Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game, joins us this week on io9's Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast to talk about his new book The Lost Gate, comic books, and how working in theatre made him a better writer.
The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy is hosted by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley.
You can download the MP3 for this episode here, subscribe to The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast feed here, and browse other episodes here.
Read on for this episode's fabulous SHOW NOTES!
0:23 Introduction
Interview: Orson Scott Card
2:06 Interview begins
2:17 Orson Scott Card talks about his latest novel, The Lost Gate and gods trapped on Earth and his hatred of vampires!
8:45 Why has there been a shift in book sales from Science Fiction to Fantasy in recent years? And how genres can be held back by their roots.
12:52 Lost Country Life and what Fantasy can learn from it
14:40 "Fantasy has become so much more like Science Fiction
15:38 Advice for writing child characters and the dangers of defining them as "children" instead of "people"
18:18 Mithermage stories until the end of time?
19:26 "I don't write children. It's not my goal. I write humans."
19:53 What lessons did OSC learn while working in theatre?
20:50 "It's not that actors are dumb, it's that if there is a way to read it oddly, somebody's going to find it."
22:34 The audience will never lie to you
27:28 Writing for an audience of volunteers and an audience who thinks they hate genre fiction
28:41 Magic Street, the best book of OSC's career? Writing a believable black character as a white author
34:42 The problems with Heart's Hope
36:44 The dangers of reading The Chronicles of Narnia in chronological order
39:26 Why'd OSC start Intergalactic Medicine Show?
42:25 Good Fantasy and Science Fiction artwork
44:14 Orson Scott Card doesn't like comics?
51:42 The status of the Ender's Game movie
52:48 A Dogwalker movie? Anything else in the works?
54:49 Audiobooks are the best way to experience literature
55:52 End of interview
MP3 file - Extra material from Orson Scott Card Interview
Dave and John talk about Wizards
56:46 Robert Asprin's Myth series, bringing levity to Fantasy and the shift in popularity from warriors to wizards
58:55 Diane Duane's So You Want to Be a Wizard
1:00:07 Where'd all the Barbarians go?
1:01:29 John's recommend-a-story database
1:03:36 The Way of the Wizard and John's endless slush pile of submissions
1:04:54 Patterns in the wizard zeitgeist
1:05:52 Nnedi Okorafor's "The Go-Slow"
1:06 39 Rajan Khanna's "Card Sharp"
1:07:28 Jeremiah Tolbert's "One-Click Banishment"
1:08:21 C.C. Finley's "Life So Dear Or Peace So Sweet"
1:09:23 Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Secret of the Blue Star"
1:10:42 What defines a "Wizard" story?
1:12:44 Dave's "Family Tree"
1:14:54 The thrill of having your story illustrated by a professional and an illustration from "Family Tree"
1:16:07 Read several short stories from Way of the Wizard
1:16:29 Frazetta: Painting with Fire
1:17:09 Brute Force vs. Intellect vs. Street Smarts
1:18:24 Rolling a "7" for Charisma
1:19:48 D&D's influence on the perception of wizards
1:21:25 The Dying Earth-esque magic system and its limitation in a Role Playing Game
1:22:51 Any other anthologies coming from John?
1:24:03 Show wrap-up
Thanks for listening!
John Joseph Adams is an anthologist, a writer, and a geek. He is the bestselling editor of the anthologies By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Living Dead (a World Fantasy Award finalist), Seeds of Change, andWastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse. His most recent books are The Living Dead 2 and The Way of the Wizard, and he is currently assembling several other anthologies, including Brave New Worlds and The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination. Barnes & Noble.com named him "the reigning king of the anthology world," and his books have been named to numerous best of the year lists. In addition to his anthology work, he worked for more than eight years as an editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,and is currently the editor of Lightspeed Magazine and Fantasy Magazine.
David Barr Kirtley has published fiction in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Lightspeed,Intergalactic Medicine Show, On Spec, and Cicada, and in anthologies such as New Voices in Science Fiction,Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and The Dragon Done It. Recently he's contributed stories to several of John's anthologies, including The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, and The Way of the Wizard. He's attended numerous writing workshops, including Clarion, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, James Gunn's Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and Orson Scott Card's Writers Bootcamp, and he holds an MFA in screenwriting and fiction from the University of Southern California. He also teaches regularly at Alpha, a Pittsburgh-area science fiction workshop for young writers. He lives in New York.
Snownotes compiled by podtern Aidan Moher
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