Category Archives: Everything

Five Rather Wonderful Audiostories

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escape_pod_podcast

Possibly you listen to podcast fiction and audioboks. Possibly you don’t. Either way, you should definitely listen to the following five pieces. Three are from Escape Pod and two are from Podcastle, which reflects my own personal listening habits, but also reflects how the SFF crowd were early adopters of online audio formats for fiction. Because free SFF audio stories have been online for some years now, there is quite a bit of good Science Fiction and Fantasy to pick from. Unfortunately, mystery, crime , romance and lit fic are taking a while to catch up, but if you wanted to create a short-format fiction podcast in one of those genres it’s worth being are that there certainly isn’t much competition to deal with at the moment. Continue reading

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Arrakis [pt.1]

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dune

DUNE

Herbert, Frank (New English Library, ISBN 978-0450011849)

Sophie kept a boyfriend named Alan – the same way that one might keep a housecat or a gerbil. Alan belonged to that shadowy class of persons who somehow leave no discernable impression in your thoughts. You would’ve found him listed in the credits as ‘fireman #3’ or ‘guest at party’.

 

 

He had a genial temperament; he’d amble out to see you when you arrived and make small talk. He just appeared underwritten. When you looked up from a conversation, you’d find him standing in the background fiddling with something, as if his actor didn’t have any lines and needed to full up the time pretending to do something. His presence left so scant an impression that to this day I can remember only two facts about him: he owned a video camera and slept heavily. Continue reading

On Melbourne

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Melbourne

The following was read aloud at the 20th anniversary of Glass Wings online held at the Wheeler Centre on Friday 14th March 2014.

When I first moved to Melbourne I had only just broken up with Dublin. The break-up had been a long time coming, but of course it was still painful. When it did end I couldn’t say that she was as upset about it as I was. I couldn’t honestly say that she even noticed. That’s how cities are. She might be your one and only, but you are just one of her millions. Continue reading

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Murder Most Musically Foul

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murder_and_mendelssohn

MURDER AND MENDELSSOHN

Kerry Greenwood  ISBN978-1-74237-956-2

It’s murder most musically foul in Kerry Greenwood’s latest novel, Murder and Mendelssohn. Phryne Fisher, the stylish private detective with nerves of steel, keeps her trusty pearl-handled pistol strapped to her silk garter as she investigates not one but two villains plotting to harm those she holds dear.

As with all twenty books in this series, it is the year 1929. Whilst times are changing, the world is still conservative; people know their place and a respectable reputation is everything. Fortunately the rich, titled and beautiful Phryne Fisher makes her own rules, and society gracefully acquiesces to her will whether she is dancing in her undergarments, piloting an aeroplane or apprehending villains. Continue reading

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Plants

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PLANTS
mrblo

I grow plants in pots out front of the apartment. Sonia tells me that the neighbours believe I’ve decided to grow marijuana there; right out there in plain view. According to Sonia, the neighbours identify the third or so of the pots in which nothing has yet germinated as the nascent marijuana plants soon to deliver policemen and dishonour to their neighbourhood.

I look like the sort of guy who might grow marijuana, but should I resent as an insult the implication that I could prove so simpleminded as to grow it in plain view, right out on the porch in front of my apartment?

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Boosterism [pt.1]

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babbitt

BABBITT

Lewis, Sinclair (Bantam Classics, ISBN 9780553214864)

Hilary and I both held tenure as delivery drivers at a pizza restaurant on Centre Road called, ‘La Casetta‘. I majored in second-hand smoke inhalation while Hilary pioneered a study into the effects of alcohol on Italians.

The cook used a substance called, ‘Beef Booster’. Like Sinclair Lewis’ boosterist, he knew that you had to have pep, by golly. When the pizza needed more pep he would open a bucket of Beef Booster and heap it on. Continue reading

From A Reader’s Point Of View

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from_a_readers_point_of_view

When I was living another life, in another country, some years ago, I worked for a time as a marketing researcher. My job, in this other life, was to sit hidden in shadows behind a one-way mirror – from this place I observed, made notes on and recorded the opinions of the product test group of the hour. They knew I was watching them – there was to inform them of this them of this, and besides which, I suspect the giant and otherwise completely incongruous mirror in an otherwise dull office complex would have been something of a give-away. Continue reading

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Saturation

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SATURATIONsaturation

This shows the trajectories of some blobs of colour as they egress from three moving bodies. Each body and all the blobs of colour that egress from it accelerate towards one of the other bodies with a constant magnitude of acceleration: the yellow blobs and the body that expels them accelerate towards the body that expels magenta blobs, the aquamarine blobs and the body that expels them accelerate towards the body that expels yellow blobs and the magenta blobs and the body that expels them accelerate towards the body that expels aquamarine blobs.

Over the course of its life, each blob loses brightness. If it passes close to a body other than the one that expelled it, it also loses saturation. Continue reading

The Fault in Our Stars

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the_fault_in_our_stars

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS

John Green (2010) ISBN-10 0143567594, ISBN-13 9780143567592

John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars is now a film set for release in Australia on June 5th 2014.  And there, dear reader, is your deadline to read the book.

TFIOS (as we Nerdfighters call it) had been sitting on my list of to-be-reads for a while. Not as long as some others, but, eh,  a while. While I quickly devoured all his other novels, I left this one sit a little longer. I mean, why hurry the emotional seasick-making ferry ride of a book dealing with teenagers and cancer? Continue reading

Saga n1. A Long And Complicated (Account Of A) Series Of More Or Less Loosely Connected Events (O.E.D.)

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saga

SAGA (Volumes One and Two)

Brian K. Vaughan (Writer) / Fiona Staples (Illustrator)

ISBN 978-1-60706-601-9 / ISBN 978-1-60706-692-7

So even if you pretty much have your head stuck in the literary clouds and barely come down from the Mount Olympus of the Booker short list each year you are probably aware of graphic novels like Sandman and Maus. You might even be aware of Fables by Bill Willingham and Y the Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan. Continue reading

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Majestic

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the_holy_bible_lamsa_trans

BOOK OF EXODUS

Chapter 21 (Holy Bible, ISBN for example 9780060649234)

Halfway through the book of Exodus, God proclaims to Moses the ordinances governing different kinds of ox gorings[1]. For example,

 “And if one man’s ox gores another man’s ox so it dies; then they shall sell the live ox and divide the money; and the dead ox also they shall divide.”[2]

It amazes one how relevant that remains today. Continue reading

The Red Book of Lang

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red_fairy_book

THE RED FAIRY BOOK

Edited by Andrew Lang (1890) ISBN-13: 978-0-486-21673-7 / ISBN-10: 0-486-21673-X

Fairy tales are fashionable again. I’m not saying they were ever unpopular. Children never do quite become suspicious of fairy tales the way adults do from time to time and era to era. Personally, I think we can trace the start the march of the fairy tale fashion of the early twenty-teens to Fables by Bill Willingham. If you haven’t read Fables, it is a comic about fairy tale characters stranded in modern New York. If the theme sounds vaguely familiar that’s because the series was so successful there were all sorts of plans to turn it into a film or television series, but then some bright exec somewhere (evidently) realised that all the characters were public domain. Why not write their own series that is sort of similar but not too similar and therefore, QED: no need to pay any royalties? Thus, fairy tale characters have suddenly suffused our TV screens and fairy tales have returned to the public consciousness again. Continue reading

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      TINDER Sally Gardner ISBN-10: 1780621493 Many years ago, a strange thing occurred. I was browsing the fiction shelves of a well known, and now defunct, multinational bookstore whilst discussing the reasons books for adults were no longer illustrated (with another person, I’m not entirely mad). One argument was that it was … Continue reading