The Guardian has a podcast about science fiction. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but first reactions are as follows. I am encouraged that Damien Walter was invited to participate. I think their reading list is very patchy (but congratulations to Kaaron Warren for making it as the token woman on an otherwise all male list). And I am astonished at this:
China Miéville, rising star of the “new weird”
What next? The Guardian interviews Johnny Rotten, the rising star of “punk rock”?
Update: Given Will’s favorable commentary I took the time time listen to the podcast. Much of it is indeed quite good, though I’m rather surprised that they managed to discuss Plan for Chaos without mentioning The Boys from Brazil. I am, sadly, not in the least bit surprised to find that one of the authors in the reading list didn’t actually get mentioned in the podcast. You should be able to guess which one too. Finally a quick nod of respect to Damien who managed to not answer the question about defining steampunk and other sfnal sub-genres with a deftness that any cabinet minister would be proud of.
you never know – they’ll probably have the works of ‘some bloke called James Tiptree jr’ on next time…
big of them to invite the SF blogger employed by the same paper to the grown-ups bookblog
rising star – only in the sense of outselling most of the last few year’s worth of booker shortlisters put together*
* this may be an exaggeration
4 minutes in and we’ve got the first claim that – “it’s got clones in and is by Wyndham but isn’t really SF…” aaarrrrggghhhhhh
Apart from that comment noted above actually pretty good.
I enjoyed the podcast but also noticed the oversight. And since I didn’t know Kaaron Warren is a woman, I was actually miffed that it was an all-male list!