, and Lo! It is under attack. Not life-threatening attack, but erosive 'if we make lots of little cuts maybe they won't notice' kind of attack. In government terms the amounts of money involved are microscopic, but for many authors and illustrators (not me at the moment, but one day who knows?) PLR income is a big chunk of their total earnings from their creative work. If you're a UK citizen, and happen to think PLR cuts are a bad idea, there's an online petition you could sign. Only if you feel like it, obviously.

I know 2007 feels like a long time ago already, but here's Locus' summary of the sf/f books that appeared on the most Best of 2007 lists. That'll be the 'best of the best ofs' or something, then. I have read precisely one of the books mentioned, which is clearly a pathetic effort of which I should be ashamed, but hopefully it doesn't make me a bad person. The one I have read is The Terror, which is very good in all sorts of ways.

Labels: Books, Comics, Events, Podcasts, Writing