A Meal of Thorns

"If KSR could just write pamphlets!" Noted SF scholar Gerry Canavan joins to discuss The Voice of the Dolphins , a collection of science fiction stories with extremely pointed politics from physicist Leo Szilard. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon ! Guest: Gerry Canavan Title: The Voice of the Dolphins b...

"I don't know what planet they're on, but I know about the earrings!” We’ve got a very unusual space opera to read through this time around, one that takes questions of empire and identity to interesting places; critic and editor Alexandra Pierce joins to discuss. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s P...

Only in its 5th year of operation, the Le Guin Fiction prize has already become something of a critical darling, with very interesting shortlists and winners that rarely overlap with other genre awards. Critic and reviewer Roseanna Pendlebury returns to the podcast to share opinions and insights on the nine books on this year’s list. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Anc...

Out of print for the greater part of the 20th century, Hopkins’ Of One Blood looks a lot like Afro-futurism, using ancient Ethiopian technology and the new science of mesmerism to think about racial politics. But it’s actually a bit stranger than that—Garret Bridger Gilmore returns to walk us through some of the novel’s contexts and theories. Podcasts, reviews, interviews,...

Worldcon episode time: we’ve got interviews, we’ve got a coffee report, we’ve got an only-mildly chaotic group podcast attempt! Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon ! Guests & Collaborators: Thomas Ha Alex Kingsley Frauke Uhlenbruch Marshall Ryan Maresca & Cass Morris of Worldbuil...

A deeply strange and arresting short novel, The Water Statues defies easy categorization but has a powerful and cerebral atmosphere, putting us in mind of a lot of other works—including Clarke’s Piranesi . Langdon Hickman, last unshriven host of Death // Sentence , joins to discuss. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider suppo...

More famous for his science fiction and dark fantasy, Ray Bradbury also tried his hand at crime fiction, with often-fascinating results. Writer, critic, and editor Aigner Loren Wilson talks us through the strange flourishes and tonal experiments of Killer, Come Back To Me ! Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s Pat...

In this con-coverage episode, Casella talks to folks at Readercon in Boston, including Lisa from Narrated , author Sara S. Messenger, and editor Carl Engle-Laird. We also visit Porter Square Books, an indie bookstore that has recently launched their own book review. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon ! H...

Literary agent and Print Run podcaster extraordinaire Laura Zats is on to talk about a novel that is the most urban fantasy you can imagine, and yet seems to run towards different traditions and ideas the closer you examine it—Robin McKinley’s award-winning but under-discussed Sunshine .   Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books .   Pl...

Critic & reviewer Ian Mond talks us through Tiny Deaths , a very funny and frequently morbid collection. We also think bigger: about the place and status of humor and seriousness in genre literature, and why non-genre imprints and translated literature might be places to look for this energy. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider sup...

Brunner’s prescient classic about overpopulation: is it about overpopulation? Was it prescient? And, for that matter: what does it mean to be a classic? Reviewer and editor Dan Hartland joins to discuss these questions and more. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon ! Guest: Dan Hartland Title: Stand...

Science fiction readers love a mechanism, they love a bit of world-building and mystery-solving. Premee Mohamed joins us to discuss Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus , a book that asks: what if a science fiction book intentionally avoided all of that?  Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon ! Gues...

A rain of corpses is falling from the sky, insectoid femme fatales are setting their compound eyes on our tender thoraxes, and our cattle drive across an expanse of nanotech goo is starting to go off the rails. So we ask ourselves: do we still have to go to work tomorrow? Critic, author, & podcaster Gareth Watkins joins to discuss Dempow Torishima’s delightfully strange Sisyphean . Podca...

Stop explaining and start exploring: critic & reviewer Molly Templeton walks us through this gem of 1980s mass market fantasy, with many asides and theories on shifting patterns of publishing and reading patterns. Plus, we spill the beans on the most fun book club, also known as the most fun cult. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please conside...

The pleasures and perils of nostalgia & reference, the importance of identifying real play versus gamified labor, and whether the internet used to be fun: Matthew Leggat of the Utopian & Dystopian Fictions podcast joins to discuss Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One . Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s...

A nested novel that very pointedly bridges the litfic/specfic divide, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas takes some big swings at tricky topics. Abigail Nussbaum returns to the podcast with some thoughts on how the novel has aged, and how it’s still relevant to genre thinking today. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting...

We’re leaving speculative genres for just a moment! Author Max Gladstone joins to discuss style & structure in Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled classic The Big Sleep , a work that’s been massively influential across SFF literature, games, & film. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon...

In this science fiction novel, translated from the French, dreamers “dive” into their own subconscious and return with mysterious & valuable objects. Translator, author, & scholar Alexander Dickow joins to discuss Francophone SF, weird fiction, and artistic allegories & analogies. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please cons...

Reviewer and historian Liz Bourke joins to discuss religion, historical overlaps, and examinations of gender in Paladin of Souls and fantasy more generally. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon ! Guest: Liz Bourke Title: Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by  Gi...

Greg Egan’s work exemplifies a certain kind of “hard” science fiction: not that it’s obsessed with big manly space battles, but rather that it’s using science to really dig into some complicated subjects. Eden Kupermintz, of Death // Sentence and many other cool projects, joins to discuss the scope and the scale, philosophy and physics in Diaspora .   Podcasts, r...

Charles Saunders’ sword and soul narratives, pulp-fantasy-inspired tales of Black and African heroes, helped blaze a trail for the genre—but, like Saunders himself, they have a complicated and still-developing story. Jon Tattrie, author of the newly-released Saunders biography, To Leave A Warrior Behind , joins us to talk about the foundational novel Imaro : its themes, its history, an...

If you read Dracula and thought: “I like the ancient shapeshifting nemesis and the homoerotic subtext, but I don’t like how subtle the sexual and national anxieties are,” you’re in luck! Editor, reviewer, and scholar Marisa Mercurio is here to talk about not-so-subtle horrors in Richard Marsh’s 1897 novel The Beetle . Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at...

We’re closing out this strange year with a “big-picture” episode: editor & critic Dan Hartland is on to talk about trends and directions—or lack thereof—in recent speculative fiction. We talk about the interesting spread of books & awards this year, do some armchair speculating about genre shifts & their accompanying arguments, and have some very insider-b...

We’re tracking down the wellspring of “dark academia” in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History , and plucking on threads that stretch out to current fantasy and science fiction literature, with reviewer Roseanna Pendlebury as our guide. Casella manages to throw some shade at Arrival , somehow, and also references Dumb & Dumber .   Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays,...

Academic, critic, and prolific podcaster Cameron Kunzelman joins for a far-ranging discussion about how climate fiction, science fiction, and personal and political connections to the environment intersect. Bonus hog sighting. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon ! Guest: Cameron Kunzelman Title: Venomous...