The Sword and Laser discussion

http://www.swordandlaser.com/home/201...

And thanks to Scott Lynch for joining us!

Great! Was starting to twitch from missing my S&L fix.

Nick wrote: "Great! Was starting twitch from missing my S&L fix."

Yeah, sorry! We could only get Scott on Tuesday, so just decided to postpone the episode a bit. But it's a good long one! :)

I hide my S&L withdrawal symptoms by telling my coworkers I just need more coffee.

Now I have to decide if I want to listen immediately or listen on my commute like I'm supposed to.

My life is so hard.

Awesome news, I thought because of the delay there was no episode this week. :)

Yay, mid-week brain candy!

I'm listening to the podcast right now, and Tom just said that he wasn't a big fan of the James S A Corey series. I read Leviathan Wakes a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. So is it the type of story that you don't like or is it the fact that it's a dual author? Just curious because it seems like a book that you would be up for, with the spaceships and all.

Tom, you have the distinction of being the second podcaster whose pronunciation of Eoin Colfer's name I have corrected.

It's pronounced like Owen (or just one syllable, own).
Not like Ian.
http://www.forvo.com/word/eoin/

JRush wrote: "I'm listening to the podcast right now, and Tom just said that he wasn't a big fan of the James S A Corey series. I read Leviathan Wakes a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. So is ..."

I haven't read it, that's all. I have no opinion whatsoever.

Kate wrote: "Tom, you have the distinction of being the second podcaster whose pronunciation of Eoin Colfer's name I have corrected.

It's pronounced like Owen (or just one syllable, own).
Not like Ian.
http:/..."

That's what Is aid "EEOOOIIIWWWen"

Tom wrote: "
That's what Is aid "EEOOOIIIWWWen" "

I wish they taught the IPA in school for discussions like this.
There's no 'ee' sound in Eoin.

Kate wrote: "There's no 'ee' sound in Eoin."

It's a Ralph (Rafe) Fiennes thing!

Thanks for asking my question!

Scott sounds like a really nice guy.

Nevan wrote: "Kate wrote: "There's no 'ee' sound in Eoin."

It's a Ralph (Rafe) Fiennes thing!"

I'm pretty sure the 'Rafe' thing is just because he's posh.

He's Colfer saying his own name, and as a bonus reading a little of his Artemis Fowl book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBC8jC...

Kate wrote: "Tom wrote: "
That's what Is aid "EEOOOIIIWWWen" "

I wish they taught the IPA in school for discussions like this.
There's no 'ee' sound in Eoin."

I had a mental picture of kids drinking India Pale Ale in school when I read this, and I know you are talking about the International Phonetic Alphabet.

I would totally have appreciated some Indian Pale Ale as a school child.

I completely disagree with Scott's assessment of John Scalzi (might as well say the same about Joe Haldeman or early Heinlein). Old Man's War not untextured, but concise and cinematic. You get the maximum pleasure for the least effort. In this age of door-stopping fantasies, where publishers rate books on their 'thickness', a lot of authors can learn from Scalzi.

Good show and a great interview...like Scott alot...

Scott is the best guest S&L has had thus far, in my opinion. He seemed down-to-earth, and I admire his tendency towards occasional profanity.

He pretty much nailed the Hyperion problem, though: It's a fantastic book, but it's easily lemmable. That could be a problem when all these video-show blow-ins start to show up!

Great interview!

Kate wrote: "Nevan wrote: "Kate wrote: "There's no 'ee' sound in Eoin."

It's a Ralph (Rafe) Fiennes thing!"

I'm pretty sure the 'Rafe' thing is just because he's posh."

I thought it was because his cousin's name is Ranulph Fiennes and it sounded too similar so he changed it, I'm just guessing.

Also If anyone's interested the Artemis Fowl series is a pretty fast and fun series to read. I think the last book in the series is coming out this year.

Boots wrote: "I thought it was because his cousin's name is Ranulph Fiennes and it sounded too similar so he changed it, I'm just guessing. "

If your cousin's name is Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet, OBE you might just be posh

That was the problem. I was drinking water. If I had an IPA in me I would have said it right.

Kate wrote: "If your cousin's name is Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet, OBE you might just be posh"

That's almost like a reverse version of a Jeff Foxworthy joke.

You know you're posh when... you can land an airplane in your driveway!

Or something like that, I don't know, I'll shut up now.

Tamahome: "I completely disagree with Scott's assessment of John Scalzi."

That wasn't my assessment of John Scalzi, though. That was my assessment of Old Man's War.

Nevan: "He pretty much nailed the Hyperion problem, though: It's a fantastic book, but it's easily lemmable."

Yeah, there's a pretty high chance that some of the folks here are going to punch holes in their walls when they fling that sucker away. Hyperion does have the advantage of being a set of nested stories, based on the Canterbury Tales... so even if you don't particularly like one, you've got five more that might push your buttons. There's military action, love-across-time-dilation, a creepy backwards-aging time travel mystery, a really funny publishing industry satire, a starkly horrifying religious quest... each thread is pretty distinct.

Scott wrote: "There's military action, love-across-time-dilation, a creepy backwards-aging time travel mystery, a really funny publishing industry satire, a starkly horrifying religious quest... each thread is pretty distinct. "

I loved it mostly because of the backwards-aging mystery thingie!
Still among my favourite Sci-fi novels ever ;-)

By the seven eyeballs of Zorflabb, what a fantastic interview!

And yes, I agree about Simmons. Love his stuff, but man, the endings are almost always letdowns. I do think he pulled it off in The Terror, but it was still weird compared to the rest of the book.

I thought The Terror ending was bad and didn't fit with the tone of the rest of the book at all.


Also, great show T&V. Lynch seems like a decent guy. Really talkative too :P

By the way Tom, it's pronounced 'Ursula K. Le GWIN', in case she comes on the show.

Tamahome wrote: "By the way Tom, it's pronounced 'Ursula K. Le GWIN', in case she comes on the show." See previous lack of IPA.

Chris: "And yes, I agree about Simmons. Love his stuff, but man, the endings are almost always letdowns."

Ala: "I thought The Terror ending was bad and didn't fit with the tone of the rest of the book at all."

CAUTION: My response here spoils a whole pile of Dan Simmons books.

Yeah, The Terror is pretty indicative of his overall issue... you've got hundreds of pages of really creepy atmosphere and fascinating story as the cast gets winnowed down, and then at the end you find out the monster is a sort of polar bear with a giraffe-neck, and that it's a spirit from the dawn of time and is essentialy unkillable. So... it turns out there was never any tension after all. Everyone in the book except for the chosen one was going to die and none of their struggling ever gave them a chance.

Simmons excels at creating hopped-up, high-powered, super-dangerous antagonists, and then (perhaps because they're so uber) he never seems able to explain how anyone could believably take them down. Summer of Night is 80% of a truly amazing horror novel, a brilliant piece of work, but the climax is just... ugh. A supernatural force that was previously nigh-unstoppable becomes incompetent and silly so the cast of 12-year-olds can defeat it. In Song of Kali, the goddess Kali herself(!) is "terrifyingly" represented as sort of somersaulting around in the darkness and flicking a really long tongue at the human protagonist. There's some room for interpretation as to whether or not she's a hallucination (or maybe I'n being generous), but even for a hallucination, that's lame.

In Rise of Endymion, the titular hero Raul Endymion, a certified regular human being, physically fights the artificial life-form Rhadamanth Nemes, after Nemes has been established as being superior to the Shrike (there's a thought to give one pause) and beats it. Although he had some assistance, in that an ally of his disrupted Nemes' ability to slow time, the fact remains that Nemes is an inhumanly strong construct built out of futuristic composites. She's portrayed as being able to stand up and operate normally inside a space vessel accelerating at 200 Gs. Yet Raul clobbers her with his hands and fists. It just doesn't compute.

I loved his answer to the question about profanity.

Scott wrote: In Rise of Endymion . . .

Take this with a grain of salt; it's been years since I last read the Cantos. Too long, in fact.

(view spoiler)[ I'm wracking my brain to think of the scene in which Raul fights Rhadamanth Nemes. I do remember Fr. Captain de Soya firing on Nemes from orbit, fusing her to a riverbed or what-have-you, and I can remember the Nemes siblings tag-teaming the Shrike, dealing some damage to its midriff that it seemed to shrug-off.

As for Nemes being superior to the Shrike: I've always liked to think of the possibility that the Shrike is the end-product of the Ultimates manifesto; that it is the Machine God.

I mean, isn't its raison d'être purportedly to draw the human zeitgeist's avatar out of hiding through the suffering of the people impaled on the Tree of Pain? I don't see how the TechnoCore circa 2700AD could produce a better killing machine in the form of the Nemes siblings than its future incarnation can knock together out of some barbed wire, metal, and shoe polish.

When it comes down to it, aren't the Nemes siblings just a prototype of the Shrike?
(hide spoiler)]

What I'm thinking of, IIRC, is the bit where the Nemes constructs show off that their control of time is more precise/powerful than that at the disposal of the Shrike... I forget if they actually damaged it or merely rendered it impotent. My take on them was that the Shrike was in the service of a power with greater cosmic resources, but in the here-and-now of a direct confrontation, the Nemes-things had the edge.

Thanks for the heads up to stop the podcast. the geek-ling doesn't need any more of an education.

Scott Lynch is fucking awesome.

That was a great episode. I really enjoyed the interview. I admit, I was kinda frustrated by Scott's answer to my question, but at the same time, I kinda thought that would be the answer...and his discussion of the books and the world actually piqued my interest enough that I'm going to give the 2nd book a go. Originally when I finished it, I was pretty on the fence leaning toward uninterested in continuing with the series. But Scott seems like a really cool guy, and the interview pushed me to the other side of the line. So at some point, I will end up re-reading The Lies of Locke Lamora (probably listen to audio) and moving to the second book.

I also though his commentary on Hyperion was spot-on. He described exactly how I felt upon finishing the book, the disappointment I had with the completely unsatisfactory ending. For me, though, I didn't know it was the first book in a series...and didn't find out until about 5 years later. Needless to say, Hyperion is another book I plan on revisiting, whether it's the next pick or not.

Great episode and another great interview you guys. You just keep knocking 'em out of the park.

I enjoyed the interview this episode, but when you guys were talking about books that were meant to be trilogies you mentioned the Foundation series. The Foundation series started out as short stories and the first few books just put those short stories together.

Bob wrote: "I enjoyed the interview this episode, but when you guys were talking about books that were meant to be trilogies you mentioned the Foundation series. The Foundation series started out as short stor..."

I may just be making things up here, but I suspect that Stephen R. Donaldson's first Thomas Covenant trilogy was one of the first fantasy series that was consciously created as a trilogy -- prior to that, you had things like Lord of the Rings that was really one long story that got split up for publishing reasons, or the initial Foundation books which, as Bob said, were fixed up from a series of magazine shorts.

Agree with everyone that this was a great interview - Scott's answers were VERY candid and honest - isn't there some sort of professional code around criticising fellow authors so honestly? However Scotts assessment of Dan Simmons was spot on (not necessarily wrt Hyperion which is awesome and I hope we pick it!) but for example with Ilium/Olympos which has an amazing setup and concept (re-enacting the Trojan War on Mars!) but then the rest of the story was a real letdown for me.

@Joesph: What about Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy?

Chris wrote: "@Joesph: What about Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy?"

Good point. And there were also things like Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy and E.R. Eddison's Zimiamvian trilogy, now that I think about it.

I thought about Gormenghast, but Peake intended it to be an ongoing series.

Was Zimiamvia always intended to be a trilogy? The third one was unfinished when Eddison died, correct? (Just like Peake, interestingly enough.)

I think Zimiamvia was intended to be a trilogy, although it was kind of written backwards -- I think the unfinished book had the beginning of the story, although the internal chronology of the whole trilogy was complicated.

Another prior example, now that I'm thinking of it: Katherine Kurtz's initial Deryni trilogy.

But it still seems like Covenant was an inflection point -- I think that was around the time when trilogies (and longer series of fat fantasy novels) began to become a Thing, at least in a commercial sense.

Yeah, I've always felt like the launching point of the current "classic" fantasy genre was the publishing of Covenant and Shannara by Del Rey in 1977. (Covenant was a trilogy to begin with, and Shannara became one later.)

I want to listen to this podcast but it don't work. The space were i am supposed to press play is completely blank. Anyone else have this problem?

Are you listening on the website? What browser are you using? Do you have any extensions? Have you tried right-clicking (Windoze....) and saving it locally and listening with a computer-based audio player? I always grab the shows via iTunes and didn't have any issues, but can try to help if you give some more info...

terpkristin wrote: "Are you listening on the website? What browser are you using? Do you have any extensions? Have you tried right-clicking (Windoze....) and saving it locally and listening with a computer-based audio..."

@terpkristin - Apple fan girl!!

@Mach - I've had no issue with downloading from the website on Windows in any browser. The mp3 link is normally at the bottom of the post so do as terp suggests and right click and download. Using windows media player instead of the embedded show player has always been a more pleasant experience to me. I also subscribe to the shows RSS feed using the android app beyondpod so that it downloads and has the podcasts ready for me when I'm out and about with just my android phone.