Neil Gaiman: Author in black at Google

After reading from his collection of short stories, Neil does a fascinating ramble through many of his creative experiences in film, prose, comics (and Beyond!). I think it's mildly amusing the way Gaiman always dresses in black (and in official photos he looks like a slightly grim rock musician)--because when you hear him talk he's so cutesy, breezy, chipper and cheerful!

Science or Science Fiction

It looks convincing in this video. The space elevator. I think this is Damn Cool.

More cool Podcasts: Science Fiction

Podcasts are the new radio. I don't listen to radio much at all anymore--especially for talk and news. I much prefer to hook up with Podcasts talking about and interviewing people about exactly the things I'm interested in. I might hear a science fiction or fantasy author interviewed two or three times a year if I listened to NPR constantly. Now there are a number of excellent shows which interview lots of fascinating authors on a weekly basis.

One excellent place to turn to for SF and F coverage is The Dragon Page: Cover to Cover. Their interviews are very satisfying, though I always wish they went on a little longer. The hosts all have very professional sounding radio voices (I especially love Summer's voice) and are pretty knowledgeable about the field. Along with the interviews they discuss writing, occasional bits about the publishing business and other aspects of the SF reading and writing experience.

Stan Lee on collaboration in comics

A nice description from Stan Lee of how his collaboration with artists worked and how the artists wound up being co-creators of the famous Marvel characters, such as Spiderman. Click on the rest of the videos of this interview to get his full story.

Over the years there's been a lot of controversy about Lee getting too much credit for the famous creations of the Marvel Universe--especially concerning getting credit for all of Jack Kirby's creativity, and to a lesser extent Steve Ditko work. But from this interview I get a sense of Lee as co-creator and facilitator of that early 1960's Marvel wirlwind of creativity, and it certainly couldn't have happened without him.

New Takei Voyage

Check out the episode of Star Trek: New Voyages starring George Takei. It's actually a very good plot, great special effects--and some of the amateur actors have improved quite a bit.

Podio books

The term Podio books is a verbal play on audio books. Generally Podio books involve authors reading their own work and serializing it as Podcasts. This is still a fairly new form but there's already some very good work out there. Many of these can be found at Podiobooks.com.

My personal favorite Podcast fiction so far is Heaven by Mur Lafferty. Lafferty is an early podcasting hero with a number of other podcasts under her belt. Her vocal personality is engaging and the pacing of the story of Heaven is perfect for this medium (though some wise publisher ought to be encouraging her to adapt it for print!). Without giving too much away: it involves adventures in the afterlife, lots of mythology, friendship and romance and the apocalypse! The closest comparison I can make is that it reminds me of the best of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. (You can also watch lots of Mur at Lulu.tv--giving away the truth about history.)

Other Podio fiction that might be of interest includes: James Patrick Kelly reading his Nebula award winning novella Burn. Jack Wakes Up is a noirish mystery novel featuring a washed up movie star. Grey by Jon Armstrong is an intriguing novel of a twisted near future. Escape Pod is a long running anthology of audio short science fiction stories: a great backlog of listening pleasure.

There's much more in the Podioverse. I've only begun to explore what's out there, but I've already found lots of good stuff. It's all free (I do all my subscribing through iTunes) and a great way to try out different authors and find new things that you might like. It provides me with tons of stuff to listen to in the car or when I'm doing chores around the house.