Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 592 of the podcast that didn’t do nothin’, officer.
Ian is still not quite up to doing the show. You’ll be happy to know that he is home and is feeling better. In the meantime, Dave’s cousin Jason Dedrick was kind enough to fill in again this week!
This week: mandatory introduction; bad sports; bad boys; taken identity; close friends; invisible friends; shabby dolls; Elvis and Costello; over-qualified sideman; online wood; not matching sets; CD or not CD; sounds fair; love for Mike Love; a musical what-if; arrested development; Dennis the talented menace; thrift store surfers; teen weirdos; a Rosa is a Rosa; age-inappropriate; Beta-scam; generation gap; the noble Dedrick; guilt trip ups; Ian’s health update; show notes; Jason’s special Christmas snow; in its crutches; unsurance; room to live; safety vehicle; progressive plumbing; even more Benchley bashing (!); the sleep of death; granola movie; rhymes with tyger; the spinal solution; they should be fantastic; and, finally, moon fights.
Question of the Week: What is your favourite science fiction book? (Let’s try to keep it free from adaptations of existing IPs, folks.)
Thanks for listening.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Hello, Gents. My favorite science fiction book is Neuromancer by William Gibson (a Vancouver guy for some decades now). Gibson wanted to write high definition science fiction and, boy, did he ever. I love the complexity of his worlds and the beauty of his language, not to mention the coolness of his characters. Even though I’d been reading science fiction since the early eighties, I was late to the game on Gibson. I picked Neuromancer up in 1994, ten years after it came out. After reading the first page and a half, I said to myself, “This is the book I’ve been looking for my entire life.”
I hope Ian is well and I love Jason. I was disappointed that Jason was doing Jimmy Durante talking about hot chocolate and he didn’t call it hot-cha-cha-cha-chocolate. Ah well.
I think I’ve commented here before that my favourite sci-fi book is Dune. It’s hard to come up with a next favourite. I’ll have to re-read it to see if it holds up, but one novel I thought had some interesting concepts was Grass by Sheri S. Tepper from 1989. It’s about a woman with an equestrian background sent to investigate a prairie-like planet that’s immune from a plague which has ravaged every other world. She’s asked to participate in a local traditional hunt, but it’s not what it seems and she gets caught up in a complex interspecies power struggle. Tepper was a novelist in the Margaret Atwood vein who explored themes of gender conflict and the environment.
DUNE was so popular when I was in high school that there was a Frank Herbert fan club in our student body! I worked at the local Comics & Sci-Fi Bookstore, Lone Star Comics, so I was kind of the club’s “dealer”…I knew everyone in the club but didn’t join. They tried so hard to get me to read Herbert’s books and join in the club. What is it Groucho Marx said? “I’d never join a club that would have me as a member”, but I knew them all anyway, that was enough.
Hi there.
I think my favourite sci fi book would be The Chrysalids. I also like most books by Philip K. Dick. With my class we have recently read ‘Harrison Bergeron’ which I think qualifies, and I also found a new short story called ‘Test’ which we liked. Right now we are reading ‘Flowers for Algernon’.
I think Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle is my favorite book–unless Richard Adams’ Watership Down counts as science fiction.
Thank you again for the wonderful podcast. I don’t think I’ve commented since your trip to Belgium, but I’ve still been listening all the while.
The Dedrick Boys were at it again! And you didn’t disappoint, thanks for keeping me entertained as I worked in the yard all weekend. The weather was perfect for being outdoors with my favorite podcast.
As you’re well aware, I had hundreds of Science Fiction books at my disposal while I worked for almost three years at Lone Star Comics. I read some of the greats while I was there: Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, Piers Anthony and Frederik Pohl, but the one book that really sticks in my memory was “The Proteus Operation” by James P. Hogan. I really enjoy time travel stories and Hogan’s book still resonates in my mind today, so much that I actually cast actors in my mind as if it were a movie as I read the book. “The Proteus Operation” is an alternate reality where the Axis won World War II, so a covert group of scientists build a time travel device for a one-way trip to prevent Germany and Japan from winning the war. The successful results of this expedition are the world we live in today. I distinctly remember how the time travelers communicated their one-way messages to the future letting the scientists know they had made it, they placed ads in random publications from the past that the future scientists knew to look up and read.
I think a series or film adapted from Hogan’s book would be terrific even though it has similar themes to Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle.” Did any of you watch that series on Amazon? I thought it really ended badly and I can’t remember how closely it followed the book, probably way off the rails. Ah, hell…I may just have to re-read the book!
Ian, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re feeling much better!
Jason, if you’re reading this, keep up the great work…you’re a natural.
And not to be left out….David, how did it feel to have some sugar for the first time in weeks? What was it?
Hasta la Vista amigos!! Have a great weekend and week my fellow Sneaky Dragon Amigos!!