Two conventions and some podcasts

In May and June I have been to two conventions , the Fedcon in Düsseldorf, Germany and Fantasticon in Copenhagen, Denmark.

At Fedcon a few Babylon 5 fans went together to make a little happening. You can find a series of pictures of Babylon 5 fans in and out of costume here

At both conventions I was giving away buttons for #FreeBabylon5, a group that campaigns to get Babylon 5 back on TV channels and Internet streaming. You can find more information on the Free Babylon 5 website.

I have participated in a few more of the Downbelow podcasts as a guest, and it has been fun following Heidi and Elisabeth discovering Babylon 5, and their – sometimes – uncanny guesses of what is to come. Of course, they miss greatly form time to time, but they are very observant.

Likely there will be a bit more on those activities later …

 

Hugo award voting and material, an overview

As a preparation for the voting for the Hugo Awards 2009 I downloaded the package of material from their website, and listened to some the short stories on a variety of podcasts, and watched what I could easily get hold of.

There was not enough time to read the rest of the material.

This is what I got to see or read before voting :

Dramatic presentations, short form :

Doctor Who : ‘Turn Left’
Doctor Who : ‘Silence in the Library’/’Forest of the Dead’
Battlestar Galactica : ‘Revelations’
I would have liked to see more, especially ‘Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog’ . I was not aware that the DVD version from the US was Region Free, so missed out on that one. I will have to get it some time

Dramatic presentations, long form :

‘The Dark Knight’
‘Iron Man’

Novels :

Charles Stross : Saturns Children
Neil Gaiman : Graveyard Book
Cory Doctorow : Little Brother
John Scalzi : Zoe’s Tale

Short stories (audio podcast format) :

Ted Chiang : ‘Exhalation’
Michael Swanwick : ‘From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled’
Mike Resnick : ‘Article of Faith’
Kij Johnson : ’26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss’

A bit of info on my preferences will follow when I get to the different categories.

I still have some novellettes and novellas on my reader that I will want to read, but at the moment I am busy reading a much older Science Fiction story, EE ‘Doc’ Smith’s ‘Lensman’ Series

More details when I get to watch/read more of the stuff, and a few more thoughts on the stuff I am reading/watching

The Babylon Podcast is back after the holidays

The last month the Babylon Podcast has been off, ok, they had a few holiday gifts, so we did not miss it all together.

The editor of the podcast has compiled a set of filk episodes, some good fun with B5 as the subject.

Tim has selected some fine moments from the 2008 Babylon Podcast, with a few mixups etc.

The first Live feed recording on January 7th was canceled, and so was the one on the 14th, the recording was made in the Los Angeles studio, and could not be heard live.

Waiting for the edited podcast was well worth it, however. The news of Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s departure from this world was honored, including an amusing anecdote from Jeffrey Willerth.

We had a beautiful interview with Ed Wasser who plays the mysterious, evil Mr. Morden. He was close to unstoppable in his enthusiasm and has obviously had a great experience with B5.

Podcast : SciFi Talk

“SciFi Talk”, as far as I understand it, is Tony Tellado’s continuation of a radio show. It comes in a slightly irregular scheme (if any), but often I see two or three episodes in the same week.

Interviews, round table discussions etc about all things SciFi, Fantasy, Horror etc is the stuff of “SciFi Talk”. He generally appears enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the people he talks to, to a degree that I occasionally find too much.

Also, I am not much int the Horror genre, so I will skip many of the interviews.

This podcast is still in my iTunes feed, but if there are 2 or 3 downloads I do not always feel the need to get them all.

I think it will stay on my list for a while yet, but it is one of the podcasts under consideration for cancelling.

Link :

SciFi Talk

Podcast : Dragonpage Cover to Cover

A weekly podcast all about the written word in SciFi, Fantasy etc.

Most of the weeks this show is hosted by Mike Mennenga and Mike Stackpole. Both have written books, Stackpole just “a few” more, including some New York Times bestsellers.

For now I have read just one of his books (Star Wars: “I, Jedi”) and two short stories. I like them, but more about that later.

General discussions about books and publishing can often, to me at least, be quite interesting. It looks like we are going to see a shift in publishing the written word similar to what we have seen in the music industry. Actually it has already started. Ebooks are becoming common, and ebook readers are seriously coming now. Amazon has the Kindle, Sony has a reader, and the iPod Touch has a set of ebook reader packages available, some are free, some not. On the other hand, paper books are not going to disappear overnight, there is something about having a *real paper* book in your hands.

I do have an iPod Touch, more about that at a later stage

Every week has an interview with an author, publisher etc.

Finally, the library segment, where they talk briefly about books that have been sent to the studio, and an occasional book review.

In the last episode I listened to there was an invitation to submit content about book publishing, more reviews etc, so I expect to listen to a more varied podcast in the future.

This is one podcast I expect to stay in my iTunes subscription, I particular like that Mike and Mike sound like they are really enjoying doing the show, apart from it being informative and entertaining.