Return of the Podder: More of my favourite Podcast Shows (Part 2)
KCRW’s BOOKWORM
Umberto Eco
Nicole Krauss
Bret Easton Ellis
Identity (Series of 10)
This is where the big guns of literature come out to bat. Or to talk.
KCRW’S Bookworm is a major literary podcast show. It features serious, detailed discussions on literary matters, featuring big-name authors.
One of their longest, most fascinating series was the recent 10-part series on Identity. Each episode of slightly less than 30 minutes focussed on one aspect of Identity. Hispanic identity, Asian identity, mixed-race identity, and so on.
Authors featured ranged from relative unknowns like Maxine Hong Kingston, Don Lee, Nina Marie Martinez, to heavy hitters like Camille Paglia, Alan Hollinghurst, Margaret Atwood, John Banville…
The discussions are always interesting, ‘provocate book-talk’ to quote their own tag line, and well worth the listening.
THE RADIO ADVENTURES OF DR. FLOYD
This one’s a bit more of an acquired taste.
I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, and at times, if I’m not in the mood, even I press ‘next’ on my iPod, or remote, to bypass the latest episode.
But if you’re in the mood for some light, chatty, even whacky talk about Science Fiction, often without any definite point, then this pod show is reasonably good TP.
If you’re not interested in SF, though, you’re not going to like it.
THE SECRETS: THE PODCAST FOR WRITERS
Like Dr. Floyd above, but less irritating in tone and style, The Secrets is a series of under-15 minute episodes offering advice on various aspects of the writing craft.
It’s a great series if you’re a wannabe writer, or even just a blogger.
Nothing earth-shattering, mind you. But informative and entertaining.
And again, with special interest for writers (or editors, or publishers, or even just readers) of SFFH.
In fact, one of their feature podcasts is a special focus on SF/Fantasy news.
THE WEEK IN WHEDON
This is one I’m probably going to unsubscribe from soon. But since it’s still on my Podcasts Playlist…
Joss Whedon is best known as the writer-creator of TV serials like Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, and Angel. Though he’s also a highly paid screenwriter for blockbuster movies as well.
(Look up his IMDB page for more info if you’re interested.)
This pod show is a series of weekly updates on what’s happening in Whedon’s world, including his upcoming shows, scripts in production, syndication of older shows, etc.
I subscribed to find out if there was any truth to the rumour that he was going to start a spin-off show called Tales of The Watcher featuring characters from both his Buffy and Angel series.
(Apparently not.)
Or how close he was to the long-awaited Buffy movie starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.
(Nowhere in sight.)
Or whether it was true that his short-lived but highly popular SF show Firefly was being made into a big-screen movie.
(Yes, but still unsure of whether production is underway or only ‘green-lighted’.)
The trouble with the show is that it rambles on in such detail about such trivial things that only a hardcore Whedon fan would be interested.
It’s definitely not for you if, like me, you’re just a fan of his shows and not into hero-worship.
And worst of all, Whedon himself barely figures in the shows – this is almost entirely a fan enterprise.
Skip this one.
But I would still be eager to subscribe to a podcast featuring an author I’m more “into”, like, say, Stephen King.
Anybody know about anything like that?
Remember, file-sharing is caring!
That’s it for the pod shows for now. But keep looking. And keep in touch!
Invasion of the Pod People: The wonderful world of Podcasting and my current favourite Pod shows (Part 1)
A podcast, in case you didn’t know it already, is an audio recording intended to be broadcast over the internet, usually through an Apple store (check your iTunes program) and then downloaded onto your iPod, hence the name.
You don’t need to DL to an iPod only. You can simply DL to your comp, and listen to it right there, or burn it onto a CD and then listen to it in your car, on your home theatre system, wherever.
Basically, it’s an MP3 audio file.
The best thing about it is that it’s mostly free!
If you have iTunes on your comp, then you can find the latest podcasts by clicking on the Music Store icon in the main menu to the left, then browsing through the Podcast menu, or simply searching for the topic of your interest.
There will also be a number of other choices listed, such as Audio Books, News, Music, etc. Those will usually be charged at the usual iStore rates.
But almost all podcasts are completely free. No subscription, no joining fee, nada.
Just download and listen.
As with any other new medium, there’s a lot of amateur podcasting going on.
Because, like blogging, anybody and everybody can podcast.
Why, even I’m planning to take this blog and podcast it, starting early next year!
(At least, that’s the plan, let’s see how things actually work out once I finish the major home-office move I’m undergoing and once I have my new hardware equipment installed, set up and debugged.
Will post to the blog as and when it works out–and if it works out.
Hell, I may even consider vBlogging as well as Podcasting the blog!
But more about that in due course.)
I can’t claim to know everything that’s being podcast out there.
It’s a big Netiverse after all.
(And an even bigger Nutiverse, if you know what I mean.)
A lot of the podcasts seem to be news feeds from major as well as minor news channels in the US, something that doesn’t remotely interest me.
The last thing I want to do while driving to the gym, or taking my afternoon tea break, is listen to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina.
Nor was I really interested in the scores of amateur writers eagerly (over-eagerly) offering their unpublished novels converted into podcasts.
But what I found after a bit of trial and error and searching and downloading a lot of junk, was that there is some really good stuff being podcast too.
Especially in the area of interviews and fact-based programming.
Here are some of my currently favourite Podcast shows and the episodes I really enjoyed listening to.
A few of them I haven’t actually got around to listening to yet, but they’re high on my “must-listen-next” list, so I’m listing them too.
I’m not going to comment much on each one, since they’re mostly quite self-explanatory.
But basically, the Podcasts I’ve picked all have good audio quality, pro level or near-pro level, are well produced, have intelligent insightful content, and are way better than if the same material were to be available in printed or html/xml form.
The reason being is that these are mostly interviews, or shows by talented audio artists.
And just as it is possible to read an interview, listening to it has a whole different charm.
For instance, Maya Angelou, the veteran African-American writer, has a style that’s wonderful to read, but actually listening to her speak is a whole different experience.
I think you know what I mean.
So that’s why most of my Current Fave Podcast choices are interviews or personality based stuff.
I’m always looking for new stuff though. So if you hear a Podcast, or hear of one, do let me know.
After all, the internet’s motto is, or should be, (File-)Sharing is Caring!
A WAY WITH WORDS
Food 2
Theater
Lexicography
Surfing
Dictionaries
This is a show about language, as the name suggests. Each episode is fairly long, a bit less than 50 minutes, which is a bit of a downside. But they pack a lot of learning into that time. Each episode focusses on a different subject. The episodes I’ve heard so far are listed above.
The one on surfing is particularly entertaining, but maybe because I just love that surfing lingo. It’s where we get most of our popular slang today – ‘dude’, ‘chill’, ‘hang loose’, etc. A great way to improve your language skills and learn a lot about the idiosyncracies of the English language.
BOOKBUFFET.COM
Interview with Julian Fellowes (9 parts)
Interview with Jack El-Hai (7 parts)
Interview with Kem Nunn
Interview with Tracy Quan (7 parts)
Interview with Sheila Hayman
Interview with Arthur Jeon
Interview with Edith Grossman
These are excellent interviews with authors. At first, I wondered if I really wanted to listen to an author I’d never heard of before (most of the above), let alone actually read anything by. But once I started listening, I was hooked. Well, not addicted maybe.
But you see, the thing about Bookbuffet podcasts is that they’re really short. Each one is no more than 5 minutes, often as short as 1 or 2 minutes.
(Hence the several parts of each interview.)
So they’re really just nuggets of wisdom or insight and I don’t mind spending a couple of minutes with a bunch of different writers and picking up something from it.
But if you’re not interested in the craft of writing or a serious student of literature, then perhaps even 1 minute might be a minute too long!
DRAGON PAGE COVER TO COVER
#181: Interview with Karl Schroeder and Bruce Taylor
#180: Interview with Jennifer Fallon and Marie Jackober
#169: Interview with Kevin J. Anderson and Gerard Readett
Interviews with authors and editors of science fiction and fantasy. I’ve just got these three issues, but there are plenty more out there.
These are much, much longer than the Bookbuffet interviews, but they’re also much more fun. At least, they were to me, a hardcore SFFH fan.
If you enjoy reading the works of these authors, or even the genre in general, you’ll probably find something to like in these chatty, insightful, but always entertaining and light interviews.
FUNNYINDIAN
The Brian & Joe Show
Second City
On Clubbing
The Podcaste System
Here’s a complete change of pace. Cincinnati, Ohio, USA-based stand-up comedian Rajiv Talwar is an ABCD with a sense of humour.
Anyone can enjoy his routine, and with each podcast running to anywhere from 12 to 18 minutes, it’s a nice way to spend a short drive, or a long coffee break.
What I like about Talwar is that his jokes are geared to Indian ears, like the first episode where he plays on the word ‘Podcast/e’ with and without the ‘e’. Get it? Get it.
GAMECAST ONLINE: A GAMING GUIDE
This one I haven’t actually been able to DL yet. Don’t know why. But I’m going to keep trying. For some reason, I have this fascination with tech stuff, especially the software side of IT. And though I’m not actually a gamer myself, my kids are majorly into it. So I enjoy reading through magazines like PS2 Gaming and passing on articles of interest to them.
If anyone’s actually heard any of these podcasts, let me know. Or if you have any suggestions for other Gaming podcasts, ditto.
HORROR READER
An interview with David Morrell
A Different Kind of Horror: Interview with Elizabeth Massie
This is one of my favourites.
I adore reading interviews with writers of SFFH. (That’s Science Fiction Fantasy and Horror, by the way.) I’ve got virtually every book of interviews with SFFH writers, and have read each one to bits.
Maybe it’s because I’m an SFFH writer too, and it was my lifelong dream to become one, so I hang on every word, hoping to pick up something, or just getting strength and inspiration from knowing there are people out there who are actually making a successful living telling stories about fantastic things and creatures. (I guess I now make a fairly successful living doing much the same thing, but learning is an eternal process, isn’t it?)
Horror Reader has a lot of episodes out there, each one about half an hour long. (As far as I’m concerned, they could be two hours long, and I’d still listen.)
I’d recommend these two strongly: David Morrell is a very entertaining author of thrillers (Burnt Sienna, one of his most recent, I liked very much) as well as supernatural horrors and espionage thrillers. He’s also the guy who created Rambo (but the book is way, way better, trust me). Here he speaks on the eve of the release of his new horror novel, his first in a long time, Creepers. Morrell is a fascinating personality because while his popular million-copy bestsellers are so pulpy, he himself is a professor of Literature, highly regarded in his field!
Elizabeth Massie, on the other hand, is a much lesser-known horror writer but she’s very talented. Read her Sineater, if you haven’t read her already. And the interview is interesting because it offers a flip side to Morrell’s bigbucks career success, with Massie talking about the joys and bittersweetness of being published by independent (small) publishers and writing horror at a time when everybody believes the genre is dead and gone.
(…to be concluded.)
Multiple worlds, many wars: ‘Master’ Harry Turtledove’s treasure trove of Alternate History war sagas (Part III)
The World at War series
The WorldWar series
The WarWorld series
The Colonization series
The American Flag series
The Videssos Legion series
etc
all by Harry Turtledove
He’s called the ‘master’ of Alternate History and rightfully so.
Harry Turtledove is an amazingly prolific, amazingly dependable author. He belies the notion that some readers have that once an author achieves great success, he stops delivering good books.
Turtledove is that rarest of rare creatures in the publishing biz. He delivered his best work *after* finding success.
His career-bestselling book was, as I mentioned earlier, Guns of the South.
Bouyed by its success (he’d written a lot of books before then, SF as well as Fantasy, with limited results), he went on to develop the same ‘world’ into a long sequence of novels that, as far as I can tell, are still continuing through multiple linked-series.
There’s an alternate-history retelling of World War I, called The Great War series.
There are three alt-hist retellings of WWII, called The WorldWar, Colonization, and Settling Accounts series.
There’s the American Empire series. The Crosstime Traffic series for young readers. The Videssos Legion if you’re tired of his 20th century retellings and want to go farther back, to the Roman age (but in a fantasy world).
The best thing about Turtledove is that, if you like his work, there’s lots of it waiting for you to read.
You’re not going to run out of Turtledove books for a long while, trust me.
I’ve been reading him for ages, and still can’t catch up! And I’m a voracious reader.
My personal favourite is the World at War series. Because it’s fantasy more than alt-hist.
That is, it can be read in its own right, without you needing to figure out, oh, this is so-and-so, or oh-that’s-winston-churchill and so on.
You can just read it, and enjoy the read.
(And if you’re wondering if maybe, I’m implying that in some alt-hist books you can get a headache trying to figure out who’s actually supposed to be who, and done what, and when, you might be right–that’s the one major downside of alt-hist, if you don’t know the history in the first place, or worse, don’t care much about it!
But in that case, why the hell are you reading this blogpost in the first place?!)
The World at War series is different from most alt-hist books, and most Turtledove books too, because it’s not SF really. In fact, it’s the other side of the river: fantasy. It’s in fact a fantasy retelling of the Second World War.
It postulates the question, ‘What if WWII took place in a world where, instead of technology and modern weaponry, magic and dragons and mages prevailed…”
There are six books as of this writing, of which I’ve read only three. All the titles have the word ‘Darkness’ in them, in case you’re looking them up…
Like all Turtledove novels (and indeed, like most Alt-Hist novels), the World At War series follows several major viewpoint characters–about 15 in each book–through the entire saga.
If you know your WWII history really well–if you’ve read the entire set of Winston Churchill’s histories of the war, for instance–then you’re really going to have a treat ahead.
But even if you’re not a total WWII buff (I’m not) you’ll still find a lot to enjoy.
For one thing, Turtledove isn’t as obsessed with the US-Versus-Them notion, which means he’s able to just tell a story well, with all characters weighed equally, and no inherent biases. On the contrary, he actually manages to bring out the humanity in every one of his characters, even the worst of them.
This being a war saga, there’s never a really dull moment. There’s always people dying, or under threat of death, or surviving impossible odds.
Nations are being overrun, transformed, taken over, wrested back…
Terrible things, shocking things…
But never a dull moment.
In terms of story, at least.
As far as style is concerned, though, that’s another story…
There are times when Turtledove’s methodical storytelling style can seem plodding. Like a perfectly well-bred horse insisting on trotting at precisely the right speed, no matter how much you want (or need) him to go faster.
Perhaps this pedantic prose is the result of the many plotlines and characters he’s juggling. With so many things happening, to so many people, he’s just trying to keep it simple.
He doesn’t try for fanciful descriptions or elegant turns of phrase. Like other prolific genre writers–Asimov is a good comparison–Turtledove’s goal is to tell us the whole story, nothing more.
He tells an excellent story. And he tells it well enough for his purposes.
The idea of dragons being used instead of planes–they drop eggs which explode just like bombs–and of magically charged ‘sticks’ in place of guns, sorcerors casting spells to conceal (or expose) spies, ‘ley’ lines used to transport ships or trains across great distances quickly, and wizards and crystal balls being used by each side to enhance their chances of winning…these and many other thrilling ideas are explored in this fascinating series.
Turtledove’s fascination for history and his enormous output as a writer has led him to start using a pseudonym recently.
Under the byline H.N. Turtletaub, he writes straight historical fiction. You can look up the books on any online bookstore.
Somehow, these titles aren’t as interesting as his alt-hist. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because he’s bound by the historical record.
Although, he is smart enough to use minor, unknown historical characters rather than the high-profile kings and emperors we all know about, which gives him more freedom.
But mainly, I think, Turtledove’s biggest failing shines through in these books: Without an existing framework upon which to ‘grow’ his own ideas and diversions, he settles into a plodding, dull, story of his own making.
It’s not that his Turtletaub novels are boring (I’ve only read two but he’s hardly written three or four so far) but that they’re not that exciting as his alt-hist books.
Of course, this problem rears its head in his alt-hist books too. If you make the mistake of reading, say, an entire series of his in one go, you might end up reeling with boredom and dullness because of the methodical way he presents each episode, each character, then moves on to the next, with predictable regularity.
But what drives you on through his alt-hist series is the over-arching storyline–ripped from the pages of history itself–and the underlying knowledge that ‘this really happened’ as well as the clever ‘what ifs’ he keeps posing, and then following through to its logical conclusion with rigorous intellectualism.
It’s true that Turtledove’s books can get somewhat predictable and reptititive. I wouldn’t recomend stacking a huge pile of them and reading through them all one by one.
On the other hand, if you read the books between other series, or as an alternative to other fiction, why, then they’re quite engaging. Even addictive in a way.
And ultimately, if you persevere, they grow on you. Even the characters that seemed least interesting at first, start to become more interesting, and in the end, turn out to be the ‘real’ heroes or heroines of the tale. Even more so than the famous personages out of the history books.
But then again, that’s only to be expected.
After all, don’t forget. This isn’t history. It’s alternate history.
And it’s best read as an alternative!
I know I haven’t mentioned so many classics–like Pavane, or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Or Alt-Hist in other form like movies (not so many to speak of actually, probably because it’s hard enough to make intelligent historical movies, let alone expect movie-going audiences to appreciate ‘alternate’ histories–”this isn’t really what happened, it’s what might have happened if…” “HUH?”)
Or graphic novels like Neil Gaiman’s excellent 1602. Or even new Alt-Hist novels that are well worth reading like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Years of Rice and Salt…
I guess there’s tons more to be written about the sub-genre, but I’m going to try and wind this series up before it becomes as long as a Harry Turtledove saga!
Just one last word of friendly advice: Don’t read Alt-hist for the ideas or the technology, or the action-adventure alone – although those may or may not be present in the best Alt-hist books.
Read it the way you would a good historical novel series.
For the people and their stories.
After all, there’s a reason why it’s called His-Story. (Although it should actually be Their-Story, don’t you think?)
And why this sub-genre is called Alternate History.
(Concluded.)
A very limited number of copies of the AKB Books edition will be available again soon - and the Penguin mass market edition will be out in a few months! 
The long-awaited final volume in the Ramayana Series will be issued in a very Limited Edition by AKB Books, while the mass market paperback will be published early next year by Penguin Books! 