SFSurplus-2008-07-25 #059 [48:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Thank you for taking your valuable time to listen to us. This is show number fifty-nine on the feed July 25th, 2008. Our topic in the Council of Great Relevance today is Introducing Kids to SciFi and Fantasy. In the news; Astronaut Edgar Mitchell talks about a cover-up of alien visitations on Earth, Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse will be aired out of order, Doctor Who is on iTunes, and we’re going to have a report on the first day of Comic-Con.

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

Producer - Girl Friday
The Conspirator - Vince
Science Nerd - Jeromy

It looks like everyone is on board and I’ve got my Frackberts Coffe. Let’s get our geek on!

Our top story today is not related to fiction but it is of such importance that it needs reporting.
Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell says aliens have repeatedly visited Earth and our governments are involved in a cover-up. The 8th man to walk on the moon says there’s no doubt about the contact.
[Play: Mitchell-1 - Out: phenomena is real.]
Mitchel grew up near Roswell, New Mexico and believes the purported events there are the beginning of the secrecy.
[PLAY: Mitchell-2 - Out: 60 years or so.]
He says the aliens look like the traditional image, with a small frame, large head, and large eyes.
[PLAY: Mitchell-3 - Out: that look strange to us.]
He also says our technology is “not nearly as sophisticated” as theirs and “had they been hostile we would have been gone by now”. Dr. Mitchell was a crew member on Apollo 14, and shares the record for longest moon walk with Alan Shepherd. His comments come from a recent radio interview. NASA released a statement claiming that they do not track UFO’s, nor are they involved in any sort of cover up regarding life from other worlds.

Source
Gordon Cooper made claims to a UN panel in 1985

Joss Whedon is making a new pilot for Dollhouse. In a move that may seem familiar to many, an alternate pilot will cause a shuffle in the running order of the 13 episodes ordered by the television network. Whedon insisted in a post at Whedoneque.com that the new pilot was his idea. Dollhouse stars Eliza Dushku and is expected to begin in January of 2009.

Eliza Dushku said, “And I, for some reason, did not get to wear my leather pants in the first episode, and that was kind of a problem… that was like a deal breaker. We have leather pants for me in the next one.”

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Doctor Who seasons 1, 2, and 3 are now available on iTunes. Because of this move, BBC America has a booth at Comic-Con and is seriously marketing Who in the U.S.

Now we’re going to go semi-live to Dave reporting from San Diego Comic-Con.
- Dave at ComicCon
Thank you Dave. Lot’s of neat things going on at Comic Con. He was talking about the Owl ship from Watchmen and there are some great pictures of it at AintItCool.com.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/37604

Council of Great Relevance : Introducing Kids to SciFi and Fantasy
We’re talking about Introducing children to SciFi and Fantasy and as most of us are parents we have some thoughts on the topic. We’ll get started by going through age groups and what’s appropriate.

Age appropriate genre fiction:

Preschool (Pam will take this set)

Fairy Tales are pretty standard fare
Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, - Princess phase is starting up full swing at our house with the 2 year old.
Shrek is a good blend of story for boys and girls - plus a butt-kicking princess!
Wall-E - Excellent way to introduce space travel and robotics to the younger crowd.
Star Wars - Not all movies in the series are appropriate
We let our 4 year old watch A New Hope, but that’s it. I so want to tell him that Vader is Luke’s father, but I’ve resisted so far- why ruin it for him?
I think Ep1 would be okay for this age group, too, but I didn’t want to ruin the integrity of the story line and show it out of order.
My 2 year old was enthralled with ANH. It is the only time I’ve ever seen him sit still for half an hour.

School Age (6-10)

Harry Potter
Reading to the kids at this age would be good, as it also allows you to filter out any violence you may not want to expose them to. Towards the end of this age bracket, let them read it themselves! Or read it to you.
Harry Potter has played a big part in getting kids to read again
Star Wars: Empire and Jedi are better suited for introduction at this age.
Sarah Jane Chronicles- Get them hooked on Dr Who early…
It’s also important to remember that young children even as old as 9 or 10 have tough time with existentialism.

Tween (10-13)

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeliene L’Engle
Nina Kimberly the Merciless: podiobook by Christiana Ellis would be good for girls at this age. Warrior chic, but also sort of a love story.
Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkein
The Time Machine, by HG Wells
Stephen Hawking is apparently writing a kid’s triology, the first book is called “George’s Secret Key to the Universe”. The aim was to “provide a modern vision of cosmology from the Big Bang to the present day”. The sole element of fiction in the book involves supercomputer that opens a door allowing George and his friends to travel into space aboard an asteroid.
Eragon?
I’m finding that my 11-year-old is well adapted to take in some of the more “awesome” stuff that has some violence in it.

Council’s First Sci-Fi Memory

Vince: Tranzor Z, Voltron, and Robotech. Robotech was the biggest influence though. Mostly because I found the novels a few years later.

Pam: I was 4, waiting in line to see Star Wars IV at the theatre, standing next to a large standee of C3PO and R2D2. I have my original action figures still, but I never got a Millenium Falcon, though I always wanted one. I’m holding out for the Millenium Falcon Transformer.
My family would all sit down to watch BSG together- I had a huge crush on Dirk Benedict, but would have settled for Boxy in a pinch. I still have my original BSG trading cards.

Casey: All my friends were trying to get me play Star Wars with them and I didn’t know what they were talking about for a week.
BSG was big for me too. I went to Universal Studios and they had Cylons that would shoot at you while you were on the tram.
I had a 6-million-dollar-man action figure and I could look though his head and see out his eye.

We’re now entering what I like to call the sloppy third part of the show. This is where we talk about things a little more off the cuff and maybe go off-topic for a bit.

We believe in community and we have several ways for you to interact with us. We’re going to be getting a forum set up at our website again in the coming weeks. For now though. You can use the forum at our Facebook group. There’s a link to the facebook group at scifisurplus.com. We’ve also got a “page” so you can mark yourself as a fan in your Facebook profile. Just search for SciFi Surplus from Facebook.

Matt from the Facebook groups says that the TOR ebook giveaway will allow people to download ALL of the books TOR has previously offered over the past few months for download until Sunday July 27th. TOR is working up to launching a Speculative Fiction destination website with loads of features and lots of writers and stories. TOR is one of the biggest speculative fiction publishers. Get the goods at T-O-R-dot-com. Thanks for the information, Matt.

I also want to point out that Mur Lafferty’s new book Playing for Keeps will be on sale at Amazon.com on August 25th and we want everyone to go to Amazon on that day and buy it. I have a button set up at our website that will take you right there when it’s time. That’s Playing for Keeps by Mur Lafferty on August 25th. Also Mur tipped us off the last time she was on the show that she starting up the Stories of the Third Wave in her podcast feed for the novel. Since the announcement, we’ve been working on a contribution to the radio station themed extra stories and all I can say about it right now is “Super 107.” We’ll have more details for you soon.

SciFi Surplus needs a day off. I have a couple of things that need to get done. and a bit of time to breathe. We’ve got a lot of new people on the crew now and everyone has ideas for the show and I have to take a bit of time getting caught up so we can incorporate the ideas. So there will be no Friday show on August 1st. We will be back on Tuesday, August 4th and hopefully there won’t be a ton of news to catch up on.

A year ago the U.S. government requested Boeing develop a laser that could be mounted on a truck that would be used to destroy incoming rounds from mortars, artillery, or rockets. This week, Boeing delivered the High Energy Technological Demonstrator, a first step towards tactical lasers being deployed on battlefields.

We talked about this in show number 58 but Vince has some thoughts so we’re going to talk about this one some more. The SciFi Channel released the trailer for Caprica this week. Scheduled to air December 2008, Caprica is about the politics of the twelve colonies shortly before they create the Cylons. Two daughters from two prominent families die and one of the fathers finds a way to bring them back.

Caprica Trailer

Thanks go out to our producer, Girl Friday, Vince, and Jeromy. Great job! 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!