space opera

StarShipSofa No 433 Ken MacLeod

April 27, 2016 by Jeremy Szal

Main Fiction: “‘The Entire Immense Superstructure’: An Installation” by Ken MacLeod

Originally published in Reach for Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Ken MacLeod was born in Stornoway and lives in West Lothian. He has Honours and Masters degrees in biological subjects and worked for some years in the IT industry. Since 1997 he has been a full-time writer. He is the author of fourteen novels, from The Star Fraction (1995) to Descent (Orbit, 2014), and many articles and short stories. His novels and stories have received three BSFA awards and three Prometheus Awards, and several have been short-listed for the Clarke and Hugo Awards. He is curently working on a space opera trilogy, The Corporation Wars (forthcoming 2016-2017).

In 2009 he was Writer in Residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at Edinburgh University, and in 2013 and 2014 was Writer in Residence at the MA Creative Writing course at Edinburgh Napier University. Ken MacLeod’s blog is The Early Days of a Better Nation. His twitter feed is @amendlocke

Narrated by: Cheyenne Wright

Cheyenne Wright is a freelance illustrator and concept artist. He is the color artist on the three-time Hugo Award winning steampunk graphic novel series Girl Genius, and co-creator of many other fine works; Including 50 Fathoms and the Ennie award winning Deadlands Noir for the Savage Worlds RPG. He has also produced graphics for Star Trek Online, the Champions MMO, and t-shirt designs for T.V.’s Alton Brown. Cheyenne lives in Seattle with his wife, their daughter, and an ever growing stack of unpainted miniatures. In his spare time he is teaching himself animation, and narrates short stories for a variety of audio anthologies where he is known as Podcasting’s Mr. Buttery ManVoice™

His story which we’re about to read is to be included with two other short stories in a small e-book published in Italy by Future Fiction (http://www.futurefiction.org/ ).

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Categories: Podcast | Tags: anthology, bsfa, Cheyenne Wright, high-tech, hugo award, Jonathan Strahan, Ken MacLeod, orbit, space opera, superstructure, the corporation wars, the star fraction

StarShipSofa No 429 Gareth L. Powell and Rachel Armstrong

March 30, 2016 by Jeremy Szal

Interview: Rachel Armstrong – Will We Ever Build StarShips

Main Fiction: “Distant Galaxies Colliding” by Gareth L. Powell

First published in Quantum Muse (2005)

GARETH L. POWELL is an award-winning writer from the UK. He is the author of the novels Silversands, The Recollection, Ack-Ack Macaque, Hive Monkey and Macaque Attack.

His alternate history thriller, Ack-Ack Macaque, won the 2013 BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) Award for Best Novel, and his story, ‘Ride The Blue Horse’, is currently shortlisted for the 2015 BSFA Award, in the short fiction category. In addition to winning the BSFA Award, Ack-Ack Macaque has also been published in Japan by Tokyo Sogensha; Fantasy Book Reviews placed it at #40 in their list of Top 100 Fantasy Books; and it has also inspired a comic strip, fan art, graffiti murals, a pop song, and at least one tattoo.

In 2011, The Guardian review of Gareth’s second novel, The Recollection, insisted that, “If you only read one space opera this year, it’s got to be The Recollection.” The book went on to be translated and published in Germany by Heyne (a division of Random House) under the title Sternentor. He is currently working on his sixth novel.

Gareth’s short stories have appeared in a host of magazines and anthologies, including Interzone, Solaris Rising 3, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. Many of his stories have been brought together in the collections, The Last Reef (2008) and The New Ships (coming 2017).

The Guardian says, “Powell draws his characters with fine brushstrokes.” SF Book Reviews places him, “at the forefront of science fiction,” and Gutenberg’s Son writes that he, “has managed to find the balance between thoughtful existentialism and pulp adventure. In addition to his fiction, Gareth has penned a strip for the long-running British comic, 2000 AD, and has written articles and reviews for The Irish Times, Acoustic Magazine, and SFX.

In the early 1990s, Gareth studied creative writing at the University of Glamorgan. He has since run a genre fiction workshop at Aberystwyth University and given guest lectures on creative writing at Bath Spa Uni. He is also a popular panelist and speaker at literary events and conventions, and was a guest of honour at BristolCon in 2012. He is a frequent guest on local radio, and has appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme.

Narrated by: Katherine Inskip

Katherine weighs galaxies for a living, and builds worlds in her spare time. She is addicted to chocolate and Japanese logic puzzles.

Science News by J J Campanella

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Categories: Podcast | Tags: galaxies colliding, Gareth L. Powell, J J Campanella, jeremy carter, katherine inskip, powell, quantum muse, Rachel Armstrong, science news, space opera, the last reef

StarShipSofa No 428 Stephen Kotowych

March 23, 2016 by Jeremy Szal

Jeremy Szal on Hugos and StarShipSofa

Main Fiction: “Saturn in G Minor” by Stephen Kotowych

Originally published in Writers of the Future: Volume 23

STEPHEN KOTOWYCH is a Writers of the Future Grand Prize winner (for “Saturn in G Minor”) and past finalist for the Prix Aurora Award, Canada’s top SF prize. His stories have appeared in StarShipSofa (#259), Interzone, Intergalactic Medicine Show, numerous anthologies, and been translated into a dozen languages.

His first collection of short fiction, Seven Against Tomorrow (which includes, among other stories, “Saturn in G Minor” and the Nikola Tesla murder mystery novella “Under the Shield”), is available now in both ebook and dead-tree formats. For more details, please visit his website at www.kotowych.com

Stephen is currently completing work on his first novel–a secret history about the real-life friendship between Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla. He enjoys guitar, tropical fish, and writing about himself in the third person.

Check out his blog at www.kotowych.com

Narrated by: Nick Camm

Nick is an actor, audio-book narrator and voice-overer. He recently did a few scenes on the telly with Derek Jacobi, which made him tingle. He’s just finished shooting the feature film ‘Slapper and Me’, which mostly involved him sitting in a sleazy pub for 12 hours a day smoking herbal cigarettes, drinking tepid, non-alcoholic ale and pretending to be in the 1970’s. He thinks it should be out in the autumn, but they’re not telling him, probably because they don’t want him turning up at the première in his cheap suit.

Audio-bookwise, Nick is currently four books into narrating the mystery/thriller ‘Eddie Malloy Series’, written by Richard Pitman and Joe McNally. Set in the skullduggerous world of horse-racing, reluctant part-time detective Eddie gets involved in various capers and generally solves stuff. It’s the first time in many a year that Nick has read, and enjoyed, a set of novels where spaceships refuse to appear. Notwithstanding, Nick has made a polite suggestion to the authors that shiny, future-type stuff might feature in the next of the series (a Hawking-drive, killer robot horse, perhaps). This has fallen on deaf ears.

If you want him to narrate a book for you, he can be found on Twitter, here: @NickCamm1

Or, if you want him to do some acting for you, here: http://amberltd.co.uk/?client=nicholas-camm

My Sci-fi Marc Zicaree

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Categories: Podcast | Tags: anthology, audio narrator, hard sf, hugo, nick camm, saturn, space opera, stephen kotowych, wotf, writers of the future

StarShipSofa No 416 Colin P. Davies and Anatoly Belilovsky

December 30, 2015 by Jeremy Szal

Coming Up…

Fact: Science News by J J Campanella

Interview with editor of Escape Artists’ MotherShip Zeta, Karen Bovenmyer with Jeremy Szal

Main Fiction: “Julian of Earth” by Colin P. Davies

Originally published in Asimov’s.

Colin P. Davies lives near Liverpool, England and has been contributing to the science fiction and fantasy magazines for twenty-five years. His stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Abyss & Apex, Andromeda Spaceways, Daily Science Fiction and elsewhere. His story “The Defenders” was included in The Year’s Best Science Fiction #22 edited by Gardner Dozois. Colin is currently working on the third novel in his Young Adult comic fantasy trilogy Clifford and the Bookmole. More information can be found at Colin’s webite www.colinpdavies.com

Narrated by Sarah Afa

Sarah was born and raised in the United States, and moved to Australia in 2009. She has years of experience doing public speaking, as well as reading poetry and prose for competitions. Yes, she is a talker! She enjoys singing, reading, and adventuring the world with her new husband.

Short Fiction: “Tempora Mutantur” by Anatoly Belilovsky

Originally appeared in Stupefying Stories.

Anatoly Belilovsky is a Russian-American author and translator of speculative fiction. He was born in a city that went through six or seven owners in the last century, all of whom used it to do a lot more than drive to church on Sundays; he is old enough to remember tanks rolling through it on their way to Czechoslovakia in 1968. After being traded to the US for a shipload of grain and a defector to be named later (see wikipedia, Jackson-Vanik amendment), he learned English from Star Trek reruns and went on to become a paediatrician in an area of New York where English is only the fourth most commonly used language. His original work appeared or will appear in the Unidentified Funny Objects anthology, Ideomancer, Nature Futures, Stupefying Stories, Immersion Book of Steampunk, Daily SF, Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk, and Genius Loci anthology, and has been podcast by Cast of Wonders, Tales of Old, and Toasted Cake; his translations from Russian have sold to F&SF, Year’s Best SF #32 (edited by Gardner Dozois,) Grimdark, and Kasma. He blogs about writing at loldoc.net.

Narrated by J.S. Arquin

J.S. Arquin is an actor, writer, musician and pessimistic optimist. He lives in Portland, Oregon and spends a large portion of his time producing The Overcast, a speculative fiction podcast featuring breathtaking stories from the Pacific Northwest and Beyond. Find it at: www.peoples-ink.com/the-overcast