I’ve always found my office at the Lair to be a sanctuary of sorts; a place to which I can always retreat when I’m not in the mood to deal with yet another microscopic oddity turned into yet another macroscopic disaster. One might expect, then, that having Overlord Miller—trapped in suspended animation until we can develop a way to reverse the carbon-freezing process—on display in a special, lighted niche in my office would be little more than a bitter reminder of one more in a seemingly endless parade of failures. One might expect that his face, twisted as it is into a grimace of—if not outright agony, then at least severe discomfort—would be an unwanted and unwelcome monument to mismanagement, complete and utter lack of communication, and sheer stultifying incompetence.
In fact, I find it rather soothing.
I’m not going to bother analyzing my feelings on the matter. What should fill me with guilt is instead inexplicably calming. Who would have guessed?
Jay “The Kingfish” Lynn, our Minister of Crackpot Schemes and Unfortunate Synergies may be feeling more than his share of guilt over the whole unfortunate incident. The Kingfish joined me in my office for a little discussion regarding Overlord Miller’s immediate future, among other things.
Given our track record regarding The Secret Library—not to mention our proclivity for inadvertently altering the time-space continuum—it is entirely possible that we selected Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates for discussion well before the Puritans departed England for the New World. Whether this will have any lasting implications upon the fledgling Massachusetts Bay Colony, only time will tell. In any case, we enclose the aforementioned discussion herein for your examination and (we can only hope) approval. Astute listeners will note that we are joined once again by Madame Overlord Johnson, who is entirely too literate for her own good.
Not so terribly long ago, Overlord Miller and I gathered an elite group of minions in a conference room and asked them a very important question: Who is Jared Axelrod? We were informed that Mr. Axelrod is responsible for, among other things, The Voice of Free Planet X, Aliens You Will Meet and Fables of the Flying City. As is often the case, we were not entirely confident that the information our minions provided was accurate, so we took it upon ourselves to consult a more authoritative source, that being the man himself, Jared Axelrod. Little did we suspect that Jared Axelrod would use his Tricksy Mind Rays to distract us from exploring his innermost secrets, subtly veering the conversation toward other topics, all the while making us believe that it was our intent to discuss said topics in the first place. Beware! Should you dare to listen to this episode of the podcast, you, too, may be entranced by Mr. Axelrod’s Tricksy Mind Rays. No one is safe…
Overlord Miller’s plans to attend GenCon were ultimately foiled, possibly by rampaging mega-nanobots.
Overlord Miller recently finished reading Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies).
Overlord Miller’s beard currently resembles a Recognizer from TRON.
Overlord Miller has been re-watching The X-Files. That Charles Nelson Reilly episode? It’s called “José Chung’s From Outer Space” and it is made of win and bleeping dead aliens.”
Is Mr. Kenneth Newquist’s so-called Monster Week 2010 an examination and retrospective of movie monsters or a damning, behind-the-scenes exposé that will bring all of the Overlords’ schemes into light? Is Jaws a ground-breaking horror film that set the trend for summer blockbusters or a misunderstood documentary? Just how blurry is the line between fantasy and reality? Answer: Not Blurry Enough.
No one, not even SyFy, has made a creature feature spotlighting a havoc-wreaking shetland-bonobo hybrid, but the Overlords may be willing to option them for the screen.
Overlord Miller reveals the shocking true origin of St. Patrick’s Day.
Technically, it’s DOCTOR Mega John Cmar.
“ant fungus exploding head” can be simplified to Cordyceps.
In this episode of The Secret Lair podcast, the Overlords get together to discuss a couple of recent movies starring Robert Downey, Jr. Note that both Overlords were in their new powered armor suits while recording this episode, which completely explains the tin-can quality of the audio in the recording. Really.
Discussion: Iron Man 2 and Sherlock Holmes
Iron Man is Overlord Johnson’s OMG Best Superhero Movie EVAR, so the sequel had a lot to live up to.
Holy analogy, Iron Man! Iron Man 2 : Iron Man :: The Dark Knight : Batman Begins
Hey, Black Widow: Vere is your aksent, comrade?
Overlord Miller would have preferred Nick Fury: Agent of M.E.N.A.C.E.
Justin Hammer was a good California millionaire.
Overlord Miller felt that Whiplash was a little shoe-horned into the story.
Overlord Johnson thought Whiplash was pretty cool, but his demise was weak.
Gwyneth Paltrow, Jon Favreau and new-Rhodey (Don Cheadle) had a lot more to do this time around.
Howard Stark is Walt Disney.
Overlord Miller seems to think that Robert Downey Jr. will be relegated to a cameo in the upcoming Avengers movie; Overlord Johnson disagrees.
War Machine was pretty darn cool.
The new Iron Man armor was pretty cool, too. Let’s avoid the West Coast Avengers version (AKA Silver Centurion), though, okay?
Jake Wyler is another Chris Evans role (Not Another Teen Movie).
Do not do this with Captain America’s shield. Ever again.
Overlord Miller is looking forward to the Green Lantern movie, but we have some concerns about how the power of the ring will be realized on-screen.
And finally we get to Sherlock Holmes, which Overlord Johnson felt was a bit reminiscent of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Overlord Miller was relieved, as it could have been much, much worse.
Holmes’ fighting strategy brought to mind Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.
Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) appears in the very first of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, “A Scandal in Bohemia.”
Was the movie too “steampunk-y”? What have we got against steampunk, anyway?
Madam Overlord Johnson felt the plot lacked any sort of mystery.
Who will portray Moriarty in the sequel? Perhaps one of Overlord Miller’s man-crushes.
And now we’re on a Doctor Who tangent. That’s the royal “we”, where Overlord Miller is the royalty and Overlord Johnson is a bloody peasant.
Are we really talking about a porn parody of the old Batman television series? Apparently so, but we say “cultural touchstone,” so it’s okay. There’s a fully-clothed trailer for Batman XXX: A Porn Parody on YouTube, of all places.
Finally, Overlord Johnson isn’t quite ready to declare steampunk a complete failure as a genre of fiction just yet; he very much enjoyed Gail Carriger’s Soulless, a review of which can be found on this very site.
Lairkeeping
The podcast will be on hiatus for the next six weeks or so, but we’ll be updating the blog between now and then.
In this episode of podcast, we are joined in the Lair by Madame Overlord Johnson, who did not bring cookies. What did she bring? Opinions and class. Turns out we were already full up on the former, but sadly lacking in the latter.
Chief Medical Officer’s Report
It is entirely possible (probable, even), that the Bad Doctor has been ill-informed as to the purpose and, indeed, the very nature of our speculum farm in New Zealand.
Well, that’s a fine question, isn’t it? Probably something transcendent and revelatory. Or not.
Once again, we’re chatting about “Video games can never be art,” an article written by movie critic Roger Ebert. Because there’s no horse dead enough that we’re not willing to give it another whack.
Chris thinks that The Void might well be art. It moved him.
Amazing Fantasy #17? Geek reference fail. Spider-Man was introduced in Amazing Fantasy #15, Johnson.
How about those graphic novels? Watchmen, Planetary and Transmetropolitan are all cited as examples.
Fan-fiction? Are we stirring that pot, too?
crit·i·jism (Pronunciation: \ˈkri-tə-ˌji-zəm\) noun. 1. The reeking ejaculate spewed by critics.
The Tangent Train chugs right along and we wind up talking about the maturity of geeks, Star Wars (there’s a shocker) and horror films (Overlord Miller doesn’t like the gore) until someone finally puts the show out of its misery.
I want to try something a little…experimental with the show notes for this episode of The Secret Lair. Let’s call it an exercise in the power of mind over matter; a test of your ability—with your own brain and vast imagination—to have a real, tangible, discernible impact upon how you perceive reality. If you’ll just bear with me for a moment and follow these instructions very carefully, I think together we can achieve something remarkable.
All right, now the first thing I need you to do is close your eyes. Just close them nice and tight. The next thing I want you to do is visualize a vast, empty space that stretches out to infinity in all directions. Fill that space with the purest white, completely lacking in color or shadow. Now imagine a single, perfectly round dot, contrasted against the backdrop of your pristine—wait a minute. Are your eyes open? They are, aren’t they? Dammit, how is this going to work if you can’t follow simple instructions? You know what? Forget it. We’re done here.
Do you remember your first computer? Mine was an Apple //GS with two floppy drives (5.25″ and 3.5″), no hard drive, a whopping 1.25MB of RAM and an ImageWriter II dot-matrix printer that churned out a whopping four pages per minute (maybe 1-2ppm if I used the color cartridge). Eventually, I added a blazing-fast 2400-baud modem and connected to my first bulletin board system.
I’ve owned a number of Windows PCs since the late 1980s, but this year I came full circle; I’m typing these show notes on Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive, my dual-booting MacBook. Lest anyone think the poor, old Apple //GS was abandoned, let me assure you that it lives to this day, housing the Lair’s artificial intelligence, BECKI.
On this episode of the podcast, we hearken back to days gone by, reminiscing about computers in an age before dial-up Internet access, when the BBS was king and life moved at right around 30 characters per second. We also preview Project: Truth, a brand new board game from Evil Overlord Games.
That shrieking, agonizing wail you just heard was all the clocks at The Secret Lair springing forward. We are now free from the vile grip of Daylight Saving Time, but at what cost? All this bouncing around backward and forward in time takes a heavy toll on mind, body and soul. Not to mention minions. The clocks in the Lair are all perfectly synchronized, but synchronizing with an atomic clock is terribly pedestrian. Cesium atoms may have been fine for 1955 but this is the twenty-first century, and we have standards. We also have a tachyon transference array that may or may not be of extraterrestrial origin. This gives us heretofore-unprecedented chronometric accuracy…so long as you never change the clocks. And so, twice a year, we cross our fingers and hope that the temporal slingshot effect won’t send all or part of the Lair hurtling anywhere from a few seconds to a few thousand years past the mark as we spring forward and fall back. If you’re reading this in the spring of 2010, it means we’ve survived another time change more or less intact, and it’s time for another gripping and informative episode of The Secret Lair.
St Urho’s Day is a celebration of a fictional fellow who drove all of the grasshoppers out of Finland. From Wikipedia:
The legend of St. Urho was the invention of a Finnish-American named Richard Mattson, who worked at Ketola’s Department Store in Virginia, Minnesota in spring of 1956. Mattson later recounted that he invented St. Urho when he was questioned by coworker Gene McCavic about the Finns’ lack of a saint like the Irish St. Patrick, whose feat of casting the snakes out of Ireland is remembered on St. Patrick’s Day. In fact, the patron saint of Finland is Henry (Bishop of Finland).
Discussion: The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
The Atrocity Archives is the first book in Charles Stross’ Laundry series; it contains two stories: “The Atrocity Archive” and “The Concrete Jungle”. The second novel in the series is The Jennifer Morgue. The third novel, The Fuller Memorandum, will be released later this year.
Overlord Johnson really enjoyed Glasshouse and Saturn’s Children, but felt that The Atrocity Archives was essentially a pulp novel that explains too much.
Overlord Miller recently reviewed Halting State and is currently reading Iron Sunrise. He classifies The Atrocity Archives as “hacker pulp”.
In this episode of The Secret Lair, we’re joined by hacktivist and digital culture commentator Thomas “cmdln” Gideon and a bit later in the episode by author and DIY enthusiast Matthew Wayne Selznick (Brave Men Run). The topic is one near and dear to our hearts: free content. This time out, we’re looking at free content from the perspective of the podcast novelist, and we begin our discussion with the announcement that J.C. Hutchins, one of the most popular podcast novelists, will no longer be offering new content for free.
Discussion: Free Content vs. Paying the Creator
Our discussion was prompted by a blog post from novelist J.C. Hutchins, author of 7th Son: Descent and Personal Effects: Dark Art.
Podiobooks.com is home to a wide array of free podcast novels, including the entire 7th Son series.
Another author who has used podcasting as a springboard to more traditional publishing is Scott Sigler, author of Ancestor, Infected and Contagious, among others.
Matthew Wayne Selznick asked (on Facebook), “When was the last time you paid for something creative (music, book, movie, art, etc.) even though it was also available to you for free?” The responses were interesting and sometimes eye-opening.
Does the podcast novel walk a fine line between marketing tool and gimmick?
How far is podcasting behind blogging on the adoption curve?
Is there a sense of entitlement to free works among fans of podcast novelists?
Mike Masnick at TechDirt says you have to (1) connect with fans and (2) create a reason to buy.
Selznick: Even providers of free content like Jared Axelrod don’t expect to see direct financial return from that same content.
What is neo-patronage? Matt explains.
Thomas provides an example of an artist utilizing neo-patronage: cartoonist/animator Nina Paley.
Matthew points to Another Sky Press, a publisher that lets customers decide how much they want to pay for a book.
Chris mentions Magnatune, which allows customers to set their own prices for music.
Some artists have used The Ransom Model (or crowd-funding) to support their efforts.
Jill Sobule’s 2009 album, California Years, was entirely funded by her fans.
Did the audience J.C. Hutchins created when he released the 7th Son podcasts let him down when it came time to pony up for the print edition?
Mur Lafferty offers a variety of content for free: novels, short stories, dramatized fiction and advice for “wannabe writers”.
John Scalzi is another author who successfully used free content to launch a successful (science-fiction) writing career.
What does a creator owe their audience?
Neil Gaiman:Entitlement Issues; or, George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.
Matt isn’t currently working on the sequel to Brave Men Run, and he tells us why. While you’re waiting, you may want to check out Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights.
Selznick: A better, more ubiquitous form of micro-payments would help make neo-patronage more viable.
Could Peter Sunde’sFlattr (currently in beta) be that system?
The community that has sprung up around podcast novelists is very insular, and incredibly passionate, but have we been drinking too much of our own Kool-Aid? We try to put some perspective to the whole business.
I’ve always found my office at the Lair to be a sanctuary of sorts; a place to which I can always retreat when I’m not in the mood to deal with yet another microscopic oddity turned into yet another macroscopic disaster. One might expect, then, that having Overlord Miller—trapped in suspended animation until we can develop a way to reverse the carbon-freezing process—on display in a special, lighted niche in my office would be little more than a bitter reminder of one more in a seemingly endless parade of failures. One might expect that his face, twisted as it is into a grimace of—if not outright agony, then at least severe discomfort—would be an unwanted and unwelcome monument to mismanagement, complete and utter lack of communication, and sheer stultifying incompetence.
Given our track record regarding The Secret Library—not to mention our proclivity for inadvertently altering the time-space continuum—it is entirely possible that we selected Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates for discussion well before the Puritans departed England for the New World. Whether this will have any lasting implications upon the fledgling Massachusetts Bay Colony, only time will tell. In any case, we enclose the aforementioned discussion herein for your examination and (we can only hope) approval. Astute listeners will note that we are joined once again by Madame Overlord Johnson, who is entirely too literate for her own good.
Overlord Miller’s plans to attend 
In this episode of podcast, we are joined in the Lair by Madame Overlord Johnson, who did not bring cookies. What did she bring? Opinions and class. Turns out we were already full up on the former, but sadly lacking in the latter.
The Atrocity Archives is the first book in Charles Stross’ Laundry series; it contains two stories: “The Atrocity Archive” and “The Concrete Jungle”. The second novel in the series is The Jennifer Morgue. The third novel, The Fuller Memorandum, will be released later this year.
Episode 0048: The Great Old Pumpkin