The Functional Nerds Podcast

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Joan Slonczewski , author of Minds in Transit . About Minds in Transit : In the hundred-level city of Iridis, human lords recycle diamonds and emeralds down to the Underworld while sentient machines pilot lightcraft and perform surgeries. Microbial minds expand the brains of scientists and artists. The artist Chrys directs her microbes to paint s...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Morgan Ryan , author of A RESISTANCE OF WITCHES . About A RESISTANCE OF WITCHES : Stubborn, plain-spoken and from an unimpressive family, Lydia Polk never expected to be accepted into the Royal Academy of Witches. Now, with Hitler’s army rampaging across Europe, the witches of Britain have joined the war effort, and Lydia is key to the cause: she...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Michael Damian Thomas , to talk about Uncanny Magazine Year 12: Fly Forever, Space Unicorns! . About Uncanny Magazine Year 12: Fly Forever, Space Unicorns! : Editor-in-Chief/Publisher Michael Damian Thomas and Team Uncanny Magazine have run successful Kickstarters for the seven-time Hugo Award-winning, 2024 World Fantasy Award-winning, and 2024 L...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Matthew Kressel , author of SPACE TRUCKER JESS . About SPACE TRUCKER JESS : Jessian Urania Darger is a kick-ass take-no-shit foul-mouthed too-smart-for-her-own-good sixteen-year-old girl with a chip on her shoulder. She and her daddy have been grifting their way across the verse for years. But when her daddy gets arrested for running crypto-credi...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Antony Johnston , author of Can You Solve the Murder? About Can You Solve the Murder? : One murder. Six suspects. One truth for YOU to uncover. YOU are the lead detective and it’s your job to investigate the most mysterious crime of your career. There’s been a murder at Elysium, a wellness retreat set in an English country manor. You arrive...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Auston Habershaw , author of If Wishes Were Retail . About If Wishes Were Retail : Alex Delmore needs a miracle. She wants out of her dead-end suburban town, but her parents are broke and NYU seems like a distant dream. Good thing there’s a genie in town?and he’s hiring at the Wellspring Mall. It’d help if the Jinn-formerly-of-the-Ring-of-Khorad...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome back Randee Dawn , author of The Only Song Worth Singing . About The Only Song Worth Singing : Childhood friends Patrick, Ciaran, and Malachi would’ve been happy to play music for coins on the streets of Dublin, but when their sound – a blend of traditional tunes and rock styling – lands them a record deal, they also get their first tour of...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Mark Stevens , author of No Lie Lasts Forever . About No Lie Lasts Forever : When a reporter dies in a shockingly familiar way, the media rushes to announce the return of the PDQ Killer. The city of Denver reels, but no one more than Harry Kugel. After all, he is the PDQ Killer – or was fifteen years ago. And he didn’t do this. Still workin...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Victoria Helen Stone , author of Bald-Faced Liar . About Bald-Faced Liar : Traveling nurse Elizabeth May has a promising new home in Santa Cruz. And another new identity. It’s a pattern of reinvention for a woman escaping her traumatic childhood?and hiding from the decades of notoriety and destruction that followed. Invisibility has kept Elizabet...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome S.A. Barnes , author of Cold Eternity . About Cold Eternity : Halley is on the run from an interplanetary political scandal that has put a huge target on her back. She heads for what seems like the perfect place to lay low: a gigantic space barge storing the cryogenically frozen bodies of Earth’s most fortunate citizens from more than a century a...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Maura Jortner , author of Keepers of the Marsh . About Keepers of the Marsh : Twelve-year-old Lana isn’t looking for trouble when she ventures into the swampy marsh behind her family’s home in Galveston Bay. She’s just sweaty and bored and lonely, sick of sitting around doing nothing. Her family never goes anywhere. Her mom and her sisters want n...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Chuck Wendig , author of The Staircase in the Woods . About The Staircase in the Woods : Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what. Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend walks up—and never comes back down. The...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Mary Robinette Kowal , author of The Martian Contingency . About The Martian Contingency : Years after a meteorite strike obliterated Washington, D.C.?triggering an extinction-level global warming event? Earth’s survivors have started an international effort to establish homes on space stations and the Moon. The next step – Mars. Elma York, the L...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Brandon Crilly , author of Serpentine Scenarios: Five New Adventures for B.O.A. . About Serpentine Scenarios: Five New Adventures for B.O.A. : The Bureau of Agents (B.O.A.) follows a simple mandate: Priority One: Remain unseen. Or, at minimum, don’t get caught. Priority Two: Accomplish the mission. Priority Three: Promote snake advocacy. (I mean,...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Jim C. Hines , author of Kitemaster . About Kitemaster : Nial Sarnin is twenty-one years old, far too young to have lost her beloved husband Jika. One year after Jika’s death, Nial is preparing to fly a kite sewn from the shirt Jika wore at their wedding, to carry his spirit to the stars and beyond. Instead, Nial finds herself launched on a...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome James J. Butcher , author of Cold Iron Task . About Cold Iron Task : Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby may have one case under his belt, but he’s still a novice Auditor in Boston’s Department of Unorthodox Affairs. And he’s already made mistakes. Desperate to repair his fraying friendships, he doesn’t ask too many questions when a mysterious patron offer...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Tochi Onyebuchi , author of Harmattan Season . About Harmattan Season : Veteran and private eye Boubacar doesn’t need much?least of all trouble?but trouble always seems to find him. Work has dried up, and he’d rather be left alone to deal with his bills as the Harmattan rolls in to coat the city in dust, but Bouba is a down on his luck deux fois,...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Catriona Silvey , author of LOVE AND OTHER PARADOXES . About LOVE AND OTHER PARADOXES : Cambridge University, 2005: Student Joe Greene scribbles verses in the margins of his notebook, dreaming of a future where his words will echo through the ages, all while doubting it could ever happen. Then, the future quite literally finds him—in the form of...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome Allison Epstein , author of Fagin the Thief . About Fagin the Thief : Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob and his open-minded mother, Leah, a...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome John Scalzi , author of WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE . About WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE : The moon has turned into cheese. Now humanity has to deal with it. For some it’s an opportunity. For others it’s a moment to question their faith: In God, in science, in everything. Still others try to keep the world running in the face of absurdity and unce...

This week on the podcast, Patrick and Tracy welcome L.J. Cohen , author of Litany for a Broken World . About Litany for a Broken World : A young girl’s disastrous first foray through the multiverse cleaves her from her family and abandons her in a homeless encampment, adrift in a world and a body not her own. A doctor struggling with grief volunteers for the annual Boston homeless census and...

This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Michael Nayak , author of SYMBIOTE . About SYMBIOTE : As World War III rages, the scientists in Antarctica are thankful for the isolation – until a group of Chinese scientists arrive at the American research base. In their truck is a dead body, the first murder in Antarctica. The potential for a geopolitical firestorm is great, and, with no clear jurisdiction,...

This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Kat Kourbeti and Michael Ireland from Strange Horizons to talk about the new podcast project celebrating 25 years of the magazine: S.H.@25 . S.H.@25 Links: Arkady Martine’s SH@25 episode, featuring her soundscaped poem The John Scalzi interview Ootheca by Mário Coelho (with the cockroaches for teeth) Alhaji Jerry by ML Kejera (with musical interludes by the aut...

This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Jack Campbell , author of Destiny’s Way Book 2 of The Doomed Earth Duology . About Destiny’s Way : Lieutenant Selene Genji is hurled into the past to try and save a world that doesn’t want her in this action-packed adventure from New York Times bestselling author Jack Campbell. Earth was destroyed on June 12, 2180. Lieutenant Selene Genji watched it...

This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome Lauren J. A. Bear , author of MOTHER OF ROME . About MOTHER OF ROME : The names Romulus and Remus may be immortalized in map and stone and chronicle, but their mother exists only as a preface to her sons’ journey, the princess turned oath-breaking priestess, condemned to death alongside her children. But she did not die; she survived. And so does her story. Bea...