William Shunn, a Nebula nominee, is one of a small but growing number of Science Fiction authors who podcast. We pestered him for an interview and he was kind enough to oblige.

Three science fiction geeks. Four liters of lager.

Sorry for being so late with this. We’ve compensated for the delay by making this podcast too long. We discuss a grab bag of science fiction related stuff.

We normally steer clear from Science Fiction on television but I’ve just come across this pic of the new K9 and I couldn’t resist putting it up here. I’m not a big fan of SF on TV normally but the new Dr. Who hasn’t disappointed. There’s even talk of a K9 based Dr. Who spinoff which sounds dubious .

It’s probably the circles I move in but when I usualy hear about the rapture, an event where us lowly mortals get uplifted into an indescribably wonderful higher state, its not in reference to the christian rapture but the geek one. The Geek Rapture refers to a utopian Singularity scenario.

Alastair Reynolds is a Welsh science fiction writer based in the Netherlands. We like his books so we posed as highly important science fiction journalists and pestered him with some questions. Fortunately he fell for it.

The end of the world has always been a hot topic in Science Fiction. And in the last ten years there’s been a flood of movies with end of the world themes. A Canadian film critic called it “Apocalypse Porn”. I’ve always found stories built around these scenarios fascinating myself, its a sub genre of science fiction where a societies collective anxieties are just underneath the surface.

There’s a really cheesey site where you can find out what kind of Science Fiction writer you are. I gave it a shot and I got a writer descibed as a “A pyrotechnic talent who put only a small portion of his energy into writing.” Kind of appropirate considering that there hasn’t been a Meme Therapy entry for six days. If you want to take the cheesy test yourself you can here (link).

Neal Asher is an brit Science Fiction author who most recently penned The Voyage of the Sable Keech. Neal was gracious enough to succumb to a bit of pestering.

I’ve had some feedback that our audio files are hard to find. And yes our blog isn’t the most user friendly. Sorry for being a bit crap in that department but we’re working on it. In the meantime here’s a few quick links to our audio.

Evil scientists were always a rich goldmine of villains for comic book writers. But even as a child fed on a steady diet of Superman, Batman and Fantastic Four comics I never thought that real world scientists were the scourge of mankind that they were made out to be. And eventually the evil scientist as villain fell out of fashion, psychopath, drug dealers and evil mutants took their place.