TechSword & LaserStuff at Dragon*Con

My heart's as full as a baked potato. Alright, Yeah, Today is a very special episode of tech Stuff, so special that the only word to describe it is spado winkle. So the reason that there is a a special is one, for the first time ever, we are recording outside the confines of our Comfy studio, so we're kind of excited and frightened. The second is that we are at dragon Con, which is a huge fantasy, science fiction, horror genre fan in convention. And third and fourth we have two special

guests with us today. We have Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont. Say Hi, Hi, Hello, you follow direction well? Veronica said, hello, I just want to point out you said specifically to say Hill right. Okay, sorry, Tom follows direction exceptionally. Well. We have we have Tom and Veronica, who collectively our Sword and Laser. I have never asked which is which, but um, I know that seriously because Veronica does the laser sound effect. Pew p. There we go. I was

hoping I could get it on here. I wasn't gonna specifically ask. I thought if I was obleek enough, I could get it. Um. The So you're here doing Sword and Laser as well as some of your other projects. Why don't you both introduce yourselves and kind of give an overview of all the amazing stuff you guys do. Me first, okay, Um, I'm Veronica and I currently co host Texila on Revision three and also Core on the

PlayStation network and uh in our free time. We are fortunate enough to have Sword and Laser, which is the reason we've come to dragon Con for the past two years to do live show here and interview authors and it's always been a blast. Yeah. My name is Tom right, and now, of course I do Sortain Laser with Veronica, which is a science fiction fantasy fook club. UH, and I also do Tech News Today daily on the Twitter network at two thirty Pacific, five thirty Eastern. I do

Current Geek Weekly with Scott Johnson. I do Forecast with Scott Johnson. I do East Meats West, Where We Go Chang got like six more with Brian Bridge? Should I go on? Keep going? Keep going? Right with Brian brush with the SNORB cartoons with Scott Johnson. I think that's it,

So he thinks all right, and uh so, yeah. We we asked Tom and Veronica on the show because we were all going to be in the same place at the same time, which is unusual, but also because they cover Technology Top five on Revision three and Tom will just continuously interrupt me for the rest of the show, adding in the things that he's forgotten that he does. Um No. We we asked them here because they're both technology journalists and we wanted to kind of talk about

what it's like covering technology from a journalism standpoint. Chris and I did a video show for a while where we covered news, technology, news, and um and so we really got kind of a crash course and what it's like to cover tech, and that was really a small, a tiny show compared to what you guys do, so just kind of want to get your thoughts on what it's like covering technology. Uh And and if you've had experience covering other kinds of topics, what makes it sort

of unique in that? And from a journalism standpoint, Well, it changes so fast. I mean there's new stuff all the time, and it can be very difficult to stay on top of everything that's happening and changing. And technology covers so many different areas as well, whether it's gadgets or computers or internet culture and uh, you know, new media stuff. It's it's always changing and there's always some

thing that we have to learn and pay attention to. Yeah, and the technology crowd is the smartest crowd of media consumers technology and science. You know, folks, they know what they're talking about in their field, and you, as a reporter often have to know everything about every field. Uh. So you're going to get corrected a lot a lot

because you can't know everything about every topic. But hopefully you can know enough to to be able to pass along just the good information, kind of sift good from bad. Uh And And one thing that Veronica and I both got really good on when we did Buzz Out Loud at seen It back in the day is using the audience to your advantage. Uh, And I know, John, that's actually how I got to know you. Was relying on you to kind of contribute some facts and stuff that

you knew from your research and how stuff works. That helped us to pass along emails and voicemails to people to kind of further explain stuff that maybe we weren't able to fully explain in our coverage of it. I actually really missed doing a daily show like tom DA's Now and like we used to do it buzz out loud because it keeps you really sharp, like when you're reading stuff every day and you have to be able

to follow stories throughout the week. You, um, you definitely absorb it a lot better than with me and Patrick on Texila. UM. We do a lot of computer health problems and gadget questions, and we do news at the top of the show, but it's not our main focus. So I found myself, you know, getting out of the loop a little bit on a lot of the big

stuff that's going on. And I think I need to start listening to tech news today regularly, more regularly, more regularly, more like five days a week instead of the four I already do. Yeah, Veronica, you just you need to listen harder. I know, you have a better job and pressing stop five minutes, then emailing and then listening another five minutes like that. I know. Um. Actually that that

bringing the whole audience factor into it. That's one of the things I found very interesting getting into knowledgy blogging and UH and technology podcasting as well as doing the video show. UM. You know, as a writer, occasionally we would get readers writing in to to comment on on the articles we were writing, but that that interaction rapped up significantly once we went to blogging and podcasting, and

so it is interesting. Why don't you talk a little bit about what it's like, UH interacting with your audience and how I mean to me, that seems like it's a really unique thing that podcasters in general and tech podcasters specifically get to do that other journalists don't. Necessarily

they don't experience that well. I think Tom already covered it really well and saying that the audience is way smarter than we are, and so they're always giving such great feedback and such additional information to whatever we're talking about. Their indispensable in that way, and correcting us and and updating us on stuff that's going on that we may have missed. It's it's incredible well and one of the

things you have to do. And and maybe tech podcasters and and bloggers are better at it because they're just into technology and they like to to play around with stuff, but anybody in any topic can do that, which is open up the channels, read some emails on your podcast, or respond to someone your bog or uh, you know, play some voicemails. So open up a voicemail line or just ask for people to record MP three and send

them as attachments. Once you start including the audience in whatever you're doing, more audience members will catch on to that and say, oh, I want to contribute to and you'll you'll get people who don't, in fact, the vast majority don't, but you'll start to develop a crowd that you can rely on, and you can separate the trolls

from the from the people who actually contribute. And then now you have a stable of not only experts that you can you can use to make your content better, but also folks who are going to spread the word about your show and say like, hey, I really like this because I'm invested in it. That's a great point. Um, is there anything about technology in general that that you

are particularly passionate about? I mean, besides, because as you were pointing out Monica, Uh, technology is a huge, huge topic, and there are a lot of sub topics uh in general. For instance, from my own perspective, Uh, the stuff I'm really interested in is is despite the fact that I work for How Stuff Works and I love writing how stuff works articles on how tech works, my real interest

is kind of on the social impact of technology. But I'm just curious if there's something similar or something specific that you're really passionate about as far as technology is concerned. I like memoristers, memoristers for Mr Merritt. It's it's it's a constant battle, both with Molly Wood at Buzz out Loud and now with Becky Is, who've tried to stop me from including these stories that might bore everyone else. We've had requests to do that topic on our show

and we have not done that yet. It's kind of daunting um at quantum computing. Anytime there's a quantum story, I get I get sucked in all kinds of astronomy stuff, anything with planets, planet finding. I like that, I mean I am. I'm passionate about all technology and how it works and how people use it and what they use it for on the less technological side, but more the

the use of it, the social use side. Anything about copyright technology, copyright law, and what you can do in this medium just fascinates me because it all seemed very clear until the Internet came along and made it really easy to copy everything, uh infinitely, and now we're dealing with a whole new set of rules about how anything, how this, how this stuff works, right, I mean, there's

there's just a it's a whole different universe. So you have this battle of people who are like, no, physical CDs can't be copied and given away, you know, because that undermines our business. They didn't actually make that that distinction as much when you had to actually physically copy a CD by going and buying a really expensive burner or paying someone to do it, because people wouldn't really do it, so if you gave it away, you kind

of turn a blind eye. Now that it's infinitely copyable, everyone's paying attention and it's unstaff poppable, so it's almost you know, the horses and the cows and all the chickens and everything I've left the barn. In fact, the barn burned down and now there's no barn to go back to. Mr Barrett, I would like to point out that as a Southern boy who grew up on a farm, you do not keep the chickens in the barn. But that's exactly right, John, What were the chickens doing in

the barn? I think if we can place, can someone answer the chicken and the boy right? Industry needs to address that. I'm sure we'll have a listener right in and explain to us exactly what those chickens were doing in the barn. I'm still grappling with which came first, the chicken or the eggs. They figured that out, you guys, you work, you should know that. Well, that's science stuff, the chicken, anything that we we we have the habit of foisting anything that has to do with biology or

physics over to science. Do you have to go to the Foul Stuff podcast? Yes? My answer is a little less fancy. Um. I'm really into video games sweet so anything video game related I'm instantly drawn to. But also on the more esoteric side of that whole culture, which is video games, as our video games and how they affect society. That's something that I'm really drawn to, How how how our society is really changing because of video games, and how it's not just the realm of the geeky anymore.

I mean everyone plays now, from you know, small kids to grandparents and you know, middle aged housewives you know are playing World of Warcraft and it's totally normal. Alright, Desert Island computer or game system? One game? What is it? Well, it could it be my gaming PC. It has to be one game, one game. Um oh wow, it would be World of Warcraft. I'm guessing Mr Merritt would have

the same answer. Civilization is that because you would miss civilization so much and it does violence, that you would feel the need to build up some kind of civilizations a month. There's no infinite supply of coconuts to sell to support very expensive maybe, well, where does the connection come from? Exactly? That's text? Oh shoot, all right, just a silly question. Since I knew that Veronica was also

into video games. We actually did two episodes not that long ago, in fact, that they published the week coming into Dragon Con. Uh, this will publish significantly after Dragon Con, but we did two episodes about the rise and fall of the Arcade, video game Arcade, and of course the video game Crash of three because I was one of those fortunate young men to own an Atari twenty and a copy of ET. Yeah, so that was that. Um anyway, Yeah,

so that happened. The next question I had was, I don't know if if Veronica, if you've ever had to do this. I know that Tom's had to do it, and I've done it as well, Chris as as well. I don't know whether where this is going, but it's a it's a the the insumus a mail thing because okay, it's the it's the experience. Well, there's the first bleep for the podcast. I think we can leave that in. It was probably the no. The question is technology predictions. Yeah,

we talked about how technology moves very quickly. Um. A lot of us have done technology prediction shows, usually at the end of the year, to predict what's going to come out the next year. Of Veronica, I don't have you have you ever done those? I have? Yeah, we used to do them on on BOL all the time every year for New Year's So Martel's also done forecast with Tom also which is his predictions podcast. So with Johnson, the question is are there any predictions you made that

you feel we're essentially spot on? And were there any you made that we're about as big a miss as you possibly could get? Cheese? Um? Oh, looking back, it's gonna be hard to remember, Tom, do you remember anything I got right? I know there was one. I feel

like there was a good one. Let's remember. It's hard to remember the prediction because if you're because if you're right, then you just feel vindicated for a while and then you kind of forget, and if you're wrong, then you instantly forget it because you don't want to be like That's why a lot of people hate doing prediction shows, because you're on record saying something like especially way or the other, especially if you do the following year. Yeah, we always do Yeah, so that you can kind of

tally up how you did. I'll give you an example of the biggest one I've gotten wrong this year, which was that Apple will come out with a tablet, but it's it's not gonna go anywhere. As my editor next to me holds up his iPad, I got really close on the tablet. I said it was going to be eight ninety nine, which was the top out price, right uh. And I said it was going to come in the summer, and came in the spring, but I got close. I also said goodbye Palm bought or fold and they got bought.

And then two years ago I said Android will out sell the iPhone. So it's just a couple of years earlier. Every year I say something that like our f I DA is going to become like the default, like de fact a way to pay for things and turn on your lights in your house, like with the r f I D chip and planted in your arm. That never happens. Just I'm just not ready. Yeah, I go to Japan a lot for work, and I'm so frustrated by how they've got everything down. You just have one card for everything.

You pay for everything with this one card. You can get on the subway with it, you can buy a bag of chips with it. And they're starting to get that a little bit here, but or with your cell phone even but people are scared of it for some reason, and they're really terrified of losing their information and having their information being floating around, even though it's so close, like you have to be pretty close in order for

the r F i D to work. They there's that fear that people have about this kind of technology that's really preventing a lot of it from improving our lives in a big way. And I feel like people have to kind of get over that hurdle of fear in order for their lives to really improve. And we've seen that with a lot of technology over the years. And then you know, people, once they get over that hump, they forget about it. They don't worry about it anymore.

It's just that initial like, oh, I don't know about that. I don't think I want that in my house. I'll let some strange waiter to take my credit card, but I don't want an r F i D on the internet like constantly have to, you know, think about it. But yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it's just that it's really the it's really the fact that they don't know how how much their information is already out there just using traditional payment methods and other ways of communicating. Um, yeah,

it's I've noticed the same sort of thing. We did do an episode about that once several probably more than a year ago now, where we talked about the same sort of thing. And yeah, years past and we haven't seen a huge leap forward since then. So clearly my impact as podcast are just I've been waiting to get chipped for a really long time. I'm totally I can. I can. I can have taught to you over in England. I've been talking about it for University of Southampton. Our

vet does it. I don't know if they would be able to help get lost very easily. Does anyone know to whom this podcaster belongs? Oh? By the way, I didn't mention the one that I got the wrongest of all of my predictions, which was the Capple will never come out with a phone most wrong. Ever, that's awesome. I like it that I'm not the only one who's wrong. Um. And and here's this is kind of wrapping up the tech journalism thing, and it's it's kind of similar in

a way to the last question. Um, can you think of any story in tech anything that you've covered that you that just really surprised you? I mean some stuff that you know a lot of the stories that we cover tend to be uh confirmation of something that we had heard about sometimes a year ahead of time, so it ends up just being oh, well, we finally got confirmation on this thing we heard about a year ago.

But can you think of anything that just sort of came out of nowhere and really surprised you, positive or negative. The first thing that comes to mind is the bird dropping the bread in the large hatch collider. That really surprised me. Yeah, the Slingbox was was one that kind of took me by surprise. It's very rare at the Consumer Electronics Show, which happens in Vegas every year in January, that you see something you didn't already know was coming.

Every year, it's just kind of an iteration previously. So last year the big thing was three D TVs, but it wasn't the first time we've seen them, and it certainly was the first time we've seen TVs, and we've been kind of expecting three D. But when Slingbox came out, which was two thousand five cees, it was something that nobody expected. It was this little company over in the Innovations Platform. They were overwhelmed with folks going, Wow, this

is amazing. Did broadcast your your television over the internet? Is that legal? How do you? How do you get away with this and it's just this little box, which is kind of ugly but amazing because there's no moving parts and it's fairly cheap. It was then actually that that first model, if you remember, was really gray and boxing.

You know, they've they've improved it since, but the box is a different set top box that game, that's right, But yeah, no, that was the That's one of the ones that I could think of that was certainly nothing anyone was prepared to expect, and and and was popular

and students still is. Yeah. I like I like seeing the things that get the big buzz at cs that tend to and they tend to fall outside the major categories of electronics, because I mean that if you see something that's in a major category, you're just oh, this is another version of such and such. So I remember things like the LG watch phone that wasn't it. Yeah, but let people take off the demonstrator's arm, right, there's something going on there. For me, it was wireless charging

like with power Matt. It's such a promising vertical, but yet it just doesn't seem to go anywhere. Yeah, I think what they need to do is just shoot some video of my desk and get a shot of all the different wires that I have and then say this is why you need this. That g It's two eyes how they spell it. Charging system was just announced at IFA ember Lynn and they've got Energizer on board, and I feel like that that could launch it more into

the mainstream. You know, it's funny because speaking as a former Dish Network employee, I had to point that out since they inquired Sling. It's, you know, Sling as one of those things that I just kept expecting to explode. And it's that in TiVo, the TiVo brand itself, and it just surprises me. It's like people understand what they are, but they don't know the names. They don't even know TiVo. Really, I don't agree with that. I think TiVo has become

kind of the the standard. I think people everyone knows what a TiVo is and how it works. I think everyone who doesn't have it knows that. You know, people who have one don't have to watch the commercials and they can record things when they want to. I think that's become pretty That brand has definitely spread to the masses. Um. I mean, maybe I'm biased because I do work in technology.

So everyone I know knows what it is. But my parents know what it is, or they at least know how a DVR works, and they've heard of a ti Vo because now that Comcast has their own DVR box, you know, people get those automatically now and they kind of figure it out and they know that ti Vo is in that in that realm um. But sling box is definitely kind of surprising to me. I think a lot of what's prevented it wouldn't it be like the

sports situations how they've been getting blackouts. They've they've never actually been stopped, they've never been some people threatened and saber rattled. But I think the thing with sling is they're getting acquired by Dish. Slowed them down for a while because they had anytime the company gets acquired, it's going to go through a lot of bureaucracy and integration and people leave and take knowledge with them and all of that um and then Dish wants to integrate it

into their machines, not integrated into other machines. So you're not seeing it being put in, uh to a lot of different devices. So yeah, you don't. You don't see sling as a household verb the way you hear I'm going to TiVo that, whether you're using a TiVo DV are not, I don't know if you ever will. I don't know if if if that can bust out of it, because it may be possible that by the time it would get to that TiVo level of growth, will just

be able to stream everything off the internet. Anyway. Well, I think um. One of the things too, is that you know for sling, you know, they are ingrained now in the dish DVRs, but the TiVo brand as a DVR is in the minority. Comparatively, It's in fewer homes than everybody else, So it seems like everyone else has taken the concept and has taken off, yet TiVo is struggling year after year to to do it. Although you're right it is that you know the name brand to

consider the xerox when it's usually a good thing. I should point out that I actually do hear sling used as a verb, but not in that context, but my wife uses it quite a few times, like I'm going to sling this dog at you. That actually is said, what more often than I prefer to no no Jack resal terrier. Um, So we're gonna kind of transition now over to the the whole technology uh sci fi fantasy genre fan then diagram, which is almost a circle. Um. So you guys are here in part to to talk

to do an episode of Sword and Laser. So you're both a big fans of the science fiction and fantasy genres. Um, I'm gonna ask a really silly question, why do you think there is that big crossover between people who are really enthusiastic about technology and people who are really big fans of science fiction and fantasy. Now, granted it's not like a one to one thing, but it does seem to be the general rule. I think science fiction definitely

makes sense. I mean just because it's it's future thought. It's thinking about science what's possible in the future, Like where is our world going? Well, how is the technology we used today going to evolve? You know, five hundred a thousand, two thousand and years from now? Where where is our world going to be? And I think that draws a lot of people in and and get some excited about the tech that's out today too, because they're like, oh, that's almost just like the thing I read in that book.

Ten years ago. It's so cool, it's really happening fantasy. I don't know, I don't know why would like that. Yeah, I still don't know why they grouped them together. In some bookstores. A lot of them have finally stopped that, where you've got the fantasy section in the science fiction section. But I remember growing up they were always grouped together because they were so small there. I mean, there was a time when they were very, very niche, and that's

definitely changing over the years. It's becoming a lot more acceptable. I mean, you see things like Firefly and Battlestore Galactica and and big sci fi or fantasy shows really exploding on TV. Particularly excited about the Game of Thrones, the Song of Fire and Ice series coming to HBO, and hopefully that will take off in the same way that a lot of the other HBO shows have taken off in the past. And but I'm not sure why why they do get lumped together. It is kind of an

interesting question. Having been a bookstore employee, I think I have a little insight in the classification because it's imaginative fiction. You have your romance section, which is not based on reality, but it's usually based in some sort of similar to reality situation, horror same way, mysteries same way. Historical FICI and obviously based on history, but science fiction and fantasy and even thinks they get put in there that aren't either, Like Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle

is not science fiction or fantasy, it's alternate history. Uh, They're all imaginative fiction. It's like, we're not in our world anymore. We're either in the future or we're in some alternate world or some totally different reality where you know dragon. Maybe maybe it's an escapism thing. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Um, and people who like technology, like to think creatively, like like to imagine, they you know,

people who are into that have that creative aspect to them. Uh. And and I don't know why the escapism crosses over necessarily, but maybe it's just it's part of that creativity as well. Yeah. I kind of feel like it's arbitrary because people like Neil Stevenson I see in the irregular fiction not in a genre fiction category, and I'm thinking, are you know reading through? And I'm thinking, what are you kidding? There's

plenty of science fiction in here. There's plenty of fantasy in here, just reading anathem right now, and I'm thinking, you know, this is kind of strange that you would include this and not include some of the other things that I've seen, you know, in the fantasy and science

fiction category. So it just, you know, I think it sort of depends on who's organizing it and how Kurt Vonnegut go in sci fi fantasy by all rights, but he's a real author, he's a he's a he's classic, he's literature, And there's a little bit of prejudice there that sci fi and fantasy, you know, is frivolous, even though there's great works of literature in sci fi and fantasy, they have to sort of elevate it out of that, like Thomas Pinchin for instance. Yeah, I do find that

I've seen that happen too. I remember taking creative writing course and my teacher, my father is a science fiction author, but he also teaches at a college, and uh so this teacher was a colleague of my father's. Um I never took one of my father's classes, but this the teacher, knowing my father, who writes science fiction, came to me and in this creative writing class, and now Jonathan, I want to make sure that when you have a writing assignment, you write a real story. And I won't repeat what

I thought. I think you should know. I can't. I don't want to make Tyler have to bleep something out later. But it was yeah, I I I thought that's really unusual because you think of some of the great writers, especially some who were like like orwell, if you think of I mean now, granted, yeah, you can draw so many parallels to things that have actually happened to stuff that was in that book, and or you know, Brave New World World, yeah, or Our Fair Knight for one.

I'm naming all the dystopian novels called Orange and Maids Tale, um. But yeah, these are all these are all books that you can't you could never argue are not literature. I mean they're they're they've definitely shaped thought and opinion, and they've moved people in ways that that any book that

is specifically designated literature has done before. So well, yeah, especially when you're reading something like I I just finished Rics and Creek for example, market at Wood, and it's it's great because you it actually makes you think, like where is our society going? Like what are we doing wrong?

What's what are the potential disasters that could have occur, you know, based on our use of technology and our use of um, you know, medicine and changing the world and in very you know, specific ways, and it makes you think, It makes you wonder, like like, how we could you know, potentially affect things going forward. There's a little bit of an overlap whether you're playing a video game, whether you're hacking some code, whether you're troubleshooting your your computer,

of where is this owing? Like you were saying, how do I how do I make it to the castle and save the princess? How do I? How do I track down that that short that's making this happen? How do I get around this firewall? And when you're reading science fiction and fantasy, you're engaging that same part of your brain, like how do I work around this thing that is different from reality? And you make the same argument for mystery novels as well, but it's more challenging

and more outside of the box. Yeah, more outside of your normal experience in a science fiction or fantasy novel. So maybe that's sort of why there's that overlap. I hate it when people ask me like why don't you read a real fiction book, you know, can you just not read like a sci fire fantasy book for once, like George orwell oh wait, like yeah right, yeah, yeah.

It definitely hits close to home for me. But that's probably because, you know, since my dad's still still writing science fiction, although now he's right to get under different pseudonyms, which is interesting. Yeah, I'll just say that if you if you happen across a young adult no vole for he wrote Twilight, didn't he wanted? I want? I wanted

to explain the body glitter. Okay, we're just gonna drop that UM Club show dot com, So so really quickly, can you name some of your your favorite authors or favorite novels that that you think are something that you would go to again and again, or even if you would never read it again, something that you thought was particularly well written that you think every fan should should

read at some point. Um, this is a little maybe a little outside genre, I'm not sure, but um, Watership Down is probably one of the first books that really drew me into the world of you know, it's fantasy in a way, just because it's you know, that really changed that book really changed my life and and probably also anything by Tad Williams. I read the Dragon Bone Chair trilogy was the first real fantasy series I ever read,

and I was hooked after that. I was like, wow, this is a big book and there's three of them, and I just read this for the entire summer and it was fantastic, excellent. Yeah. Uh yeah. The Bedrock novels uh form for me, and probably most people have read these if they're self respecting geeks or nerds. But Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I actually remember where I was when I bought it for the first time and and reading it as I was reading it as we were

taking my sister up to college in the car. It was the book I had bought for the long car ride. Uh, And I just read it over and over and over again. After that was a long car ride, that long of a book I read. Um. Yeah, and then uh, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Definitely, what were you laughing about? Look at you? Yeah, I just revealed some thing that I'm not going to explain to the fans. But if you throw his shoulder fire, you can read it a

picture of Gollum on his arm. It's amazing. Actually, no, it's true story, true story my my parents when they were cleaning out my room and long after I had left, had come across a drawing I made at age four because it said so on the drawing of Gollum and the Ring age four. Cute. Yeah, you were doing from the start. I was doing start And then I keep reading Dune, the Dune series, again and again and again, so I don't know I'll stop. Oh yeah, I mean some of my favor authors. I'm still a big Tad

Williams fan. I read pretty much everything he comes out with. I love Robin Hobb and her like the Farst Year trilogy and The Assassin's Apprentice. Um, let's see who else, there's so many. I'm really into Patrick Rothfus right now. And the Name of the Wind is one of my written new books that's come out from an author in a long time. It was his first full novel and it's just incredible. And the second book is coming out

next year. And there's just so many good authors out right now, Like you know, it's it's hard to pick and it's hard to read everything, and and I'm on good Reads and I just keep adding books to my to read list and just kind of never ends. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I love every mad, crazy, insane word of Philip K. Dick that he ever wrote down. We can kind of see how Tom and I are are.

I'm definitely more on the stored side of things, like fantasy is definitely my what's really closest to my heart. But that's what's great about doing the show with Ernic because I get exposed to these books that I would never have bothered to pick up before, like George rr. Martin My life less rich if she had not made me read that, and I just tore through everything he wrote and wouldn't mind if he put out the next book. Yes, please put out the next book, George. Although he's not

my please put out You're not r B boy. If I could tell you all the listener mail we get from George rr Martin, Can I ask a quick yes, how is the audience different for Sword and Laser versus the tech journalism that you've done, Because I would imagine that the audience would be completely different in the way they react to you and interact with you. Um, not

not so much. We do actually have a lot of overlap between listeners of viewers of Texila and people who watched Sword and Laser, but through good Reads we also get a lot of really hardcore sci fi fantasy fans and just coming to conventions like this where we meet people for the first time and tell them about the show.

In the book club, um, you know, they get brought in they don't know or other works sometimes and they're very very passionate about the authors that they follow, and you can kind of feel that when they're talking about them in the forums and you're like, Wow, you guys know stuff about this that you're You're finding things in these books that we're reading that I would have never noticed, and it just makes the reading experience so much more

rich to have that input from everyone. I think what's interesting about Sort and Laser two is that there is a lot more talking to each other in the audience than there is in a lot of our other shows that are a lot of the other shows that I do, where it's the audience will talk to each other, but they will also talk mostly to the show, not necessarily to me, but you know, to what's been said on the show. We're almost peripheral. Yeah, with sworton Laser. The

podcast is just one voice amongst the huge discussion going on. Interesting. Thanks, that's great. Um, well, we're over time, so we're going to wrap this up. I want to thank both Tom and Veronica for joining us. That was wonderful, especially considering that you're both on West Coast time and we're recording this at nine in the morning, so it feels like six am and we have coffee. Thank you very much. Thank you for the coffee. So thank you for joining us.

Why don't you close out by telling us where where people can find you if they are not aware of the stuff you're doing already. Okay, my blog is at Veronica Balmont dot com. You can follow me on Twitter at Veronica and um texta law on Revision three Texila dot com, Core on the PlayStation Network, and Sword and Laser is at Sword and Laser dot com and all my stuff is at tom Merritt dot com. To our

two teeth excellent. Well, thanks again, guys, and thank you to all your listeners out there, and we will talk to you again really soon. If you're a tech stuff and be sure to check us out on Twitter, text stuff, hs WSR handle and you can also find us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash Tech Stuff h s W. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the House

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