Episode 22 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, featuring our interview with George R. R. Martin, is now available through iTunes. Note that this is a new, different feed from our old one. Future episodes will show up on this one.
StarShipSofa Podcast Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Interview
Episode 157 of Tony C. Smith’s StarShipSofa podcast features a short Q&A with me and John Joseph Adams about us relaunching Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy over at io9. The Q&A begins at 10:36 into the episode.
Redstone Science Fiction Interviews John Joseph Adams
Here’s a new interview with John Joseph Adams at Redstone Science Fiction.
Way of the Wizard Anthology Cover Spread
Here’s the final cover design for the John Joseph Adams anthology The Way of the Wizard, which includes my story “Family Tree”:
The Marion Zimmer Bradley story is “The Secret of the Blue Star,” from Thieves’ World #1. It’s one of my childhood favorites, and one I suggested for inclusion, and it’s very cool to see my story collected alongside it. George R. R. Martin’s “In the Lost Lands,” a staggeringly dark fairy tale, is also a must-read.
Atheists Know the Most About Religion
Lots of my friends have been linking to the results of the recent survey by the Pew Forum that showed that as a group atheists know more about religion than religious people do.
Of course, these days I know WAY more about religion than most people, but for a long time I was at a distinct disadvantage, having parents who weren’t religious and never took me to church. I remember once as a kid I was on a bicycle trip and a woman said to me that I had to listen to my mother because “even Jesus had to obey Mary,” and I said (not joking) “Mary who?” There was also the time I got the NES game Ghosts & Goblins for my birthday, and I was reading from the instructions booklet to my friends, and I mispronounced “Satan” as “satin,” and everyone made fun of me. Until they explained it to me, I had just assumed that “Satan” was a made-up video game monster, like “Gannon.” I also got mocked by my college roommate once for my unorthodox pronunciation of “Pontius Pilate.”
Of course, unlike me, most atheists used to be religious. Through my involvement with organized skepticism, I’ve heard the stories of probably 70-80 people about why they gave up on religion, and I’ve heard the same basic story over and over again, but I’ve never heard anyone comment on one particular pattern, so I thought I’d note it in passing. Basically it’s this: You have two siblings, Sibling A and Sibling B. Sibling A is dutiful and Sibling B is feckless. As teenagers, Sibling A goes to church, studies the Bible, and plans to become a minister, nun, religious scholar, etc., whereas Sibling B thinks religion is a joke and spends all their time drinking, having sex, and doing drugs. Sibling A spends so much time on serious study of the Bible that the contradictions, historical inaccuracies, immoral teachings, etc., eventually become too much for them, and after a years-long period of agonized soul searching they give up on religion and become an atheist. In the meantime, Sibling B has made a total mess of their life — various addictions, lousy job, unplanned out-of-wedlock children, etc. — and turns to religion to get themself straightened out. Sibling B becomes some variety of hard-core fundamentalist, raises their children that way, and constantly hectors everyone they know, including Sibling A, to get right with God, in spite of the fact that Sibling B has still not bothered to learn the first thing about what the Bible actually says. Anyway, anyone else noticed that pattern? I’ve seriously heard some variation on that story dozens of times now.
Strenuous Exercise Can Make You Gain Weight?
There was an interesting article recently on Huffington Post about weight loss. Now, the health/medicine stuff on HuffPo is often rife with pseudoscientific garbage, so I don’t take anything they say that seriously, but this article sounded plausible to me. First it said that unless you’re Michael Phelps, the amount you exercise basically has no effect on your weight, because, if you do the math, you’ll see that you have to do just an insane amount of exercise to burn off the amount of calories you gain by eating say, half a cookie. Losing weight is all about diet. That much I already believed. The next thing it said though, which had never really sunk in before, was that you can actually gain weight by exercising too much, because strenuous exercise makes you really hungry, and then you get back from your workout and eat way more than you would have otherwise. It said light exercise like walking can actually be better in this regard for losing weight.
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Podcast Relaunch in 3 Days
We’re at T-minus 3 days and counting until our Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy relaunch. If you haven’t “liked” the show on Facebook yet, now would be a good time to get out there and starting liking.
Like these fine folks. Thomas Uke Costick says:
“GGG is one of my fav podcasts. Glad I saw this so I can update my reader. Looking fwd to the next podcast.”
And Leilani Cantu says:
“Can’t wait! I loved all the Tor episodes, and was extremely dismayed when they stopped coming. Hope to hear a lot more from you!”
Letter from Juhan
Juhan writes:
“Seriously, I learned about so many new authors from your podcast … Awesome. Thanks! And you guys are pretty decent philosophers too, when it comes to … more difficult conundrums :D (like the consciousness transfer stuff, for example). I actually mean it. Seriously. I’m looking forward to more more debates on similar issues — fantasy and sci-fi are full of that stuff.
Also, it’s always good to hear that Roger Zelazny is still very much appreciated. Kudos to mentioning ‘The Keys to December’ on the terraforming episode!”
Thanks, Juhan! Glad you like the show. Actually my undergrad degree is in political philosophy, so I like to think I’m not bad at that stuff. And yeah, I’ve been known to maybe mention Roger Zelazny from time to time.
(The consciousness transfer stuff was in Episode 19.)
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Podcast to Interview Catherynne Valente
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy will be interviewing Catherynne Valente, so if anyone has any questions they’d like us to ask her, feel free to suggest them.
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Podcast Website
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast now has a new website:
We figured that with 21 episodes over at Tor.com and others appearing soon at io9, we might as well create a permanent archive with links to all the shows. That way, no matter where in the galaxy our crazy adventures take us in the future, there’ll always be a complete episode list that’s easily found.
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Podcast on io9
Okay, it’s official! Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy will be relaunching on the mega-popular website io9. Watch for our long-awaited George R. R. Martin episode next Wednesday, October 6th!
Thanks so much to Annalee Newitz and all the folks over at io9 for making this possible.
This would also not be possible without the support of our first sponsor, Brilliance Audio, the nation’s largest independent publisher of audiobooks. The next few episodes of Geek’s Guide will feature short ads for featured Brilliance titles that we think may be of interest to our listeners. Special thanks to John Grace at Brilliance for setting this up for us.
Also, we’ve had a number of listeners ask if they could donate money to help keep the show going, and we’ve now got that set up. You can PayPal funds to us at geeksgalaxy@gmail.com. Producing the show is enormous fun but also an enormous time sink, and the amount of listener support we receive over the next few months will help determine to what extent we’re able to keep doing it.
And of course, if you haven’t listened to each and every one of our twenty-one existing episodes, they’re all still available over at Tor.com.
Julie Dillon Octopie at Threadless
Julie Dillon, who did the gorgeous cover for issue 2 of Lightspeed, has a brilliant T-shirt design up at Threadless.com: Octopie! Vote for it.
Inception Trailer A Capella Re Dub
Random Egoboo
Random egoboo:
My name turned up on this page devoted to the topic “What was the best short story you read in the last ten years?” Royce Wood writes, “‘The Trial of Thomas Jefferson’ by David Barr Kirtley changed the way I think about everything. Literally.”
Also, Facebook has a (new?) function where it creates a page listing everyone who “likes” each topic, so there’s one for David Barr Kirtley. Currently there are a grand total of four people who “like” me. Two are friends of mine (thanks, guys!). Two are strangers, and one of them lives in Indonesia. I was sufficiently curious about what I might have written that got me listed as a favorite author by someone in Indonesia that I sent her a message inquiring about that, but I haven’t heard back.
The first time I ever saw myself listed as a favorite author on a social networking site was back in the days of Myspace when I came across the profile of a teenager named “Goat Vomit” — obviously a young man of discriminating taste. I messaged him, and it turned out all he’d read by me was one story (“They Go Bump”), but I guess that was enough.
I recently tried searching for “short story art” in Google image search and the first things that came up were for my story “Family Tree.” That was quite a surprise.
In other art news, today I came across a piece of digital art I really like: one.man.army by Patricio Betteo. Check it out.
Christine O’Donnell Mice with Human Brains
Oh my god, why did nobody tell me about this? I WANT ONE OF THOSE MICE.
Why Boys Don’t Read
So I was in the bookstore the other day, and as I’m browsing through the Fiction & Literature section I hear a guy shout at the top of his lungs, “GET ONE OF THE CLASSICS!” and I’m like, “WTF?” So I peek around the aisle and see a mom sitting with her son, who couldn’t have been more than 14, and she’s saying, “So these both look good, right? Which one do you want?” And the son’s like, “I don’t know. Can we just go?” And the mom’s like, “Well, what do you think of this one?” and the son’s like, “It won’t be good,” and she’s like, “How do you know it won’t be good?” and he’s like, “I don’t know. I just know.” The conversation continued in this vein for a while, punctuated every once in a while by the dad (who was off somewhere else) shouting, “GET ONE OF THE CLASSICS!” I wandered by and glanced at the books the mom was holding. One I couldn’t make out the title, but the other was Catch-22. Now, I like Catch-22 quite a lot, but you’re a total effing idiot if you try to foist that on an unwilling 14-year-old boy to try to get him to read something. I debated for a minute whether I should say anything, something along the lines of, “Hi, I couldn’t help but notice that you’re a total effing idiot. Do you need some help picking out something that a typical 14-year-old boy might actually want to read?” But then I sort of imagined bringing over a copy of Tim Zahn or R. A. Salvatore or something, and having the dad go, “THAT’S NOT ONE OF THE CLASSICS!” and I decided I just didn’t have the energy for it right at that moment. I seriously don’t get what these people can possibly be thinking though. I’ve had this conversation repeatedly: “My 14-year-old son doesn’t read.” Me: “What have you done to try to get him to read?” “Oh, like I bought him a copy of Bleak House, and he read a few pages, but then he went back to playing Halo.” Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy Banner
Looks like we’re getting very close to a relaunch of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy. Here’s a sneak peak at a banner I’m working on.
Jon Snow vs. Severian
So I just finished rereading Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, and it occurred to me that there are a lot of striking parallels between Severian in Shadow of the Torturer and Jon Snow in George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.
(By the way, if you’re a fan of Game of Thrones, check out my awesome interview with George R. R. Martin on the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.)
Belongs to fraternal order who dress in black, are much diminished from former days, and who follow ancient rituals whose origin and purpose is forgotten. | Belongs to fraternal order who dress in black, are much diminished from former days, and who follow ancient rituals whose origin and purpose is forgotten. |
Must travel north to seek adventure beyond a giant wall, called the Wall. | Must travel north to seek adventure beyond a giant wall, called the Wall. |
Is counseled by blind Maester Aemon. | Is counseled by near-blind Master Palaemon. |
Doesn’t know who his mother is. | Doesn’t know who his parents are. |
Breaks his vows by attempting to desert. The head of his order shows unexpected leniency and gives him a totally badass sword, Longclaw. | Breaks his vows by offering mercy to a prisoner. The head of his order shows unexpected leniency and gives him a totally badass sword, Teminus Est. |
Becomes ruler of earth and travels into space to face judgment by angelic beings who might restore life to the dying sun. |
DO NOT WATCH TIM BURTON’S ALICE IN WONDERLAND
DO NOT WATCH TIM BURTON’S ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Learn from my mistake. Holy crap, it’s truly ghastly. It’s absolute torture to sit through. Seriously, everyone involved with this travesty is late for a very important date with my fist.
HBO Game of Thrones Preview
HBO has posted a short featurette about their upcoming Game of Thrones adaptation, in which we can see some of the actors in costume for the first time. Here’s Arya Stark, Tyrion Lannister, and Daenerys Targaryen:
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- …
- 44
- Next Page »