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
Say hello to our new partner Sticker Fu. Use the code Sword1 and get 10% off the stickers.

QUICK BURNS

New Hitchhiker’s Guide book “not very funny”

Ariel: post-apocalyptic sword-and-sorcery adventure

Casting for Game of Thrones HBO pilot!

BARE YOUR SWORD – feedback from the audience

Mixing Media Alters My Brain – Posted by aldenoneil on September 2, 2009 at 12:22pm A phenomenon occurs occasionally, where I’ll be reading a book concurrently with playing through a videogame, and my reading of the novel is effected. This time around it’s Warcraft III and The Forever War. Reading through a description about a certain base under construction, all I could envision was little soldiers with low polygon counts and blocky grey buildings rising whole from the surface. I don’t believe that was the author’s intention.

Of course it occurs with movies – reading through The Lord of the Rings will never be the same for any of us, for example – but videogames present a more stylized vision, which really f*cks my sh*t up, for lack of a better phrase. It really points to how subjective an experience reading a novel is.

Does this happen to anyone else? Milder forms include casting actors or friends in roles, or envisioning natural settings as versions of places that you’ve actually been to. That’s why descriptions of nature scenes have always been difficult for me; I live in a bubble.
http://swordandlaser.ning.com/group/videogames/forum/topics/mixing-media-alters-my-brain

District 9
Posted by Chris Maler on August 23, 2009 at 8:45am Okay, maybe I’m jaded but I don’t get it. District 9 was a complete let down to me. I left the theater feeling like I’d seen that theme done a dozen times, usually more successfully . I don’t want to drop any spoilers, so I won’t go into detail, but for someone who is into sci-fi, District 9 presents well trod themes in a typical, unimaginative manner. The CGI was pretty interesting, but that’s about the only notable thing for me. I didn’t dislike the movie, but jeeze I’ve seen people raving about it like it’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I’d rather watch a rerun of Enemy Mine or Alien Nation.
http://swordandlaser.ning.com/forum/topics/district-9

ENGAGE – Interviews with interesting characters

Timothy Zahn – Our guest is SciFi author Timothy Zahn. He won the Hugo award in 1984 for his novella Cascade Point but is best known for the very popular Star Wars sequels known as the Thrawn Trilogy. They were authorised by Lucas and took place after Return of the Jedi. He has also written the Dragonback series and the Conquerors Trilogy, about a war between humans and aliens.

Listener Questions

What would the galaxy be like if Grand Admiral Thrawn had won? Would it be better or worse than how its turned out under the New Republic?

I’d like to know what he’s reading, and what he’s read this year. I know I bought the first Dresden Files book on Michael Stackpole’s recommendation after he read the galley.

ADDENDUMS

T-Shirts: We’re desciding the best way to distribute them on the Internets, but everybody who attened our panel at Dragon*Con got one.

Tagline: Different worlds, different discussion

Designer: Kathryn Parker

Next episode – Forever War recap and kickoff of the next book, which will be Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

We’re also planning a little meetup for Saturday evening! We’re still working out the details for that, so make sure you check Veronica and Tom’s Twitter pages for updates. We’ll probably also post the info here.

Hope to meet some of you there!

UPDATE: Meetup will be at 5pm on Saturday the 5th at the Pulse Bar & Loft at the Atlanta Marriot Marquis.

Also don’t forget we’re doing a live Sword and Laser in Atlanta at Dragon*Con! The show takes place Friday evening, September 4 at 8:30 PM in Hilton room 204. It will be Veronica, me and special guest Timothy Zahn. Other guests may be announced as well.

BARE YOUR SWORD – feedback from the audience.
Audio books are no good for SF
Do you like your endings with everything-wrapped-up or open-ended?
Hi Tom and Veronica,
John Anealio’ George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.

QUICK BURNS – unrelated news of the month
Robo-Ethicists Want to Revamp Asimov’s 3 Laws
A Game Of Thrones pilot script leaked
A brief history of SteamPunk
Personal Effects: Dark Art by JC Hutchins. The book with a lot of cool extra materials.

Tagline Contest
Congratulations Barry O’Neil “Different worlds – different discussion”

ADDENDUMS
Game of Thrones Wikis
Unnoficial Songs of Ice and Fire
A Wiki of Ice and Fire
But Tower of the Hand is much much better! Thanks Padwen!

Game of Thrones being shot for HBO Sean Bean cast as Lord Eddard.

A Game of Thrones card game.

BARE YOUR SWORD – feedback from the audience
What Was Robert’s Rebellion Really About (Minor Spoilers, Major Speculation)

Check out these lizards they’ve discovered that swim through sand in the Sahara. They didn’t mention it, but I’m guessing they smell like cinnamon.

Love the Show,
Dave in Portland

Abner Senires sings amazing parody songs… this one is about the Kwisatz Haderach.

ENGAGE – Interviews with interesting characters
Talking to Charles Davis, from Metal Gamer and the Chizzle and Dizzle show.

Holy Thunder Force: Charles dares you not to air guitar to this one.

Rain of a Thousand Flames: This the one that has a nude woman in it, but Charles assures us, it is definitely the most ridiculous one they have made.

Unholy WarCry: 10 minutes long and the one that has Christopher Lee dressed in a giant king costume.

Magic of the Wizard’s Dream: Charles says it’s not that interesting of a music video, but it’s the one he mentioned that has Christopher Lee singing on it.

QUICK BURNS – unrelated news of the month
Download DroidMaker for free

1969 Hugo Awards. Neil Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin and Michael Collins received a Hugo Award in 1969 for The Best Moon Landing Ever. Also Novella “Dragonrider” by Anne McCaffrey [Analog Dec 1967,Jan 1968]

Tagline Contest
Come up with a tagline for The Sword and Laser! The winner will have their words emblazoned on the back of our new t-shirts, which will be making their debut at Dragon*Con this September!” Email theswordandlaser@gmail.com by Wednesday July 29.

WHY WE PICKED A GAME OF THRONES

Rick on May 22, 2009 at 9:22pm
I third “Game of Thrones”. It is sitting on my shelf waiting for me to finish the China Mieville book I’m in the middle of. Also, for those upset with Mr. Martin’s lack of new bookage, you should go read the comments by Niel Gaiman on his blog concerning exactly what George R. R. Martin is and is not to his readers.

C on May 23, 2009 at 9:39pm
Game of Thrones is fantastic, the only problem I can see with it is that anyone who reads it will be completely hooked for the rest of the series. As long as people don’t mind that then it’s great. I would also be interested in reading something else (as in something outside Song of Ice and Fire) by him though. Armageddon Rag is supposed to be really interesting and Fevre Dream is about vampires which is always fun. Both of those are standalone books (I think) so they might be better than starting a series?

terpkristin on May 26, 2009 at 4:10am
The reader for books 1-3 (Roy Dotrice) is great. I purchased the 4th book but haven’t listened to it yet (read that one in hardcover on an import version), though John Lee is the narrarator, and some have said that they don’t like him as much as they like Dotrice.

ABOUT A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones is the first of seven planned novels in A Song of Ice and Fire, an epic fantasy series by American author George R. R. Martin. It was first published on 6 August 1996. The novel was nominated for the 1998 Nebula Award and the 1997 World Fantasy Award, and won the 1997 Locus Award. The novella Blood of the Dragon, comprising the Daenerys Targaryen chapters from the novel, won the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Novella.

The novel lends its name to several spin-off items based on the novels, including a trading card game, board game and roleplaying game, and HBO has authorized the filming of a pilot episode based on the novels.[1]

WHAT WE’VE BEEN READING

Tom – Heretics of Dune

Veronica – Black Powder War, Book 3 in the Temeraire series (Book 1 is here)

ESSENTIAL NERD VIEWING

John Hodgman administers a nerd test to President Obama. Do you know the answers?

MOVIES

Moon – A Film By Duncan Jones; Starring Sam Rockwell.

We also give our impressions of the book. Which we probably didn’t make clear enough, that we absolutely LOVED it. There are some good threads discussing Daemon in our Ning group. If you want to jump in try the “How would you have ended it differently?” thread or the thread discussing the encrypted text at the end of the book.

Congrats to Mark who may have accidentally won our copy of Dune. Although it looks like he actually meant to enter after I’m looking at the thread post-show.

Next book will be by George R. R. martin. But which one? You can weigh in on our pick the Martin book thread.

Aaron Harvey from our Ning forums created this amazing “book cover” for Sword and Laser! I think it marries the science fiction and fantasy genres perfectly! I also feel pretty honored that Aaron took the time to create something so cool for the community.