SFSurplus-2008-07-15 #056 [56:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Special Guest: Mur Lafferty (murverse.com). Topics: Audio Fiction, Podiobooks, Can’t Stop the Serenity

Thank you for taking your valuable time to listen to us. This is show number 56 on the feed July 15th, 2008. We’ll be talking about Audio Fiction and Podiobooks in the Council of Great Relevance. Author and new-media pioneer, Mur Lafferty is with us today. Very exciting. In the news there will be no Trek at Comic-Con, Hellboy tops the box office, DC Comics re-thinks its movie strategy, and Fans of Fanboys win. I’m also going to talk about Can’t Stop the Serenity and raising money for Equality Now.

If you’re in the Salt Lake City area, pre-order your tickets for “Can’t Stop the Serenity,” a screening of Joss Whedon’s “Serenity” to benefit Equality Now. Pre-order tickets are $10 and they’re $15 at the door. Here are the details:

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 6:30pm
Brewvies (age limit is 21)
677 S 200 W
Salt Lake City

SciFi Surplus is presented by GoToMeeting. The best way to conduct an online meeting is now available for the Mac! For a FREE 30-day trial, visit “Go To Meeting dot com.”

Casey: You can make contact with SciFi Surplus using the Temporal Temps Hotline by calling 801-938-5525. Our Skype username is “scifisurplus.” For all of this information again or send and email go to scifisurplus.com and click “talk to us.”

Casey: I’m Casey and joining me on the show today is

• Jeromy - Our Resident Science and Space Enthusiast
• Randy - Producer - TheNakedBootleg.com is getting ready to start up.
• Pam - New Friday Producer, a.k.a. “Girl Friday” PantsFreesia
• Mur Lafferty - Author and new-media pioneer - MurVerse.com

Okay, everyone is on board. Let’s get our geek on!

Copy: J.J. Abrams says he is disappointed that there will not be a presentation at Comic-Con for his Star Trek re-imagining. The director says the production is not far enough along to present anything to an audience yet. Abrams says the story focuses on why Kirk, Spock and the crew of he Enterprise are so tightly connected. Star Trek opens in theaters May 8th, 2009.

Copy: Hellboy II: The Golden Army took the top spot at the box office in the U.S. sending Hancock to second. Brendan Fraser’s Journey to the Center of the Earth debuted at number three. The newest Hellboy earned an 88% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes dot com.

SciFi Surplus is presented by GoToMeeting. The best way to conduct an online meeting is now available for the Mac as well as the PC! GoToMeeting gives you flexibility for your busy schedule because you don’t have to travel across town or even across the country to have an effective, productive meeting. You can start an online meetings on the fly or schedule them in advance. Everyone logs on to your meeting during a conference call and THEY see YOUR computer screen. You don’t have to communicate with just words. You can SHOW them what you’re talking about. If you haven’t tried GoToMeeting for FREE, NOW is the time. For YOUR FREE 30-day trial visit “Go To Meeting dot com slash tech podcasts.” That’s “Go To Meeting dot com slash tech podcasts. You can also click on the GoToMeeting link on our website.

Copy: Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, is saying that science fiction television and movies are to blame for a lack of interest in the “real-world” space program. Aldrin says -quote- “All the shows where they beam people around and things like that have made young people think that is what the space program should be doing. It’s not realistic.” -end quote- He praises movies like “Apollo 13″ and documentaries for their portrayal of space flight.

Copy: Warner Brothers, the parent of DC Comics, seems to be taking steps to re-think their movie adaptations of the superhero genre. After the recent success of Iron-Man and the buzz generated by tagging the films with cameos from other heroes in the Marvel universe, W-B and DC are having high level meetings about the future of their franchises.

Copy: Fans of the highly anticipated film, Fanboys can claim a victory. We talked with the writer Ernie Cline in show number 47 when editing duties for the film were given back to the original director. We’ve also learned that the original storyline has been reinstated to include one character’s desire to see Star Wars: Episode I before he dies of cancer. When the terminal cancer subplot was pulled from the film there was outrage from fans and a boycott of The Weinstein Company began.

Council of Great Relevance: Downloadable Audio Fiction/Podiobooks

Casey: We’re talking about Downloadable Audio Fiction, also known as podiobooks. In the council today is special guest, Mur Lafferty, author and new-media pioneer, Randy, our producer and podiobook junkie, and Pam, an audio fiction fan and new contributer to the show. Modern Audio Fiction and Podiobooks can be traced back to the radio dramas of the early 20th century. Given the fact that there has been a lot of years where this format wasn’t so popular, how did modern downloadable audio fiction get started?

• Harkens back to the day of serialized radio drama
• Podiobook explosion of 2006 (Sigler, Tee Morris, etc.)
• The term “Podiobooks” was coined by Evo Terra, who started podiobooks.com and brought Tee Morriss and Chris Miller in to start it with him.
• Earliest podiobooks were manuscripts that people had written and never been able to get published traditionally so they started podcasting it- now evolved to content written specifically for audio consumption and is much more interactive
• Sigler uses his “Junkie’s” names in his body count in Infection
• Sigler is currently running a contest to design the P.U.V. James Keeling for his podcast novel, The Crypt
• Hutchins’ 7th Son:Obsidian called for fan-created content to be included in the feed
• Playing for Keeps by Lafferty had fan and other podcaster-created content
• Matthew Wayne Selznick’s “Brave Men Run” (incidentally, comes out in print Sunday July 13) had a day long live streaming content provided by other podiobook authors.
• Cross promotion between authors
• “Share the Pain” between Hutchins/Sigler
• 7th Son clones in Lafferty’s “Hell”
• Randy -Reference of Jack Palm’s Mustang and billboard in Sigler’s “Nocturnal”
• J.C. Hutchins references Perry Dawsey in his 7th Son Trilogy. Dawsey is the main character in Sigler’s Infected.
• Charity promotions
• Sigler - veterans
• EscapePod - takes the “donate” button off the site in December, and encourages people to donate to Heifer International

Casey: Let’s talk a bit about the range of content. There are all kinds of genre fiction in podcasting and podiobooks.

• Ranges from very science-intensive (Singularity by Bill DeSmedt) to very fictionalized/character driven (Space Casey by Ellis)
• Sigler takes time to research the science behind his books (genetics, deep earth spelunking, etc.), and applies it, but has had some goof-ups (no face masks in the suits in Earthcore)
• Fantasy stories such as Pocket and the Pendant series by Mark Jeffrey, Shadowmagic by John Lenahan
• Short story collections such as EscapePod (sci-fi) or PseudoPod (horror, which Mur edited) or PodCastle (fantasy)
• Traditional “fan fiction” written within an existing scifi universe
• TD-0013, a Stormtrooper who narrates “A Different Point of View” about his take on the events outlined in Star Wars.
• Any other fanfic audionovels? - Buffy Between The Lines - Buffy audiodrama fanfic

Casey: There are different ways to go about storytelling in audio. Talk about some of the distictions.

• Voice Only versus Sound Effects
• There have been very compelling stories that have used only the narrator’s/author’s voice
• early Sigler (Earthcore, Ancestor)
• Heaven series by Mur Lafferty (more fantasy than scifi)
• Other authors have gone to other extremes
• 1st season of Shadow Falls (a little more horror than scifi) by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff used a full cast (second season (”Shadow Falls: Badlands”) was his voice only, with a stronger focus on the story and not the production- it was also about 3x longer than the first season)
• Space Casey by Christiana Ellis used a cast of characters and full sounds effects, and recently won the “GOLD Mark Time Award for Best Science Fiction Audio production of the year” Unlike Nemcoff’s production, which used actors (I think), Christiana relied on other podcasting talent. Likewise, “The Takeover” by Lafferty uses other podcasters as character voices
• Writing/Reading styles are varied
• Most writers read their fiction as if it were a book on CD
• Christiana Ellis performed Space Casey entirely through dialogue with first person insight or narrative
• Delivery Method
• Serialized delivery vs a “dump” - Lafferty delivered early novels in the Heaven series one chapter a week, but with Wasteland, she delivered all the content at once
• Delivering content all at once doesn’t provide the oppty to incorporate fan feedback
• Services like podiobooks.com can schedule in the original schedule (daily, weekly, or monthly) [Mur edit] instead of all at once if a listener wants to recapture the original feeling
• Source - Authors typically offer content direct from their website, via a service like podiobooks.com once it’s complete, or via iTunes.
• Direct from site or on the author’s iTunes feed, you typically get extra “chat” from the author - more background or fan feedback calls, or promos for other books or online projects
• Feeds like podiobooks.com have just to the story content with limited extra. If there’s a “story so far” as part of the production, it’s usually included in both types of feeds.
• Soundtracks
• Some productions have background music, like Pocket and Pendant series - very soft, but will flare at an important part of the story
• Season 3 [Mur edit] of Heaven by Lafferty offered a customized soundtrack- a new song that played at the end of every episode
• The Takeover has the best song ever, “Re: Your Brains” by Jonathan [Mur edit] Coulton at the beginning, and closing song by SongsToWearPantsTo. (”Re: Your Brains” is also used in “How to Suceed in Evil” by Patrick McLean)
• Celldweller has done the music for 7th Son: Obsidian
• Scott Sigler uses the band Uncrowned for music on the Nocturnal and Infected podcasts

Parsec Awards- awarded annually at Dragon*Con

• 2006 Long Fiction went to “How to Suceed in Evil” by Patrick McLean (beat out 7th Son and Infected (then known as Infection)) - all 2006 winners found here: http://parsecawards.com/2006-parsec-awards/winners
• 2007
• Best Speculative Fiction Story Short Form: No World for Warriors
• Best Speculative Fiction Novella Form: The Arwen by Timothy Callahan (now in Season 3)
• Best Speculative Fiction Novel Form: The Immortals by Tracy Hickman
• Mark Time Award for Best Science Fiction Audio production of the year - Christiana Ellis just won for “Space Casey”

Mur Lafferty

• The Takeover
• Working on “War” (final book in Heaven series)
• Publishing “Playing for Keeps” on August 25th
• Presenting at “Podcasting Your Novel” panel at Dragon*Con in Atlanta
• MCing the Parsec awards

Other Authors to mention (not necessarily genre fiction)

• Tee Morriss
• Phil Rossi
• Seth Harwood
• Evo Terra - founder of podiobooks.com
• Corey Doctorow
• Nathan Lowell

Casey: This is one of those topics that can go on all night. Thanks go out to Randy and Pam for putting this segment together and to the fabulous Mighty Mur Lafferty for being here and sharing her wisdom and knowledge. Keep listening because we’re going to talk to Mur about her new book and her podcasts.

SciFi Surplus is News, Talk, Geeks and Fun. And we love the geeks! Interacting with listeners is a great part of doing this show. If you aren’t a member of Facebook, we encourage you to sign up and join our Facebook group and make friends with us and the hundreds of people there. We also have a page so you can mark yourself as a fan and help spread the geeky word. Just search for SciFi Surplus and you’ll find us. We also appreciate hearing your opinions. If you go to scifisurplus.com and click “talk to us” you can find all the ways to give us feedback about the show or voice your opinions about whatever you like. Here’s a voicemail talking about show number 55.

Play:[Jim, Dallas - Comic Books to Movies]

Can’t Stop the Serenity

Topic: Mur Lafferty is the COOLEST!

• Playing for Keeps is available August 25th.
• Everyone should order a copy from Amazon the day of to make it show up on their charts.
• SFS will have a special link on our website for Mur’s book.
• MurVerse.com
• Tricks of the Podcast Masters is continually used by Casey as a reference.

Casey: A huge special thank you goes out to Mur Lafferty for spending the entire show with us. Thanks also go out to our producer- Randy, our brand new Thursday night producer- Pam, our science and space expert- Jeromy, and to Nicole Dowland for taking some time for us. If you like SciFi Surplus and you’d like to help out, please take the time to make a donation at SciFi Surplus dot com. For everyone here, I’m Casey and we’ll talk to you next time!