The Sword and Laser

#519 - No Stomach for Old Salad by Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont

#518 - Hugo Bump Yourself by Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont

We get a history listen and revisit accents. And the clean blade battle is confirmed for WorldCon 2029. Plus our non-spoilery first impressions of She Who Became the Sun.

Why taste in books is like taste in food. Plus, our final thoughts on Joe Abercrombie's The Devils. And the Ruth-Veronica feud heats up. Also, Tom likes fish sticks. Literally.

We cast The Devils, try to apologize to Ruth, and recall other food-related romantasy. Plus, Veronica has a shameful tequila revelation.

Wesley Chu joins us to talk about The Lives of Tao and Jan is back, so we have loads of news including Locus Award Winners and the British Fantasy Society shortlist. Plus Tom sings. We're all sorry about that. Also, we almost named this episode The Lives of Wesley Chu until we realized we had already done that in 2014.

Everything is out of context. But we do have interesting thoughts about The Lives of Tao and lots of congrats for the winners and nominees of the Nebulas and more.

We speculate on how James Cameron will make The Devils and whether Frankenstein will be too scary for Veronica. And we further kick off The Lives of Tao.

We discuss the return of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files and Frank Herbert’s posthumous SFWA Infinity Award, Audible’s AI narration plans and Amazon’s cancellation of The Wheel of Time—while nominating hamburg steak and vegan enchiladas and sharing listener stories from Matt Dinniman’s event. We round out the show with in-depth discussions of The Lives of Tao and Mickey 7.

From Hugo admins resigning over AI panel vetting to the latest award winners and a fresh Murderbot clip—to set the stage for our book club pick. Then we dig into Mickey 7’s Ship of Theseus dilemma, sharing listener takes (yes, even foot‑fetishting AIs) and the questions that keep us up at night.

We wrap up Dungeon Crawler Carl, including our horrible imitations of Jeff Hays. Plus, we announce the next pick for May and ponder data-driven determinations of the best SFF books of Tom’s life.

We have Murderbot trailer! And we like it! Plus, the Hugo nominees are out and we wrap up our thoughts on The City and the City and begin our April dungeon crawl.

Tom forgot to write the intro to the show this week, so you’re stuck with the Veronica Edition. March is still full of madness, which makes sense because it’s a full moon eclipse coming up and Venus is in retrograde. Or something! We check in on The City and The City by China Miéville, and we see and unsee your perspectives on the book thus far.

March Madness has begun, so get your votes in now. Plus do we like Alexander Skarsgard as Murderbot? And our final thoughts on Will of the Many and non-spoiler intro to The City and the City.

The nominations have begun for our March Tournament! Why do we care if eBooks and print books are the same? And our first thoughts on The Will of the Many.

We have the best 25 books coming out in the next six months and the best 25 books of the last 25 years. Goodbye to the Science Fiction Book Club, our final thoughts on The Ministry of Time, and we kick off our read of The Will of the Many.

Tom is safe. Stephen has had three New Years, and we all love Graham Gore. But the best part of the show is Veronica's parade of diseases.

We kick off our January read, wrap up Akata Witch, and welcome in new public domain characters. There's a new Lord of the Rings movie this year. Yay! Plus, Veronica had a rhubarb cider, and Joe Abercrombie looks great for 50!

It's end-of-year book list time! And we have a list of our favorite end-of-year lists. Plus, our initial thoughts on Akata Witch!

We celebrate our 500th episode in the best way we know how—by asking ChatGPT to get our stats wrong. PLUS, announcing the book pick for December and sharing our final thoughts on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.