S&L Podcast - #317 - Crew Goals

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Hey the Hugo nominations are open and you can vote for us! Also Firefly is coming back as books. And the Hugo nominations are open and you can vote for us. Plus StoryBundle has an awesome set of books called Black Narratives! And the Hugo nominations are open and you can vote for us. Oh and the Locus Awards are open for voting. That one... you can't vote for us. But you can vote for us in the Hugos.

Download directly here!

WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?    
Tom: Gainey Vineyard Cabernet Franc 2015    
Veronica: Syrah    
    
QUICK BURNS
    
John (Nevets)
It looks like Hugo Nominations are open, both for last year's works, and for 1942 works. They are calling it the "1943 Retrospective Hugo Awards", but that's like how they call this years the 2018 Hugo awards for 2017 works. If you are eligible to nominate, you have until March 16th to get those in, so that should hopefully be plenty of time to think on it.

Stephen: You can nominate The Sword and Laser podcast in the best Fancast section. There is a need to double the amount of nominated votes from last year to become a finalist. WorldCon 76 is being held in San Jose, Ca. You need to be a supporting member or have gone to Worldcon 75 to be involved     
    
Silvana: Locus Award's ballot is out and non-subscribers can vote too. 

Voting is open until April 15, 2018. 

Jenny: StoryBundle is offering a Black Narratives Bundle that has some great stuff, including one previous S&L read and another by the same author. The initial titles in the Black Narratives Bundle (minimum $5 to purchase) are:

To Raise a Clenched Fist to the Sky: The Panther Chronicles, Book One by T. Thorn Coyle
Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson
Angelborn by L. Penelope
Echo by Alicia Wright Brewster

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular titles, plus SEVEN more!

Lion’s Blood: InSha’allah Series Book One by Steven Barnes
Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 by Terah Edun
To Wrest Our Bodies from the Fire: The Panther Chronicles, Book Two by T. Thorn Coyle
Kabu-Kabu by Nnedi Okorafor
The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson
Black Borne by L.L. Farmer
Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

Even though I've already read The Salt Roads and Redemption in Indigo, I went for this one! "    https://storybundle.com/blacknarratives
    
April: Tomi Adeyemi's book "Children of Blood and Bone" is coming out 3/6, and it looks amazing. This video of her opening her copy is fantastic:


    
Tassie Dave: Titan Books is releasing 3 Firefly novels. Starring our loveable bunch of rogues and browncoats. These will be the first books written for the franchise with original storylines. 

The first will be released in October, 2018 with 2 more scheduled for release next year (March and October 2019) 

The novels will be written by Nancy Holder, who has written over a dozen Buffy the Vampire Slayer tie-in novels; Age of Heroes author James Lovegrove; and Tim Lebbon, who has written the movie novelizations for 30 Days of Night and The Cabin in the Woods, as well as tie-in fiction for the Star Wars, Alien, and Predator franchises. Joss Whedon will serve as consulting editor.     

Tamahome: Firefly novels coming to the 'verse    

Mark: My Own Kind of Freedom: A Firefly Novel by Steven Brust was written on spec and submitted for consideration as an official Firefly novel, but was rejected. Brust released it as an ebook which you can download in epub/mobi/pdf formats at http://dreamcafe.com/firefly.html

Matthew: So happy to see R.A. Salvatore announced more Drizzt books (who didn’t see that coming lol). It’s a brand new trilogy starting with a book called Timeless on Sept 18th. I’m a few books behind but will easily catch up before the new one comes out. Also this year is the 30th anniversary of the The Crystal Shard.    
    
Colin: Orbit announces the publication of original Culture drawings from the Estate of Iain M. Banks. Sounds like something that some of us would be interested in.  
    
TRP:  here's a link to a story about the HBO version of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. 
It's a film starring Michael B. Jordan, Sofia Boutella, and Michael Shannon which is due to air on HBO in the spring of this year.
Here's another link to the teaser trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzAwg9gj9vc
    
Tom's book Pavaria is on Audible now, read by Tom!
    
March Madness nominations continue
    
BARE YOUR SWORD

Science Fiction Art Prints    
    
Spaceship + Crew generator    
    
BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION    
    
February Book: A Wrinkle In Time
Book Briefing
    
ADDENDUMS    
    
Our show is currently entirely funded by our patrons. Thank you to all the folks who back our show and if you would like to support the show that way head to patreon.com/swordandlaser
    
You can also support the show by buying books through our links! Find links to the books we talk about and some of our favorites at swordandlaser.com/picks
    
Review us on iTunes!
    
    

S&L Podcast - #316 - Why'd Ya Do It, Ernie?

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We share our memories and thoughts on the passing of Ursula K. Leguin. We also talk about how silly it is to think anybody but George R. R. Martin truly knows the release date for Winds of Winter, and discover the true villain of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Download directly here.

WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?

Tom: Air

Veronica: Temptation 2013 Zinfandel

QUICK BURNS

RIP Ursula K. Leguin

Nokomis.FL - Winds of Winter is coming......September 6th. ? The story came from The Strand bookstore's website on NYC. Several other sites reported the same story, i.e

Trike: The next project by Dennis Villeneuve, director of the superb Arrival and better-than-expected Bladerunner 2049, is going to be a new adaptation of Dune. He says his goal is “Star Wars for adults.”

BTW, if you haven’t seen the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, I highly recommend it. That guy was a crazy person, and the influence of that failed project was felt in most of the sci-fi movies released in the 1970s and 80s, including Star Wars.

Darren: Anyone else pick up that Google are now doing audiobooks. There's no subscription option like Audible which Google are touting as a good thing (personally I get quite excited when the credits turn up), and there's no whisper-sync which I don't use much myself but I know others do.

I'm sure the ongoing conflict between Amazon and Google is going to play into this at some point, just as long as they don't start pulling apps from each others services then having another option out there can only be a good thing (surely?).

Not bought anything from them yet so no idea what the service, quality, usability is going to be like.

Anyway, it's 50% off your first purchase until Feb 26th.

Mary: Yay! It looks like MaddAddam could be back on! (And yes, I call these Sci Fi even though Ms Atwood doesn’t like the term.)

BARE YOUR SWORD

S&L BOOK CHALLENGE

Rob was sad because we didn't mention the challenge last time. You have to create new shelves that feed into your challenge totals -- we're competing to see who can get to 10,000 Sword OR Laser books first! (Veronica named hers sl-laser and sl-sword respectively).

From Sean Lookielook (the Rob and Tassie Dave of Vaginal Fantasy, btw): "When you join the challenge you make a separate bookshelf for that challenge. Just name it "2018 sword challenge" or whatever. It doesn't matter what it's called; it's just for your reference. Only books that are on that shelf AND have been marked as "read" (i.e. they are on your "read" bookshelf with a "date read" set in 2018) count toward the challenge."

BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION

February Book: A Wrinkle In Time

Book Briefing

Final Words on Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

FOTMP (1818) part 3 chapter 4

Veronica has problems with this chapter too, also this story is basically Doomsday Book at this point (everyone is dead).

FOTMP: Why'd Ya Do It, Ernie? (Whole book spoilers)

ADDENDUMS

Our show is currently entirely funded by our patrons. Thank you to all the folks who back our show and if you would like to support the show that way head to patreon.com/swordandlaser

You can also support the show by buying books through our links! Find links to the books we talk about and some of our favorites at swordandlaser.com/picks