Karl Schroeder, scifi/fantasy writer Wednesday, Feb 1 2006
small WORLD Podcasts 12:00 am
Interview with science fiction/fantasy writer Karl Schroeder. We discuss his cold; his upcoming book Sun of Suns which appeared in serialized form in Analog magazine; completing the first draft of the second book in the series; Alexandre Dumas‘ The Three Musketeers; Master and Commander; why he had to take a break from science fiction of writing Lady of Mazes; milestones; the plot of Ventus; Vernor Vinge’s character, Pham Nuwen; the appeal of blending of high fantasy with science fiction; why it is more difficult to develop plot lines and characters in science fiction than in fantasy; heroes and villains and competing interests; what is thalience?; the problem of redefining semantic concepts in the future; why he is no longer interested in the traditional arguments of whether artificial intelligence is possible or not; the plot of Permanence; why brown dwarfs could be the key to making interstellar civilization possible; building new worlds to express new ideas; writing The Claus Effect with David Nickle for the 3-Day Novel Contest; why he started his blog Age of Embodiment; cognitive science; evolutionary biology; physics; neural physiology; The Matrix movie; why he is optimistic that things are getting better in the world; violent conflicts; fresh water; literacy rates; democracy; the worst problems according to the UN University’s Report of the Future; AIDs; international organized crime; international terrorism; climate change; mass extinctions; Orson Scott Card; Gene Wolfe; the influence of his Mennonite background in his writing; his involvement in Foresight Studies; the future of health care in Canada; startling insights he found in Foresight Studies.
Featured song is “Holy Town” by MoJo Filta.
February 7th, 2006 at 3:01 am
Sunday night I submitted a link to Boing Boing to my interview with Karl just before I went to bed. When I woke up the next day the small WORLD web site was down beause it had exceeded it’s daily bandwidth. Turns out Cory had mentioned resulting in more traffic and downloads than my poor little web site could manage.
Still, if being Boing’d means thousands of people are tuning into the small WORLD then that’s a problem I welcome.
February 16th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
I would love to listen to this podcast but every time I try to get it the download speed slowly spirals downward to a crawl. So I was wondering if you would consider uploading the podcast to a filesharing site (e.g. rapidshare or any other like it).
Thanks.
February 16th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
I’d love to help you out but I don’t see any options on how to upload files to RapidShare. Any suggestions?
February 18th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Rapidshare was just an example of a file sharing site off the top of my head. I haven’t used it to upload any files myself — just download — so I don’t know the specifics of uploading. Another service, www.megaupload.com , has detailed uploading instructions on the home page. Hope that’s more helpful.
I’ve just visited the www.rapidshare.de homepage & it seems the uploading mechanics are similar to www.megaupload.com : 1. click on the Browse button; 2. in the File Dialog that pops up, navigate to the file you want to upload; 3. click to select that file; 4. click the Upload button to start the transfer to the file sharing site’s servers.
Is this the info you needed or did I misunderstand?
Thanks & keeping fingers crossed.
February 18th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
John, I used yousendit.com to upload the interview with Karl Schroeder. You’ll receive an email with a link to download the show. I hope you enjoy the podcast as much as I enjoyed talking with Karl!
February 18th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
Thanks for the quick response. However, the email did not get through to the other email account. Could you resend to the fastmail account instead. Sorry about the trouble & thank you.
February 19th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
No worries. I just sent out the interview.
February 20th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
Even though I’m a pretty avid SF reader, I had not heard of Karl Shroeder before listening to this podcast. Thanks to you this egregious oversight has now been rectified & his novels are now on my to-read list.
BTW, kudos for managing to touch on so many concepts in only 30 minutes or so & thanks for putting up all those informative links in your writeup. I will definitely be following up on those.
Finally, I want to say thank you for going the extra mile to make your podcast available.
February 20th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
John, I had seen Karl’s books in the shops that I frequent but never got around to purchasing one of his novels. During my interview with Vernor Vinge Karl’s name came up and I made it a point to read his books.
I’m glad you enjoyed my talk with Karl. One of the reasons I host the Small World is to expose listeners to people I think they will find just as fascinating. I was more than happy to go the extra mile so you could hear the conversation with Karl.
I must admit, I turn into something of a fan boy when I interview science fiction writers since I love the genre so much and admire the people I speak with greatly. I’m getting better at conducting the interviews as well as trying to be concise in covering the broad range of topics that come up in the conversations.
I’m very pleased with my interview with Paul Di Filippo. I felt I really nailed it on tha interview. You also might enjoy the interviews with writers Ken MacLeod and Rudy Rucker.
Finally, I really want to thank you for your kind cooments regarding the show notes I include on this web site. It makes spending the extra 30-60 minutes assembling the notes and links worthwhile!