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November 2001

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'Live on-disc' from LosCon 28

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Click here to listen to the entire show. {1:07:27} or Click here for the show's intro music.{0:41} Click here for the show's opening and news. {11:21} Click here for the interview with Richard Foss from LosCon.{10:16} Click here for the interview with author GoH Patricia Wrede.{17:03} Click here for the interview with artist GoH Chris Butler.{13:49} Click here for our interview with fan GoH Lynn Gold.{8:42} Click here for the show's closing.{1:53} or Click here to listen to our most recent Shows. Click here for an index of all Shows on our site.

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Chelsea Quinn Yarbro {Also Featuring Alan Hale and Richard Foss}

Quinn Yarbro is a hard working author who manages to be not only prolific, but also incredibly good. She puts out three or more novels each year, and throws in a few short stories or other pieces for good measure, but she never sacrifices quality for quantity. And her stories are not the sorts of things that one just dashes off while day dreaming in your office. That would not be Quinn's way, because her books are known for their historical reality. No, Quinn first does her research - months of it, getting to know the historical eras she writes about and the people who lived there, and then she crafts a story that fits the time and place so well that that is the only historical venue in which that story could be told. She puts a lot of work into the art and craft of her writing, and it shows.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - Photo Credit : Greg Preston

Cover for A Feast in Exile Copyright © 2001 by Tor Books

Quinn's newest book A Feast In Exile continues her long running series of novels about the vampire Saint Germain. In this story we are carried back to 14th century India and Asia where the Mongol hordes of Tamerlane are conquering the civilized world. Saint Germain, known here as Sanat Ji Mani, must pay dearly to purchase the protection of the ruling Sultan. Faced with the need to protect his friends he must stay behind in the city and finds himself caught between the opposing sides of this conflict. Trapped by the invading Tamerlane he is forced to join their army and march with them - during daylight. Crippled by this he is unable to escape, all the while knowing that he must keep his vampire nature from being discovered. Fighting for his survival and that of his friends he must endure the carnage of this war if he is to regain his freedom.

Listen to this show

Click here to listen to the entire show. {1:55:21} or Click here for the show's intro music.{0:41} Click here for the show's opening and news. {9:32} Click here for the Richard Foss interview discussing LosCon 28.{28:04} Click here for the interview with astonomer Alan Hale.{16:25} Click here for our interview with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.{58:41} Click here for the show's closing.{1:58} or Click here to listen to another interview with Quinn that we did last year. Click here to listen to our most recent Shows. Click here for an index of all Shows on our site.

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Dr. Ben Bova

Ben Bova has always been one of my favorite authors. I look forward to each new book he writes with great anticipation. His stories are always soundly rooted in science and filled with speculations about "what if this goes on?" or "if this happens, then what?". But his stories are not just interesting thought experiments, they feature believable people acting in realistic ways and are, at their heart, cracking good stories. His characters live adventures many of us dream of and show us the sort of world we might live in if we but have the courage to follow our convictions . And unlike some authors who try to hide a lack of story in their fiction by using literary tricks, Ben never lets literary experiments get in the way of telling the story.		Ben Bova Photo by Ed Chappell
But this does not mean that Ben always tells his stories in a simple or linear manner. Rather, he looks at the story he is telling and then writes it in the most interesting and effective way possible. If this means that his novel has to start with something from near the end of the story and then back track from there, well... so be it. Or if the most effective way to tell the story is to mix multiple story lines from different persons and times, then that's what he does. But whatever technique he uses, it is always in support of telling an interesting story. For anyone who wants to be a writer, I strongly suggest that you read Ben Bova. His non-fiction will fill your mind with story ideas and his fiction will show you how a master plies his trade. Read his stories and think about them not just as stories, but as examples of story telling. Ask yourself; "Why did he do that in just that way and not some other?", "Why did he start the story there?", "What did he do to lay the ground work for that plot development or how did he slip in that bit of technical background without stopping the story?". If you want to become a writer you should read and study the works of Ben Bova. You'll be learning from a master.

Cover for The Precipice Copyright © 2001 by Tor Books		Ben's newest work of fiction, The Precipice, fits neatly into a series of books that he's been writing about the exploration and development of the Solar System. {I'd call this series How the Solar System was Won, but Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick have already used that as a working title for a movie they did more than thirty years ago.} The Precipice tells of a mission to the asteroids and of the problems that had to be overcome before that mission could be flown and the dangers found while venturing into deep space. Ben even managed to work in one of my favorite characters from his earlier stories, Dan Randolph. We first met him in Ben's 1985 novel Privateers, in which Dan Randolph was an expatriate space entrepreneur who was in conflict with everyone from his own government to the U.N. and especially a Soviet Union that was exercising growing power over the world due to their development of lunar resources. In that story, Dan had to fight to keep space from becoming an exclusive arena for the Soviet Union.
We encountered Dan Randolph a few years later in Empire Builders, where he now had to face the problems arising from Global Warming and persons trying to use these problems as a rationale for creating a global dictatorship. If not stopped, these people would crush freedom under the guise of averting a global catastrophe. Betrayed by persons within his own company, Dan becomes a hunted man and must turn to a shadowy 'lunar underground' for help in averting Global Warming and in stopping this new dictatorship. In The Precipice the problems caused by Global Warming have not been solved and now threaten all civilization. The resources to ease this problem exist, but they are out in the asteroid belt. Dan Randolph is put into conflict with a ruthless competitor who will stop at nothing to crush Dan and his company and gain exclusive control of those asteroid resources for his personal benefit. Dan must risk everything on a test flight of a new spacecraft to prove that humanity now has the means to reach the resources needed to avoid the calamity they are facing. To say that I enjoyed The Precipice a great deal is a major understatement. It was well written and filled with thought provoking speculations. The character developments were true to the characters and added depth to events that had come before. This book ends with the promise of more stories yet to come and for my money, they can't get here too soon. Most highly recommended.

And as for Ben's skills at writing entertaining and informative non-fiction, you need look no farther than his new book The Story of Light. Now, I'll have to admit that when I first saw the title of this book it made me wonder just what Ben was going to write about. Would it be an art book, a science book or maybe a history book? Was it going to be a discussion of the wave / particle duality of light? Would it explore the psycho / physiological interactions between humans and light? Would it explore the speed of light and relativity? Would it discuss.... Well, you get the picture. The easiest way to describe this book would be to say that Ben uses the general topic of "Light" as a jumping point for discussing just about anything that hits his fancy. In a way, this book is like sitting down with Ben and having him chat with you about all sorts of interesting and sometimes obscure topics from an incredibly diverse range of topics, some scientific, some cultural, some artistic, some... well I gave up counting the viewpoints and just gave in and enjoyed the ride.

Cover for The Story of Light Copyright © 2001 by Sourcebooks Inc.

Listen to the show
	Click here to listen to the entire show. {1:03:35} or Click here for the show's intro music.{0:41} Click here for the show's opening and news. {18:40} Click here for the Ben Bova interview.{42:33} Click here for the show's closing.{1:41} or Click here for an index of all Shows on our site.

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