Twice the Agony

I was on Rick Kleffel's wonderful Agony Column Pocast on March 11th, episode 846, talking about Pyr Books' Pyr and Dragons Contest, as well as Kay Kenyon's Prince of Storms and Paul McAuley's Gardens of the Sun.  Here the direct link.

I came back on March 19th, episode 852, to talk about Pyr's first five years (we turned five this month!). And here's the direct link to that.

Podcast: Lou Anders & Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Double your podcast pleasure this morning.

I'm on The Agony Column, talking to the brilliant Rick Kleffel about fantasy (the return of sword & sorcery), trends in science fiction (will sword & planet return?), ebooks and eReaders, Sam Sykes, Ari Marmell, the future of artwork in a digital book world, and the rumored Apple tablet. You can download on iTunes or go to the direct link.

Meanwhile, The Dragon Page Cover to Cover episode #390A has an interview with Kristine Kathryn Rusch, talking about her new space opera, Diving into the Wreck. Again, iTunes or follow the link above to the embedded player.

That's enough listening for one morning, surely.

The Agony Column: A Conversation with Lou Anders : New Fantasy Triangle, Steampunk and Illuxcon II

Artist Dave Seely at Illuxcon II

I'm up in Rick Kleffel's latest Agony Column Podcast: 


12-11-09: A Conversation with Lou Anders : New Fantasy Triangle, Steampunk and Illuxcon II

Rick says, "That was, of course, my first question when we started talking. And indeed, I'd tend to agree that the three writers do sort of triangulate on the new aesthetic for fantasy fiction, the post-Perdido world of gritty and weird fiction. But that was only the starting point for our conversation.

We jumped next to a discussion of a barrel-full of Steampunk novels that are forthcoming from Pyr, including a French novel, the first in a series that is described as "Dumas with dragons." And we talked about Lou's experience at Illuxon II , an intriguing invite-only meeting of artists and art directors. You can hear a fascinating look at contemporary science fiction from a variety of angles by following this link to the MP3 audio file."

Yours In Agony: Ranting About SciFi Migrations

The other day, I got excited by BioWare's forthcoming game Star Wars: The Old Republic, both in terms of what it represented as "what a Star Wars film/television series could be" and, in a larger sense, as evidence for science fiction narratives migrating out of literature and into gaming. I heard enough good things in response to that post to pick up a Game Pro magazine in a coffeeshop yesterday and read up on that title and BioWare's successful Mass Effect games. Mass Effect has already been mentioned to me a time or two, specifically as being "real science fiction," but you know how it takes something a time or two to get on your radar...Well, now BioWare is looming large on said radar. (You can follow them on Twitter here, btw.) Around the same time, I saw a Tor press release on the Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing blog, about their own forthcoming deal to produce EVE Online novels. So all these thoughts about convergence were bumping around in my brain.

Somewhere in there, Rick Kleffel called inviting me to guest on his wonderful Agony Column podcast, and all these jumbled thoughts came spilling out. I'm not sure what we actually said, but we talk about Tor's announcement, Mass Effect (which I mistakenly call "Massive Attack." Apologies, guys), the potential impact of James Cameron's Avatar, John Scalzi's new role on Stargate: Universe and the way SF is migrating out of category into YA, mainstream literature, videogaming, film, television, etc... We didn't actually mention a single Pyr book, so, you know, go buy some anyway please. But meanwhile, the podcast will be available on iTunes shortly, and here is a direct link.

I haven't gamed since I became a parent (I was 1/3 of the way into Ultimate Spider-Man when that happened), but I'm itching to see what I've been missing. And I'll certainly look to see if BioWare are attending the San Diego Comic Con.

Robson, Enge, Sturges, Lloyd and even Yours Truly

There's a fantastic interview with Blood of Ambroseauthor James Enge over on SFScope. Conducted by Sara M. Harvey, and well-worth reading, here's a taste:

The genesis of Morlock was, I think, frustration with two of my favorite writers, Tolkien and H.G. Wells. I was annoyed that Tolkien so obviously favored elves over dwarves, and that Wells did the same with Eloi over Morlocks. Morlocks did stuff—they worked and learned and thought and created. They seemed to me more authentically human than the empty, shiny Eloi. So what if they lived underground and weren't so pretty? The cannibalism is a little harder to stomach, as it were—but I'm sure that's exactly why Wells put it in. That's his thumb on the scale, trying to tilt our judgment of his characters.

Then over at The Agony Column, Rick Kleffel and I talk about Steampunk, Victoriana and Elizabethan SF, with a bit about Chris Roberson, George Mann, and old series Doctor Who. Here's a direct link.

Meanwhile in response to my accidentally traumatizing her with an offhand statement, Justina Robson asks What is Fantasy About? Please go join in the discussion. I sense brilliance on the verge of conception.

Then Graeme's Fantasy Book Review gives an 8 out of 10 to Matthew Sturges' Midwinter.They say:

...a book that any fantasy fan will get a lot out of. ...there is no denying the sense of urgency that leaps out off the page and drives the story along [at] a very fast pace. The constant plotting and scheming underneath the surface adds to this urgency as well as giving the reader the best possible reason to keep reading. There are loads of questions that all need answering and it’s all credit to Sturges that these are the kind of questions where you care enough about the answers to invest more time in reading the book. You also cannot deny the dangers that our travellers must face on their journey and these make for some great moments where anything could happen and spectacle is the order of the day!

Hey, I'd be rushing out to get that now if I hadn't read it already. But if you need more convincing, Jessica Strider at Sci-Fan Letter interviews Matthew Sturges, about the book and the craft of writing in general.

I was doing a presentation about writing comic books for a group of fourth-graders, since I'm most known as a comic book writer. Most of the questions were what you'd expect from nine-year-olds: Who'd win in a fight between the Hulk and Superman, that kind of stuff. Just as the questions were dying down, a kid in the back raised his hand and asked, "How much do you make?" I paused for a second and said, "I do okay, I guess." He wasn't satisfied, "Can you give me a dollar amount?" "That's an inappropriate question," said the teacher, embarassed. "Why?" said the kid. "How can I tell if I want to do that job if I don't know what it pays?"

Meanwhile, The King of the Nerds (what a title!) has some very positive thoughts about Tom Lloyd's The Twilight Herald:

...one heck of a wild ride, with action, excitement, danger, violence and epic confrontations occurring left and right... I’m not certain I would say The Twilight Herald is an improvement over The Stormcallerbut Lloyd at the least reveals an impressive level of verstatility in terms of style between the two novels. Furthermore he maintains an ability to include a subtle over-arching theme of revenge across the entirety of the novel that is never overwrought or glaring. Lloyd is keeping me guessing with the series and, criticisms asside, that is something I can definatley appreciate.

And that's enough news for one morning, right?

Update: Well, no, because there's a terrific interview with Tom Lloyd that is up at Fantasy Book News & Reviews.

Podcast: Yours Truly in Agony (Again)

The incredibly-well read and well-spoken Rick Kleffel and I discuss space opera today on the Agony Column podcast. Rick was enthused by reading Brian Greene's Icarus at the Edge of Timeand Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star,neither of which I've read, but both of which sound right up my alley. So we talked about these works, about John Meaney's Nulapeiron Sequence, about Kay Kenyon's The Entire and the Rose series, about the general qualities of space opera, and about the differences between Star Wars and Star Trek, and whether Trek is space opera or military SF. Here's the direct link to the mp3, and you can also subscribe via iTunes.

Which you should. Rick is an amazing interviewer, asking really insightful questions, and his podcast covers a wide range of book-related topics. He covers enough works of a science fiction nature that I can justify my time as keeping me informed about the rest of the field, and enough works outside it that I don't get myopic. For example: My favorite in recent weeks, his interview with Charles Bamforth, 30 year head of research for Bass and the author of Grape vs. Grain: A Historical, Technological, and Social Comparison of Wine and Beer.And here's the direct link for that.

Lou Podcast: An Agony of Pleasure

Rick Kleffel's marvelous podcast, The Agony Column, just uploaded an interview with Yours Truly as their 279th show. "A Conversation with Lou Anders, Editor of Pyr Books" covers such diverse topics of my unorthodox route into publishing, the genius of John Meaney, my old anthology Live Without a Net, the state of short fiction and of SF in general, what Pyr is looking for these days from manuscripts, sneak peaks at various forthcoming works, and the genius (and limits) of William Gibson's intuition. And other things besides.

Incidentally, I was already so addicted to Kleffel's podcast before he had me on. So now I'm like through the roof. I get it from iTunes, but here's the link to the RSS feed.

Update 12/228/07: Rick writes this morning to let me know that he'll be broadcasting an 8 minute segment from our interview on San Francisco's KUSF during Talk of the Bay!