Chronscast - The Fantasy, Science Fiction & Horror Podcast

Bean and Peat are once again joined by Davinia (Dee) Evans, having talked about Scott Lynch's The Lies Of Locke Lamora last time around.  How she represents a new type of fantasy author; her own journey, from taking a copy of The Hobbit from the school library and having dreams of being published by Robert Jordan's publisher (Orbit), to the eventual publication of her Notorious Sorcerer trilo...

We're back with a new episode delving into Scott Lynch's debut novel, ths 2006 historical fantasy The Lies Of Locke Lamora, the first in Lynch's "Gentlemen Bastards" series. Set in the city of Camorr, the book introduces us to the Bastards, a group of elite con men who rob and inveigle the rich, and get tangled up in a new criminal mastermind trying to take over the city's underworld. The novel wa...

Bean and Dan were once more joined by Tade Thompson, who relates to us his experiences of moving into the world of screenwriting, an entirely different beast than novel writing, and which comes with its own trials and networks to navigate. He discusses the different writing techniques required, the different ways a manuscript works its way through production systems, and how a film or TV show actu...

Bean and Dan are joined once more by one of the good friends of Chronscast, Tade Thompson, to discuss the great David Lynch's towering masterpiece, Mulholland Drive . Lynch is one of our favourite filmmakers, and his films continue to astound and bewilder like no other director's can. We wanted to do an episode to give our own small tribute to the great man, so you can imagine our delight when our...

Join Bean, Peat and Dan as we talk about our various works in progress, our own writing styles, triumphs, and what listeners can expect from our next few episodes.  On the menu are: commercialisation versus art and independent literature, the late great David Lynch, short fiction; what are the rules and whether or not to break them. We talk about shared fictional universes. We talk about our...

Following our last episode with Richard Sparks on The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, in which we must have mentioned The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy at least, ooh, I don't know, at least three times, and after which we lost radio contact with Brian Sexton after he was devoured by the Black Sinkhole of Sligo, we decided to plough on with the second half of the interview. So, on a tight sche...

Hi!  Hi! Hi there! Wow. Wow. Wow! This is beautiful. This is so beautiful.... I might just buy it. Dan and Brian are joined by - DON'T PANIC - the comedy writer Richard Sparks about Douglas Adams' seminal SF comic masterpiece, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Hitchhiker's Guide has influenced the culture in innumerable ways, but no one really knew it was going to be such a smash hit. Nei...

We're back! For our newest episode Pete and Dan are joined by Aparna Verna, the author of the breakout fantasy novel The Phoenix King, published by Orbit. Originally Aparna was invited onto the show to talk about Neil Gaiman's 1996 hit novel and TV show Neverwhere, but in light of the recent allegations against Gaiman, we've decided not to release that episode, though we may do so in the future as...

We're joined once more by filmmakers Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez, the brains behind The Blair Witch Project, V/H/S, Lovely Molly, and many more. Gregg and Hale talk to us about their new podcast-based audio drama Black Velvet Fairies . It's a tour de force meta narrative that plays with the found footage medium that gave them their big break, but also features real-world interviews with paranor...

You might be forgiven for thinking that us saying we had two of the horror genre's most distinguished filmmakers on the show would be an April Fool's joke, but you should know by now we never, ever joke about our guests (except for RJ Barker, who will forever be known as the Goth King of Leeds). Today we're joined by Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez, who burst onto the moviemaking scene in 1999 with...

Christopher and Dan are joined by horror writer John Langan, whose great horror novel The Fisherman finally is out now in the UK, an inexplicable seven years after being first published in most other territories. John talks to us about the health and wellbeing of Laird Barron, one of the other members of the modern horror brat pack, who suffered recent well-publicised ill-health.  We also tal...

Ahoy ahoy! When the Beanstalker and I were drawing up our wish list for guests on the podcast, there was one name that @Phyrebrat was adamant that we try and get. That was the American author John Langan, who joins us for this episode. John is one of the masters of modern horror and whose seminal book The Fisherman , an exploration of guilt, diaspora history, and weird cosmic horror, won the prest...

Peat and Dan are joined by Anne Perry, publishing director at Jo Fletcher Books. Anne talks  with us about the state of the publishing market in 2023, and what authors ought to consider when positioning their book in the market.  We talk about the rising prices of books, the price differential between different regions, subscription-based business models, printing-on-demand, and how the...

We're back after the summer break, and are joined by Anne Perry, the publishing director at Jo Fletcher Books, to talk about Naomi Novik's 2015 fantasy bestseller, Uprooted. Based upon aspects of rural Polish folklore, Uprooted follows Agnieszka, a plain village girl who is shocked to learn that she is to be taken away to live with The Dragon, a powerful and distant wizard who lives in a tower at...

So! After a few technical hitches and delays our bumper new episode is finally up. The Big Peat and I are joined by the award-winning fantasy author RJ Barker, whose novel The Bone Ships won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2020. Together we rabbit on about Richard Adams's 1978 classic piece of children's fantasy literature, Watership Down. Watership Down follows a group of rabbits who,...

It's Coronation Day! Well, not quite. But in the UK we are steadily approaching the moment when the king, Charles III, formally takes the Oath and is crowned.  This month we're tackling Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, the first book in the seminal Gormenghast series. Titus follows the birth of the titular character and the first eighteen months of his life, which culminates in a very strange, ers...

Merlin's Beard! What better topic to talk about as we enter the springtime and the regeneration of the land than Excalibur and the legend of Arthur, King of the Britons, who is prophesied to restore the land to verdance and glory and who knows much about the average velocity of unladen swallows. But we'll not be focusing on that particular cinematic incarnation of the once and future king. We'll b...

When Chronscast was originally set up I wanted different co-host folks for different co-host strokes. I wanted my guest today, the blogger Peat Long, to contribute to the podcast particularly in the area of fantasy fiction, in all its guises and possibilities. For various reasons he couldn't commit at the start of the venture, but I'm pleased to say that Peat has agreed to be an occasional co-host...

We're joined today by Tade Thompson, the multi award-winning author of such books as Rosewater , Making Wolf , Far From the Light of Heaven , and the Molly Southbourne novellas. He is also a self-confessed comics junkie, which he proved when he joined us last year to delve into the great WATCHMEN . This year Tade talks with us about Sandman , arguably Neil Gaiman's greatest piece of work, and anot...

We see in 2023 with Chad Fifer and Chris Lackey, the hosts of the Strange Studies of Strange Stories podcast covering genre fiction. As well podcasting, they are quite the polymath duo; Chad is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and musician, and Chris is a writer of books for tabletop RPGs and co-host of other podcasts such as Rachel Watches Star Trek . Chad and Chris's bread and butter is H.P Lovecraft...

As the nights draw in and we approach the midwinter, what better way to celebrate the season than dipping into that most macabre of festive traditions, the Christmas ghost story? While we're all familiar with Dickens's A Christmas Carol , more modern traditions include the BBC's A Ghost Story For Christmas , adaptations of typically M.R James stories, and which themselves are continuations of anci...

This month we're talking about one of the all-time classics of science-fiction literature, and arguably the book that demonstrated science-fiction could be literature: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand Of Darkness, a million-selling Hugo and Nebula winner. We talk about the book's enduring legacy, its approach to worldbuilding, character, and loose(ish) plot, and how the book plays with ideas of l...

This month we're joined by the author fantasy author Juliet E. McKenna, creator of several epic series including The Tales of Einarinn, The Aldabreshin Compass sequence, The Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution, and The Hadrumal Crisis trilogy. Juliet talks to us about one of the very first examples of what we might term "modern fantasy" - Hope Mirrlees' 192 novel Lud In The Mist . Juliet and I ta...

This month we're joined by the award-winning British-Canadian author, poet and essayist Naomi Foyle, to talk about Inish Carraig , the alien-invasion-cum-prison break thriller by our very own @Jo Zebedee. Among the topics we cover is the quintessential "Norn Irishness" of the book, conveyed without ever lapsing into cliché, but yet acknowledging the unique history and culture of the place in a sub...

We're joined by one of the kings of UK science-fiction and fantasy, the literary agent John Jarrold, to talk about Rob Holdstock's majestic 1984 novel Mythago Wood , winner of the World Fantasy Award. Over a career spanning almost fifty years John has become one of the leading lights and champions for British genre fiction, and a household name within that community. In the publishing industry he...