interview

StarShipSofa No 474 David John Baker and Colin Gibson

KickStarter: Everyone Worlds Without Walls https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1895930248/everyone-worlds-without-walls

Interview: Colin Gibson, Oscar-winning Production Designer on Mad Max: Fury Road with Jeremy Szal

Main Fiction: “Nanoamerica” by David John Baker

Originally published in PS Publishing’s Catastrophia.

David John Baker is a philosophy professor at the University of Michigan, where he studies the conceptual foundations of modern physics.  He has defended the view that space and time are as real as material objects, and that there is no fundamental difference between your left hand and your right hand.  He also teaches a popular course on science fiction and philosophy.  His stories have appeared in Escape Pod, Writers of the Future, and the PS Publishing anthology Catastrophia.  Visit him online at www-personal.umich.edu/~djbaker.

Narrated by: George Hrab

Multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, producer, composer, and heliocentrist George Hrab has written and produced six independent CDs and a concert DVD; published two books; recorded hundreds of episodes of an award-winning podcast; emceed countless science conferences; been a TEDx speaker; and has even performed for President Clinton. He’s traveled to four continents promoting critical thinking, science, and skepticism through story and song. George is considered one of the preeminent skeptic/science/atheist/geek-culture music icons currently living in his apartment.

Fact: Science News by J J Campanella

StarShipSofa No 431 Martin L. Shoemaker and Mika Mckinnon

Interview: Mika Mckinnon


Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H. Sturgis


 

Main Fiction: “Pallbearers” by Martin L. Shoemaker

Originally published in Galaxy’s Edge

Martin L. Shoemaker is a programmer who writes on the side… or maybe it’s the other way around. Programming pays the bills, but a second place story in the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest earned him lunch with Buzz Aldrin. Programming never did that! His work has appeared in Analog, Clarkesworld, Galaxy’s Edge, Digital Science Fiction, Forever Magazine, and Writers of the Future Volume 31. His novella Murder on the Aldrin Express was reprinted in Year’s Best Science Fiction Thirty-First Annual Collection and in Year’s Top Short SF Novels 4. His short story “Today I Am Paul” will be reprinted in Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-third Annual Edition, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume One, The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, and The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 8, and will appear in French translation in Galaxies magazine.

Narrated by: Brian Rollins

Brian Rollins was born in California and grew up in and around the Western US. He currently resides in Highlands Ranch, CO where he works as a voice artist primarily focused on audiobooks. He is probably best known for being the voice of the Glen and Tyler series of audiobooks, written by JB Sanders. If you’re in the Denver area in March, you can find him on stage with Magic Moments, a non-profit theater group that brings theater professionals and people with special needs together to create an original show every year. You can hire Brian to narrate your next audiobook at TheVoicesInMyHead.com.

StarShipSofa No 420 David Steffen and David Brin

Coming Up…

Interview: David Brin and The Best Year in Space Ever!


Fact: Science News by J J Campanella 


Main Fiction: “Catastrophic Failure” by David Steffen

Fiction originally appeared in Perihelion Science Fiction.

David is a software engineer and writer living in Minnesota. He is the editor of Diabolical Plots, a speculative fiction zine of fiction and nonfiction. In 2015 Diabolical Plots began publishing original fiction for the first time. He is also the administrator of the Submission Grinder, a web tool for writers to track their submissions and find markets for their work. His fiction has been published in Escape Pod, Daily Science Fiction, AE and many others.

Narrated by: Mark Kilfoil

Mark “the Encaffeinated ONE” Kilfoil loves fiction, so much so that he’s written some (such as the Parsec-nominated Tainted Roses), read quite a lot (a library of over a thousand half-read books and growing) and now narrates them (sometimes actually recorded for others). He’s found that volunteering for a dozen years in radio was a decent way to get a full-time job as a Program Director at a community radio station in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, but not such a great way to finish his thesis, so he stopped at a Masters in Computer Science. He can be heard frequently on CHSRfm.ca, and two of his shows irregularly appear as podcasts, and can be found at encaffeinated.ca (CAFFEEN!) and theweirdshow.com (The WEIRD Show, winner of a Parsec Award for “Best Infotainment”). He likes cats enough to pet them but not enough to own one, and computers enough to own several but pet none of them. He will someday write a million words, but at this rate, that will require life extension, so he eagerly awaits the ability to upload into a computer, if that hasn’t already happened and this is all only a simulation.

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