#007 - The S&L Podcast: Elfpunk FTW
Posted on 
Friday, May 16, 2008 at 1:32AM
Friday, May 16, 2008 at 1:32AM On today's show:
CONTEST WINNER!
Nick
As the shock wave raced across the planet, Jared’s final thought was
admitting to himself: “Those damn scientists were right all along“.
He wins... a copy of Mass Effect!
WHAT WE'VE READ LATELY
V: Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
Tom: Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Film version is called Stalker.
ELFPUNK!
Vote for the next fantasy book, in the sub-genre of elfpunk!
(so far, Unshapely Things by Mark Del Franco is winning!)
Voting ends midnight, May 19th.
Reader Comments (9)
Unshapely Things is already on its way from Amazon, so I hope it wins.
Tom when you start playing choose a warrior! I'll get ya from noob to oob (as in uber!) in no time flat! And believe me as a guy that plays on 2 servers... AIE rocks! It's absolutely not elitist at all and the officers keeps things under control so people of all ages can enjoy it.
First time I've caught the podcast - love the theme music! Would love to follow the site, but I don't read... :P
I went "Wah!" when Tom mentioned Stalker, because I just finished playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl just a few days ago. I had heard that the game had connections to an old Russian film, but had no idea how strong those ties were...
It's set in the Zone which surrounds the remains of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, an area full of mutant wildlife and environmental 'anomalies.' Stalkers are those who enter the zone to retrieve the 'artifacts' that form inside the anomalies. There are stories of a particularly powerful artifact, the Wish Granter, inside the ruined Chernobyl reactor, but it's a long and perilous journey to get there.
Has anyone else played it? It's pretty new game...came out just last year.
Same here Will, ordered it from Amazon late last week. It will be read even if it doesn't win.
I miss the Jonathan Coulton intro, I really don't like the new one. Please bring back "The Future Soon!"
A second "Wah!" here. I too played through S.T.A.L.K.E.R. recently and was surprised to hear it's actually based on a novel and a movie.
In 2005 this DJ mix album, DE9: Transitions from Richie Hawtin featured a music video remixing a scene from the Stalker movie, which at the time was totally awesome even without the experiences the game planted in me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJmopxR6RQI
Weird are the threads of life that bring all these things together.
[...] Get creative! Write us a ONE LINE CLOSING SENTENCE to a science fiction or fantasy novel. See our last contest for a sample of a good opening line! We’ll put the top choices up for a [...]
Roadside Picnic by A&B Strugatsky is a fine novel. I remember reading it about 10 years ago. For those of you interested in Russian science fiction check out:
http://lib.ru/TRANSLATION/
Which hosts English translations of many Russian sci-fi writers. Give Hard to be a God by A&B Strugatsky a read as well as it is a great book.