Category Archives: Podcasts

Galactic Chat 58 – Ken Liu

In this latest episode of Galactic Chat, I get to talk to one of my favourite writers – Ken Liu! I have to apologise to all our listeners, because I was completely starstruck, and not very articulate. Fortunately, Ken more than makes up for it with one of the most fascinating interviews I have done.

We cover a huge range of ground, from the art of short stories to the challenges and pleasures of translating into English. We also get to hear about Ken’s upcoming “silkpunk” novel, which sounds absolutely amazing.

Anyone who loves short stories, epic fantasy, going out into the broader culture of spec fic or sweeping sci fi will get a huge amount out of this podcast. Actually, any spec fic fan is going to love it!

In this week’s episode David interviews Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Ken Liu. They talk about the short story form, the difficulty in translating from Chinese to English, Ken’s translation of the Chinese sci-fi masterpiece The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin and Ken’s own epic fantasy”Silkpunk” series called The Grace of Kings.

The blog post they reference in the cast is http://www.jasonsanford.com/blog/2014/8/want-to-be-a-successful-writer-avoid-short-stories

You can find Ken at his website.

Galactic Chat Post Ditmar Bonus Cast

Galactic Chat – Kaaron Warren

Galactic Chat – Kirstyn McDermott

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In the latest interview from Galactic Chat, I have the pleasure of interviewing one of Australia’s most talented spec fic authors – Kirstyn McDermott. From the show notes:

David McDonald returns this week with another interview from Continuum 9. In this episode he talks to Kirstyn McDermott, award winning author of Perfections and the recently released Caution: Contains Small Parts, and co-host of the Writer and the Critic Podcast (fear not, this is a Mondy free zone).

In this episode they discuss the challenges of transitioning between short and long fiction, and the comeback of the novella. Kirstyn shares her thoughts on the changing face of the publishing industry and discusses her experiences with the ebook only release of Perfections. And, we hear Kirstyn’s tips on how you go about reviewing the work of people you know.

You can purchase Perfections from Xoum, Amazon or Kobo

Caution: Contains Small Parts will be available from Twelfth Planet Press

Author Website: http://kirstynmcdermott.com/

Author Twitter: @fearofemeralds

You can follow this link to listen!

A Conversational Journey through New Who – Spearhead from Space!

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As we prepare to start on the next season of Doctor Who in our conversational review series, we thought we would do something different and check an episode of Classic Who. We made a list of epsiodes worth looking at, and Tansy suggested “Spearhead from Space”. There were a number of reasons it seemed a great start, it is the first appearance of Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, was intended as a mini reboot of the series and, very importantly, features Caroline John as Liz Shaw (some of you may be aware that, sadly, she passed away this year).

And, to make it even more different, we decided to try our hand at podcasting! This was my first experience, and rather nerve wracking, but we got through it. I am not game to listen to my babbling, so you will have to let me know how I went.

We had a lot of fun, and hopefully you will enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed making it. You can listen from the Podbean site, or download in iTunes (search The Book Nut or “Doctor Who in Conversation”). A big thanks to Andrew Finch for producing it for us!