Panel Discussion Moderated by Terry Bisson and Interviews with Rudy Rucker, K. W. Jeter, and Jay Lake
I guess I'm working on the fire sale model of my post from earlier, with lots of stuff going out fast and furious. The SF in SF presentation from February 11 of this year was unusual, in that there were three readers; Rudy Rucker, K. W. Jeter, and Jay Lake. I have already podcast the reading portion of the show, which my readers and listeners can find here. I have divvied up the reading for your convenience, and you can find all the permutations at the link.
This multi-podcast will not catch me up, exactly, but I do have a lot of material to go around. I had a grand time talking with all the participants in one-on-one interviews that last in the vicinity of ten minutes, or until the presenters of the show start hovering and making that throat-slicing gesture, which I generously interpret to mean, "Time to Stop."
I always have great discussions with Rudy Rucker, and I am looking forward to another very soon. This time around we talked mostly about his autobiography, 'Nested Scrolls.'
I had never met K. W. Jeter, and really enjoyed doing so. As one of the group who hung out with Philip K. Dick, Tim Powers, James Blaylock and Dean R. Koontz back in Santa Ana in the (80's?), he's a legend even without having invented the term steampunk.
And Jay Lake is always a joy to speak to. He's a man who has mastered the art of taking every sub-genre of the literature of the fantastic and turning it into literature of the "litrachur" variety as well. It's a neat trick.
04-24-12 UPDATE:Podcast Update: Time to Read Episode 41 Richard Zacks 'Island of Vice' and Gregg Jones, 'Honor in the Dust'
Click image for audio link.
Here's the forty-first episode of my new series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. The podcasts/radio broadcasts will be of books worth your valuable reading time. I'll try to keep the reports under four minutes, for a radio-friendly format. If you want to run them on your show or podcast, let me know.
My hope is that in under four minutes I can offer readers a concise review and an opportunity to hear the author read from or speak about the work. I'm hoping to offer a new one every week.
"...good candidates for being thoughts from God..."
— Tanya Luhrman
Tanya (T. M.) Luhrman is waiting for me at KQED when I arrive to speak to her. It's her second time here (the first was for "Fresh Air"), and she knows the routine. I must admit that I was still getting over how good 'When God Talks Back' was. It was definitely not what I might have expected it to be before I read the introduction. But even then, Luhrman goes much farther into that supernatural than I had dared to hope.
To my mind, 'When God Talks Back' is the quintessential Fortean work of the 21st century, and very scientific book that clearly looks at the supernatural in a manner that allows for, indeed accepts the existence of things unknown, and looks to quantify and qualify those things as best as can be done by looking at how humans behave.
Talking to Luhrman, you quickly see how her combination of extreme intelligence combined with an engaging empathy made her the ideal person to study the supernatural as experienced by American Evangelical Christians. Again, I find myself admitting that I had never considered that American Evangelical Christians would experience "the supernatural." In person Luhrman makes all this seem very natural; a talent that itself may be considered something more.
I'll be speaking with Tanya Luhrman again, live at the Capitola Book Café on May 5, at 6:30 PM, and I have invited and hope to have some member of the local Vineyard Congregation in attendance. But in the interim you can hear our all-too-brief conversation at KQED by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
New to the Agony Column
05-13-13: Commentary : Mary Roach ... "Gulp." : Open Up and Say "Awe"
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Mary Robinette Kowal Reads "Evil Robot Monkey" at SF in SF on April 20, 2013 : "...not that there's anything remotely Regency about evil robot monkeys..."
05-06-13: Commentary : Glennon Doyle Melton Suggests 'Carry On, Warrior' : Fighting for Life in the Too Much Information Age
05-04-13: Commentary : Reasons Not to Leave the House, Reality Check : The Truth Hurts Edition: 'Down the Up Escalator' by Barbara Garson, 'The Wolf and the Watchman' by Scott C. Johnson,'The Book of Woe' by Gary Greenberg, 'Confessions of a Sociopath' by M. E. Thomas
05-01-13: Commentary : Mario Guslandi Reviews An Emporium of Automata by DP Watt : "...from the bizarre to the grotesque, from the baroque to the uncanny..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : : Rick Klaw Reads at SF in SF on April 20, 2013 : "...those are the kind of people that don't get work anymore..."
04-29-13: Commentary : Ben Katchor Catalogues 'Hand Drying in America' : Subversive Cities of the Heart
04-27-13: Commentary : Mark Morris Introduces 'Toady' : A New World of Horror
Agony Column Podcast News Report : : Thomas Frank from The Easy Chair and Harper's Magazine: TV's DC Fantasies : "... basically, everyone is corrupt ..."
04-22-13: Commentary : Danielle Trussoni Maps 'Angelopolis' : The Afterlife of Angels
04-17-13: Commentary : How Not to Leave the House : Reach for the Recycling
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Matt Richtel, Sophie Littlefield and Terry Bisson at SF in SF on February 9, 2013 : "You cannot do this all day long." Sophie Littlefield
04-16-13: Commentary : Stephen Kessler 'Scratch Pegasus' : Lens of Language
04-08-13: Commentary : Ruth Ozeki Clocks 'A Tale for the Time Being' : Reading is the Future
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2013 Interview with Ruth Ozeki : "...through the act of writing, she would somehow conjure the reader into being..."
