The Imaginaries Podcast: Recent Episodes
The Imaginaries
We shop talk imaginary things in books, comics, movies, television, & more. Follow us on iTunes, Soundcloud, or YouTube! Support us at http://Ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
We are absolutely thrilled to bring you this (first!) episode with one of our absolute favorite writers: C.L. Polk! There’s so much to talk about in the first two books of Polk’s Kingston Cycle (we recorded before the third book in the trilogy, SOUKSTAR, was released) and her standalone THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN that we barely scratch the surface in this episode, though we do have an excellent time talking about world-building and gender roles, among many other big conversations. We have future episodes planned, so stay tuned for more conversations with the enormously talented and extremely wonderful C.L. Polk.
No ads, no bullshit, no hetero, and (almost) no social media. Visit https://www.imaginaries.net or drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com with thoughts.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
Rating or reviewing our podcast wherever you find your favorite podcasts really helps spread the word AND keep improving our episodes as we go.
In this first episode of 2021, we share our favorite books, comics, shows, and more from 2020.
Instead of running through them all as we’ve done in previous years, we highlight some of the best and most important trends of the year. We wanted to focus on all the good to come from the year -- and according to us, there was plenty of queer science fiction and fantasy to celebrate, like all the wonderful queer sff animated shows, increasing queer rep in sff miniseries, and excellent new books and series from our favorite debut authors of the past couple years.
Take a listen for the best of 2020, and you can check out our full lists of recommendations, on our website at https://www.imaginaries.net/imaginary-awards.
Stay tuned through 2021 as we bring you more delightful imaginaries!
Like our content? Our website is https://www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the frequent madness of most social media.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) - Wherever you found this one!
We are working to put together a page on Bookshop.org with all of the books we can't stop talking about after nearly 5 years of podcasting(!!), so watch this space and shop local, indie, and proud.
Rating or reviewing our podcast wherever you find your favorite podcasts really helps spread the word AND keep improving our episodes as we go. We never cut away to ads, or put our episodes behind a paywall. Ever.
If you're itching to celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by spending $$, please honor the Black trans* women and other trailblazers who led the charge at Stonewall and after, elsewhere. Or you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, the official George Floyd Memorial Fund, or your local independent bookstore. Your $$ grows extra limbs and tentacles and improves lives through these organizations.
Welcome to the Michaelogical Network, a Star Trek: Discovery recap series with our brand new past/present/future Star Trek correspondent, Eleanor Tremeer.
In this episode we recap the happenings in DISCOVERY's season 3's final story arc, which begins with episode 11 and concludes with the season finale in episode 13 (“That Hope is You [Part 2]”). We discuss one or two things that went well, all the broken hinges, and a couple of personal pet peeves.
You can listen to all of our Disco recap episodes for this season on our podcast feed, here and wherever else you can stream our backlist.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the 2020 socials.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and/or the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Welcome to the Michaelogical Network, a Star Trek: Discovery recap series with our Star Trek correspondent, Eleanor Tremeer.
In this episode we recap the happenings in DISCOVERY's season 3's ninth and tenth episodes: “Terra Firma” (parts 1 & 2). It is in this episode that we bid a fond but problematic farewell to her most Imperial Majesty, Mother of the Fatherland, Overlord of Vulcan, Dominus of Qo'noS, Regina Andor. All Hail Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius. Aaaaand ... see you in Section 31?
Join Tony, Eleanor, and Kend as The Imaginaries sets out to unpack each episode of this season.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the 2020 socials.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and/or the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Welcome to the Michaelogical Network, a Star Trek: Discovery recap series with our brand new past/present/future Star Trek correspondent, Eleanor Tremeer.
In this episode we recap the happenings in DISCOVERY's season 3's eighth episode: “Sanctuary,” which bored Tony and Eleanor––if not to tears, then to ramen and texting through action scenes. The question is, in an episode that hit so precisely some of the character beats we’ve been craving throughout the season, did two of our three presenters find this episode so entirely “meh”?
Join Tony, Eleanor, and Kend as The Imaginaries sets out to unpack each episode of this season.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the 2020 socials.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and/or the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Welcome to the Michaelogical Network, a Star Trek: Discovery recap series with our past/present/future Star Trek correspondent, Eleanor Tremeer.
In this episode we recap the happenings in DISCOVERY's season 3's seventh episode: “Unification III,“ which the show runners have made explicitly clear is a sequel, not to any previous episode of Discovery proper, but a sequel to The Next Generation's "Unification I" (SSN5.7) and "Unification II" (SSN5.8), in which Captain Picard of TNG fame (played by the immortal Patrick Stewart) is sent on a mission to extract Spock of the original series (played by Leonard Nimoy) from an unsanctioned and undercover mission to plant the seeds of reunification between the people of Romulus and Vulcan. Überfans of Star Trek lore will remember that once upon a time those two cultures had been one, but had split over deep political differences. (Vulcans take the logical "right-brained" stereotype to the extreme, while the Romulans embody the opposite and passionate "left-brained" approach.) So what happened to the work Nimoy's Spock had carried out? This episode dovetails both the three series AND several of Discovery's previous plot arcs, with Michael learning exactly what her brother, with whom the entirety of Disco's second season was concerned, got up to in the ~930 years between then and now.
Join Tony, Eleanor, and Kend as The Imaginaries sets out to unpack each episode of this season. (And listen to our regular four-episode series with Eleanor, currently airing on the cast.)
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the 2020 socials.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and/or the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Welcome to the Michaelogical Network, a Star Trek: Discovery recap series with our past/present/future Star Trek correspondent, Eleanor Tremeer.
In this episode we recap the happenings in DISCOVERY's season 3's sih-ih-ix-th episode: “Scavengers,“ in which Michael Burnham goes rogue with her not-quite-maternal gal pal Georgeou to save Book the smooch-smooch while Captain Killy and Saru are left holding the Discovery together ... as well as Grudge the cat's imaginary leash. What’s left? We pray Discovery doesn't bury another gay by way of Philippa G.'s flashbacks, argue over whether cool-looking tech is even remotely important compared to tech that actually works, and imagine plot arcs for everyone from Captain Killy––ahem, future captain but current ensign Tilly––to poor Willa, who may indeed give us the semi-impotent villain (or future-version Wesley Crusher?) we've long dreamed of.
Join Tony, Eleanor, and Kend as The Imaginaries sets out to unpack each episode of this season. (And listen to our regular four-episode series with Eleanor, currently airing weekly on the cast.)
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the 2020 socials.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and/or the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
In this quadrilogy of very queer episodes, we tackle the past, present, and hopeful future of one of our favorite franchises. Our regular guest is Eleanor Tremeer, who has probably written stuff about sff you've already read, and has graciously agreed to join forces with us here. For the second episode, buckle up for some bunny trails into Netflix’s “The Crown” (sexy Margaret Thatcher, WHAT) as well as pink banana squash and dancing [SPOILER: must be 18+ to access this spoiler]!
Pink Banana Squash: https://homesteadlifestyle.com/how-to-grow-pink-banana-squash/ Sexy Thatcher: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/arts/television/the-crown-margaret-thatcher.html NSFW content NOT linked here, but its creator IS and you can totally read between the lines: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Kandy_Fong
Eleanor on Twitter: @ExtraTremeerial Eleanor on io9: https://io9.gizmodo.com/author/eleanortremeer Eleanor on Babbel: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/contributors/eleanor-tremeer
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and/or the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Welcome to the Michaelogical Network, a Star Trek: Discovery recap series with our brand new past/present/future Star Trek correspondent, Eleanor Tremeer.
In this episode we recap the happenings in DISCOVERY's season 3's fifth episode: “Die Trying,“ in which the crew of the Discovery … ahem … discover … the ultimate fate of the Federation they had all served and left some 930 years behind. What’s left? Some grey lashes on Philippa G., poor technical know-how, and some unexpected ship cameos. (Among other things.)
Join Tony, Eleanor, and Kend as The Imaginaries sets out to unpack each episode of this season. (And watch for our near-future regular episodes with Eleanor in the weeks to come.)
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the 2020 socials.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and/or the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
In this quadrilogy of very queer episodes, we tackle the past, present, and hopeful future of one of our favorite franchises. Our regular guest is Eleanor Tremeer, who has probably written stuff about sff you've already read, and has graciously agreed to join forces with us here. For the first episode in this series, we talk the history of queer coding in Trek, as well as canon Trek's attempts at including queer characters and the trope of the depraved bisexual. We talk about Garak and Dax a lot, as you might guess.
Eleanor on Twitter: @ExtraTremeerial Eleanor on io9: https://io9.gizmodo.com/author/eleanortremeer Eleanor on Babbel: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/contributors/eleanor-tremeer
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and/or the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Welcome to the Michaelogical Network, a Star Trek: Discovery recap series with our brand new past/present/future Star Trek correspondent, Eleanor Tremeer.
In this episode we recap the happenings in DISCOVERY's season 3's fourth episode: “Forget Me Not“. Which. We. Loved. After all, this episode a) took us to Trill, Eleanor’s all-time favorite Trek planet, b) gave characters like Hugh Culber and Keyla Detmer scenes worthy of their acting chops, and c) brought us the cutest queer romance known to humankind––that is, a romance between Adira and Gray and one adorable hand-sewn quilt.
Truthfully, we keep waiting for the other shoe (season) to drop, but this third season of Star Trek: Discovery continues to build strength upon strength for those of us who first fell in love with the franchise––the Federation!––for its radical humanity and celebration of difference, whether that be racial or neurological or gender-bending queer delightfulness. We can only hope that after such a strong beginning Discovery will keep on delivering what it has shown us it can do in these first four episodes.
Join Tony, Eleanor, and Kend as The Imaginaries sets out to unpack each episode of this season. (And watch for our near-future regular episodes with Eleanor in the weeks to come.)
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the 2020 socials.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and/or the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Welcome to the Michaelogical Network, a STAR TREK DISCOVERY recap series with our brand new past/present/future STAR TREK correspondent, Eleanor Tremeer.
In this episode we recap DISCOVERY's season 3's third episode: “People of Earth”. We spent the previous two episodes asking: “What happened to the Federation?” and the third episode aims straight for the center of that tangle by taking us directly to Earth, where a microcosm of the larger political problem plays out between those left on the planet and the raiders who have been haunting their skies. Some beloved characters lean in to grapple with the many traumas they have experienced over previous seasons as they discover what happened to the world they left behind.
Join Tony, Eleanor, and Kend as The Imaginaries sets out to unpack each episode of this season. (And watch for our near-future regular episodes with Eleanor in the weeks to come.)
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the 2020 socials.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
GO VOTE.
Welcome to the Michaelogical Network, a STAR TREK DISCOVERY recap series with our brand new past/present/future STAR TREK correspondent, Eleanor Tremeer.
In this episode we recap the happenings in DISCOVERY's season 3's second episode: "Far From Home". Many of our questions from the last recap have now been answered. (And some of our speculations were even correct! Michael Burnham really has had to wait a significant amount of time for her crew to arrive in her present, the future. This is also a fabulous season for everybody's hair styles.) That said, many more questions have been raised, and we can't wait for the showrunner to answer them. (Please, please, do the right thing by our bridge crew! And more Captain Killy and Commander Georgiou moments, please.)
Join Tony, Eleanor, and Kend as The Imaginaries sets out to unpack each episode of this season. (And watch for our near-future regular episodes with Eleanor in the weeks to come.)
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the 2020 socials.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and/or the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Welcome to the Michaelogical Network, a STAR TREK DISCOVERY recap series with our brand new past/present/future STAR TREK correspondent, Eleanor Tremeer.
In this episode we recap the happenings in DISCOVERY's season 3 opener: "That Hope Is You (Part 1)". Is this episode, which we liked very much indeed, a signal that DISCOVERY has at last found its feet and figured out what it should always have been about––the future? Are there real Trek Lore Specialists now behind the helm? What in blazes is this mysterious "Burn" that sexy hunk of a Book keeps going on about? Will there be more flirting with worms in future episodes?
We can't wait to find out.
Join Tony, Eleanor, and Kend as The Imaginaries sets out to unpack each episode of this season. (And watch for our near-future regular episodes with Eleanor in the weeks to come.)
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the 2020 socials.
You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and/or the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Join us as we dive happily into Phil Stamper's debut, THE GRAVITY OF US, with Phil himself! We talk about the importance of showing the joy in queer relationships, especially when the relationships themselves are taking place in a sea of complexity -- but are not themselves the only source of conflict. Of course, we also get to talk about the history, present, and possible of space missions and NASA, as well as how we talk about those things. Who has the authority to tell the stories of the very few who go to space? Who could give themselves the authority, when the history of the same has been so cishet, white, and male? Come along with us as we talk it out!
You can find out the latest on all things Phil at www.philstamper.com or on Twitter under the handle @stampepk.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the tweets. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i)
If you like our cast, we’d love to hear from you by way of a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You can also celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards your state’s bail fund, and the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
This episode is an excellent complement to Episode 128 with Tj Klune, in which we love all over the wonderful cover of his novel THE EXTRAORDINARIES. After we recorded that episode, we went searching for the person responsible, and found David Curtis, who ended up being responsible for plenty more amazing covers for our recent faves. In this fascinating episode, he walks us through the design process for the queer sff we know and love, from cover illustration to interior design to appearing on the shelves. We learned a lot and had a great time, so come along on this fun ride!
To find out more about Dave's work, you can find his portfolio at http://david-curtis.com and his Insta presence under the handle @dcurtisstudio.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the tweets. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
We’d still love your reviews if you’re willing and able, but please put your $$ toward ending police brutality and ending systemic racism. You can celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards the USPS, your state’s bail fund, and the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Neither of us knew the "disaster twink" archetype going into this episode, but we're so glad we do now -- and if you don't either, or even if you do, then this conversation about TJ Klune's recent YA novel THE EXTRAORDINARIES is definitely for you. We chatted with TJ about queer YA in general, as well as the exciting things happening there, as well as about the nuanced delights that await in THE EXTRAORDINARIES, including an important discussion of friends and friend groups, the relationship protagonist (and disaster twink) Nick has with his dad, the importance of genre savviness and fan fiction, and more. It was a great time, so come along with us!
Bonus: If you enjoy our chat about THE EXTRAORDINARIES' cover, stay tuned for Episode 129, in which we talk with David Curtis, the cover designer of this and many other recent books. We learned a lot about what goes into making a cover!
For more information about TJ Klune's books and ongoing projects, visit him online at www.tjklunebooks.com!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the tweets. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
We’d still love your reviews if you’re willing and able, but please put your $$ toward ending police brutality and ending systemic racism. You can celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards Unicorn Riot, your state’s bail fund, and the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
In this episode, we welcome back Caitlin Starling, whose appearance in Episode 101 let us delight over her terrifying and intimate THE LUMINOUS DEAD. This time we're all about her new novella, YELLOW JESSAMINE, and we get to talk about some our favorite topics (queer subtexts abound) and learn much more about what makes horror feel like, well, horror. Plus, we have an extended discussion about poison gardens, which are a thing you should absolutely know about.
If you'd like to learn more about Caitlin's excellence, check out www.caitlinstarling.com or follow the adventures on Twitter at @see_starling. YELLOW JESSAMINE is available from Neon Hemlock Press at https://www.neonhemlock.com/books/yellow-jessamine, where you can also find out more information about the other 2020 novella quartet authors that we have talked to on this podcast in recent episodes!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the tweets. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
We’d still love your reviews if you’re willing and able, but please put your $$ toward ending police brutality and ending systemic racism. You can celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards Unicorn Riot, your state’s bail fund, and the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
UPDATE: Introduction issues fixed! Thanks to everyone who let us know about the syncing issue. We will never trust Audacity again. (Just kidding. We love you, Audacity.)
As you can probably tell from the range of this episode's title, we had a great conversation with Eboni around her upcoming novella, STONE AND STEEL. You better believe we also serve up a heaping helping of found families (one of our favorite main dishes!), and we're also extremely thankful for Eboni's nuanced take on queer community. STONE AND STEEL is definitely one of our favorite novellas of the year, and our conversation with Eboni is one of our favorites, too!
To learn more about Eboni's work, go to www.ebonidunbar.com or look her up on Twitter at @sugoionna87 and on Instagram at ej_beezington. You can find STONE AND STEEL, as well as the other novellas in Neon Hemlock's 2020 quartet, at www.neonhemlock.com/books.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the tweets. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
We’d still love your reviews if you’re willing and able, but please put your $$ toward ending police brutality and ending systemic racism. You can celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards Unicorn Riot, your state’s bail fund, and the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
This episode lets us delight over Leigh Harlan's recent novella Queens of Noise, out now from Neon Hemlock Press (and please listen to episode 124, in which we talk with dave ring, the publisher and managing editor). You'll probably already know that we love talking about found families, especially queer found family, which Leigh and their Queens give us in abundance. What we didn't know is that we certainly wanted our queer sff infused with punk rock, and Queens more than delivers. Queens of Noise particularly delighted us westerners because of its focal werecoyote pack, so when we say we loved this gem of a novella for many reasons, believe it!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the tweets. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
We’d still love your reviews if you’re willing and able, but please put your $$ toward ending police brutality and ending systemic racism. You can celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards Unicorn Riot, your state’s bail fund, and the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Our Guest this episode is dave ring, who answers about what it means to champion queer voices in SFF as an editor and publisher of a small press (Neon Hemlock Press, in dave’s case).
dave is also a fabulous writer and has a lot to say about creating queer community in writing generally and in SFF specifically. Plus, we absolutely want to know what happens between a call for book submissions and the publication of a book, and dave walks us through the magic. Oh, and we also talk about literary candles!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the tweets. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
We’d still love your reviews if you’re willing and able, but please put your $$ toward ending police brutality and ending systemic racism. You can celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards Unicorn Riot, your state’s bail fund, and the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Hang on tight for this rollicking episode with Rosaria Munda, author of FIREBORNE, which was one of our favorite YA novels of 2019 AND our sole pick for best debut of 2019! We had a grand time talking about the beautiful world Rosaria created, which is partially magic (hello, dragons), partially historical, partially Roman, but all fabulous. There's a lot of great discussion of family, ethics, war, empire, and much more -- and you can look forward to Rosaria's next book in this series, FLAMEFALL, due out in 2021. We can't wait!
Episode trivia: Kend loves dragons, but Rosaria prefers fighter planes.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the tweets. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
We’d still love your reviews if you’re willing and able, but please put your $$ toward ending police brutality and ending systemic racism. You can celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards Unicorn Riot, your state’s bail fund, and the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
This episode concludes our duology on magic, starting with the long history of its depiction in fantasy as influenced by the socio-religio-political norms of the era. We end with much yelling about She-Ra and pandemic-driven literature, so watch where you step. Er, listen.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the tweets. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
We’d still love your reviews if you’re willing and able, but please put your $$ toward ending police brutality and ending systemic racism. You can celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards Unicorn Riot, your state’s bail fund, and the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Thank you for your patience in waiting an extra bit for this particular episode. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Black Lives Matter. Trans lives matter. Stay safe out there.
This episode begins our duology on magic. Ready your wands and harness your dragons, my friends!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com while we are avoiding the tweets. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
We’d still love your reviews if you’re willing and able, but please put your $$ toward ending police brutality and ending systemic racism. You can celebrate our queer take on science fiction and fantasy by honoring the Black trans women and other diverse peoples who led the charge at Stonewall and elsewhere. On theme, you can put some bucks towards Unicorn Riot, your state’s bail fund, and the official George Floyd Memorial Fund.
Many welcomes and second breakfasts to the super smart and very Canadian Jeremy Reimer, brilliant human being and author of the book SILICON MINDS OF MARS, which as you might surmise is rather full of minds and mindful explorations of machine learning, identity, and the consequences of human-like artificial intelligences on politics and relationships.
You can find many years of his thoughtful thoughts on ARS TECHNICA, and you can find out more about Jeremy at www.jeremyreimer.com. His newsletter lives at www.spaceandscifi.com, and he also dabbles in Twitter with the handle @JeremyReimer.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line (maybe about that reading rut-busting trick?) at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
When we first heard the premise for Lina Rather's SISTERS OF THE VAST BLACK, we knew immediately that it was going to be fabulous. Then we actually got ahold of it, and not only was it fabulous, it was QUEER NUNS IN A SPACE WHALE and we were overwhelmed by the superlative degree of fabulosity.
We are so, SO excited to bring you our recent conversation with Lina Rather herself, in her first ever podcast appearance ... which we find both incredibly flattering and the kind of responsibility that would make even Spider-Man sweat. (Don't mess this up, don't mess this up, we whisper to ourselves in the mirror.) We discuss the influence of childhoods embedded in religious traditions on both the writing and reading of SISTERS OF THE VAST BLACK, as well as other aspects of the nuance and beauty of this wonderful little novella.
And not to be too much of a tease, but, there is also some BREAKING LINA RATHER NEWS in this episode, so if you want to know what's next for our spacefaring nuns, hang in until the end!
To find out more about Lina Rather, visit www.linarather.com or look Lina up on Twitter under the handle @LinaRather.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line (maybe about that reading rut-busting trick?) at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Who better than a grumpy old man to take you on a tour of a fantastical land of epic scale ... without actually going there? Welcome to our much-looked-forward-to conversation with Alexandra Rowland, author of A CONSPIRACY OF TRUTHS and A CHOIR OF LIES (as well as several upcoming books!! WE ARE SO EXCITED!!!). Their fantastic debut rocked Tony's socks off and its sequel has only continued to declothe Tony's ankles with their excellent worldbuilding and phenomenally queer approach to this genre/mode/cat which we love.
Bonus? Rowland is also a gifted podcaster, being both a host of "Be the Serpent" along with fellow authors Freya Marske and Jennifer Mace, as well as cohosting "Worldbuilding for Masochists" with fantasy authors Rowenna Miller and Marshall Ryan Maresc.
If you'd like to find out more about Rowland, their fantastic (PUN!) books, and their work in podcasting, head to www.alexandrarowland.net and take a peek at the "About" page, where you'll find links to all the podcasts and all of the socials.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line (maybe about that reading rut-busting trick?) at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be inside the brain of someone just a few days into a new medication and a workplace crisis? No? Well, welcome to this episode anyway!
Join us for one very strange episode in which Kend is extremely wired but also recording in a haunted housesit, while Tony is a reasonable human being trying to keep things somewhat under control.
Oh yeah, and we (mostly Kend) talk about the intersections of the action/adventure genre with science fiction and fantasy lenses, and a very queer readership.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line (maybe about that reading rut-busting trick?) at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
The fascists went after Sarah Gailey, and Sarah Gailey brought their very best fightin’ words in UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED, the near-future dystopia novella about fascist-stomping queer librarians on horseback saving themselves and each other and possibly the world.
Because patriarchy just sucks, man. And if Gailey and The Imaginaries have one rule, it’s DON’T BE A DICK. If we have two rules, it’s GET THEE TO A BOOKSTORE/LIBRARY/INDIEBOUND IMMEDIATELY because you’re gonna need both this novella and Gailey’s most recent release, the young adult novel WHEN WE WERE MAGIC. (They were always magic, to us. sob)
A lot has happened in the last year. The world is scary scary scary, and not just because people don’t understand how viruses work and keep clearing the supermarket shelves and hospital waiting rooms of toilet paper and alcohol wipes (but not gloves or hand soap for some reason?). A lot has happened in Sarah Gailey’s life, to be precise, and we’re here to hear all about it, and then … well, let you listen to us hear all about it. It’s very much worth hearing all about! Listen as one of the most delightful human beings on the planet describes channeling all of the scary of the last year into new structures and new forms to reach readers even beyond alternate histories, science fictions, and fantasies.
If you’re interested in hearing our first episode with the Gails, you can find that back in Episode 85 (“Sarah Gailey on Fighting Fascism and Queering All the Genres) in May of 2019.
If you’d like to learn more about Gailey’s work and web presence, check out their website at www.SarahGailey.com, their Twitter and Insta at @GaileyFrey, and their substack newsletter at sarahgailey.substack.com. (It’s fabulous.)
Also? Check out the Death Quilt project at https://american-dirt.net/index.php/death-threat-quilt.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line (maybe about that reading rut-busting trick?) at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Alix E. Harrow took our brains AND the world by storm with her debut, THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY. Is it portal fiction? Is it science fiction? Is it fantasy? Is it period fiction? Is it feminist fiction? Is it queer fiction? Is it a Nebula Award nominee? Is it ALL THE THINGS?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and YES.
Harrow is the kind of person who can claim a font color because it is “the dusky rose of a Kentucky sunset” but also talk seriously about depression and waiting for an owl with an invitation to Hogwarts. She is so full of heart and soul and good words and the kind of generous-spirited human the world really needs more of right now.
You can find THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY wherever good books are sold (and you can find some of those lovely places and spaces at https://bookstorelink.com/9780316421973). You can also follow Harrow on the Twitter at @AlixEHarrow and find out more about her thoughts and work at https://writtenworld.substack.com. And of course, by listening to this episode!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line (maybe about that reading rut-busting trick?) at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Our apologies for the slightly late upload on this one! We blame internet connectivity issues, warped audio, and a cat who just. won't. leave. the. keyboard. alone.
Come ye, come all, and welcome our fabulous guest Naomi Kritzer to the podcast! Kritzer is the author of the 2019 Nebula Award nominated young adult novel, CATFISHING ON CATNET, as well as the 2016 Nebula nominated and Hugo and Locus winning story CAT PICTURES PLEASE. We discuss everything from Kritzer’s own cats to the parameters of artificial intelligence (catlike or otherwise) to the building blocks of personhood, and basically fall even more in love with this author’s fantastic words.
You can read CAT PICTURES PLEASE on the Clarkesworld website at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_01_15, and you can find out more about Naomi Kritzer's work at www.naomikritzer.com or by following her on social media under the handle @naomikritzer.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line (maybe about that reading rut-busting trick?) at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
After three weeks of crickets, we return with a real hot mess of a delightful episode in which we discuss our feelings and emotions (and ongoing mental health challenges) as we revisit two of our childhood favorites. As in, we deliberately sat down and reread these books for the podcast to see how our responses had or had not changed. We also announce a few of our AMAZING upcoming guests on the ‘cast, and solicit recommendations for ways to kick a reading rut.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line (maybe about that reading rut-busting trick?) at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
AJ Hackwith came to our attention late in 2019 when she published LIBRARY OF THE UNWRITTEN, the first book in a series that takes us inside Hell’s Library to meet its inimitable Librarian, Claire. Tasked with overseeing the Library’s Unwritten Wing, where all of the books that have never quite come to be, Claire must go on a quest to recover one particularly pernicious manuscript––a quest that ultimately takes her not to the throes of a fiery judgment but instead on a romp through a few choice underworlds, including the living world.
With its underpinnings of queerness and found family relationships, underworlds and life inside a library, LIBRARY OF THE UNWRITTEN more or less screeched “WHEELHOUSE”! as it pirouetted through the winter air to our waiting fingertips. We are so excited to speak to Hackwith on today’s episode about the function of libraries both fantastical and factual, what it’s like to transition from writing romance to (spite) writing fantasy, weird dragon sex, and making room for some of the underrepresented letters in the LGBTQIA+ alphabet in the fantasy genre.
You can find out more about Hackwith’s work, past-present-future, at www.amandahackwith.com. You can also follow her on Twitter and Instagram, both at @ajhackwith. The sequel to LIBRARY OF THE UNWRITTEN, ARCHIVE OF THE FORGOTTEN, comes out in October of 2020. Color us EXCITED.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Becky Chambers took our hearts and cracked them wide open with her Wayfarers series, starting with THE LONG WAY TO A SMALL ANGRY PLANET. And in 2019, she released the novella of space exploration and discovery, TO BE TAUGHT IF FORTUNATE. We have a lot of feelings, some of which we are probably too willing to share on the 'cast as we talk with Becky about science, queering SFF, and why her books always have such deliciously long titles. Speaking with her was brain-meltingly awesome, and we are so excited to share this week's episode with you, our listeners!
You will not find Becky Chambers on social media (have we mentioned that she is extremely smart yet?) but you can check in with her upcoming and ongoing work at www.otherscribbles.com. You can find her books wherever good books are sold. They are:
- THE LONG WAY TO A SMALL ANGRY PLANET (Wayfarers #1) https://bit.ly/30PgcJD
- A CLOSED AND COMMON ORBIT (Wayfarers #2) https://bit.ly/37of9m9
- RECORD OF A SPACEBORN FEW (Wayfarers #3)https://bit.ly/3aL2pbF
- TO BE TAUGHT IF FORTUNATE (standalone novella) https://bit.ly/36q9RWb
All of Becky's books are worth your time.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on - iTunes (https://apple.co/3aFR64l) - Spotify (https://spoti.fi/2tERDTD) - Stitcher (https://bit.ly/38ukyZc) and - SoundCloud (https://bit.ly/2TVno5i) as well as find our oldest episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils.
If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Looking for the absolute BEST in science fiction and fantasy released in 2019? We've got you covered. Join us for our special annual award episode covering everything from best SFF novel of 2019 to best television show to best book cover art as determined by our totally impartial (and totally humble) dynamic duo!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
We would not be ... US ... without you being you, and without those amazing authors who agree to chat with us on the 'cast about bookish things. Many thanks to our seventeen guests from 2019: - Christopher Cokinos (episode 76) - Suyi Davies Okungbowa (episode 78) - Scott Selisker (episode 80) - Deji Bryce Olukotun (episode 81) - Jett Stanton (episode 82) - Sarah Gailey (episode 85) - Kim Stanley Robinson (episode 87) - Mary Robinette Kowal (episode 91) - Jonathan Michael Erickson (episode 92) - Makiia Lucier (episode 93) - Kali Wallace (episode 96) - Steve Brusatte (episode 97) - Molly Gloss (episode 98) - Caitlin Starling (episode 101) - Seanan McGuire (episode 105) - Tristan Palmgren (episode 86, 106 & 107) - CSE Cooney (episode 108)
This episode includes brief clips from each guest episode as well as notes about what's coming next from these authors and where to find out more about their books and other projects.
We are so excited to speak with more wonderful authors in 2020! But first, stay tuned for next week's 2019 Imaginary Awards! WE. CANNOT. WAIT.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
We are so unbelievably delighted to bring you this week's conversation with author CSE Cooney, whose novella DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP blew our minds this year and whose mind is a puzzle box of amazing anecdotes and compelling, nuanced thoughts on connecting with and commenting upon history. She breaks down the relationships between characters undergoing great transitions in their lives and the ways in which her stories provide pathways to understanding what it means to come out and come into our own.
It's telling that we'd already spent half an hour falling in love with Cooney's ferociously good stories BEFORE we hit the "record" button. What other stories might someone like Cooney share with the world? We can't wait to find out.
To find out more about DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP as well as Cooney's other projects, visit her website at www.csecooney.com.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
This is a continuation of a conversation started in Episode 106! Please listen to that episode first; this one will make much more sense in context if you do.
We're so excited to get a second (now third) round with Tristan Palmgren! Author of The Unity series books, "Quietus" and "Terminus," Palmgren joined us this time on the podcast to (continue to) talk about first contact narratives. What are the ethics? What are the power echoes in these relationships? What does STAR TREK get right (and wrong) with its Prime Directive?
You can find out more about Tristan at www.tristanpalmgren.com. Tristan can also be found on Twitter with the handle @TristanPalmgren. Their feed is packed full of cutting social commentary, writerly feelings, and relatable snark. You can buy both books in The Unity series ("Quietus" and "Terminus") wherever good books are sold, and on Amazon.
"Quietus" : www.amazon.com/Quietus-Unity-Tri…en/dp/0857667432/ "Terminus" : www.amazon.com/Terminus-Unity-Tr…en/dp/0857667580/
The Black Death! The Great Mortality! All the capitalized socioeconomic challenges of Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean! Interplanar anthropologists! A very confused A.I.! Lots of politlcal meddling! These are delightfully weird and wonderful books that you won't want to miss.
More projects from Tristan are forthcoming! ... they just can't talk about them yet.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes (including Tristan's first episode with us, Episode 86, and the first episode in this two-part series, Episode 106) on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
We're so excited to get a second round with Tristan Palmgren! Author of The Unity series books, "Quietus" and "Terminus," Palmgren joined us this time on the podcast to talk about first contact narratives. What are the ethics? What are the power echoes in these relationships? What does THE FIFTH ELEMENT have to tell us about first contact?
You can find out more about Tristan at https://www.tristanpalmgren.com. Tristan can also be found on Twitter with the handle @TristanPalmgren. Their feed is packed full of cutting social commentary, writerly feelings, and relatable snark. You can buy both books in The Unity series ("Quietus" and "Terminus") wherever good books are sold, and on Amazon.
"Quietus" : https://www.amazon.com/Quietus-Unity-Tristan-Palmgren/dp/0857667432/ "Terminus" : https://www.amazon.com/Terminus-Unity-Tristan-Palmgren/dp/0857667580/
The Black Death! The Great Mortality! All the capitalized socioeconomic challenges of Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean! Interplanar anthropologists! A very confused A.I.! Lots of politlcal meddling! These are delightfully weird and wonderful books that you won't want to miss.
More projects from Tristan are forthcoming! ... they just can't talk about them yet.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes (including Tristan's last episode with us, Episode 86) on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Why does the CDC known Seanan McGuire's name? What do fantasy dildos have to do with our podcast? And why do we all hate some dude named Jason now?
Join us for a lively discussion with one of our all-time greatest writerly heroes, the inimitable Seanan Mcguire. Really, there are no words for just how much we love McGuire's work, and for how much fun we had speaking with her.
You can find out more about Seanan McGuire's work (and her music!) on her website at http://www.seananmcguire.com (and https://www.miragrant.com), where you can also find links to Seanan's presences on social media.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
What exactly is the Prime Directive and what does it reveal about the underpinnings (and overpinnings) of science fiction and fantasy? Most people think of it as a property specifically of the STAR TREK franchise, and they're not wrong, exactly, but the base concept shows up again and again, or is responded to time after time, in a number of different seminal texts, from Iain M. Banks' CULTURE to STARGATE SG-1 to ALIEN to David Brin's UPLIFT. We're here to dig into the deets, and talk our way through the various troubles and triumphs of this sociopolitical notion in the genres that we love.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
What even are bugs and what do they do? We set out this pumpkin spice latte season to answer this question and many others, including: What the f@&*k, nature?! Why you gotta be this way?! (and) Where all do bugs crop up in science fiction and fantasy, and how are they used? (and) Do bugs AKA "not-spiders" perform different functions from spiders?
Dig deep (or at least surface-layer deep) into the history of buggy goodness with us as you stock up on candy and prepare for the seige of small children ringing your doorbell!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Do you like road trips on water? Do you like a bit of piracy that might involve neither literal water nor literal pirates? Do you ever get a hankering for a classic Enya track in the midst of your science fiction or fantasy reading session?
We're here this week to talk about oceans in science fiction and fantasy. Ocean planets, ocean metaphors, space-as-ocean, Trek ships as submarines, oceans as an early manifestation of an obstacle to overcome or a medium to traverse in journey narratives. Because an ... OCEAN ... of cold air moved into Montana the week of recording, this episode also features the tortured groans of Kend's radiator heater, for which we apologize. (Albeit, sans frostbite.) Fittingly, for this is an episode where we are ALL about the worst puns. Journey with us into Tony's existential crisis as we unpack some of our thoughts and expectations and feelings about oceans as a thing in this genre that we love!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
There are many thing to fear about this world (and other worlds) right now, but luckily sentient fungus isn't LITERALLY chasing us through the cramped confines of flooded caves in which lives have already been lost many times before. At least, we sure HOPE not.
What IS real and absolutely fantastic is Caitlin Starling's incredible debut work of science fiction horror, "The Luminous Dead." You might already have heard the buzz about this book, and we're here flailing our arms with love to confirm that it really is a smashing good read. A quick warning, though, for our listeners: This episode does contain a couple of spoilers, so we recommend you read the book before listening.
On this week's podcast, we speak with Starling about horror, mapping her story (and the underland), the relationship between fear, agency, and intimacy, and the connections between all of these things and the bodies (including queer bodies) that experience them.
If you're looking to find out more about Starling and "The Luminous Dead," you can check out her website at www.caitlinstarling.com, on Facebook under the handle CaitlinStarlingAuthor, on Twitter as @see_starling, and on Instagram as @authorcstarling.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Here's to 100 episodes with our imaginary listeners! In this episode, we celebrate having made it this far by screeching 100 of our favorite things into the abyss.
Parasitic fungus and anemic vampires Wild spaceship battles while a villain conspires Diverse protagonists who are very queer These are a few of my favorite things
When politics When climate deniers When I haunt the Earth
I simply remember my favorite things And then I these things Unearth
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
DON'T: Don't do it, people. Don't be a dick!
Unless your name is Richard or a Philip K. something or other. You probably can't help that one.
DO: Make GBBO references WHENEVER POSSIBLE.
Seriously, though, what's the 4-1-1 on gatekeeping? Is all gatekeeping inherently bad? How can it manifest in different situations? What is the tortured relationship between gatekeeping and the LGBTQIA+ community? AND HAVE YOU LISTENED TO JEANNETTE NG'S Joseph W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer* ACCEPTANCE SPEECH YET?
Between us recording this episode and this episode going live, the World Science Fiction Society did a cool thing and renamed the award the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. Because yes, it's absolutely true, Joseph W. Campbell WAS A F%$KING FASCIST.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Author Molly Gloss is one of those authors who has helped create the foundations upon which the genres we love, from Western and place-based literature to science fiction, have been built. Her books, including the recent genre-bending short story collection UNFORESEEN, the fantastic longer works OUTSIDE THE GATES and WILD LIFE, science fiction novel DAZZLE OF DAY, as well as the Western novels THE JUMP-OFF CREEK, THE HEARTS OF HORSES, and FALLING FROM HORSES. Whether she's writing in one genre or three or more, Gloss's work interrogates humanity's relationship to wilderness in all its forms. Her work has shown up on lists of authors writing environmental science fiction and fantasy, authors to read after reading the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, and authors whose works have won ... well, gadzooks of awards.
You can find out more about Molly Gloss, her work, and her social media presence by visiting www.mollygloss.com.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Last year, paleontologist Steve Brusatte changed all of our lives for the better with the publication of his popular science book, "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World." First of all, we're always here for dinosaurs. But Brusatte brought something really unique to the conversation about dinosaurs: a wide-angle lens of words that captures not just the facts as we know them about the dinosaurs themselves, but a social history of the hunt for dinosaur fossils, the development of new methods of research and study in laboratories around the world, and the diversification of those involved in the research themselves. His book is a portrait of a community working to bring new revelations about this fascinating field of study to light, and we couldn't be more excited to have Brusatte on the 'cast to talk about that community, his book, and dinosaurs on the screen and page.
You can find Brusatte's award-winning book, "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs," wherever good books are found. You can read more of his words on the "Scientific American," NatGeoKids, and "Guardian" websites. And you can find out more about the author as well as his current and future work by following him on Twitter at @SteveBrusatte.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
If you haven't yet read Kali Wallace's new book of science fiction and spacebound horror, "Salvation Day," you're missing out on one of our favorite things to break into (or out of) the genre this year. Full of creeptastic imagery and characters that make plausible decisions in tragic circumstances, "Salvation Day" unspools questions of humanity, responsibility, memory, legacy, and the potential for fundamental decency and self-sacrifice in a post-most-apocalypse society. Kali Wallace was kind enough to sit down with us to talk about reverse-engineering personal histories and responding to the world as-is, and envisioning this cool new space where the decisions that characters make under pressure require every bit as much thought as calculating the delta-v of their spacecraft engines.
You can find out more about Kali Wallace online at www.kaliwallace.com as well as on Instagram @kaliphyte!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
What do R2-D2, Pantalaimon, a weird robot koala thing, and Captain Marvel's Flerken friend Goose all have in common? They may (or may not) be new iterations of the age-old concept of a familiar.
With a burgeoning awareness of the hazards and intersections of this topic with matters of cultural appropriation, we set out to answer a couple of fundamental questions:
A) What exactly is a familiar, daemon, or animal companion if not a plot-useful pet? B) What can a familiar/daemon/animal companion DO for authors and readers of science fiction and fantasy that they can't necessarily do in other genres? 3) What do some of the more iconic as well as some of the more murky and borderline examples offer us in better understanding this genre/mode/cat we love so much?
Watch our feed in the weeks to come as we start another round of exciting guest episodes——featuring authors and scientists and thinkers you'll be sure to fall in love with if you haven't already!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
In our biggest episode yet, Tony and Kend discuss the role that very large objects, man-made and natural alike, play in science fiction and fantasy. Those giant Argonath statues warning paddleboarders off the river in "The Fellowship of the Ring"? BIG. Those space stations in "Star Trek"? BIGGER. That planet factory in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"? BIGGEST. Dyson spheres? SLOW DOWN A SEC.
It is a fact universally acknowledged that a science fiction or fantasy reader MUST be in want of something big. But why? To summon the sublime? To torment the small? To serve as a monument to male hubris, like "Ozymandius"? To represent a certain, ahem, reproductive bit of the body?
We're here for all of it. Well, maybe not the phallic stuff so much. But the impact on readers and watchers and lovers of science fiction and fantasy? Here for it. Big things that aren't so tangible as ringworlds and space elevators and supergates? Here for it. Messy definitions that fail us when we most want them? Here for it.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
"Geography isn't where is Kansas; it's why is Kansas." - Ruthie Gilmore
In what worlds have you found yourself recently? We discovered the work of Makiia Lucier by way of her 2018 work of cartographic fantasy, "Isle of Blood and Stone," and we were instantly smitten. And despite time zones and reasonable bedtimes, Lucier agreed to speak with on the 'cast about all things mapped and unmapped.
What do maps do for us? Why does fantasy, and to a lesser extent science fiction, make such a happy home for the cartographic impulse? What does including ACTUAL cartographers as characters allow a story to do? What can the real world (and all its many modern digital instruments) offer an author setting out to craft a new world? Lucier helps us tackle of these questions and more.
You can find out more about Makiia Lucier at www.makiialucier.com or on Twitter at @makiialucier, where we have been sharing some of our favorite science fictional and fantastical maps under the hashtag #mappingSFF, and we invite you all to submit your own maps for us to celebrate!
"Song of the Abyss," the sequel to "Isle of Blood and Stone," hits shelves on August 27th. You won't want to miss it!
[ Editor's Note: We are always a bit of a work in progress, and this week our struggle has to do with Tony's audio, which had a weird feedback sound to it. Apologies for that; we'll keep working to make our audio sublime! ]
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Jonathan Michael Erickson may live in Portland, but he wants you to know he hasn't given up on Los Angeles. There's room for both desert and lush green spaces in his work, just as there is in his own life. Appropriately, Erickson reached out to us some months ago, while both Kend and Tony were caught up in travels of their own. Now that schedules and disruptions have evened out, we're excited to connect the dots.
Drawn to science fiction for its boundary-blurring possibilities, Erickson began writing his first novel, "Relics of Andromeda," while on a road trip--and his characters journey far and wide as well as deep into their own subconscious in his work.
We spoke with Erickson about crafting a science fictional narrative informed by Depth Psychology, landscape, and yes! imagination. You can read more about "Relics of Andromeda" as well as its upcoming sequel and Erickson's other works-in-progress at www.jonathanmichaelerickson.com.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
We are beyond excited to introduce you to this week's guest, Mary Robinette Kowal, author of the exact specific kind of book to make us all cry with sheer excellence, and in possession of the exact specific words to say to us that make us cry all over again. This week, Mary Robinette was kind enough to take time out of her crazy #MaryGoRound of travels (and check out her social media feeds for more on THAT hashtag) and fit us in for a quick and delightful chat about writing from and to history, making room for diverse characters——characters of color, LGBTQIA+ characters, neurodivergent characters——without reducing representation to a plot point.
Mary Robinette's books include the Lady Astronaut series (currently "The Calculating Stars" and "The Fated Sky," with more to come), standalones such as "Ghost Talkers" and "Forest of Memory," and the Glamourist Histories series. She is also the author of numerous short stories, and her award-winning words are available wherever good books are sold. You can follow her work at www.maryrobinettekowal.com, where you can also find links to her various social media platforms and work as a professional puppeteer.
[ EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to the vagaries of Internet connections and the soundscape of Mary Robinette's location during recording, there are a few residual sound artifacts remaining in the recording. Our apologies for those! ]
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
How obsessed are we with the fall of the Roman Empire? Well, if you've spent much time with science fiction and fantasy, you might think VERY. VERY, VERY OBSESSED.
Join us this week for a bunch o' cool thoughts about empires, specifically toppling ones, and the square footage they occupy in our favorite genres. What are they doing there? What can science fiction and fantasy offer an author who's tackling questions of empire that other genres maybe can't? What was up with Tolkien and Rome? Are empires analogous to LGBTQIA+ identities?
WE HAVE THOUGHTS. SO MANY THOUGHTS.
After you listen to this episode, which features an abundance of background noise and laggy bits thanks to an experimental recording session in a backwoods Idaho cabin (as well as, frankly, cats just being jerks as normal), you should totally read these three essays if you can find them:
1) "Science Fiction and Empire" by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. (2003) 2) "The Course of Empire: A Survey of the Imperial Theme in Early Anglophone Science Fiction" by David Seed (2010) 3) "Alien Bodies and a Queer Future: Sexual Revision in Octavia Butler’s 'Bloodchild' and James Tiptree, Jr.’s 'With Delicate Mad Hands'" by Amanda Thibodeau (2012)
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
We are bookhounds, ever in search of a new scent, a new story, a new way of weaving words. And there’s something in the air, a barely-there trace of change. So, what is the deal with all of these new graphic novel adaptations/translations/interpretations of classic science fictional works that we’re seeing in bookstores and on library shelves these days? We put our noses to the forest floor and hunt for answers, among the thickets of juvenile, young adult, and adult science fiction and fantasy. We’re particularly interested in answering three questions: Why now? What makes science fiction and fantasy such a good fit with the visual form? And what, if anything, does SFF offer the graphic novelist that other genres/modes/cats may not?
Several works to keep your eyes peeled for: - “The Handmaid’s Tale” (novel by Atwood, graphic novel by Renée Nault) - “The Giver” (novel by Lowry, graphic novel by P. Craig Russell) - “Wool” (novel by Howey, graphic novel by Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray) - “A Wrinkle in Time” (novel by L’Engle, graphic novel by Hope Larson) - “Alien3” (original screenplay by Gibson, graphic novel by Johnnie Christmas) - “Kindred” (novel by Butler, graphic novel by Damian Duffy & John Jennings) - “The Forever War” (novel by Haldeman, graphic novels by Marvano) - “The Golden Compass” (novel by Pullman, graphic novels by Stéphane Melchior-Durand & Clément Oubrerie)
We also spend some time pondering those works we wish someone would adapt into the graphic medium, those that make especially good use of the graphic medium to add layers of nuance and interest to a story, and the potential pitfalls of slavish remakes of classic texts.
If we missed an interesting graphic novel (or comic) adaptation of a work of science fiction and fantasy, we’d love to hear about it!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Good vs. Evil. Light vs. Dark. Hot vs. Cold. Science Fiction vs. Fantasy.
Dualities (and false binaries) are everywhere you look, and some people are just so dang tired of them. But what do dualities do for us, and is it even possible to move beyond using them as the lenses through which we view these genres that we love?
This week, while Tony gallavants around the country and Kend prepares to move, we bring you a conversation about the ins and outs of dualities, craft a few of our own "better" dualities, and explore just what it might mean to break the universe down for parts and smelt it into something not rooted in duality.
Please note: Tony's break bends in mysterious ways. Kend's just falls apart. This is our truest, purest form of interdependency.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Kim Stanley Robinson is widely known for "Red Mars" (and its sequels), "2312," "Antarctica," "Galileo's Dream," "The Years of Rice and Salt," "Aurora," "New York 2140," and most recently, "Red Moon." His name has also become tied to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal thanks to an article by Naomi Klein about AOC's "Message from the Future" video. (You can read and watch that here: https://theintercept.com/2019/04/17/green-new-deal-short-film-alexandria-ocasio-cortez/) He also contributed an article to Sierra Magazine's Jan/Feb 2019 issue: "There is No Planet B." Amazing. (Read that one here: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2019-1-january-february/feature/there-no-planet-b-kim-stanley-robinson)
We talk with Robinson not just about where his books come from but about his thoughts on ecological fiction, green fiction, and climate fiction (cli-fi). Does climate change necessitate dystopia or inevitable pessimism about our shared future on this planet? Robinson doesn't buy that, and makes a case for writing utopian fiction in an age of obvious runaway climate change.
We also talk with Robinson about "Dos Pasos," Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Corey Doctorow, and Callenbach's "Ecotopia."
His advice? Take a walk. Pull some weeds. And yep, listen to podcasts.
Kim Stanley Robinson lives an unplugged life. He is not the driving force behind www.kimstanleyrobinson.info, although he says those who are happen to be great folks. But if you want to learn more about him, he suggests you read his books. "It's a pretty anti-capitalist body of work," he notes.
Robinson's name looms large in conversations about science fiction, generally, but he also had a part to play in bringing The Imaginaries Podcast into being——in that Kend and Tony found out about each others' SFF obsessions at a luncheon with this incredible author way back when (and in foreign lands). We are so excited, and so grateful, that we got to speak with him on the cast.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Tristan Palmgren has lots of thoughts, and they're all worth hearing. Author of The Unity series books, "Quietus" and "Terminus," Palmgren joined us this week on the podcast to shop talk such lightweight topics as time, feudalism, colonialism, and the function of genre in science fiction and fantasy. A thoughtful and wise human being, Palmgren takes the doors off of restrictive ways and means of thinking.
And of course, we talk about "Star Trek"! We also talk about Carl Sagan's "Contact," Barbara Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century," as well as Kim Stanley Robinson's "Antarctica," "Aurora," and "The Martians," a story collection which comments on and even inverts some of the premises of Robinson's Mars trilogy. We talk about Padme's adventures in the Galactic Senate, storytelling shortcuts, and the appropriate way to segue.
You can find out more about Tristan at https://www.tristanpalmgren.com. Tristan can also be found on Twitter with the handle @TristanPalmgren. Their feed is packed full of cutting social commentary, writerly feelings, and relatable snark. You can buy both books in The Unity series ("Quietus" and "Terminus") wherever good books are sold, and on Amazon.
"Quietus" : https://www.amazon.com/Quietus-Unity-Tristan-Palmgren/dp/0857667432/ "Terminus" : https://www.amazon.com/Terminus-Unity-Tristan-Palmgren/dp/0857667580/
The Black Death! The Great Mortality! All the capitalized socioeconomic challenges of Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean! Interplanar anthropologists! A very confused A.I.! Lots of politlcal meddling! These are delightfully weird and wonderful books that you won't want to miss.
More projects from Tristan are forthcoming! ... they just can't talk about them yet.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
This week, we talked with Sarah Gailey (of "American Hippo" and "Fisher of Bones" fame) about writing queer people back into history using genres (are they genres? What even are genres?) like alternate history and noir fantasy fiction and the various toolkits they provide. Not only was Sarah an absolute delight of a human being to spend an hour with, but they were also full of the kinds of thoughts that can open doors for authors looking to be the change they wish to see in the world of literature.
What does it mean to write alternate history when all recorded history remains silent on the marginalization and erasure of queer people and people of color——among many others?
How do we push back against static, reductive fascist takes on identity, when our identities——as young people coming of age, or as queer people, or more largely as human beings——are constantly evolving?
Sarah Gailey helps us navigate these questions and many others in this week's episode.
You can find out more about Sarah at http://www.sarahgailey.com, where you can also sign up for their twice-monthly newsletter. You can also find them on Twitter at @gaileyfrey. Their "American Hippo" duology (made up of the novellas "River of Teeth" and "Taste of Marrow") is available wherever good books are sold——and Sarah's debut full-length novel, "Taste of Marrow," hits bookstore shelves on June 4. You can and should also totally preorder it through your local indie bookstore or at https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Liars-Sarah-Gailey/dp/1250174619/. It's a kickass noir fantasy featuring the kind of tortured sibling relationship that we can all relate to, even while it re-envisions those tropes which have made noir a hard place to land when looking for hope and faith in other peoople.
Sarah Gailey breaks the concept of genre wide open, and invites us all to stand in the midst of the ruins and build a better, more welcoming space for readers and writers and creators alike.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
What's this about clothing in science fiction and fantasy? Join us as we ask and answer questions about costuming, haute couture, armor, cosplay, skants, and the critical role clothing can play in both policing or enforcing gender as well as queering science fiction and fantasy. Can clothing make these works and worlds we love more welcoming, more rich, and more enjoyable?
Um, hell yes they can!
In this article, we make specific callouts to: - E.K. Johnston's "Queen's Shadow" (a "Star Wars" novel) - Zendaya's high-tech Met Gala gown (https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/apos-not-eyes-zendaya-apos-004500446.html) - THAT Twitter dress (https://newatlas.com/cutecircuit-twitter-dress/24897/) - Annalee Newitz's 2008 opinions about science fiction fashion for io9, which are still newsworthy (https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-four-styles-youll-wear-in-the-future-according-to-385916) - Malka Older's "Crowdcutter" (http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=3009)
For further reading, check out: - THIS Fader article (https://www.thefader.com/2016/08/12/science-fiction-fashion-her-equals-ex-machina-blade-runner-costume-design) - THIS Buzzfeed article (https://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/science-fiction-fashion s-that-are-now-reality) - THIS Guardian article (https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/costume-and-culture/2013/aug/09/how-sci-fi-fashion-changed) - THIS Futurism article (https://futurism.media/sci-fi-and-fashion) - THIS Vanity Fair article (https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/10/sci-fi-fashion?verso=true)
... all of which helped inspire our episode this week.
We'd also like to thank Kend's cat, Sputnik, for doing a literal mic drop (and leap, and smash, and crash of the recording blanket fort) in the middle of our chat about Zendaya's Met Gala masterpiece. You certainly keep things interesting, cat.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
What even is comedy, especially in a science fictional or fantastical context? What makes comedy itself--and does it have to be funny? We try to figure out what's what about comedic works, and we navigate our way into the topic by the guiding stars of Douglas Adams, "GalaxyQuest," and "Futurama."
Also, Kend makes some revealing confessions, and you might not like them for it. OOPS!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these other earthly coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
What makes horror ... horrifying? Join us and special guest, musician, and horror aficionado Jett Stanton. Stanton's knowledge of horror runs deep, and our conversation ranges from frank discussions about what works (or doesn't) about classic works of horror (Bram Stoker's "Dracula," "The Fly," "Scream"), the works which shaped us as kids ("Flight Plan," "Scream," "The Thing"), and new forces at work in the genre/mode/cat ("Get Out," "A Quiet Place," "The Walking Dead"). Stanton knows so much, and we only just manage to scratch the surface when it comes to big questions like: Where do the fears at the root of horror come from? What do we do without fear? What roles do trauma and disgust play in our creation and reception of works of horror?
A couple of quick TWs: There are mentions of suicide and sexual assault in this episode as we discuss "Alien" and a number of other key works sporting the horror affect. Also there are lots of swears in this episode.
You can look for Jett on Twitter and Instagram at @jettsetforlife, and on YouTube at youtu.be/ShKFJ9Uy_RA!
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can listen to our episodes on iTunes or SoundCloud, and find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these earthly coils of their mortal SoundCloud coils. If you would like to help support our work, you can give us a rating or review on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts, and if you would like to offset the costs associated with our podcast, you can support us financially at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
This week on the cast, we talk with author and activist Deji Bryce Olukotun, whose books "Nigerians in Space" (2014) and "After the Flare" (2017) both enriched science fiction as a whole and the conversation about the immigrant experience in Africa. In 2019——with films like "Black Panther" making a splash and authors like N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, and yes! Deji Bryce Olukotun zeroing in on glass ceilings in publishing——new avenues for social, authorial, technological, and civic engagement are opening up, but what is the state of things, really?
Olukotun brings us thoughts on the influence of technology on his own writing as well as his work with Access Now and PEN America. He talks about obscure NASA publications about tracking stations, the narrative function of dinosaurs, and advocating for other authors and storytellers. We ask the big questions: What does science fiction allow or make possible or manifest in respect to these topics that other genres might not? Are we really making progress on finding and boosting #OwnVoices stories? Are dinosaurs supposed to be people?
Deji and the cast mention a number of works looking up after listening to this episode, including: - Sunny Tsiao's "'Read You Loud and Clear!' The Story of NASA's Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network" (https://history.nasa.gov/STDN_082508_508%2010-20-2008_part%201.pdf) - Nicola Griffith's "Bending the Landscape" anthologies with Stephen Pagel ("Fantasy" in 1997, "Science Fiction" in 1998, and "Horror" in 2001) - Avery Brooks' 2013 interview with K. Tempest Bradford (http://dailydragon.dragoncon.org/interviews/far-beyond-deep-space-nine-a-conversation-with-avery-brooks/) - The "Queers Destroy Science Fiction!" June 2015 special issue of "Lightspeed" edited by Seanan McGuire (http://www.destroysf.com/queers/) - "A People's Future of the United States" (2019) anthology edited by John Joseph Adams and Victor LaValle (http://www.johnjosephadams.com/projects/peoples-future/) - Deji Bryce Olukotun's "Insights" page on his website (https://returnofthedeji.com/revamp/insights/), which links to his short pieces "We Are the Olfanauts," "How to Create Your Own Jurassic Park," and "Utopian and Dystopian Visions of Afrofuturism"
You can look for Deji Bryce Olukotun's books wherever good books are sold, and you can look for his work to appear in upcoming issue of "Lightspeed" this summer.
You can find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these earthly coils of their SoundCloud first life.
Like our content? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can find ALL of our back episodes on YouTube, and listen to our episodes on iTunes or SoundCloud. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Meet Scott Selisker, Associate Professor at the University of Arizona and resident expert on science fiction and teaching science fiction. His book, "Human Programming: Brainwashing, Automatons, and American Unfreedom" (2016) is worth checking out on its own merits. He is also the unlucky human responsible for introducing US to Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.'s "The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction," which has spawned not just a seven-episode series on this podcast, but also reshaped our conversations about science fiction (and fantasy) on a macro level. We invited him to come and join us for a conversation about the very macro question of "What makes science fiction beautiful?" Excited words follow.
Side note: Selisker's voice is a sonorous ear-worm you NEED in your life.
Our conversation includes references to a number of formative works of science fiction criticism and fiction, including David Wittenberg's "Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative" (2012), Jennifer Egan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad" (2010), Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" (2005), Max Barry's "Lexicon" (2013), as well as Marina and Sergey Dyachenko's "Vita Nostra" (2008). We also discussed the "Alien" and "Star Trek" franchises (of COURSE), Ursula K. Le Guin, Nnedi Okorafor's "Binti" series, and Nalo Hopkinson's body of work. Selisker also references Dan Sinykin's article "The Conglomerate Era: Publishing, Authorship, and Literary Form, 1965–2007" in the journal Contemporary Literature and Joseph Campbell and Darko Suvin's competing definitions of science fiction; to read more about these, just look for the Wikipedia page on "Definitions of Science Fiction."
Want to find out more about Scott Selisker? You can find his book "Human Programming" on Amazon, his faculty webpage at https://english.arizona.edu/users/scott-selisker, and his Twitter handle is @sselisker.
We do also want to give shout-outs here in the show-notes to our previous episodes on Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.'s "The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction":
Beauty #1: Fictive Neology (Episode 5) Beauty #2: Novums (Episode 12) Beauty #3: Future History (MIA, hard drive failure) Beauty #4: Imaginary Science (Episode 34) Beauty #5: The Sublime (Episode 55) Beauty #6: The Grotesque (Episode 71) Beauty #7: The Techno-Gatorade (Episode 79)
You can find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these earthly coils of their SoundCloud first life.
Like our content or our new introduction? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can find ALL of our back episodes on YouTube, and listen to our episodes on iTunes or SoundCloud. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
The day has finally arrived, dear friends, when we get to finish our longest-running series of episodes. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay's "The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction" may have taken two-and-a-bit years to journey through, but every step of that journey has been rich (or dare we say, RIFE) with conversation. About what, prey? About what makes science fiction ... well, science fiction! We are so grateful for this book and the many new ways it has given us to frame this evergreen debate, and to move forward in critically and creatively engaging with this thing (genre/mode/cat) that we love.
So, thank you, Csicsery-Ronay!
What is the seventh beauty of science fiction? Well, Tony really struggled to pronounce the 'Technologiade,' so we're going to call it the Techno-Gatorade. We hope you don't mind.
We do also want to give shout-outs here in the show-notes to our previous episodes on the subject:
Beauty #1: Fictive Neology (Episode 5) Beauty #2: Novums (Episode 12) Beauty #3: Future History (MIA, hard drive failure) Beauty #4: Imaginary Science (Episode 34) Beauty #5: The Sublime (Episode 55) Beauty #6: The Grotesque (Episode 71)
You can find all of our back episodes on YouTube once they have shuffled off these earthly coils of their SoundCloud first life.
Like our content or our new introduction? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can find ALL of our back episodes on YouTube, and listen to our episodes on iTunes or SoundCloud. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
What are the socioeconomics of the postapocalypse? Suyi Okungbowa has a book coming out this summer that defies Western genre expectations of godpocalypse and urban fantasy and dystopic postapocalypse narratives ... and instead moves into——and helps to create——a new space within science fiction and fantasy. His book is titled "David Mogo, Godhunter," and yes, the word Afrofuturism provides one way to look at what it's up to; but Okungbowa draws upon contemporary realities and the landscape of present-day Lagos to interrogate privilege, social norms, and our economic assumptions of disaster. "David Mogo, Godhunter" is conversant with works like Emily St. John Mandel's "station Eleven," N.K. Jemisin's "Fifth Season," Neil Gaiman's "American Gods," Rebecca Roanhorse's "Trail of Lightning," and yes, "The Dresden Files" too.
This week, Okungbowa joins us on the podcast to talk about all of these things as well as the nature and effects of migration, community building in the aftermath of devastation, and why science fiction and fantasy are so congenial to dealing with these issues.
In the podcast, Okungbowa mentions several works worth further exploration: - Clayton Alderfer's ERG theory of motivation - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Friday Black" - Jess Rowe's "Your Face in Mine"
You can find out more about Suyi Davies Okungbowa at www.suyidavies.com or follow him on Twitter under the handle @IAmSuyiDavies. "David Mogo, Godhunter" is due out in July 2019.
Like our content or our new introduction? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can find ALL of our back episodes on YouTube, and listen to our episodes on iTunes or SoundCloud. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
When it comes to tackling gender as a subject in science fiction and fantasy, one approach has been to sort everybody out into single-gender societies. Whether we're talking about one of the earliest progenators of this approach, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Herland," or the kinds of worlds second-wave feminists built in "Gate to Women's Country," "Handmaid's Tale," and "Left Hand of Darkness," or perhaps even the weird gender-bending works by writers working in science fiction and fantasy today, such as "The Stars Are Legion" and "Ancillary Justice" and "Lumberjanes" and many others—no matter who we're talking about, there's much to be said. Join us for a tour of the three (or more?) stages of single-gender utopias and arguments about Alderman, Atwood, Gilman, Hurley, Leckie, Le Guin, Russ, Tepper, Tiptree, and ... Wonder Woman? Yeah, Wonder Woman!
Questions are our forté: Who is writing these stories and who gets permission to make big science fictional or fantastical statements about the relationship between gender and society? What expectations and assumptions does a single-gender utopia lay bare? What happens when you take a binary understanding of gender out of the equation? And also, where are all the not-white people? Single-gender utopias seem to have some blind spots. We put big question marks around the words "gender" and "utopia" as we dig into this legacy novum of our favorite genres/modes/cats—so be forewarned, this episode gets very queer.
Like our content or our new introduction? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can find ALL of our back episodes on YouTube, and listen to our episodes on iTunes or SoundCloud. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Thirteen years ago, on March 27, 2006, Stanislaw Lem went to meet the ultimate Unknown. We are joined by poet and professor Chris Cokinos to commemorate Lem’s death and to dig into what is perhaps his most well and widely-known work, “Solaris.” What keeps us coming back to this weird little book? What is up with those adaptations? In what ways can we as readers in 2019 better tangle with this work in all of its incarnations? Cokinos, who is currently teaching “Solaris” as part of his larger curriculum at the University of Arizona, and who is currently refining a manuscript of science fictional poetry, unpacks what Lem means to him—and maybe, just maybe, he means to all of us.
In today’s episode, we reference two analyses of “Solaris,” both well worth tracking down: - Istvan Csicsery-Ronay’s 1985 “The Book is the Alien: On Certain and Uncertain Readings of Lem’s ‘Solaris’” (available on JSTOR); and - Roger Ebert’s review of the 2002 Soderbergh/Cameron adaptation: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/solaris-2002
You can find Chris Cokinos’ books wherever good books are sold.
Like our content or our new introduction? Our website is www.imaginaries.net, and you can drop us a line at imaginarypod@gmail.com or find us on Twitter at @imaginary_pod. You can find ALL of our back episodes on YouTube, and listen to our episodes on iTunes or SoundCloud. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
What does Michelle Obama's 2018 memoir, "Becoming," have to offer in conversation with science fiction? Quite a lot, as it turns out. When we look at her reflections on identity-building and personal transformation, we see a perfect template for examining these same subjects in science fictional works ranging from Annalee Newitz's "Autonomous" and Martha Wells' Murderbot series to Jeff VanderMeer's "Annihilation" and Nnedi Okorafor's "Binti."
And let's be honest, we both really wanted to talk about Michelle Obama's book, too!
Looking for the link to the Annalee Newitz article we mention in the cast? You can find it on io9 under the headline "Six Good Habits I Learned From Being Bullied as a Geeky Kid" or at https://io9.gizmodo.com/six-good-habits-i-learned-from-being-bullied-as-a-geeky-5966749. Enjoy!
You can find ALL of our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Join us this week for a rollicking good look at sidekicks in science fiction and fantasy. What are they doing there? What functions do they serve? What do they bring to the table--both in terms of furthering the plot as well as deepening our understanding of the relationships they inhabit with the main character or characters? We’re here to tackle the Heroic Helper, the Comic Relief, the Gal Pal™ or Bromance™, the Cute Factor, and many more sidekick archetypes. We’re here, too, to mess with your head a bit. When things get messy, we’re at our absolute best!
For further reading, if you’re comic-inclined, take a look at Morris’ “The League of Regrettable Sidekicks: Heroic Helpers from Comic Book History”--a part of Quirk Books’ growing stable of comic-related anthologies.
You can find ALL of our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
We are BACK for the third and final (for now) episode in our series on science fictional and fantastical music! Here we wrap up our conversation with a quick survey of science fiction music videos, the transition from analog to digital, and the transition from digital to an unknown future medium. We dig into works blurring the line between music video and film, performance art, and more. We tackle generative music apps like Brian Eno's "Bloom," which may be one kind of future open to science fictional and fantastical music, music videos, and musicianship.
Check out the previous two episodes in this series in our backlist, and our music video playlist (linked from our Twitter account, below)! If you're looking for a little light reading on some of the musical subjects we've examined in the series to date, check out "What does progressive rock owe science fiction?" on The Portalist (https://theportalist.com/songs-that-reference-sci-fi-fantasy) and "32 of the most mind-blowing sci-fi music videos ever" on Syfy.com (https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/32-of-the-most-mind-blowing-sci-fi-music-videos-ever).
You can find ALL of our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Are you into science fictional or fantastical music? Yes? Good. Let's talk (some more).
This week, we return to our ongoing series about science fictional and fantastical music, focusing on space rock and its intersections with progressive rock, shoegaze, and more.
If you think that list looks incomplete, never fear! This is just part two of a series in which we will tackle more. MORE, we say. Watch this space in future weeks as we tackle concept albums, multimedia extravaganzas, the Internet of (Musical) Things, and eventually, yes, soundtracks and scores galore.
You can find our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Interrupting our series on music (thanks, TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES!), we return to our ongoing journey through Istvan Csicsery-Ronay's wonder of a work, "The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction." This week, we tackle Beauty #6 (the Grotesque). What exactly IS the Grotesque, and how does it relate both to science fiction at large as well as to Beauty #5 (the Sublime), which we discussed way back in Episode 55? We set out to answer this question, with deliberate pushback against the urge to get all academic up in here. Which is to say, if you haven't read "The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction," that's alright! You don't actually need to have done so in order to listen to this episode, or to enjoy our general bonkers-ness.
And yes, if you're wondering, we do talk a lot about "Alien" in this episode. And the intersection of queer and science fiction and the Grotesque.
You can find our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Are you into science fictional or fantastical music? Yes? Good. Let's talk.
This week, we muddy the waters as we always do by tackling a difficult-to-tackle subject: music inspired by science fiction and fantasy, as well as music that is science fictional or fantastical in affect, which may or may not be related. We're here to talk about Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, Florence + The Machine, M83 and more bands of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and other decades Kend and Tony may or may not have lived through. We tackle musical genres (subgenres, modes, cats) including prog rock, psychedelic rock, space rock, synthwave, synthpop, downtempo, synthetic and electronic sounds in music, and all sorts of music that ... well, let's just say it's a bit out of this world, if you catch our very on the nose drift.
If you think that list looks incomplete, never fear! This is just part one of a series in which we will tackle more. MORE, we say. Watch this space in future weeks as we tackle concept albums, multimedia extravaganzas, the Internet of (Musical) Things, and eventually, yes, soundtracks and scores galore.
You can find our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Welcome to part two of our introduction to science fiction and fantasy of the last decade. In this episode, we finish the conversations we started back in Episode 68, and broaden it to include discussions of comics, webcomics, young adult fiction, the New(est) Weird, and a do-your-homework-by-reading-these list of genre-shaping and genre-breaking texts we look to as guiding stars of the last decade.
Also: here be tarantulas.
You can find our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Are you looking to get into science fiction and fantasy for the first time, or are you a purveyer of bygone epochs of the science fictional and fantastical looking to refresh your reading list? This is the episode for you!
Join us this week as we take a look at the last decade in science fiction and fantasy both in print and on the big and small screen--at what's new, what's emerging, what's changed for good or ill, and what we think might yet be waiting in the wings. We're here for the feminists, for the LGBTQIA+ reader, for those who found themselves in drought in the early 2000s, and for those on both sides of our culture-wide love-hate relationship with superhero franchises. We talk novellas, protest fiction, works in translation, short-form science fiction television, and where all the market has shifted. Best of all, we lay the groundwork for discussing specific works that have shaped and reformed the genres (or cats) in the last decade.
This is not an episode to be missed!
You can find our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Looking for the absolute BEST in science fiction and fantasy released in 2018? We've got you covered. Join us for our special annual award episode covering everything from best SFF novel of 2018 to best television show to best book cover art as determined by our totally impartial (and totally humble) dynamic duo.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Why talk about holidays on this podcast? Are we drunk enough to really get into it? Join us for this week's cozy sweater of a cast as we dig out the same books we dig out each year to bring ourselves back to ourselves, and to remind of us all good things in the world. Tony makes an argument for the "Harry Potter," "His Dark Materials," "Animorphs," "The Old Kingdom," "Kingkiller Chronicles," and "Wayfarers" series, while Kend glares from over the top of a stack of Sarah Gailey, Alessandro Baricco, Ian McDonald, Sheri Tepper, K. Arsenault Rivera, and Robin Sloan. We talk about lifelong faves and problematic faves alike. Tony lavishes endless praise on Chabon's "Kavalier & Clay" & Kend bemoans the loss of childhood favorites undercut by maturing awareness.
As you uncork your holiday cider, mull over these comforting favorites!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.
Stay tuned for next week's mammoth #ImaginaryAwards2018 podcast!
Hit the road, jack, and don't you come back no more no more no MORE NO MORE
Okay, serenades aside, this week as you're preparing to undergo your own road trips and holiday journeys, we're back with a deep dive into the various manifestations of road trips in science fiction and fantasy. We ask all of the important questions, like: journey or destination--how do they relate? What separates a "road trip" from a standard "journey narrative"? What does a poem by Margaret Atwood have to do with ANY of this craziness? And why do we love road trip narratives as a whole, and why do we love some specific stories ... specifically?
Some of the many texts we interrogate include: David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas," JRRT's "Lord of the Rings," Brian K. Vaughan's greater body of comic work, Catherynne Valente’s "Space Opera" and its inspiration, Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide," Richard Powers' "The Overstory," Jacqueline Carey's "Starless," Seanan McGuire's "Ghost Roads" series, the film "Mad Max: Fury Road" and ... yes, a whole lot more. Even the Epic of Gilgamesh (the FIRST RECORDED STORY, WHAT) gets some brief, and laughing love.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
Some people are born into families, some people make their own, and some people stumble onto theirs in the dark. This week, we're here for the found families which gave us a home in science fiction and fantasy. You'll know many of the titles and many of the worlds: Star Trek, Harry Potter, Firefly, Lumberjanes, Avatar the Last Airbender & The Legend of Korra, Steven Universe, Jacqueline Carey's "Starless," Becky Chambers' everything, Charlie Jane Anders' "All the Birds in the Sky," Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time," and many many (MANY) more.
There's something inherently queer about the found family trope, or perhaps more rightly we should say that found families make critical space for the queer conversations which have informed our lives as readers and authors and commentators on science fiction and family. We find ourselves in these books, and we want to dig into all of the reasons why!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
What exactly is the legacy of J.K. Rowling's boy wizard, and in what ways has the "Harry Potter" series transformed or transmuted the science fictional and fantastical landscape? In what ways have we, Rowling's readers, gone off-script and gone about making space for ourselves as newly minted adults and tastemakers and, yes, occasionally, as academics? And what about those prequels, that weird stage play, and all the other canon Potterverse ... things ... which have cropped up since the original series was published?
As you can imagine, we have a lot of questions about what the Boy Who Lived has gotten up to in the years since that last weird epilogue, and we have some thoughts on what he's done to a brance of genres and our brains and the publishing industry. 80s kids, this is not one to miss!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
A noisy but important episode, we bring you an interview with fantasy author Jess E. Owen, whose now-completed Summer King Chronicles series leaned into the legacies of Ursula K. Le Guin, Tamora Pierce, and the #WeNeedDiverseBooks movement in junior and young adult literature. Owen met with Kend at a coffeeshop in Kalispell, Montana, where a nearby young family alternated between being very excited about life (you'll hear that in the background) and sidling closer to hear this author expound on what it takes to publish successfully by kickstarter (or any other publishing route), how furries make an awesome fanbase, and the important role fantasy plays in shaping our internal and external worlds. You have our apologies for all of the background noise, but as to the rest? You're welcome. You're welcome to this instantly better life you now have with Jess E. Owen and her nuanced thoughts in it!
To learn more about Jess E. Owen, check out her website at http://www.jessowen.com, and we're going to make good on her many suggested TED talks by having her back in future podcasts. Join the #GryfonPride on Twitter at @authorjessowen!
And as for us? You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening, wingbrothers and wingsisters!
What's more horrifying than the body? When it comes to body horror, deep-seated assumptions about who we are and on what we build our identities come to the fore. Some of those assumptions are unstintingly problematic. Others provide a crack through which fresh ideas can flourish. Authors as diverse as Octavia Butler, Jeff VanderMeer, Annalee Newitz, Ann Leckie, Brian K. Vaughan and Nnedi Okorafor have found new ways to infuse their works with fresh takes on body horror, and franchises as diverse as Alien, Star Trek, Twilight, Game of Thrones, Stargate SG-1, and The Magicians have become entangled with the subject.
This episode, we tangle with all the tangles. It's ruinous. It's messy. It's delightful.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
CATS.
You know they're there. On spaceships. In your Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Army crawling under rollercoasters. Sleeping in your bathroom sink that ONE TIME you forget to turn the light on when you want to wash your hands at night. And they're coming for you. They are ... CATS.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
Sometimes, when you read a really good book or watch a really good bit of media, you find yourself wanting to INHABIT the world you find there. Right? Everyone who grew up in the 90s wanted to go to Hogwarts. To go riding across the rolling hills of Rohan. To yell at Scotty (a bit unnecessarily, mind) to beam aboard the Enterprise.
In this episode of the Imaginaries Podcast, we take a long look at the top worlds we'd actually want to live in, and some of the reasons why they appeal so much to us as heart-homes. Here's a hint: Tony uses the worlds to get into thet whys, and Kend uses the whys to get into the worlds. Whether it's found families, points of view we connect with, characters we'd actually want to spend time with, post-capitalist utopias where we could actually afford medical care, or worlds where benevolent AIs take care of all the difficult stuff and leave us free to create, every world has a why, and every why has a world!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
[[RAW AUDIO WARNING: This episode consists mostly of raw audio in a classroom setting, so: maybe don't dial your stereos up to 11 on this one.]]
Many thanks to the University of Arizona MFA program for hosting us (well, hosting Tony and a laptop with Kend on Skype) last week! We are uploading the live audio as a plus-one podcast in advance of our scheduled weekly episode. The conversation was wide-ranging, but centered on our experiences as folks who got our MFAs and then had to grapple with SFF's weird relationship to the (note the big air quotes) "literary" establishment.
Our excellent hosts included UAMFA program director extraordinaire Ander Monson (findable on Twitter @angermonsoon & online at www.otherelectricities.com) and Chris Cokinos, whose cats are just plain excellent and whose books on meteorite hunting and vanished birds are mindblowing. Check 'em out, and enjoy the extra words this week!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
What does it mean to be gay in science fiction and fantasy? The question can be broken down into three major components: 1) What magic happens when SFF works include characters with same-sex attraction? 2) What magic happens when SFF works are written BY authors who experience same-sex attraction? And 3) what can we expect to see in texts both historical and contemporary when it comes to representation?
The history of same-sex attraction in SFF is, as you probably already know, fraught. In this episode, we discuss matters ranging from the Bury Your Gays trope to queerbaiting to "slash" pairings and fanfiction to the lack of representation in SFF anthologies to a whole long-ass list of books, comics, films, and television shows to watch out for (for both good and bad reasons, that is). It's a lot! And it's messy!
WARNING: This episode is VERY gay! It specifically tackles characters and authors from minority sexual orientations who have same-sex-oriented romantic and/or sexual attractions, not the full LGBTQIA+ rainbow community ... but that just means there's more to come.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
What role does religion play in science fiction and fantasy? What do we read into and what do we read out of a book written by an author of a known religious bent (think Orson Scott Card, C.S. Lewis, or Tolkien), or which features characters of a religious bent (think Mary Doria Russell or Tristan Palmgren)? Religion is something we can't get away from in 2018, whether we're talking about contemporary politics or science fiction or our own personal histories.
Get ready for some serious baggage inspection, folks: Kend is here with some rants on growing up religious, while Tony is here to be calm and the kind of emotional anchor we all need in our lives in 2018. What more could you want out of a podcast?
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
What is orientalism, and why is it ... not a great thing to keep stumbling across in science fiction and fantasy? Better yet, what are some signs to watch out for that indicate you're writing orientalism into your latest book? We're here to talk about the history, the definition, the manifestations, and the long fight to combat orientalism in our most favorite of genres. But be ready! We don't exactly go easy on prized favorites of the genre.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
Once upon a time two years ago, we started a podcast series tackling Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr's "The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction," a work of actually readable literary theory which attempts to find new ways at describing and understanding what even this science fiction thing IS, anyway.
The fifth beauty has everything to do with the science fictional sublime. What IS the sublime? Can it be ... playful? Or is it always grotesque? What is the DEAL with inverted expectations? CAN WE EVEN SURVIVE THIS EPISODE OH MY GOD.
Ahem. It got a little rough in there for a while. More ramshackle gallivanting to follow!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
There's something in the Latin that you should know, something sneaky and delightful that will revolutionize your understanding of the word "invasion" and the invasions so common to science fiction and fantasy works. From classics like "War of the Worlds" and middle-aged classics like "DUne" to modern brain-teasers such as "Annihilation" and "The Expanse," we're here to unpack what, exactly, an invasion can do for you and your planet. Or, well, someone else's planet. After all, we humans aren't such shabby invaders ourselves, now, are we?
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
What are space operas, and what is their relationship to science fiction? Join us this episode for a long talk on the ins and outs, the ups and downs, and the future significance of this--what, subgenre? Mode? Cat?
CATS!
We open with a quick reading from Catherynne Valente's new breakout hit, appropriately titled "Space Opera" and featuring, appropriately, one super serious feline threat. We then talk about a number of other, less obviously named space operas, including the immortal "Hitchhiker's Guide," some Kim Stanley Robinson, "Star's End," and Ian McDonald's "Luna" series. We give a quick hat-tip to fan favorites such as the MCU (especially "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Thor: Ragnarok"), "Star Wars," and "Star Trek." We're interested in modes and media, stakes and science, and what makes a blockbuster versus a flop. It's all here, and it's all SUPER DRAMATIC!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
Want to know what we've been reading this year? A lot. A lot of books. So many books. TOO MANY BOOKS HELP
No, just kidding. About needing help. We have indeed read many, many books in the first seven months of 2018, and we're here to give you the highlights of the top half of the year, as well as a bit of a preview of what's to come. After all, not every book can win an Imaginary Award ... but every good book deserves its moment. And here we are. Giving moments away. Like funnel cakes at a fair. Or perhaps kettle corn, depending on your preference.
The full list of our 2018 reads will be going up on our website in the coming weeks! (As well as lots more reviews. Kend has a brief break from grad school coming up.) So keep an eye on the Interwebs for that.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
Summer brings a lot of things, including a brief hiatus as Tony travels and Kend wraps up a summer of intensive graduate classes. While you wait for their return in the coming weeks, enjoy this episode on "beige" writing in science fiction and fantasy ... and some authors who seem to know what they're about, with nary a whiff of beige to be found.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
In this, the third and final installment of our "Enclosed Spaces in sFF" series, we tackle the city. The city on our planet, the city on other planets, the city in worlds of strange makings. Cities have long been a construct familiar to the reader of science fiction as well as the reader of fantasy, just as they have been familiar to the authors who put them to many diverse purposes.
Here, we discuss the city in such texts as "Lord of the Rings," Nnedi Okorafor's "Akata" series, in "City of Stairs," "Harry Potter," "Crossroads of Canopy," the works of China Mieville and Adrian Tchaikovsky, Kim Stanley Robinson and Omar El Akkad, NIcola Griffith and Patrick Rothfuss, Chris Beckett and Octavia Butler ... among many, many others.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
We are so excited to celebrate #TowelDay this year with a special episode dedicated to Douglas Adams ... and, more importantly, whales. Whales in space, space whales, whales with attitude. All the whales! We also make mention of dolphins and petunias, because, well, they've earned it, poor sods.
Just so we're on the same ... wavelength ... here, Kend had no idea that there were so many whales in science fiction and fantasy. Tony did, but then Tony is a magical unicorn of a human being and capable of truly exceptional things. His science fictional and fantastical whale collection is sizeable, and his observations on what they do for our favorite genre are profound.
One item of boilerplate: the audio volume on this file varies some. We've done our best to minimize the problem, but there may still be some residual issues.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
What exactly IS camp, and why does it matter to those of us who love science fiction and fantasy? What role does camp play in the queering of the genre, and why are we talking about it now? If you grew up loving "The Fifth Element" and "Doctor Who," you're already an expert on camp, and you're probably also used to defending the campy against those who equate camp with "poorly made" or "low budget" or "lowbrow." We're here to enliven that struggle, to advocate for camp and all campy things, and to uncover what exactly it is which makes it so important, now and always.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
What's the big deal about space stations? What's the big deal about any locked room mystery? What's the big deal with any science fictional thing that is also a SCIENCE FACTUAL thing? They're hospitals in space. They're prisons in space. They're cities in space. They're ... in space. Which is pretty cool.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
Plenty authors of science fiction trace their literary DNA back to Mary Shelley and her masterwork, "Frankenstein." What does it mean for science fiction to trace its origins back to a woman of a certain time and place and class? What does it mean for these authors we know and love (or don’t) today to bring her back into the conversation? What does it mean to claim Mary Shelley as an influence at all? These are just some of the questions we set out to answer in this week's podcast.
You can find a list of works inspired by Frankenstein at: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/22661.Frankenstein_revisionist_novels (our thanks to the list's creator) as well as some thought-provoking essays on Shelley's legacy at https://www.themarysue.com/lita-judge-mary-shelley/ and https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/women-science-fiction-authors-mary-shelley-frankenstein-200-ursula-k-le-guin-sci-fi-writers-female-a8177556.html. Many thanks to those authors as well!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
Yes, those ships! Welcome to our new latest miniseries on enclosed spaces in science fiction and fantasy, wherein we nerd out about all things ship, inside and out. Ye shall hear many things about design and function here, as well as laments, and diverse cheers.
Do you have a favorite spaceship design? Or a least favorite? We'd love to hear from you.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
Buckle up: it's time for our review of "Star Trek Discovery," the latest addition to the Trek franchise. Did we love it? Yes. Unreservedly? No. There's a lot to shop talk, from representation to technology to plot mechanics ... and much, much more.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
This was a hard episode to record. As you'll probably be aware, the incredible Ursula K. Le Guin passed away early this year, and in this podcast we set out to untangle just what it was that she did. Did she change science fiction? What will her legacy be?
Full disclosure: this will probably be just as difficult to listen to as it was to record. But it's worth it. Ursula K. Le Guin deserved it. She earned the right to demand our sincerity.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
Looking for the absolute BEST in science fiction and fantasy released in 2017? We've got you covered. Join us for this, the second of two podcasts covering everything from best SFF novel of 2017 to best television show to best book cover art as determined by our totally impartial (and totally humble) dynamic duo. We are posting these two episodes simultaneously!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "Best of 2017" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
UPDATE: It has been pointed out to us by a listener (@bridgebury on Twitter) that "The Stars are Legion is not Kameron Hurley's debut novel. She has published 6 novels so far, the first of which was God's War in 2011. (Sorry!)" but if anyone owes an apology, it's us ... sorry guys! We got that one wrong! But we'll totally be reading Hurley's other books now.
Looking for the absolute BEST in science fiction and fantasy released in 2017? We've got you covered. Join us for this, the first of two podcasts covering everything from best SFF novel of 2017 to best television show to best book cover art as determined by our totally impartial (and totally humble) dynamic duo. We are posting these two episodes simultaneously!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "Best of 2017" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to our final podcast of 2017! Yes, yes, we know it's showing up on the second day of 2018, and we apologize for the delay. This week, we're talking about the Weird in science fiction and fantasy, its intersections with Lovecraftian and other murders/unkindnesses/tribes/categories of SFF, and what to look for as we move into a future populated by Jeff VanderMeers and China Mievilles. It's a good future. It's a bit odd, but we like it that way.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "Best of 2017" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.
Thanks for listening!
This is the third and final installment of our "planetary bodies" series, which began with the Moon (Ep. 37) and middled with Mars (Ep. 38). Here we cover a LOT of ground--everything from Kim Stanley Robinson's "Aurora" to Sheri Tepper's "Grass" to Nicola Griffith's "Ammonite" to Cixen Liu's "Three Body Problem." How do we present planetary bodies in science fiction as a landscape and a function? And what's this about "Cli-Fi" or climate-change exploratoriums in science fiction? We have a lot of questions, and a lot of thoughts, and cats. WHAAT.
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. Thanks for listening!
Mars has long been the focus of our science fictional imagination. So what's the deal? How is setting a book or a colony on the red planet different from setting it elsewhere in our solar system? We get into the nitty gritty of Percival Lowell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, "The Expanse," Mariner 1, Mark Watney's potatoes, and much much more. While you're reading this, you should look up K. Maria D. Lane's "Geographies of Mars" and Carl Abbott's "Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West." We promise you won't regret it!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. Thanks for listening!
What does a lunar society give us that another society anywhere else can't? Is there something about the moon as a setting that makes for looney sci-fi? Join us as we double down on lunar settings, from Ian McDonald to Ursula K. Le Guin to N.K. Jemisin to James S.A. Corey--there's plenty to explore, and that's what we do! Thar's where we go!
You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email imaginarypod@gmail.com. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. Thanks for listening!