S&L Podcast - #384 - Teenaged Wiccan

Tom starts throwing money at Becky Chambers and Veronica defends her rose quartz. Plus, new Star Wars short stories coming and lots of great tie-in novels up for Scribe awards! Also our first impressions of A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.

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WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?
Tom: Nothing
Veronica: I Ate a Watermelon!

QUICK BURNS

Tamahome: Excerpt from A Memory Called Empire sequel

Julie: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, the fourth book in Becky Chambers’ Wayfarer series is set to come out in February

Kev: Celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back - here's the author list for the new From A Certain Point of View anthology set during and around the movie. The first FACPOV set during A New Hope was fun.

Mark: The 2020 Scribe Award nominees have been announced by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. Sword and laser titles abound.
Winners will be announced on July 15

Tamahome: Max Brooks' (World War Z) new bigfoot novel Devolution is being adapted for the big screen:

BARE YOUR SWORD

Amy @SuthinBelle
@Veronica @swordandlaser you and @acedtect were wondering what author was from Russia - Isaac Asimov (Foundation). BTW, the author from South Africa is actually Tolkien and the author from India is TH White (Once and Future King). Long and lasting impact from British Colonialism.”

Drake Tungsten @turtleismytotem
@swordandlaser Are there any plans to have videos of episodes like you used to?

John Taloni:
Just for the fun of it, a full-length "Staba O'Riley" aka "Teenage Wiccans."
Arty intro...Pete Townshend's guitar blends in...Keith Moon's drums hit...John Entwhistle's subtle bass...and then, Roger Daltrey!


Hang out after school
Crystals sure look cool
I get the quartz into my jewel'ry
I don't need a stone
To groove the Crone
But they sure as heck look pretty, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Don't scry
The evil eye
It's only teenage Wiccans

Sisters say the spell
The bond we feel will swell
Chant in a circle
Until the night grows colder
The crystals make the Witch
But I will cut a bitch
You try to take 'em, I'll stab you in the shoulder

Teenage Wiccans
It's only teenage Wiccans
Teenage Wiccans
Oh yeah, teenage Wiccans
They're all Wiccans!

BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION

Keep an eye on the Patreon and Goodreads for the July Pick

JUNE PICK
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

MCE: Find your Teixcalaanli name


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 - #383 - TerpTalk

Congrats to the Locus Nominees and Nebula winners! We’ve read a bunch of those but there are some great new picks to be discovered too. Everybody wins! Plus long-time Sword and Laser listener TerpKristin joins us to wrap up Magician: Apprentice.

Download directly here!

QUICK BURNS

Geoff: 2019 Nebula winners announced! Here’s the official post.
A Song for a New Day wins for best novel, which surprises me based on "buzz", but I haven't read it yet so I'll take it on faith that it is worthy. Looking forward to reading it!
S&L pick This Is How You Lose the Time War wins for Novella.

Mark:
2020 Locus Award finalists announced

Stephen: New Virtual Con, this time put on by Tor.com and Den of Geek
Info and dates here
Christopher Paolini & Brandon Sanderson June 11th
Neil Gaiman & V.E. Schwab June 12th
June 13 and June 14 all sorts of stuff
You need to register to get an invite to the event.

BARE YOUR SWORD

Thanks to Dave Packard the OC S&L we had a lockdown version of the monthly meetup via Zoom, attended by Dave, Stephen Richter, Andrew Cator, Christina and myself.

We spent about 10 minutes discussing Magician: Apprentice then over an hour talking about Star Trek, Star Wars, various books and comics we're reading, TV shows we're watching and I forget what else.

A good time was had by all.

Gary Fisher

—-

Beth Mitcham @MitchamBeth
MAGICIAN: APPRENTICE, Raymond E. Feist. A great time-travel book. I mean, there's no time-travel in it, but while reading it I am magically a kid again, reading fat fantasy books by the bucketful. Hindsight makes it pleasantly predictable.

Kelly Sedinger @Jaquandor
Listening to a @swordandlaser discussion on the DUNE books and which ones to read and which to skip, I'm reminded of a wonderful turn of phrase by @BluejoWalton, who referred to the later novels as "homeopathically good".

Kenley Neufeld @kenleyneufeld
A gentle tale of humans, elves, dwarves, and even a dragon. Fun and light w/out the dark heaviness that pervades fantasy. More than one boys journey into manhood caused by war. Surprised to not hear from our protagonist in the last 85-pgs. Magician: Apprentice for @swordandlaser

Amy @SuthinBelle
@swordandlaser I posted on Goodreads but wanted to let you know about the new data viz on book picks I made

BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION

JUNE PICK

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Full wrap up with Terpkristin joining us! Yay!

Magician: Apprentice by Raymond E. Feist

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