Our second piece of audio fiction for April is “January” written by Becca De La Rosa and read by Kate Baker. You can listen to it here.
Podcasts
New Linkage Collection
Guess who has spent most of today staring at code rather than blogging.
– Alex C. Telander interviews AussieCon 4 GoH, Kim Stanley Robinson (podcast).
– The Guardian puts the boot in to bad fantasy character names.
– Mark Kelly starts gathering some interesting statistics about how SF&F books are published.
– A Western Australia newspaper has a very positive article about Aussiecon 4.
– Jeff VanderMeer has compiled a wonderful list of recommendations of good 2009 SF&F from many different countries.
– Charles A.Tan talks to the publishers of an anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction.
– On Saturday I tweeted about a group of people in V masks who were demonstrating outside of the Scientology offices in Tottenham Court Road. I now suspect that they may have been the racist and homophobic group talked about here.
– The Scavenger has an excellent interview with trans activist, Julia Serano.
– The Guardian publishes another trans-positive article (which I note because it shows they are making progress).
– Australian resident wins the right to have no gender.
Clarkesworld Audio Release
It being the middle of the month, there is a new podcast story available from Clarkesworld. This time it is our second story from #42: “The History Within Us” by Matthew Kressel; read, as ever, by the excellent Kate Baker. Listen to it here.
P-Con Wrap
P-Con should have been well and truly dead-dogged by now. There might still be a few people in the Porterhouse, but as the dead dog started at lunch time anyone who is left will be pretty horizontal by now, I think.
It sounds like Nick had a wonderful time, which makes me very happy, because it was partly my fault that he was there.
For my own part I have learned something very valuable: if you are going to record an audio report from a convention, make sure you have very good notes to hand, because once the recording goes live you won’t be able to remember anything about the convention. Proof of this fact can now be found here. I shall try to do better next time, Tony.
Because I will probably have forgotten by next year, here’s a reminder about the wi-fi in the Central. It does work, and it is free. The problem is activating it. With most hotel wi-fi you just connect, launch your browser and sign in. Eirecom, however, have managed to create a system where the sign-in process only works in Internet Explorer. The stupidity of this should be obvious to all, and now you have all been warned about just how dumb ISPs can be.
I wasn’t at the dead dog as I had to get back to Somerset and re-pack ready to head out to California. However, I did spend Sunday evening at the convention. Diane Duane and Peter Moorwood turned up, which was very nice, and a whole bunch of us headed out to dinner at a nearby Japanese restaurant. Good eating was had by all, despite the sad lack of unagi on the menu.
There was also some obscure tweetage and, because Irish people were present, discussion of religion. Ireland has, apparently, come a long way in the last 40+ years. I am reliably informed that back in the 1960s it was considered deeply shocking for a bishop to actually see a lady’s nightie. Obviously this was true if the lady was in it, but also the mere sight of such a risqué garment was liable to cause undue stress for episcopal persons. Sadly this proved far too much of a temptation to some dreadful sinners.
The things you learn at conventions…
Mid-Month Audio at Clarkesworld
It is mid-month audio time again at Clarkesworld. We podcast our main story when the issue goes live. The second story in the issue is podcast in the middle of the month. So you can now enjoy “The Language of the Whirlwind” by Lavie Tidhar, as read by the wonderful Kate Baker, here.
Geek Syndicate Literary Podcast
The Geek Syndicate guys have launched Scrolls, “the podcast for literary geekdom.” I don’t know who the three guys on the show are, but they managed a pretty solid opening episode that is genuinely all about books, not a “what’s controversial on teh intrawebs this week” thing. They are also planning a book club.
Neil Clarke on the Sofa
My boss at Clarkesworld, Mr. Neil Clarke, was a guest this weekend on the Sofanauts podcast. He talks with host Tony C Smith and John DeNardo, the boss of SF Signal. You can listen to it here. Neil talks a bit about the book publishing business that helps finance Clarkesworld, and about an exciting story due up in the magazine next year.
Geek Syndicate Hugo Wrap
Barry and Dave are back from their summer vacation and podcasting again at The Geek Syndicate. The latest episode, #133, includes a look back at their Hugo picks to see how well they managed to figure out who would win. As usual, the big feature discussion is at the end of the show, and you have to listen through the news section to get there, but it is totally worth it to hear the boys talk about whether Jedi should be allowed to wear their hoods up when in Tesco.
Mexico Calling
Kevin and I have just completed around 40 minutes worth of telephone interview for MSN Mexico. This was for Roberto De Antuñano’s Ultralinea program. He wanted to talk to someone about WSFS and the Hugos, and of course Kevin is The Man as far as WSFS is concerned. Hopefully we did a good job. I have no idea when, or if, any of this will be broadcast, but if I find out I shall let you know. I’d like to thank Roberto for giving us the opportunity to plug WSFS to his audience. Here’s hoping we see a lot more of Spanish-speaking science fiction fans in the future.
Sunday? Hah!
I was hoping to get some video editing done today, but I have two work-related projects that need work, I have a ton of blog updates needing doing, and need to go buy food, and I really ought to tidy the place up a bit before Kevin gets home. More later.
Stephen Boucher Interview
Here is the first of my podcasts from Worldcon. It is an interview with Stephen Boucher, the man who started the whole Australia in 2010 bid by foolishly saying “I’d rather chair a Worldcon than…” in the hearing of a bunch of SMOFs. Despite the hail of $20 bills that descended upon him, Stephen won’t be chairing Aussiecon 4. That honor goes to Perry Middlemiss and Rose Mitchell. But Stephen is heading up the Facilities Division, and he has a lot of interesting things to day about the new convention center in Melbourne.
There is a fair amount of background noise on the recording, and that’s despite us going off to a relatively quiet part of the convention center. Hopefully you can still make out what is being said fairly clearly.
By the way, the reason I say I’m “again” looking at future Worldcons is because I recorded an interview with Farah Mendlesohn just before this one. I must bear in mind that I may not upload recordings in the order in which I make them.
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A Podcast Experiment
I figured that it was about time that I learned how to do podcasts, so I have bought myself a digital voice recorder and am beginning to experiment. Of course I needed a convenient experimental subject, which is why my first podcast in an interview with Kevin.
Obviously we had to have something to talk about, so we structured the interview around Worldcon and the World Science Fiction Society. It isn’t the best interview I have ever done. I quickly discovered that podcasts are much less easy to edit than traditional interviews so you have to work very hard to getting the structure right in advance. But hopefully some of you will find it interesting. If you have any questions as a result of what Kevin said, please ask them here.
I’m reasonably pleased with the quality, but I think I had the microphone sensitivity set too high. Noise is hard to get rid of. It sounds OK on speakers, but on headphones you may find there’s too much background creaks and groans (blame our sofa).
Anyway, do let me know what you think of this experiment. Podcasts seem reasonably easy to do. Also the technology I have allows me to put the podcasts up on iTunes. If you would like me to do that I will.