You can imagine many uses for podcasts if you try: company during commutes (my own favorite), occupation of the mind during chiefly physical tasks such as washing dishes, even (apologies to many authors) insomnia treatments.
Here’s one I hadn’t considered.
Martyn Casserly is a freelance journalist, musician, and new-media observer living in London; I’m also following him on Twitter. Here‘s how he discovered a benefit of podcast fiction in dealing with a medical problem.
For those of you who wondered how soon I’d make it into print again…
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You remember how, when Israel crossed over the dried-up Jordan, Joshua had the Israelites take twelve large rocks from the center of the riverbed to build a monument to the event at their first encampment (Joshua 4:1-9). Have you remembered to celebrate its later equivalent?
Today’s reading is from the Book of Linus, chapter 12, verses 34–41:
…can get you into so much trouble with the fairer sex. “My eyes are up here, buddy.” “Yes indeed, but the unusual words/drawings are down there.“
If you’re here because you heard Jason Rennie’s interview with me in “Sci Phi Show Outcast #59,”1 (thank you, Jason) or my “7th Son Episode 17: The Story So Far” reading (thanks, Hutch!), you might still be wondering what’s going on here. Here it is, in a nutshell:
(a) Evidently I had a Star Wars flashback moment when I identified Mal Reynolds of Firefly with the “Rebel Alliance” (still can’t believe I did that). We’re Browncoats and durned proud of it.
(b) The story by Elisabeth Waters and me had “An Army Marches” as its working title, but it’s now published as “Crosswort Puzzle.” It’s in Sword and Sorceress XXII, not XX. [↩]
It wasn’t to be, alas. As I noted earlier, the quality of the other nominees is superb, and I’m not surprised to have been blown out of the water by such excellent pieces as Matt Wallace’s thoughtful “No World for Warriors,” Jason McDowell’s audio tour de force “Sacrifice” (check them both out at Variant Frequencies, a superbly produced collection), and Paul Berger’s “The Watching People” (Escape Pod).
You can find the complete list of finalists at http://www.parsecawards.com/2007Finalists. Give ’em a listen; there’s good stuff here.
It’s time for the second annual Parsec Awards for excellence in podcasting, which will be given out at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia (31 August–3 September 2007). Two of my short pieces have been nominated and will be considered by the Parsec steering committee as they choose ten semifinalists and five finalists in each category. Five outside judges, who are not involved with podcasting but are involved with related areas such as literature, science, and communications, will then choose the winners.
My two entries:
Scheduling conflicts will likely keep me from Atlanta and the awards ceremony, alas. But given the excellence of the other nominees, it’s gratifying to be welcomed onto the playing field.
Clerk’s log, MJDate 54262.0: Scott’s gracious comment on a previous article reminded me of something remarkable that happened this past February. Let me tell you about it.
Every so often someone comes along and completely changes your perspective on a subject. I hadn’t thought much of Johann Strauss’s waltz “On the Beautiful Blue Danube,” for example, other than that it was simply “pretty music.” Then came the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, sweeping us from prehistory into that fictional year with a panorama that featured a weapon in orbit, then another, and another, and suddenly that shining carousel of an orbital space station with a ground-based shuttle pirouetting into final approach … all to the accompaniment of “On the Beautiful Blue Danube.”
Wow. I began listening to Strauss’s music with a fascination I’d never had before, because Stanley Kubrick and company had built a bridge for me to this unknown territory.
It happened again on the fourth of February twenty-aught-seven.
Scott Sigler — King of the Hard-Science Monsters — the man who single-handedly ensured that thousands of listeners would never again look at a pair of poultry shears without a certain shudder — Continue reading
Clerk’s log, MJDate 54213.9: In honor of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day (inspired by this discussion), I present the following. No, it’s not fiction. It’s a paper I delivered at the 2005 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. My purpose in it was to introduce science fiction and fantasy to people who were not necessarily familiar with SFF — for that matter, who may not have been familiar with fiction in general — and to show them why they should give it their attention.
I’ll warn you up front: it is not “written for the web” — no bullet points, and some great honking big paragraphs. Nonetheless, I hope you like it.
Two worlds have collided, and storytelling may not be the same again.
In case you haven’t yet seen this, the august New York Times (”all the news that’s fit to print”) recently ran an article on podcast fiction, featuring Scott Sigler, J.C. Hutchins, Continue reading
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]The TREASURES OF ALBION series (with Elisabeth Waters):
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