I've been skimming over the archives of the Sons of Kryos podcast (by Jeff, Judd and Storn) in the past few weeks. There are lots of really useful stuff and I thought that I should break some of my finds out for you.

The first podcast of Sons of Kryos was published in July 2005. There have been 62 podcasts since. Each podcast consists of three or four sections each lasting about 15 minutes. In my recap effort I'm now in the third season, somewhere around episode 40.

The only drawback of the Sons of Kryos podcast is that the starting times of different sections in the individual podcasts are not marked in the archives. Here I'm trying to give approximate numbers for those, also.

This is similar effort to the Cull blog where Ryan Stoughton recaps different rpg blos and podcasts and tries to point to the most bestest material. My effort here differs in that I haven't even listened to every Sons of Kryos podcast and my selections are simply a result of my personal interests right now. Regardless, I hope this is useful to you.

A short list of my recommendations, the full descriptions follow in full text:

• Episode 12, section I: Bangs (At the beginning)
  
• Episode 12, section 3: Inspired Games (Starts at 30 minutes) 
• Episode 15, section 1: Good sentences - This is what the game is about (At the beginning)
• Episode 15, section 2: Stakes (Starts approx. at 15 minutes) 
• Episode 18, section 2: How to Start a PTA Game (Starts at 23:40)
• Episode 27, section 1: Managing Screen time (At the beginning)
• Episode 35, section 2: Good sentences - No (Starts at 16 minutes) 

As in theatres where real people perform on a stage. That's how I've felt for a long time now. Both the psychological science fiction stories and the galaxy destroying time-warping speculative black hole physics stuff, too. Imagine how cool it would be.

The thing is, most of the theatre world isn't into sci-fi or they just outright feel like sci-fi is not for the real stage. The day I first realized this was when I got feedback for my dramaturgy assignment from my professor in the applied drama classes. I had dramatized William Gibson's Hinterlands. She noted that she hadn't ever thought about dramatizing science fiction nor had anyone else dramatized a piece of sci-fi as an assignment. She also seemed to be surprised by the themes explored in the piece, as if serious theme exploration in science fiction was something she did not know existed. And she probably didn't know such a thing existed as well.

I think that many works of science fiction would prosper on stage. The scale of some of Alastair Reynolds' visions combined with the presence of actors to convey the effect of those massive-scale events is something I dream about frequently. Other works, such as William Gibson's newer novels and Ballard's Super-Cannes, for example, would serve as ideal vessels for exploring the values in contemporary society and its future outlook. And the strength of putting it on stage in theatre would be to ground it in human experience provided with the actors present in the same space as the audience.

This was today's sermon. Go in peace, my brothers and sisters.