Help Me Help Children’s Hospitals with #ExtraLife!

On November 4-5th I am going to run 24 hours of Dungeons and Dragons, live-streamed on Twitch, all to benefit a great charity. This video, and the link below, will tell you how!

Find my Extra Life Page and pledge today!

Then on November 4-5th, check out the stream on Twitch! https://twitch.tv/christianaellis

2016 Oscar Marathon Introduction (Audio)

Christiana and Mike begin their annual Oscar Movie Marathon!

Check out our Tracking Spreadsheet!

The End of Fallout 4 (Audio)

Finally, the audio version of my spoilerific discussion of Fallout 4 with Nobilis Reed!

 

2016 Oscar Marathon Update 1! (Video)

In-depth discussions of: Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, Inside Out and more!

Special Edition: The End of Fallout 4 (Video)

Nobilis Reed joined me for a discussion about Fallout 4, including a spoilery discussion of the ending(s).

The Geek Side of Life: A Song of Ice and Fire – What’s the end game?

Hey guys! This is a Balticon Panel that I was on about, well, look at the title. The excellent Tim Dodge was both moderator and recorder, and has posted the audio on his podcast, which I am reposting now. šŸ™‚

Originally posted here.

Live from Balticon 49! This is a panel discussion titled A Song of Ice and Fire: Whatā€™s the End Game? It featured Jay Buechler, Christiana Ellis, Nutty Nuchtchas and Jeff Young. SPOILER WARNING: Do not listen to this episode if you have not read all five books in the series and you care about being surprised.

Web sites:

Promo: Coxwood History Fun Cast

Psuedopod #450: “The Horse Lord”

Originally posted here.

“The Horse Lord” by Lisa Tuttle.

ā€œThe Horse Lordā€ was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in June 1977 and included in A NEST OF NIGHTMARES. This collection was first published in 1986 by Sphere Books and is now available as an e-book from Jo Fletcher Books; it is also included in STRANGER IN THE HOUSE, a collection of her early supernatural fiction published as a limited edition hardcover by Ash-Tree Press in 2010.

Lisa Tuttle began her career as a published writer in the early 1970s, and won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer of the year in 1974. Sheā€™s the author of seven novels and more than a hundred short stories. Born and raised in Texas, she has lived in a remote, rural part of Scotland for the past twenty-five years. Her first novel, Windhaven, was a collaboration with George R. R. Martin published in 1981. This was followed by a horror novel,Familiar Spirit, in 1983. Unable to stick to one well-defined genre, although most of her work features elements of horror and/or dark fantasy, she went on to write novels of psychological suspense (Gabriel and The Pillow Friend), science fiction (Lost Futures), and contemporary/mythic fantasy (The Mysteries and The Silver Bough) as well as books for children and young adults, and non-fiction (Encyclopedia of Feminism and Heroines).

Short stories were her first love, and remain important. Her first short story collection, A Nest of Nightmares was published in the U.K. in 1986, and two years later featured in Horror: 100 Best Books edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman. Her other collections include A Spaceship Built of Stone and other stories (1987), Memories of the Body: Tales of Desire and Transformation (1992), Ghosts and Other Lovers (2002) and Objects in Dreams(2012). A number of her short stories have appeared in ā€œbest of the yearā€ anthologies and been nominated for awards; ā€œCloset Dreamsā€ won the 2007 International Horror Guild Award. She edited an influential anthology of horror stories by women writers, Skin of the Soul, first published in 1990.

She has just finished a new novel, to be published next year: THE CURIOUS AFFAIR OF THE SOMNAMBULIST AND THE PSYCHIC THIEF ā€” this is the start of a new detective series set in London in the 1890s. If you want a taste of what is to come, check out her stories in both theRogues and Down These Strange Streets anthologies and follow her author page on Facebook.

Your narrator this week is Christiana Ellis who is a Writer and podcaster living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the author of Nina Kimberly the Merciless as well as Space Casey. She also produces several non-fiction podcasts and videos that can all be found at Christianaellis.com. Most recent project is Space Casey Season 2, the sequel to the original audiodrama about a con artist in the future, which can be found on Podiobooks.com and SpaceCasey.com

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The double barn doors were secured by a length of stout, rust-encrusted chain, fastened with an old padlock.

Marilyn hefted the lock with one hand and tugged at the chain, which did not give. She looked up at the splintering grey wood of the doors and wondered how the children had got in.

Dusting red powder from her hands, Marilyn strolled around the side of the old barn. Dead leaves and dying grasses crunched beneath her sneakered feet, and she hunched her shoulders against the chill in the wind.

ā€˜Thereā€™s plenty of room for horses,ā€™ Kelly had said the night before at dinner. ā€˜Thereā€™s a perfect barn. You canā€™t say it would be impractical to keep a horse here.ā€™ Kelly was Derekā€™s daughter, eleven years old and mad about horses.

This barn had been used as a stable, Marilyn thought, and could be again. Why not get Kelly a horse? And why not one for herself as well? As a girl, Marilyn had ridden in Central Park. She stared down the length of the barn: for some reason, the door to each stall had been tightly boarded shut.

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Space Casey Season 2 Parsec Submission

Space Casey Season 2 has been nominated for a Parsec AwardĀ in the the Best Speculative Fiction Audio Drama (Short Form) category!

Space Casey Cover Square-1400

I was asked to submit a 30-minute compilation including up to four clips from the season, and this is what I submitted. I hope you enjoy!

Peak Superhero! (Video)

I get together with Christopher Morse, Jared Axelrod and Tee Morris to talk all about superheroes!

Gamergate Makes Me Sad

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I am a gamer, and Iā€™m not ashamed to say so.

I am, however, sad.

Iā€™m sad because a thing called Gamergate is tearing the online gamer community apart right now, and it is making everybody miserable.

Whose fault that is, of course, is up for debate.

I have an opinion on that, but let me set that aside for a moment.

There are a lot of people in Gamergate, and not allĀ of them are there for the same reasons.

If you are a Gamergate supporter, I am not going to try and argue your points. Thereā€™s plenty of that going around already, and it has not, it seems to me, been very productive or helpful.

Instead, Iā€™m just going to ask you this:

Whatever it is that you personally hope is going to come out of all of thisā€¦

Is it really worth it?

Iā€™m not talking about the natural tendency to try to fight tomorrowā€™s war today. Iā€™m talking about what changes might get made to the industry right now. Think about what it is that you want to have happen. Be as specific as possible.

Want such-and-such a website to promise to disclose writer-developer relationships?

Want so-and-so who was mean to you online to be fired?

Want to make sure that your favorite games are not tampered with?

You tell me. What is it, specifically, that you want to change?

And donā€™t say: ā€œEthical journalismā€ because that is an abstract, and not everybody would agree on what that is. Think about real, tangible, specific things. What is it you want?

Now, letā€™s say you got itā€¦

How much difference would that make in your actual day-to-day life?

Maybe you think itā€™s a lot. I canā€™t speak for your life or your priorities. My guess though, is that, other than a sense of victory, it wouldnā€™t really change anything very much at all unless you are personally a games developer or journalist.

So, in any case, whatever that change is. Is it really worth all this discord and fighting?

 

I canā€™t answer that for you, but let me talk a little bit about what else the gaming community is sacrificing in this battle:

  • Real actual human beings with thoughts and feelings are made to feel afraid in their homes.
  • People are angry and polarized. Trolling is rampant on both sides, with no end in sight.
  • Indie games developers may leave the field for a less controversial, less aggressive medium, robbing all of us of whatever games they might have made.
  • Potential games developers will not even enter the field.
  • Big triple-A games makers will see the controversy and become more risk-averse than ever, for fear of pissing off anyone. The result will be more-and-more annualized bland franchises, with no innovation, because who knows what change might set off the next big fight?
  • The mainstream perception of ā€œGamersā€ is being damaged more by this fighting than by any other thing I can think of in my lifetime.

Again, regardless ofĀ whose fault this is, it is still happening, and it is happening because the fight over ā€œGamergateā€ is happening.

 

Still worth it?

 

Regardless of who started it or why or how or whatever, Gamergate has become the online equivalent of a riot, with looting and violence.

You may have joined something that you hopedĀ would be a peaceful protest. Now, you look at the looters with genuine dismay, upset that they have co-opted your message. But if you continue to stand there in the streets with them, you cannot be surprised when the tear gas starts flying.

Is that ā€œfairā€? Maybe not. Still gonna happen.

(As a side-note, everybody knows that simply ā€œreportingā€ the trolls is 100% useless. The preponderance of burner Twitter accounts on both sides of this movement means that any troll that gets their account suspended just creates four more the next day and keeps on trolling.)

So what am I saying you should do?

Go home. Play videogames. This is not a ā€œbattleā€ that needs to be ā€œwonā€ today! It is not a ā€œwarā€!

The games industry is not going anywhere. Games journalism will exist as long as games do.

Neither industry is going to make sweeping changes overnight. In either direction.

There will always be games that you like, and games that you don’t like.

The future of games and game journalism will be forged not with demands and harassment, but by calm discussion and good-faith engagement over time.

Continuing this fighting on Twitter will accomplish nothing except further trolling, further anger, and further division in the gaming community.

Instead, I suggest that you find games and game websites that you like and support them. Be involved. Give constructive feedback and help to shape the community there.

If you feel a site is not worthy of your business, then leave it at that. Just donā€™t go there. It is really that simple.

And finally, please, to everyone on every side of this thing. Remember that your fellow human beings are fellow human beings! People say dumb things sometimes. People say things that they donā€™t mean. They say things that they mean but phrase it badly. They have strong feelings and irrational feelings and conflicting feelings and they like and donā€™t like and love and hate lots of different things because weā€™re all people here!

There are real human stakes here. Real lives that are being damaged.

Or is it really all just a game to you?

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