The Sword and Laser discussion

We're very excited that James S. A. Corey's 'The Expanse' is being made into a TV series! PLUS we sat down to chat with Andy Weir and Daniel Suarez. We learn you shouldn't go for a publisher, but go for an audience, and why you should NOT tell your friends your stories but make them read what you write instead.

http://swordandlaser.com/home/2014/4/...

Well, that's going to take some time to listen to. :)

The sound quality was actually better than I expected at these on site things.

Gave a "whoa!" when I saw the 2+ hour running time. Gonna enjoy this especially as I just read The Martian.

FYI: Some timemarks (even a #:##'ish) in the show notes might make future awesome shows more awesomer ;)

Thanks for asking about my flying car. I don't think traffic would be that bad.

I'm glad you didn't cut the reactions to the cat. That just made everything more homey, somehow. Maybe because we have two cats so it was easy for me to visualize what was happening.

Also, I may have stopped listening when you guys were done with the "standard show", and didn't listen to the readings or the audience Q&A.

Joanna wrote: "I'm glad you didn't cut the reactions to the cat. That just made everything more homey, somehow. Maybe because we have two cats so it was easy for me to visualize what was happening.

Also, I m..."

That's ok! That's why we put it at the end :)

Q&A starts at 1:17 (wow). I commented the Soundcloud, but you can't see it on the S&L site.

Tamahome wrote: "Q&A starts at 1:17 (wow). I commented the Soundcloud, but you can't see it on the S&L site."

What do you mean?

Tamahome wrote: "Q&A starts at 1:17 (wow). I commented the Soundcloud, but you can't see it on the S&L site."

Thanks! I might listen to that part later!

Veronica wrote: "Tamahome wrote: "Q&A starts at 1:17 (wow). I commented the Soundcloud, but you can't see it on the S&L site."

What do you mean?"

Oh, nevermind I see it now! It didn't show up right away.

Andy Weir's comments about the burgeoning success of The Martian, despite the lack of an expensive and focused marketing campaign, reminded me of Pareto's Principle (aka The 80-20 Rule), which makes the claim that 80% of effects come from 20% of causes.

I've no doubt that quality of product is a major reason why the book is taking off, but it may also be that there's a degree of conflation going on between it and Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, another story about a lone survivor in a hostile environment.

Not to suggest that the book wouldn't be just as successful without the movie, but I'm thinking there could be a degree of serendipity here.

Great podcast guys. I listened to the author interview portion too and it was very interesting. Keep the greatness coming!

Looking forward to listening but will have to wait til the weekend. Long episodes are such a double-edged sword.

terpkristin wrote: "Looking forward to listening but will have to wait til the weekend. Long episodes are such a double-edged sword."

heh heh. double edged sword. I see what you did there.

Ohh.

I really enjoyed the extended portion of this show. Suarez and Weir are good together and I liked the way the interview portion of the show flowed into the Q and A portion to give the authors comments some more depth and thought. Good change of pace.

library_jim wrote: "terpkristin wrote: "Looking forward to listening but will have to wait til the weekend. Long episodes are such a double-edged sword."

heh heh. double edged sword. I see what you did there."

Admittedly it felt weird doing with an episode with 2 SF authors. ;)

I added many cute pictures of Xeno on the blog post if anyone is interested!

Great episode! And Xeno is adorable but I must say, my Oz-monster is cuter. ;)

I have to admit, I really disliked Daemon and then I really hated myself for reading Freedom™, and I'd kind of written off Daniel Suarez. This interview, and the reading he did, changed that. I've added his latest to my to-read list.

The Martian was already in the queue, though I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about it. Listening to the praise for Robert Zubrin (a man I have met and dislike more than Daemon) and his The Case For Mars was a little bit of a turn-off. And I guess the book is kinda more or less like Gravity but on Mars. And Gravity wasn't for me (even if it had somebody other than Sandra Bullock). But a coworker really liked it, and he and I seem to have similar tastes, so I guess we'll see...

Great way to start my Saturday morning. :)

I absolutely loved this particular podcast. Loved both parts of it. The authors reading their books was a big plus for me. Now books I might not have read are on my TBR list. Influx and The Martian sound really good. Perhaps we could read one of the these for the bookclub soonish.

PS thank you for including pics of the kitty on the blog post. sooo cute

This podcast was longer than my commute and I haven't gone back to the listen to the rest of it yet. I hope this doesn't constitute lemming the podcast :)