Author Topic: Escape Pod Reviewed  (Read 4625 times)

onela22

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on: December 22, 2009, 12:34:03 AM
Dear All:

I thought you might be interested in a review of Escape Pod published earlier this year. The publication is the SFRA Review, which is put out by the Science Fiction Research Association, one of the major academic organizations that studies sf. I've added a link below to the SFRA Review Archives. The Escape Pod review is in Volume 289. Enjoy.

http://www.sfra.org/review

 



Talia

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Reply #1 on: December 22, 2009, 05:41:39 AM
wow great read. thanks for sending that along!



Swamp

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Reply #2 on: December 22, 2009, 05:44:36 AM
That's a very good review.  I liked the part below best.  While he sees it as a slight critique (admiting his bias), I love this "fun" aspect of the EP stories, though I like its diversity as well.

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Perhaps my only critique of the series is that its selections skew toward more humor than I might choose on my own. Thirty to 40 of the full-length stories have either a madcap, postmodern quality or are resolved by classic comedy conventions. (Although for a truly brilliant, humorous flash piece, listen to “The Team-Mate Reference Problem in Final Stage Demon Confrontation” by Constance Cooper.) I don’t think I’m humorless, but in SF, my preference is for tough and thoughtful rather than clever. I think Connie Willis’s Lincoln’s Dreams is one of the world’s great books, for instance, but I don’t really like To Say Nothing of the Dog.

The percentage of comic stories on Escape Pod probably reflects in part Eley’s taste, and in part that such material comes across more readily in performance. Where reading to yourself allows you to pause, reread, and ponder, audio books move forward relentlessly. This forward momentum lends itself to stories with a first-person perspective or a strong narrative voice. Once you’ve enriched your pool with these kinds of stories, I think a higher percentage of these voices are going to be eccentric or otherwise “off.” As someone who commutes 150 miles a day for work, I’ve noticed I listen to more suspense and plot-heavy fiction in the car and save poetry for reading at home. Similarly, Escape Pod sometimes emphasizes playfulness over profundity.

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Bdoomed

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Reply #3 on: December 22, 2009, 06:52:19 AM
Yeah right here
Quote
Escape Pod sometimes emphasizes playfulness over profundity.
I wanted to say, "hey dude, what's the catchphrase?!  Have Fun!

All in all an amazingly awesome review and a fun read!  Thanks for sharing!

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


Listener

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Reply #4 on: December 22, 2009, 03:08:23 PM
Quote
As someone who commutes 150 miles a day for work, I’ve noticed I listen to more suspense and plot-heavy fiction in the car and save poetry for reading at home.

And I thought my old 52-mile commute was a lot.

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SFEley

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Reply #5 on: December 24, 2009, 10:21:48 PM
Hey, great find! Thank you.  I enjoyed reading that.

In response to the "emphasizing playfulness over profundity," my kneejerk response would be "Good, it's working."  >8->  I like both and want to deliver both, but the core mission is getting more people to discover the genre.  It'd be harder to dip your toes in if every story was the SFnal equivalent of Finnegans Wake.  (OTOH, if every story was a comedy about electric toothbrushes, you'd outgrow it eventually.  I would too.)

ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine