Podcast highlights and recommendations

R

Robert Adam Gilmour

Grimscribe
Every now and then I find a podcast episode that doesn't fit into any thread neatly, so I hope this might be useful.

I still haven't made a start on John Crowley's books yet but sad to hear about his memory problems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f49ZeDU7F4
 
Some interesting stuff in here, the Malinda Lo book in particular (didn't catch the title) and the scarcity of old gay books.
There's a whole series of interviews and roundtables on this channel related to the recent Dangerous Visions & New Worlds nonfiction book, the one about dystopias is also good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgmJmdXldKU
 
Recent mention of David Drake got me seeking out interviews and I liked this one best of the few I listened to/watched.
I never understood the layout of this site, the first part of the interview is at the bottom.
Agony Column Podcast
He talks about his own writing as therapy for his time in Vietnam, Karl Edward Wagner, Clark Ashton Smith being fundamentally darker than HPL.
 
Another highlight so soon? Yes. I remember an interview with Richard Matheson and I was really surprised he believed in fringe religious stuff because he had such a reputation for rationalizing fantasy.
I knew about his Splatterpunk son Richard Christian Matheson but I didn't know he had other children who were writers like Chris Matheson and Ali Marie Matheson. This is an interview with Chris and I found it quite sad and it provides some insights about how the father's personality and beliefs went into his work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa7ZgFBDGbc
 
Robert Adam Gilmour said:
Another highlight so soon? Yes. I remember an interview with Richard Matheson and I was really surprised he believed in fringe religious stuff because he had such a reputation for rationalizing fantasy.
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No doubt this is a sensitive subject for him, but I can't help think Chris Matheson comes off here sounding a little overbearing and righteously self-satisfied in his disdain for his father's "belief system" (and I say that as someone with zero patience for any kind of religious or faith-based arguments or assertions at the best of times). I hope he showed his father a lot more sympathy and understanding while he lived and a great deal less of this contemptuously dismissive argumentative side. In fact I had to stop listening about halfway through when he started going on at length in classic motivational-speaker style praising the Eternal Beauty and Mystery of Life while also belittling his father's fears of death—fears that Chris admits are shared by practically all of humanity, including himself. It all sounded like so much vapid "cope" to my ears, as unconvincing as any of the strange beliefs it appears his father sought consolation in towards his later years.

If you found this moving, there's a good Dennis Etchison story on a similar theme, an understated and wryly funny, but ultimately melancholy piece about a failing writer reconnecting with his elderly father and discovering his late life obsession with audio recordings of supposed alien vistors. It's called "It Will Be Here Soon" and appeared in his book The Dark Country, though it's not really a horror story (except that it deals in the ultramundane horrors of loss and aging).

There's also a worthwile tangentially related story by Nigel Kneale called "They're Scared, Mr. Bradlaugh", the title of which, when you understand what is being said and to whom (the speaker is Kneale himself), tells you all you need to know.
 
I didn't see it quite that way. I think he thought the world of his dad but was just expressing his deep frustration with a part of their relationship.

The thing that struck me most was what Richard Matheson said when his son was holding his hand.
The talk about loneliness makes me want to investigate more of his work. I already knew that Incredible Shrinking Man was more than Land Of The Giants or Ant Man but this made it sound like something I might pick up next time I see it.
 
What Dreams May Come made me wonder what RM's metaphysical thoughts were. You should never assume that a fictional work reflects the author's opinion but WDMC and Stir of Echos made me wonder.
 
I guess this is sort of related but I've been running a minor fantastic fiction/horror review channel on Youtube for a few years now, and I have been wondering whether I could share it somewhere on the forums, but I didn't want to seem intrusive.
 
ThisCreepingEvil said:
I guess this is sort of related but I've been running a minor fantastic fiction/horror review channel on Youtube for a few years now, and I have been wondering whether I could share it somewhere on the forums, but I didn't want to seem intrusive.
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Just go ahead!

This is more of a video blogger than podcast:
Found out that Stephen E. Andrews has a youtube channel, he wrote the bulk of 100 Must Read Science Fiction Novels and 100 Must Read Fantasy Novels (I loved them both) and I've been watching tons of his videos, he's a bookseller too. He has interviews with Christopher Priest, Nina Allan, Chris Beckett and multiple with Tom Toner.
I just bought a Tom Toner book the other day after seeing Andrews hype him up, but I had wanted it before because Paul Di Filippo and Adam Roberts loved it too.
Andrews talks a great deal about authors being increasingly pressured into series novels, fantasy in particular, bloating the books and the late 1970s Tolkien clone boom. I can't recall if it was him or his friend Scott Bradfield (who also has a youtube channel) but one of them made a case that lots more authors used to have a career of SFF singletons that had wildly different concepts. Seems like Silvia Moreno-Garcia is one of the very few major publisher authors today who habitually writes a different kind of novel from the previous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2KSv800IgY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDa1Wfi1qbY
 
Robert Adam Gilmour said:
Found out that Stephen E. Andrews has a youtube channel...
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I've found his videos nicely erudite and deeply nostalgic. This is to be expected from someone such as Andrews who's been in the SF bookselling trenches forever. He's talked often about the plague of the trilogy (not his words) and I'm inclined to agree with him.
 
Not quite a podcast but I was really surprised how deep this video goes, really impressive and thoughtful, goes into a lot of history, western classical, ancient china, jazz, dubstep and more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azpxUnIgsts

Very fine interview with Mariana Enriquez featuring John Langan and Paul Temblay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xXaLnW8qUY
 
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