S&L Podcast - #483 - C is for Chestburster

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A few more thoughts on the Hugos, who would win in a fight between Maas and Yarros, and we preview our March Madness brackets!

Download directly here!

WHAT ARE WE NOMMING?

Tom: Mexican Caesar Salad
Veronica: Hot chocolate

QUICK BURNS

March Madness Brackets!

Let's run through the matchups. We can even give which ones are predicted to win based on reader votes on challonge

Seth: Susan Cooper, author of spooky fantasy kids books is the SFWA's newest Grand Master.

Seth and JasonReads: Ryan Reynold's production company is working on an adaptation of Scalzi's latest.

Seth: Apparently, The Martian is already 10 years old— Andy Weir wrote a bit more about Mark Watney's journey around the dust storm and released them as "The Lost Sols."

terpkristin: There’s some great journalism out about the 2023 Hugo Awards and the censorship involved. It’s pretty damning. Scalzi has thoughts on it too."

Decado and Jan: There is a press release on business wire titled "iwot and D1srupt1ve Join Forces as True Source to Unleash AI Magic on “The Wheel of Time”®" and I need Tom to decipher the press release! Help!

Tom's interpretation: "A company that uses number ones instead of the letter I is creating a chat bot trained on the Wheel of Time series. Coming to the Web, Android and iOS. It will have a freemium model. "

jasonb: ‘Alien’ Will Be Adapted for Children’s Book

BARE YOUR SWORD

Tamahome: If Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J. Maas had a fight, who would win?

Jan: I had to live for two weeks on protein shakes without anything else before a stomach operation to reduce the size of my liver so there was more room for the surgeon and while protein shakes are not as bad anymore it soured those shakes for me 😉

BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION

MARCH PICK

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
Amazon Link

CHECK IN

Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne
Amazon Link

LaszloJamf
Drink every time …
Stew is consumed
There is a spray of arterial blood
Something is measured in units of “mead halls

Iain Bertram
I am being driven to distraction by the use of ye olden days language scattered through the book whip I assume is for world building.
Why use seax instead is knife. 🔪 not everyone is reading digital books.
This smacks of an author (academic) showing off rather than making it readable.
I am not making fun of place names but using old words for common place items rather than the obvious modern word."

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

S&L Podcast - #482 - Let's Talk About Seax, Baby

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We've opened nominations for Mad Marchness!, our March tournament of book picks. Plus, the failure of the Hugos and the rise of Romantasy. And we begin our first impressions of Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne.

Download directly here!

WHAT ARE WE NOMMING?

Tom: Spanikopita Quesadilla

Veronica: Protein shakes

QUICK BURNS

March Madness nominations are open! Our annual tournament-style voting to determine the April pick is open for you to suggest books.

Tamahome: A link for Peter F. Hamilton's next book in September.

racer951y: Denis Villeneuve Will Stop Making ‘Dune’ Movies After ‘Dune 3,’ Despite More Books in the Series: ‘Dune Messiah Should Be the Last for Me’

Jan: The Guardian has an article about the rise of the Romantasy genre

Chris K: Locus has posted their 2023 Recommended Reading List

Oaken: Worldcon IP organization reacts to recent criticism of the 2023 Hugo awards and actions of the Chengdu award administrators.

Oaken: Scalzi notes that Glasgow Worldcon has, in light of the Chengdu incident, committed to transparency in the 2024 Hugo Awards.

Seth: Fourth Wing helped curb Big Five publisher domination of the 2023 bestseller lists (as reported by Publisher's Weekly).

BARE YOUR SWORD

Ruth: Unusual for both the hosts to admit that they didn’t really like the book. It’s definitely an unusual choice for S&L. It’s in that zone of not quite science fiction where it has unrealistic aspects but, as Tom says, the world isn’t fully built.

Stephen: Star Trek Season 2 Episode 14 "Wolf in The Fold" written by Robert Bloch had a murderous immortal entity. The crime was first placed on Scotty, who was last seen with the victim and couldn't remember what happened because Scotty got drunk on shore leave. So, I am giving the The Shining Girls a full hearted "it is a SF book." I remember Dan as being a former Crime Beat reporter who moved over to the Sports Beat

Paul: Hardcover should definitely hire Veronica.

I'm going to join, download the app, and give it 4 stars. My review: The only thing that would make the app better is if Veronica Belmont worked there. Then the app would be unstoppably awesome!"

"Dear Veronica,

Losing your job is never fun but believe it or not when it happened to me I found it not as bad as people say.

I was unemployed between July 2022 and February 2023.

It was a time to catch up on sleep, see/visit with people I haven't for a long time for whatever reason.

Volunteering helped a lot; it got me out of the house and was a fun way to network. I helped out at the local zoo, non-profit movie theater and Friends of the Library.

Friends of the library are non-profits that get donations of used books and sell them to the community for low costs. It's great for discovering books and authors that you never knew about or been meaning to try. It's how I found some old Fantasy novels from 1980s and 90s by Dennis L. McKiernan.

Best,

David"

BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION

Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne

Amazon Link

What are we feasting?

What's going on in your thought-cage?

Blood and Guts

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