"Fifty years ago today, Star Trek launched its first “five year mission” on televisions across the country. The Starship Enterprise’s goal, “to explore new worlds… to boldly go where no man has gone before” gave viewers the opportunity to explore new realms; space, time, and the far reaches of human condition. The future, as envisioned by creator Gene Roddenberry, was portrayed as a place of great unity and equality, progress and diversity. According to author and nerd-culture critic Ethan Gilsdorf, that message is needed more than ever in 2016."
Listen to my appearance on WGBH's Boston Public Radio with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan.
Over on the Imaginary Worlds podcast, I had a chance to talk about J.R.R. Tolkien, hobbits and hippies, among othert topics.
The folks at Wizards of the Coast, aka D&D headquarters, kindly invited me to be on their Dragon Talk podcats to pax poetic about D&D and why it's so good for you. Hope you enjoy. You can also grab it on iTunes here.
My D&D world tour continues in the UK. I was fortunate to be interviewed by the BBC's Radio 5 "Up All Night" host Adam Rosser with authors Mark Barrowcliffe (The Elfish Gene) and Jim Swallow (author of numerous Star Trek, Doctor Who books). Included in this retrospective about D&D and its 40th birthday, there's also a segment with Ian Livingstone (co-founder of Games Workshop). You can listen to the archived Feb 5 show here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03szml0. Click the big arrow and bump the episode up to around the 02:13:15 mark, which is where the D&D segment begins. (I think this link will be up for a little while. Let me know if the link is dead and I'll try to find the archived show elsewhere.)
(image: AP)Does "like" = "love"? Feel a little beat up by social media sometimes? My essay about this topic, "Looking For ‘Likes’ In All The Wrong Places: On Social Media And Self-Worth," appeared on WBUR's Morning Edition, Mon Feb 4. Here's an excerpt, and you can listen to the piece I recorded below.
(image: AP)Does "like" = "love"? Feel a little beat up by social media sometimes? My essay about this topic, "Looking For ‘Likes’ In All The Wrong Places: On Social Media And Self-Worth," appeared on WBUR's Morning Edition, Mon Feb 4. Here's an excerpt, and you can listen to the piece I recorded below.
We all know the feeling.
We post something on Facebook, say our latest gastronomical experiment, or a scathing takedown of a celebrity making a fool of himself. Or, we let fly a clever tweet paired with a shrewd hashtag we’re certain is going to go viral.
Then, crickets. As in, no “likes,” no retweets, no nothing.
And how does all this make us feel? More insignificant than if we’d posted nothing at all.
That’s the power, and danger, of social media.
You can read the rest here. And listen below.
Tolkien & other nerds: I recently had the pleaure of nerding out about The Hobbit (and the new Desolation of Smaug trailer) and other Tolkien, D&D and fantasy topics with the Tolkien Professor, aka Corey Olsen, and Noble Smith (my collaborator over at Dungeons & Dorkwads)
The Tolkien Professor chats with authors and uber-geeks Ethan Gilsdorf and Noble Smith. Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. Noble Smith is the author of The Wisdom of the Shire: A Short Guide to a Long and Happy Life.
You can find them both at the webpage Dungeons and Dorkwads.
Download this episode here, or subscribe to The Tolkien Professor on iTunes.
Once again (for the third year running), I particuated in a fantastic collaborative audio fiction project called Books, Actually.
If you missed this year's edition --- "Books, Actually: What If?" --- at the 2013 Boston Book Festival, you can listen to it here.
Books, Actually is The Drum's collection of interlaced stories set in and around the Boston Book Festival. A thief, a teenaged poet, a coxswain, and a disgruntled author are just a few of the characters created by Boston authors Catherine Elcik, Ethan Gilsdorf, Katrina Grigg-Saito, Ted Weesner, Becky Tuch, Clarence Lai, Stace Budzko, and Henriette Lazaridis Power.
Hear them all, or go directly to a selected story. Here are the authors and the times on this audio file where Elcik (00:31), Gilsdorf (6:20), Lai (11:47), Power (17:12), Weesner (22:51), Tuch (29:23), Budzko (35:39), Grigg-Saito (37:17), Elcik (42:21).
Dungeons and Dragons is the single most famous roleplaying game in the world. Writer Ethan Gilsdorf didn’t grow up in Wisconsin, but his love of D&D led him to fantasize about visiting the game’s hometown: Lake Geneva, hometown to Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax. In this cool radio piece, Ethan explores the origins of D&D for Wisconsin Public Radio.
Or you can listen to the mp3 here.