Appendix N Book Club show

Appendix N Book Club

Summary: Jeff Goad, Ngo Vinh-Hoi, and a rotating roster of special guests discuss the classic adventure, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and weird fiction that inspired the creation of the world's first roleplaying game.

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  • Artist: Jeff Goad, Ngo Vinh-Hoi, and special guests
  • Copyright: All rights reserved

Podcasts:

 Episode 95 – Fredric Brown's "What Mad Universe” with special guest Angeline B. Adams | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:58:51

Angeline B. Adams joins us to discuss Fredric Brown's "What Mad Universe”, psychogeography, toxic fandom, fictionalizing the writer's process, near-future sci-fi, the Troubles conflict in Northern Ireland, the relationship between the text and the art, loose worldbuilding, environmental and knowledge hazards, having protagonists deal with a big scary world, organic plot development, what this book looks like in other mad universes, and much more!

 Episode 94 – Stanley G. Weinbaum's "The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum" with special guest Newton Nitro | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:59:52

Newton Nitro joins us to discuss Stanley G. Weinbaum's "The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum", Brazilian speculative fiction, Malazan Book of the Fallen, celebrations of the heterosexual white male, coming to acceptance with death, different cultural moral frameworks, the Virgin-Whore Complex, Brazilian miscegenation, dark humor, reskinning the Keep on the Borderlands, using RPGs to subvert facism, and much more!

 Episode 93 – Michael Moorcock's "Elric of Melniboné" with special guest Peter Bebergal | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:59:47

Peter Bebergal joins us to discuss Michael Moorcock's "Elric of Melniboné", gaming stores, Gygax's love of pulp, meta-levels inside of dungeons, grimoires IRL, Elric's rotating sidekicks, the limits of idealism, the tragedy of addiction, Elric in art, the Eternal Champions, Elric as anime, and much more!

 Episode 92 – Roger Zelazny's "The Hand of Oberon" with special guest Shauntelle Benjamin | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:58:04

Shauntelle Benjamin joins us to discuss Roger Zelazny's "The Hand of Oberon", TTRPG Twitch streaming, the protagonist's internal experience, similiar sounding names, casual incest, combat mechanics in literature, cybernetic limbs, life-draining highways, getting stabbed by uncles you've just met, interior monologues in gaming, and much more!

 Episode 91 - Philip José Farmer's "The Lavalite World" with special guest Kienna Shaw | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:57:31

Kienna Shaw joins us to discuss Philip José Farmer's "The Lavalite World", using present-day religious texts as mythology, literary info dumps, the petty egos of immortals, making moral choices when you your life is at stake, close third-person narration, the dangers of presenting racist characters without critique, Bluebeard's Bride, being a collaborative player instead of a lone wolf, constantly shifting landscapes, and much more!

 Episode 90 - Fletcher Pratt's "Invaders from Rigel" with special guest Ginny Loveday | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:59:48

Ginny Loveday joins us to discuss Fletcher Pratt's "Invaders from Rigel", small books with even smaller fonts, colonialism, space travellers who don't understand combustibles, goofily over-capable heroes, interesting adversaries, home play vs organized play, overly replying on combat to handle challenges, separating the art from the artist, and much more!

 Episode 89 - Jack Vance's "The Killing Machine" with special guest Paige Leitman | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:58:50

Paige Leitman joins us to discuss Jack Vance's "The Killing Machine", Alexandre Dumas, sexism, interplanetary skin tones, examples of successful worldbuilding, D&D as a western, roleplaying vs rollplaying, planet-hopping revenge games, Star Wars, the OSR community, and much more!

 Episode 88 - Fritz Leiber's "The Big Time" with special guest Jason Ray Carney | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:56:28

Jason Ray Carney joins us to discuss Fritz Leiber's "The Big Time", urban modernism, Lovecraft's fear of the other, period slang, the time travel genre, deeply traumatized protagonists, Leiber's understanding of language, being the Black Svengali to one's Trilby, unity of time and space, Conan vs Fafhrd, chronomancy, and much more!

 Episode 87 - Robert E. Howard's "Conan the Usurper" with special guest Nicole Emmelhainz-Carney | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:57:13

Nicole Emmelhainz-Carney joins us to discuss Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp's "Conan the Usurper", body horror, de Camp's heavy-handed editing, offensive physical descriptions of black characters, Lovecraft's contemporaries, the experience of talking about problematic elements in the fandom, Howard's creative process, audience analysis in pulps, the cliche of the dumb barbarian, unknown characters seeking revenge on PCs, and much more!

 Episode 86 - Lin Carter's "The Immortal of World's End" with special guest Kira Magrann | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:59:45

Kira Magrann joins us to discuss Lin Carter's "The Immortal of World's End", LARPing as an awkward teenager, goth teenage years, blending sci-fi and fantasy, tonal shifts, strange metaphors, the cognitive dissonance of glorifying violence after seeing war firsthand, evolving cultural norms, positive inclusions of beasts and animals, sexualizing all or none of the characters instead of just the female-presenting characters, random charts, Trancore as a music genre, and much more!

 Episode 85 - Fred Saberhagen's "The Black Mountains" with special guest Jason Vey | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:59:41

Jason Vey joins us to discuss Fred Saberhagen's "The Black Mountains", owlbears, waiting for the fun evil parts, the Swords trilogy, cold war themes in a post-apocalyptic world, wizards with swords, the root of the lich, making magic unique, designing for 5e vs DCC RPG, mutations tables, and much more!

 Episode 84 - Gardner F. Fox's "Kothar and the Conjurer's Curse" with special guest Clio Yun-su Davis | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:59:27

Clio Yun-su Davis joins us to discuss Gardner F. Fox's "Kothar and the Conjurer's Curse", sexual violence, sword and sorcery LARP ideas, non-stop magical hijinx, video game boob physics, the journey in gaming, using the "rule of cool" with cultural sensitivity in mind, monsters that represent human populations, coincidences as plot devices, creative death curses, power levels for heoric gaming, and much more!

 Episode 83 – Jack Williamson's "The Humanoids” with special guest Misha B | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:55:42

Misha B joins us to discuss Jack Williamson's "The Humanoids”, relatable yet opposing idealogies, babies kept in cribs too long, the value of degenerates, the character arch of authors within their careers, morally ambiguous antagonists, superpowered humans overtaking the galaxy, setting ground rules at the table, characters with godlike abilities, moving force down the chain of challenges, and much more!

 Episode 82 – Manly Wade Wellman's "Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds" with our Patron Book Club | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:57:46

Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss Manly Wade Wellman's "Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds", classic Sherlock, the Professor Challenger stories, sycophantic women, the differing moral compasses of the characters, the lens of the Vietnam War, tearing down H.G. Wells, undefeatable villains, adding mechanical wings to random encounters, proto-Lovecrafian beasties, high versus low-level gaming, and much more!

 Episode 81 – H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror and Others” with our Patron Book Club | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:55:29

Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror and Others”, setting construction, Lovecraftian punchlines, Robert Bloch, character development, ancient castles, inescapable monsters, the Whateleys, sudden developments of secret knowledge, characters built on people we know, and much more!

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