100 episodes

Functional Nerds is the weekly podcast from author/blogger Patrick Hester and Author/Teacher Tracy Townsend focusing on science fiction and fantasy media: television, film, comics, and new media such as fan films, audio dramas, online animated comics and more, technology, gadgets and all things Apple as well as music and the occasional video game.

The Functional Nerds Podcast The Functional Nerds

    • Arts

Functional Nerds is the weekly podcast from author/blogger Patrick Hester and Author/Teacher Tracy Townsend focusing on science fiction and fantasy media: television, film, comics, and new media such as fan films, audio dramas, online animated comics and more, technology, gadgets and all things Apple as well as music and the occasional video game.

    Episode 619-With Chris Radcliff

    Episode 619-With Chris Radcliff

    This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Chris Radcliff, who backed the Uncanny Magazine Year 10: A Decade of Delightful Defiance Kickstarter at the THIRD NERD level!

    About Chris Radcliff: Software engineer, space nerd, citizen scientist, geek dad, weird kid, and Uncanny Magazine Kickstarter backer!

    Mentioned in this episode:



    * Upstart Crow

    * SpaceUp

    * Unconference



    About Uncanny Magazine Year 10: A Decade of Delightful Defiance Kickstarter: Funding to support Year 10 of Hugo Award winning Uncanny Magazine!

    This week’s picks:



    * Chris: Tantie Merle and the Farmbot 4200 in Uncanny

    * Tracy: AEW

    * Patrick: Shogun (Hulu)



    SPECIAL NOTE AND LINK:

    Locus – The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field – is holding their annual fundraising drive to keep their doors open, lights on, and future bright. Please consider supporting Locus through their annual fundraiser. It runs March 5th through April 5th. Explore the campaign and wonderful reward tiers at: igg.me/at/locusmag2024

    Links:



    * Chris Radcliff on Mastodon

    * Tracy Townsend on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * Patrick Hester on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * The Functional Nerds Patreon Page



    © 2024 Patrick Hester

    • 1 hr 8 min
    Episode 618-Just Us and Brandon Sanderson’s Audible Announcement

    Episode 618-Just Us and Brandon Sanderson’s Audible Announcement

    This week, Patrick and Tracy are chatting about a Publisher’s Weekly article on Brandon Sanderson’s Audible announcement. This leads us down the path of talking royalty splits, agents and the publishing ecosystem, as well as the difference between a guild and a union, SFWA, RWA and more.

    This week’s picks:



    * Tracy: GreenLight: Debit Card for Kids and Teens (App)

    * Patrick: The Greatest Night In Pop (Netflix)



    SPECIAL NOTE AND LINK:

    Locus – The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field – is holding their annual fundraising drive to keep their doors open, lights on, and future bright. Please consider supporting Locus through their annual fundraiser. It runs March 5th through April 5th. Explore the campaign and wonderful reward tiers at: igg.me/at/locusmag2024

    Links:



    * Tracy Townsend on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * Patrick Hester on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * The Functional Nerds Patreon Page



    © 2024 Patrick Hester

    • 55 min
    Episode 617-With James Goodhand

    Episode 617-With James Goodhand

    This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome James Goodhand, author of The Day Tripper.

    About The Day Tripper: The right guy, the right place, the wrong time.

    It’s 1995, and Alex Dean has it all: a spot at Cambridge University next year, the love of an amazing woman named Holly and all the time in the world ahead of him. That is until a brutal encounter with a ghost from his past sees him beaten, battered and almost drowning in the Thames.

    He wakes the next day to find he’s in a messy, derelict room he’s never seen before, in grimy clothes he doesn’t recognize, with no idea of how he got there. A glimpse in the mirror tells him he’s older—much older—and has been living a hard life, his features ravaged by time and poor decisions. He snatches a newspaper and finds it’s 2010—fifteen years since the fight.

    After finally drifting off to sleep, Alex wakes the following morning to find it’s now 2019, another nine years later. But the next day, it’s 1999. Never knowing which day is coming, he begins to piece together what happens in his life after that fateful night by the river.

    But what exactly is going on? Why does his life look nothing like he thought it would? What about Cambridge, and Holly? In this page-turning adventure, Alex must navigate his way through the years to learn that small actions have untold impact. And that might be all he needs to save the people he loves and, equally importantly, himself.

    About James Goodhand: James Goodhand has written two YA novels. His YA debut, Last Lesson, was called “a powerfully charged study in empathy,” by the Financial Times. The Day Tripper is his adult debut. He lives in Englad with his wife and young son.

    This week’s picks:



    * James #1: Time Shelter: A Novel by Georgi Gospodinov

    * James #2: One Day (Netflix)

    * Tracy: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

    * Patrick: In Search Of… With Leonard Nimoy (The Complete Series)



    SPECIAL NOTE AND LINK:

    Locus – The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field – is holding their annual fundraising drive to keep their doors open, lights on, and future bright. Please consider supporting Locus through their annual fundraiser. It runs March 5th through April 5th. Explore the campaign and wonderful reward tiers at: igg.me/at/locusmag2024

    Links:



    * James Goodhand on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * Tracy Townsend on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * Patrick Hester on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * The Functional Nerds Patreon Pagebr /...

    • 51 min
    Episode 616-Moses Ose Utomi

    Episode 616-Moses Ose Utomi

    This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Moses Ose Utomi, author of The Truth of the Aleke.

    About The Truth of the Aleke: The Aleke is cruel. The Aleke is clever. The Aleke is coming.

    500 years after the events of The Lies of the Ajungo, the City of Truth stands as the last remaining free city of the Forever Desert. A bastion of freedom and peace, the city has successfully weathered near-constant attacks from the Cult of Tutu, who have besieged it for three centuries, attempting to destroy its warriors and subjugate its people.

    Seventeen-year-old Osi is a Junior Peacekeeper in the City. When the mysterious leader of the Cult, known only as the Aleke, commits a massacre in the capitol and steals the sacred God’s Eyes, Osi steps forward to valiantly defend his home. For his bravery he is tasked with a tremendous responsibility?destroy the Cult of Tutu, bring back the God’s Eyes, and discover the truth of the Aleke.

    About Moses Ose Utomi: Moses Ose Utomi wrote his first book when he was 5. It was a book about warrior bunnies from Mars, and the only copy is owned by his mother.

    Since then, he has gone on to write many more, slightly better stories. He primarily writes fantasy “but with the plot and pacing of a psychological thriller” and his fiction often grows out of the West African culture and mythology he was raised in as a Nigerian American.

    He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction writing as well as a Certificate in Book Publishing, and he has short fiction in various publications. Most notably, he is the author of the young adult fantasy novel Daughters of Oduma and The Forever Desert, a trilogy of adult fantasy novellas that begins with The Lies of the Ajungo.

    He is also a martial arts, karaoke, and obscure sports addict.

    This week’s picks:



    * Moses: A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert

    * Tracy: The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

    * Patrick: The Bad Batch | The Final Season (Disney+)



    SPECIAL NOTE AND LINK:

    Locus – The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field – is holding their annual fundraising drive to keep their doors open, lights on, and future bright. Please consider supporting Locus through their annual fundraiser. It runs March 5th through April 5th. Explore the campaign and wonderful reward tiers at: igg.me/at/locusmag2024

    Links:



    * Moses Ose Utomi on Instagram

    * Tracy Townsend on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * Patrick Hester on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * The Functional Nerds Patreon Page



    © 2024 Patrick Hester

    • 45 min
    Episode 615-With James Enge

    Episode 615-With James Enge

    This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome James Enge, author of EVIL HONEY, a new Morlock Ambrosius short story.

    About Old Moon Quarterly: Issue 3, Winter 2023: Old Moon Quarterly is a small, independent online magazine devoted to publishing weird sword-and-sorcery fiction set in a historical paranormal setting or a secondary-world, with a focus on well-rounded characters driving strange action.

    About EVIL HONEY: Morlock runs afoul of the god of bees and is forced to enter a society stained by evil and madness.

    About James Enge: James Enge, lives in northwest Ohio with his wife and a relentless canine researcher. He’s written Blood of Ambrose (shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award in 2010 and the Prix Imaginales in 2011), This Crooked Way, The Wolf Age, and A Tournament of Shadows, a trilogy comprising Morlock’s origin story. He’s also written a fair amount of short fiction, which has appeared in Black Gate, in the Stabby-Award-winning Blackguards, in ZNB anthologies such as Guilds & Glaives, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and elsewhere.

    In his day job, he teaches Latin and various kinds of mythology (classical myth, Norse myth, medieval legend, etc) at a medium-sized public university in Ohio.

    This week’s picks:



    * James: Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R. F Kuang

    * Tracy: DUNE Part 1 (Netflix)

    * Patrick: Midnight Riot: Rivers of London By Ben Aaronovitch, Narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith



    Links:



    * James Enge on Mastodon

    * Tracy Townsend on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * Patrick Hester on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * The Functional Nerds Patreon Page



    © 2024 Patrick Hester

    • 47 min
    Episode 614-With T.R. Napper

    Episode 614-With T.R. Napper

    This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome T.R. Napper, author of Aliens: Bishop.

    About Aliens: Bishop: The USCSS Patna has been found.

    Although the synthetic Bishop asked to be shut down forever, his creator has other plans. Michael Bishop seeks the Xenomorph knowledge stored in the android’s mind, and brings Bishop back to life—but for what reason? No longer an employee of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Michael tells his creation that he seeks to advance medical research for the benefit of humanity. Yet where does he get the resources needed to advance his work, and with whom do his new allegiances lie?

    The USCSS Patna is pursued by Colonial Marines Captain Marcel Apone, commander of the Il

    Conde and younger brother of Master Sergeant Alexander Apone, one of the casualties of the

    doomed mission to LV-426. Also on his trail are the “Dog Catchers,” commandos employed by

    Weyland-Yutani.

    There are many who would profit from Lance Bishop’s intimate knowledge of the deadliest

    creatures in the galaxy.

    About T.R. Napper: T. R. Napper is a multi-award-winning science fiction author. His short stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Interzone, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous others, and been translated into Hebrew, German, French, and Vietnamese. He received a creative writing doctorate for his thesis: Noir, Cyberpunk, and Asian Modernity.

    His debut short story collection, Neon Leviathan, came out to stellar reviews in 2020. His debut novel, Thirty-Six Streets, was published by Titan Books in 2022 (also to stellar reviews), and won both the prestigious Aurealis and Ditmar awards for best novel.

    Before turning to writing, T. R. Napper was a diplomat and aid worker, delivering humanitarian programs in Southeast Asia for a decade. During this period, he received a commendation from the Government of Laos for his work with the poor.

    Napper was a resident of the Old Quarter in Ha Noi for several years, the setting for his debut novel, 36 Streets. These days he has returned to his home country of Australia, where he works as a Dungeon Master, running campaigns for young people with autism for a local charity.

    This week’s picks:



    * T.R. 1: WINTER’S BONE by Daniel Woodrell

    * T.R. 2: True Detective (HBO/MAX)

    * T.R. 3: Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix)

    * Tracy: The Science of SciFi – The Great Lectures Series By: Erin Macdonald (Audible)



    Links:



    * T.R. Napper on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * Tracy Townsend on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * Patrick Hester on the network formerly known as Twitter

    * The Functional Nerds Patreon Page



    © 2024 Patrick Hester

    • 54 min

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