Music & Audio

Mur talks about podcasts by geek women, her new podcast, I Should Be Writing, and her cool and froody new t-shirts. Read the full story.

Michael Stackpoole stops by to chat with the guys while they drink beer brough by another guest: a listener named Paul. Included is the usual hodgepodge, including regular features, ramblings about Canada and podcasting, and a discussion of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. Read the full story.

Mur talks about how Tivo's radically changed her TV viewing habits and offers a review of the Alpha Shade online comic book. Read the full story.

SFW reviews a hard rock band who's music is inspired entirely by Star Trek. Read the full story.

Neil Gorman continues history of the comics industry in this podcast, and plugs a bunch of new podcast (including our own Radio Active ... thanks Neil!) Read the full story.

This edition of the internet radio show features the scifi short story "Snow" by Jennifer Pelland. Read the full story.

A few years ago, Audible.com offered up several science fiction short story anthologies from the big names in the genre: Asimov's, Analog and the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. For a while it looked like they were going to have annual, or perhaps even quarterly, editions, but nothing ever came of it. It's disappointing, because while there's plenty of book-length audio fiction, short fiction is rare.

Or at least it was. Short fiction's audio salvation may have arrived with Escape Pod, a new weekly magazine-style podcast. Each podcast features opening thoughts and commentary by editor Stephen Eley, followed by a short story. Eley intends to expand the podcast by incorporating 1-minute long, reader-submitted book reviews. Escape Pod is a paying market and relies on donations to fund its fiction.

Mur reviews the comic Ex Machina, talks about her very bad day (and yes, as a parent I can safely agree it was very bad), and discusses the new sci-fi magazine podcast Escape Pod. Read the full story.

It's been a few weeks since I went looking for new podcasts -- I've settled into a pretty good groove listening to my current favorites, and between those and some audio books I've been absorbed in, there hasn't been much time for new audio. So I was surprised and pleased to find a whole bunch of new science fiction/geek podcasts when I went searching, even though -- given the growth of the genre and the medium -- I should have expected it.

American horror got much needed infusion of creepiness with The Ring, a remake of the Japanese film Ringu. Despite the legacy of authors like H.P. Lovecraft, American horror movies always seem to avoid soul-cringing, subtle horror in favor of the easy gross out or Monster-of-the-Week gorefest.