A Meal of Thorns

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...

Vampire scholar, science fiction studies editor, and ARB co-founder Sean Guynes joins to discuss Kostova’s 2005 historical vampire thriller. We both have fairly negative opinions of the book, but it did lead us to talk about what historical thrillers are (or are not) theorizing, vampire novels we like more, and much else besides. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Rev...

Writer, scholar, and academic organizer E.F. McAdam joins to talk about human evolution & extinction, AI, pseudo-science, and much more in Kawakami’s very strange and really quite funny far-future novel. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon ! Guest: Eleanor McAdam Title: Under The Eye Of The Big...

Barthelme’s surreal, post-modern writing was massively influential for the short story market and for evolving conceptions of literary realism and irrealism, but he’s not often discussed in speculative circles. Author & teacher Timothy Moore is on to help rectify that: we dig into some of our favorites from this landmark connection, with lots of spitballing about the limits of inte...

Combining cyberpunk, space opera, and a strong interest in artistic creation and gaming, Burning Bright is an unusual SF novel from a very specific era. Author Ursula Whitcher joins us to talk about the novel’s many strange facets, its fascination with endings, and its connections to developments elsewhere in gaming and science fiction. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the...

Fresh off the release of her book Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Author of Color , Joy Sanchez-Taylor joins the podcast to discuss Jemisin’s The Fifth Season , a landmark book in SFF. Lots to talk about here: in terms of how the entire trilogy is tackling ideas about race and oppression, Jemisin’s approach to structure and genre categories, and The Fifth Season ’s significa...

Picking the second book as an entry point into Area X , weird scholar and normal ARB editor Zachary Gillan is on the pod to talk about Jeff VanderMeer’s work and how the New Weird is more than just ecological anxiety. (Though it might be that, too.) Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books . Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon ! Guest: Zacha...

Casella heads to Seattle for the World Science Fiction Convention, reporting on his travels and the convention. Includes interviews with Worldcon guests & conrunners, thoughts on the Hugos and the event, and, of course, a quick coffee report. Credits: Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough Tra...

Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a literally giant work that’s an exemplar of the chain-bookstore and mass-market epic fantasy boom. Author, editor, and critic Karlo Yeager Rodríguez joins to talk about the trilogy’s second entry, Stone of Farewell : its position within and influence upon the genre, and how it holds up. Credits: Guest: Karlo Yeager Rodríguez T...

Casella heads to Readercon, a Boston-based science fiction convention that’s unusually good at keeping the focus literary. This episode includes an interview with one of the conrunners, a discussion of translated SFF and the Translated Hugo Initiative, and a visit with a new romance bookstore in Cambridge. Some quick coffee reporting, as well. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more...