Let me say this is my first podcast, and only third (I think) venture into the world of fan audio. But with the latest version of iTunes, getting a podcast has become a no-brainer, so I thought I’d give it a try.
One of the first things the host, Erik, addresses is feedback that he needs more girls on the show. I know, first-time listener, but I’m not going to argue with that. I think I might know a few willing volunteers…
Then some news: a bit more information on Mike Stackpole’s postcasting network.
Then Jay from Rebelscum comes on to talk about books, after a lengthy Imperial March… Rebelscum covers books? Well, comics, apparently. He’s a comic guy. I have a bad feeling about this.
But the focus is novels. Really. They start with fiction, talking about Dark Nest, Last of the Jedi, Dark Lord, Outbound Flight, and Republic Commando: Triple Zero.
Now the Legacy series, but neither Jay nor Erik remember even who the authors are. (Aaron Allston, Karen Traviss, and Troy Denning, if you’re curious.) Way to be prepared; that was the first thing we knew about the series, and there’s plenty more information that can be found easily on TFN itself. Hrm.
And boy, it sure was hard to keep track of the books back in the 90’s when they came out all willy-nilly over the timeline. Uh… okay. I must have had some kind of superhuman intellect as a teenager or something, because I don’t recall it as being more than a very minor annoyance. The convenience of the NJO and timelines in every book has made fans lazy! (Yes, and we did walk barefoot, in the snow, uphill, to purchase stuff like the Jedi Academy trilogy.)
That said, they address the non-fiction books coming out; again, nothing new.
They finish up the podcast with an interview with Jeremy Bulloch at C3. He talks about his interview for the role, how he got to be an Imperial officer in ESB, his cameo in Episode III, his book, and acting.
Technical issue: the transitionary music bits go on too long, and they’re significantly louder than the talking bits. Is this typical for podcasts? Maybe.
In short: nothing really new here if you’ve been keeping up. It basically comes across as a laundry list with the book news. I was hoping for a little more discussion, or at least some reporting on more than one of the tiny bits of information have come out on the boards from Lucasfilm VIPs. It really seems that the type of person who would listen to a TFN podcast on books would already know these things. The Bulloch interview is a nice touch, though. As is the run time; just under a half hour. Most of the fan audio I’ve downloaded is an hour or more, which is a rather unwieldy chunk of time.
I’ll give Erik another try – the latest podcast just popped up on TFN, and some of the older ones look interesting – but he should probably find a more informed source for book news. Maybe even a woman.
I actually enjoy putting on the podcasts in the background while I’m doing other things. Most of them are pleasant enough. But I figured the book one would just annoy me, so I didn’t bother to listen to it.
And the shorter timeframe is definitely more welcome. While Star Wars En Direct can be an interesting show, it runs too long. I have yet to get all the way through one.