A World of Speculation

What can I say? Despite my recent dearth of writings, Father Joseph has decided to nominate me for a Thinking Blog Award. And this is the sort of award that a nomination is a win (which may be true of many awards, but that’s a rabbit trail I won’t follow today).

Quoting Father Joseph, here are the instructions:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

Well, the fact that Father Joseph has pointed you this way means that he can’t be one of my picks, but just for the record, he would be, otherwise.

And he named another of my favorites, Get Religion, so that’s out, too.

But the truth is, I’ve been focused on audio lately. I write a column for the Oregon Court Reporters Association newsletter, and I spend a lot of time with earbugs, frequently sitting behind a steno machine. So I’ll figure that the chain of “thinking” bloggers will spread out to many writers worth reading, so I’ll point to a few worth listening to.

The first is a back-at-you at Father Joseph, whose accent is not quite as Southern as I expected it to be, but whose commentary is full of everyday insights that validate the “wit and wisdom” promised on the Ancient Faith promo (that Father Joseph laughs about).

Another is the podcast SF magazine, Escape Pod. Founder and host Steve Ely has put together a professional-quality anthology of weekly stories (they’ve also added a horror and a fantasy edition, neither of which I’ve listened to yet) that manage to be at once thought provoking and fun.

Yet another is the Sonic Society, a vast aural conspiracy to bring “audio cinema” to English speakers from around the world (“We are legion”).

Through the Sonic Society, I’ve found such treasures as Black Jack Justice and The Red Panda — new radio programs in the Old Time Radio tradition with exactly the right mix of earnestness and tongue in cheek — at Decoder Ring Theatre. They’re between seasons just now, but that gives you time to catch up on Seasons 1 and 2 before they come back for (I hope) the third.

Finally is an experiment that maps the capabilities of podcast fiction: The Failed Cities Monologues. Lots of authors have written their stories in “different voices,” but Matt Wallace and crew take the concept of voice to a whole new platform in this dystopian tale of loyalty, betrayal, tenderness, brutality, and the question of what it takes to get by.

So there are my nominees. Thanks for the kudos, Father Joseph, and I’ll do my best to dust off my keyboard a little more productively in the future.