We were talking about Chicks Unravel Time, edited by Deborah Stanish and LM Myles, for Mad Norwegian Press. You can order the book from anywhere! Hope you enjoy it.

I’m a quilter myself and so glad we have introduced to to such amazing authors as Joanna Russ and Delia Sherman as well as helping you get through some UFOs!

Cheers, Tansy xx

For a fantastic autobiography, try The Motion of Light In Water. He’s done a few other autobiographical or semi-autobiographical works such as Heavenly Breakfast and 1984, but YMMV. I enjoyed 1984, almost as much as Motion of Light.

How do we get Question Time in the US? I bet a lot of politicians here would freak at the thought.

Janice: thanks for the further info about the tennis match.

JA: yes, a 40yo woman being called a girl - especially by a man - is indeed a bit odd. Glad you had a chance to watch some Olympics And we don’t mind if you’re listening days after we post; feel free to listen whenever you have a chance

He challenged Billy Jean King and they played in September 1973 in a best of 5 sets match. King beat him in 3 straight sets.

I remember it from my youth.

(Reference: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_%28tennis%29#Riggs_v_King)

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/21/federal-court-rules-cheerleading-sport/

All the best!

Just wanted to say that while I’m not a sports person, I have been watching the Olympics. And I found it interesting to hear you talk about the Australian coverage of it. Makes me feel like the American coverage maybe isn’t so bad, but I might pay a little more attention tonight when the commentators are one man and one woman and see who does the most talking. I have heard them tripping up over ‘girl’ and ‘woman’. I don’t mind which they use, but it is odd when they call someone in their 40s a girl and a teenager a woman.

On a vaguely-not-really-related note to the list of SF reads for teenage girls, I enjoyed the list that Culturally Disoriented posted of 8 great SF books for women - http://culturallydisoriented.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/eight-great-science-fiction-books-for-women-an-alternative-list/

I am aware of the ‘tinkling’ artifact which is a product of the fact we record using Skype and then heavily compress to mp3 to maximize bandwidth (a lot of our podcasts are up to two hours long!). We are also restricted to upload speeds of 256kbs by our ISP. I have found that listening in the car tends to reduce the ‘tinkling’ effect but I appreciate it could get annoying for headphone users.

I still have all the original recordings so it should be possible to produce better quality copies onto a CD or DVD ROM if there is demand for such.

Anyway, thanks for listening and I hope you and your wife continue to enjoy the podcast.

The Silent Producer.

OTOH, I’ve been listening to a few episodes, and am somewhat bothered by the high-pitched tinkly artifacts that accompany your voices. I used to get them when I would reprocess a large mp3 file at a lower sample rate, say 8000 or 11025 Hz, which can easily leave artifacts above 4000 or 5500 Hz (one can only sample signals that are half the sampling rate or lower). I loaded one of your shows into Audacity mp3 editor, and yes, there’s a spurious 1700Hz signal (approximately) overlaid on your regular voices, which makes the little tinkly noises, almost as loud as your own voices in spots.

The comparison picture can be found here:

http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker/SignalsSm.JPG

I see that you send them out as 44100Hz samples, but I have to figure that somewhere between recording and final production, there’s a lower-frequency sampling going on.

Could you look into that?

And you make a good point about the access to the ceremony leading to many more people being able to see things like the acceptance last year. It means that things like craziness can end up on the ballot… for better and for worse. Still, it’s kinda cool that I’ll get to lose to Neil Gaiman.

And why did y’all skip over Best Fanzine? I hope y’all take a look at the packet and the stuff we put in there. There’s a lot of fun stuff goin’ on in fanzines. On the matter of women on the ballot for fanzine, Journey Planet had three guest editors last year, all women, but specifically one asked not to be included in the nomination and the other two weren’t certain if they wanted to be, so we went with “et al”.

And as cool as it was to have your name said by George RR Martin, it was much cooler to hear my name mention on GS!!!!!

I also want all the Hugos, Tansy! I have made a plan to win in every category!

Two women are on the Fan Artist ballot, Mo Starkey (regular cover artist for The Drink Tank) and Spring Schoenhuth. As far as women for Fan Artist, I’d say that Espana Sheriff and the fantastic Delphyne Woods should be on the ballot.

ON ethign on the Hunger Games, it was fascinating how they shot it, but I have to say that the hype was over-the-top.

Good episode. I have missed a few lately, and I am glad I got to listen to it while trying to beat the heat. Your Fan Chris

Don’t ask me when I’m going to read P&M, my too-read pile is very electronically tall though I’ve only had an e-reader since Christmas… Sigh, I guess a large too-read pile is the sign of a mind still hungry for new pleasures and challenges so I guess I’ll just look at it as a positive thing!

cheers Nalini

Much as I enjoy your discussion, it grated when you concluded a feminist discussion with a comment about listening to Galactica Suburbia while cleaning your house. This reminds me very much of how a certain Labour Party member (and later elected politician) gave his wife (a strong feminist) a book on Germain Greer and an ironing board for her birthday. All day at work, there were times of quiet work interspersed with outbursts from the lady in question, denouncing the gift of the ironing board and the irony of gifting both together.

cheers Nalini

I very much enjoyed your discussion.

FishpondWorld has just provided me with a copy of The Courier’s New Bicycle. It’s looking like a good candidate for the Galactic Suburbia award to me. Fortunately for my household, there are leftovers in the fridge. Ta.

First of all: Hi! I was introduced to the podcast by lauredhel at “Hoyden About Town” a few months ago, although have only been listening since I got a new phone and discovered you’d moved to podbean (my old phone did not want to play with your old podcast). I have been gradually listening my way forwards and backwards since then. I’m picking up recs and generally enjoying the discussions - so, thanks! The Yarn podcast coincided with the start of my holidays and a bit of a spending spree at my local indie bookshop, and so I figured I’d give the book a go.

My impression of it was somewhere between Tansy’s and Alisa’s. I did not go in with particular expectations, so I wasn’t disappointed in the same way Alisa was (and although I do a lot of craft-y and yarn-y things myself, it has never formed the basis of any significant community for me). Like Tansy, I enjoyed the writing and the vocab and the world-building.

But the whole thing was a bit too empty for me. I felt like I was being told things that had happened without ever getting to the point or the climax of the story. Yes, yes, ripping a thread from Bunny was a climax. But it didn’t feel particularly climactic to me, perhaps because nothing really seemed to happen as a result of it. And I never sympathised with Tane, which didn’t help with the general feeling of emptiness.

A couple of comments on your comments. First, I can’t remember whether it was Tansy or Alisa (it’s now been a couple of days since I listened to the podcast) who said that she would have expected someone to be finding a bit more pleasure in the fashion that was going on. I did get a sense that Tane did take pleasure in his work _now_. However, I agree that his attitude towards women’s clothes is a bit off.

Someone said that there was no single pleasant character in the book. I disagree. I liked Pheff (Tane’s present assistant). But he was a bit one dimensional.

Also, rather than being a particularly twisty twist, I thought the fact that Tane was Bunny’s son was obvious - ok, not from the start, but from a significant number of pages before the denouement. What I did _not_ understand was why Tane’s father had stolen him to keep him in the slubs, why Tane was allowed to live after he ripped the thread from Bunny, and how he got to where he is in the “present”. I actually think that those details could potentially have made a much more interesting story (or at least, would have helped flesh it out a bit).

Finally, for the record, I totally agree with Tansy (I think?) about the abhorrent use of the only apparently trans* character as something of a villain. I don’t think this was done maliciously, but at the very least, it uses trans*-ness (or something very like it) as a plot twist. Can we please stop doing that? Kthx.

I would be interested in reading Grey, to see what else Armstrong does with the world-building and language and vocab, so Alex, please add me to your random list for the draw.

Thanks again to all three of you for the podcasts generally.

I just listened to the Joanna Russ episode. I have not read any of her work, but I’ve ordered, _How to Suppress Women’s Writing_, and will be borrowing, _The Female Man_, from the library, so you do have an influence on what people read.

I do not know if you ladies read much Urban Fantasy, but one of my favorite books of the year is, _My Life As a White Trash Zombie_, by Diana Rowland. The protagonist is a young woman considered by all, including her self, to be a white trash loser. The book is based on the ironic premise that her life only turns around after she becomes a zombie. It is a fun, crass, romp of a good story, but it also deals with her liberating herself from an abusive home, and I thought that it did so with a great deal of humanity and compassion. I recommend it, for what that’s worth.

Thanks again,

Josh

Thanks for cheering up our comment thread. Keep on oracling.

Tansy

Oh, and to say that I’ve been trying to be an oracle of sorts of Doctor Who for Alisa on twitter now and again.