They Came, They Saw, They Conquered

Victorious South Africa start celebrations as they win the 2007 Rugby World Cup. England beaten 15-6 a few short weeks after the worst defeat in English International history; at the hands of South Africa.

RSA have played well and deserved the win, having set themselves as The team to beat. And so the Web Ellis Cup returns to South Africa after an absence of twelve years, when South Africa won the RWC for the first time in 1995.

That's it for another four years :-( Well until the 6 Nations start next year, I've heard rumours that Argentina may be invited to join the 6 Nations - making it the 7 Nations - if they are able to secure grounds in Spain to use for home games.

I've been working on tightening Terra Incognita up and am looking at self publishing it; either through Lulu.com or possibly setting up as a publisher myself and taking the Lightning Source route - daunting stuff! On the subjest of TI, there has been a considerable delay in episodes for the Podiobook, as Kevin (The Narrator) has been out of the country for the last three weeks being indoctrinated with the Microsoft Way - congrats on the MCSE!

Anyway with Kevin now back, he has promised to get back to recording as soon as possible; that should (hopefully) mean that at least chapter 16 will be available on Podiobooks.com before the week is out. I've also been working on Praedari, the sequel to Terra Incognita, and getting that into a format for everyone to reprise their roles from TI.


Cheers,

Gary

Last day of September - winter is nigh!

The final day of the RWC Pool stages dawned bright and clean. The sun is out and all's right with the world...

Except if you happen to be Welsh, and possibly Irish (at the time of writing this, Argentina are ahead 5-0) - given the rather large score line target that Ireland have to reach in beating Argentina today...we shall see how things develop. Still, if Ireland don't go through, perhaps the Welsh will share the aircraft home with them. Scotland are through to the Quarter Finals, as are England - personally, I don't think England should have made it through. Their performance seems to have been rather lack-luster and almost "too little, too late". There were far better teams in the England Pool who deserved the chance at the Quarters.

Episode 15 of Terra Incognita has been uploaded to Podiobooks.com, and is awaiting the tender mercies of that dedicated team, who give their time freely, to build and maintain the Podiobooks.com site and community. Kevin, the Narrator, has gone to the US for a couple of weeks training - anyone seeing him in Texas, make sure he gets on a flight home before too long.

A very good friend of mine, Geoff Nelder, has an anthology of science fiction stories (Dimensions), co-written with Robert Blevins and published by Adventure Books Of Seattle. I'm recording/editing the intros and outros of Dimensions, ready for submission to Podiobooks.com - these are good stories and well worth listening too, or even buying the book and reading :-)

I've spent a lot of the last week playing with web site design, and would really appreciate any comments on the lay out of my web site - or for that matter if all the links are working correctly. I think they are, but there are an awful lot of them and it is possible that I've missed one or two. I've added a link to the Creative Commons Licensing site, and it's now on here as well :-) If you've been listening to the Terra Incognita Podiobook and you're enjoying it - let me know and rate it on the Terra Incognita page at Podiobooks. I'd really like to hear what listeners think of TI ;-) If you're enjoying TI, let your friends know - ask them to subscribe and help move the Podiobook onto, and up the Podiobooks.com Chart...

I've also been listening to the work of my fellow authors on Podiobooks.com, specifically J.C.Hutins' 7th Son Book 3 - Destruction, M Darusha Wehm's Beautiful Red, Mike Luoma's Vatican Assassin and Timothy Callahan's The Arwen (Season 1 & Season 2). I'd highly recommend them all as being well worth listening too.

And today, StarShip Sofa released Episode 59, about C.M.Kornbluth. Tony & Ciaran at The Sofa talk about a different science fiction author, film or magazine each week. Essentially the format is a brief bio of the author, or principle persons in the film or magazine, and from this they move into related fields - who the author worked with, their most well known books. StarShip Sofa is available from iTunes, or for download from the SSS web site, there is also a fairly active forum in which all things science fiction, and a few non-science fiction things are discussed - check it out ;-)

And finally... For the past few weeks, the TV has been carrying 'adverts', possibly better stated as 'requests' for World Vision Ireland. This page gives a far better idea of the work they do, than I could. The monthly sponsorship is €25 - four packets of cigarettes to make a difference to someone's life.

Cheers,

Gary

Podiobooks, Books and Rugby World Cup 2007...

England managed to pull themselves out of the quagmire that has been their Rugby performance thus far in the RWC 2007. Better late than never, but perhaps a little too late... They have yet to face Tonga, who gave South Africa a run for their money today.

Rounded off Joe Haldeman's Peace And War last night - 700 pages of science fiction, deep joy! This is an Omnibus edition that contains The Forever War, Forever Free and Forever Peace. Now moved onto a Jeremy Clarkson's Born To Be Riled for a change of pace before getting back into the science fiction vein.

I'll be getting myself into trouble very soon when I get to the local book shop - have Sandworms Of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson to collect and I'd ordered Eifelheim by Michael Flynn and Blindsight by Peter Watts. Eifelheim won the Hugo Award this year, so I'm looking forward to having a copy in my grubby little mits!

I've been listening to 7th Son Trilogy, Book 3 - Destruction by J.C.Hutchins and Beautiful Red by Darusha Wehm. J.C.Hutchins' 7th Son is a great story, start with Descent - which is Book 1. Darusha Wehm's Beautiful Red is Cyberpunk and another good story. Both are available for free subscription from Podiobooks.com - as it Terra Incognita...

Episode 14 of TI is now available on Podiobooks.com, episode 15 will be following on this week ;-) I've been thinking about producing Praedari - the sequel to Terra Incognita - as a Podiobook as well. Thus far, the core cast from TI have agreed to reprise their characters for the sequel; which is a very good start!

I have the first eighteen chapters of Praedari almost ready to distribute to the cast, but Kevin (the Narrator) has asked to have all the narrative first, so he can get a head start on everyone else. So I think I'll need to complete converting the novel into distinct character or narrator parts before that goes any further...

It looks like a good friend - Geoff Nelder - is going to have his co-written science fiction anthology Dimensions released by Podiobooks as well. I've offered to put each episode together for him, as in mixing his recorded reading with music (from MagnaTune) and intro and outro title piece - should be fairly straight forward as I've built up a reasonable amount of experience with the TI episodes...

Best get on - things to do (as ever!)

Cheers,

Gary

Well that'll be England out of the RWC, then won't it...

Unless, of course, they can beat Samoa and/or Tonga - a little unlikely I think. I'd have to say that I think this is going to be an antipodean final, SA are playing well; but I'm not sure they can beat either Australia or New Zealand... Still it'll be interesting to see what happens!

I've just finished Aldous Huxley's Brave New World - interesting book, if a little dated - but it was written seventy-five years ago... Moving onto Use Of Weapons by Iain M Banks, the third Culture novel. I found The Player Of Games a little hard going at first, but have been getting through the other Culture novels at a rate of knots.

It looks like the next version of Mac OS X - Leopard, is due for release next month - a fun, short round of upgrading the operating system is in order me thinks - although nowhere near as painful as a Windows upgrade...

I've been at the alter of StarShip Sofa this morning, as Tony and Ciaran began a two parter on Vernor Vinge. An interesting, as ever, look at a science fiction writer; if you've not heard any of the StarShip Sofa podcast and like science fiction, they you really should check it out...

Episode 13 of Terra Incognita was send to Podiobooks.com yesterday and should be available from there soon. It's also available on Podshow and also listed at the BritCaster.com site.

Cheers,

Gary

World in Union, with some upsets...

Wasn't that a fun weekend of Rugby?

It would appear that it is the Southern Hemisphere teams who are the best prepared! Watching the England v USA game I found myself rooting for the Eagles from about fifteen minutes in, they played amazingly well and, for me at least, won the game - although the score line didn't reflect that. Apparently the USA Eagles have set themselves a target of getting out of the group stages at the next world cup. If it wasn't for the South Africa in the group, I suspect they may have achieved that target this year...

Episode 12 of Terra Incognita has now been completed and uploaded to Podshow.com and Podiobooks.com. I'm aiming to have Episode 13 completed before the end of this week... There's an extra 'little' bit in Episode 12, which will also be in Ep13, 14 & 15, this is a trivia competition. The prize is a complete set of audio CDs of the entire Terra Incognita Podiobook, the details are here.

Cheers,

Gary

The Time Is Nigh...

...for the Web Ellis Cup to depart for sunnier climbs and head back to the Southern Hemisphere.

The Rugby World Cup started yesterday with a marvellous clash between France and Argentina. It got to be edge of the seat stuff as France attacked and were rebuffed by Argentina time and time again. The Argentinian boys played very competent, controlled rugby and France simply couldn't get their game together. On last night's showing, Argentina are the team to beat in that group.

Today has a grand set of games:

New Zealand v Italy
Australia v Japan
England v USA

Tomorrow, also looks like a serious set of game:

Wales v Canada
South Africa v Samoa
Scotland v Portugal
Ireland v Namibia

We have a sweep stake running at work, I drew Namibia - so that may well be an interesting game to watch...


In last week's episode, Tony Smith and Ciaran O'Carroll - the Master Minds and guiding lights - of Starship Sofa mentioned Terra Incognita. If you haven't had a listen to The Boys From The Sofa, all their previous episodes are available for download. There's also a fairly lively forum for all things Science Fiction and that can be found here.

I'll be getting Episode 12 of the Terra Incognita Podiobook together and uploaded today. I've also decided that a trivia quiz on Terra Incognita may be a bit of fun, so have set a question here. The prize is the entire podiobook on CD, when it's completed of course. Depending on how this goes, I may do another couple of trivia competitions. I've also been speaking to Kevin, the Narrator, we will be aiming to release two episodes a week from now on - hopefully this will work out!

We have also been talking about an added 'bonus' episode when TI is complete. This will most likely be a Q&A style thing - any questions or comments, email me at gary@gary-hicks.com - we may also include a teaser for Praedari, the sequel to Terra Incognita, but that really has to be worked out in a bit more detail as yet ;-)