#016 - The S&L Podcast: Pants!
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 4:49PM This week we check in on the beginning of the Wheel of Time series. Veronica's ahead of me and says the thing really picks up right after the point I stopped. Which makes me think she's just trying to get me to start reading again. Which is fine. One of the problems is I'm reading Watchmen at the same time in advance of the movie. I'll share a few impressions about that with you as well. We also discuss the book Daemon as reviewed on Slashdot. Should it be our next book choice?
Finally we take some reader comments, including a Wheel of Time Drinking Game and someone calling the last book "pants." We're pretty sure that means he didn't like it. Welcome to the wonderful world of monthly Sword and Laser! Woo-hoo! Pant
Special thanks to Jonathan Coulton for the use of his song, Mr. Fancy Pants! Go buy it here!
Reader Comments (14)
I believe an 11-book series would be an...undecology?
And speaking of Warcrafty names...I don't play WoW, but I kept hearing the place where they cross the river as "Tauren Fairy," which...conjures up some odd mental images...
Wow, we have the same mind, thanks for sticking Mr. Fancy Pants and the end of the podcast, the whole time V was talking about fancy pants I was dying to listen to that song.
Also, being a Brit, I thought I'd clarify; pants does mean underwear and we do use it to mean something is bit lame/rubbish/crap. For example, Veronica might say that "I thought Memoirs was pretty pants."
We do also use the phrase fancy pants in the same sort of way Americans do.
Great show/group, I'm off to go read The Eye of the World.
PS. That is way more than I ever thought I would type about pants.
An 11-book series would be an endecalogy or endekalogy, depending on your take regarding how to transliterate Greek into English.
This is the first episode of S&L I listened to almost to the end... Considering that I have hardly any time to read any fiction at all, that's not too bad.
Speaking of pants....
http://www.fancypantsadventures.com/" rel="nofollow">Fancy Pants Adventures (beware, addictive game)
If you like Fantasy stories you will love the Song of Ice & Fire by George R R Martin. The first book in the series is "The Game of Thrones". It is amazing in the fact that the characters act like real people with believable motivations.
As a reader who hates trilogies for trilogies sake, Sara Douglass has done some excelent stand alone books.
Threshold and Beyond the Hanging Wall are both availabe on amazon.
So do yourself a favour and check it out!
Darryl
And oh joy, there is a trilogy sequal to Threshhold. Sigh..
Darryl
I just finished Daemon (audio version- highly recommended) and thought it might be a good read for the group. It is more main stream than typical sci-fi, though I think it qualifies. Anyway, as a fellow IT guy, I enjoyed and recommend it.
Great show! I feel like in many ways, I'm very opposite to Tom, I know way too much about the swords, and don't have a lot of experience with the lasers. I'll echo Simon MacDonald's recommendation of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series by George R.R. Martin for anyone who likes Jordan's Wheel of Time series.
Just as an FYI, Brandon Sanderson is going to be writing the final tome in the WoT series. He was asked by Jordan's widow to write, and is I think best-known for his Mistborn books (I don't know for sure, I haven't read those yet). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson
Tom, Veronica Thanks for another superb podcast its great to get your takes on some great books.
Tom if your are considering getting into fantasy but are used to Hard Scifi I recommend Otherland it combines the two in an utterly sublime way.
Veronica if you are not sure about hard scifi try Peter F Hamilton the Dreaming Void! it really will pull you into the genre, (I listened to it at work, had to stop myself cheering at times! LOL)
Enjoy
I'd also recommend martins Song of Ice & Fire for fantasy readers. It's my favourite fantasy series in many many years.
Just stumbled onto this site when watching a product review done by Tom on Cnet TV (and noticing his page on a screen of a laptop).
I've read all of the Wheel of Time books - but I've been listening to them on my iPod on my way home from work each day - which is funny since I listen to BOL on my way to work. I've been listening to WoT for about 3 years now - but I've only recently discovered BOL over the past few months - from a mentioning of Scott Johnson on The Instance.
What a tangled web we weave =)
+1 for Peter F. Hamilton, though you'd probably want to start with Pandora's Star & Judas Unchained. Dreaming Void & Temporal Void (& whatever the 3rd book is) are a sequel to the first series. There are many memorable characters that make appearances a 100 years later in the 2nd series. The 2nd series is interesting though, because it goes back and forth from a scifi plot to a fantasy plot, and somehow the plots will be united in the end.
Brandon Sanderson (finishing Wheel of Time) on the GraphicAudio podcast, plus an hour of Elantris, with full cast, music, & effects:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/graphicaudio/~5/sp-1yDuI_Ek/graphicaudiopodcast019.mp3