My Brain on Scifi: New Horizons and the SF Signal Podcast
A couple weeks ago, I said to John DeNardo: “Ya know – I need to write something for you.” “Yeah?” he replied. “What would you write?”
An excellent question. I wasn’t sure just yet what I would write or how often either, but I quickly became excited by the prospect and started planning out some topics that I could cover that would fit well on SF Signal. Then came more. We started chatting about the Functional Nerds podcast; he, John Anealio and I. We (The Functional Nerds) wanted John to come on more shows with us and he wanted to be more involved, but wondered how we could get SF Signal itself more involved. Things began to percolate.
Conversations continued. Turns out, SF Signal has wanted to do some sort of podcast endeavor for quite some time now but they haven’t had the time to really dedicate to it.
Enter The Functional Nerds…
We sold John on the idea of a dedicated SF Signal podcast; something sleeker, leaner than what we normally do over on our podcast – shorter too. It would focus on a couple of topics for discussion, include the SF Signal Irregulars – any of em that wanted to be a part of it, rotating each week to give us fresh perspectives and voices. It would also include interviews with authors, actors, movers & shakers within the vast spectrum of genre media – and it would hit every Monday.
Hosted & co-hosted by me, John Anealio & John DeNardo, it would be a new chapter in the evolution of SF Signal as the premiere destination on the web for fans of speculative fiction news, reviews, mind melds and tidbits. And it will start very soon.
So when I went back to the question, ‘What would I write for SF Signal?’, I realized that the first thing would have to be about this new podcast and to ask you, the readers, a couple of questions and get your input.
- Who would you like to hear interviewed? There are a lot of interviews out there on podcasts, but is there someone you’ve been dying to hear from who hasn’t shown up? A new author, a seasoned author – let us know!
- What topics do you want to hear discussed? Is there something going on today that just has you riled up and you don’t feel enough people are talking about it? eBooks, reboots, crappy Hollywood adaptations ruining your favorite novels or stories – give us a list!
All right – that’s it. Big news, I know. I’m excited. John D. & John A. are excited. How about you?
Tagged with: fantasy • interview • podcast • science fiction • speculative fiction
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I don’t have any specific names, but I do think it would be nice to get a combination of the following:
As for topics, that’s trickier, I think. I would like to see more discussions of specific themes within SF/F (like a discussion about the human/other dichotomy, something I’m currently studying and working on, and even discussions of World SF–whatever that may be). I just feel like it would be a good idea to have a podcast that has the kind of diversity that shows up here. We don’t get enough podcasts that explicitly address the wide variety of things in SF. They always become very focused on a select set, which is probably normal (my own podcast has that problem, though we’ve tried to wander around a bit here or there; but that’s the Skiffy and Fanty Show for you).
Hope that helps with your thoughts on this.
A recap of the week’s news, would be good, with a bit of commentary, but also getting a couple of reviews of recent books, some random chatter and banter, I think this will be a fun listen!
Oh, for a moment I had the worried thought of, “Oh no! No more Functional Nerds?” But I see it was no concern. Sounds like a great project, I’ll be interested to hear the first ‘cast.
Just off the top of my head, one of the guys from the Writing Excuses podcast would be interesting to have on. They always have something interesting to add.
Yay Podcast!
If you need any help with it, I’ll volunteer!
Oh man, I’ve been waiting for a regular SF podcast to appear for ages… SciFiNow is about the best I’ve found so far and they are anything but regular… I’ll have to check out Functional Nerds, but in the meantime I echo Andrew’s comments. I would LOVE it if the podcast was a look at the week of SF news, reviews and/or previews of upcoming and new SF books, movies etc, interviews with whoever you can get (right now, I’d love to hear from people like Chris Wooding about the Ketty Jay series, China Mieville and how he manages to chuck out book after book of top quality fiction and Neal Stephenson about… anything, really, the guy’s brilliant).
I’d also love to hear more from the Bioware/Mass Effect geezers about the movie adaptation and how they think it might work, given the fact that the game relies heavily on the premise that the player shapes the story… I’d like to know how they will shape the story for the movies!
Otherwise, whatever you guys reckon will be good will almost certainly be satisfying to me! Just need to know when it’s happening!!
Three Words: Mind Meld Podcasts!
Do whatever sffaudio does. :)