Resistance Reads

Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light is one of the strangest and most ambitious science fiction novels ever written, a 1967 Hugo Award winner about a crew of colonists who have seized the identities of Hindu gods to maintain technological control over future generations, and the one man who takes on the role of the Buddha to fight back. In this episode of Resistance Reads, Michael Kilman and Matt Wellstr...

What happens when you take H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror and hand it to the people he feared most? In Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country, the real monsters aren't lurking in ancient tomes or sunken cities. They're wearing badges, drawing red lines on maps, and deciding who gets to exist in public after dark. In this episode, Michael Kilman and Matt Wellstrom dig into Matt Ruff's genre-bending novel se...

Matt and Michael dig into John Milton's Paradise Lost, the 17th-century epic poem that tells the story of the Fall from Satan's perspective. They explore why Satan reads as the tragic hero, how Milton's own political defeats and blindness shaped the work, the structural impossibility of free will in a world with an omniscient God, and why Eve gets a far more sympathetic treatment here than in almo...

Matt and Michael dig into Amor Towles' A Gentleman in Moscow, the story of Count Alexander Rostov, an aristocrat placed under house arrest in a five-star Moscow hotel for thirty years. What does it mean to keep your greatest qualities when everything else has been stripped away? They explore the Count's resistance through community and craft rather than power, the extraction logic baked into both...

What does it mean to exist outside every category society offers? Michael Kilman and Matt Wellstrom explore Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist through an anthropological lens, examining isolation, otherness, gender identity, and what vampires tell us about capitalism and nationalism. Featuring the theory of Mary Douglas, and a discussion of bullies as conservative enforcers of social no...

Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night follows an American playwright who becomes one of the most effective Nazi propagandists of World War II — while secretly working as an American spy. But here's the question the book forces you to sit with: does the spying matter if the propaganda worked? Michael Kilman and Matt Wellstrom explore the psychology of propaganda, the Nuremberg trials, why satire fails again...

In this episode of Resistance Reads, Michael Kilman and Matt Wellström discuss Percival Everett’s novel James, a powerful retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective. We explore how Everett reimagines one of the most influential works in American literature while confronting the realities of slavery, race, and freedom. We compare Everett’s novel with the original text, exami...

This episode dives into We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, a pioneering dystopian novel that helped define the genre. We examine the author’s life, the political context of the book, and the inner conflict of D-503 as he grapples with individuality, love, and rebellion inside a tightly controlled society. Our discussion covers themes of authoritarianism, emotional suppression, regulated relationships, and th...

In this episode, we dive deep into Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, unpacking its powerful exploration of colonialism, genocide, Indigenous history, and reimagined vampire lore. Through a close reading of the novel, we examine how horror becomes a vehicle for confronting historical injustice and moral accountability. We discuss Stephen Graham Jones’ background as a Blackfeet author,...

In this episode of Resistance Reads, we dive deep into Heavenly Tyrant, the highly anticipated sequel to Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. This is not just a book review. It is a critical conversation about power, resistance, feminism, and the political structures that shape both dystopian fiction and the real world. We explore the novel’s political themes, pacing, and character dynamics, with particu...

In Episode 11 we discuss the powerful themes in R.F. Kuang’s Babel and share our critique of Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Frankenstein. We explore Babel’s unique magic system rooted in language and translation, the complex relationships between its characters, and the book’s sharp examination of colonialism, resistance, and identity. We also reflect on the novel’s portrayal of betrayal, mora...

In their 10th epsiodes, Michael and Matt take a fresh look at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (the 1818 edition) and why this classic story still matters today. They explore the novel’s powerful themes of creation, ambition, and isolation while connecting them to modern life, the industrial revolution, AI, the Tech industry, and capitalism. They also compare the 1818 edition to the 1831 edition and ho...

In Episode 9 we looked at power and resistance in the 2021 novel Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. The novel is a mecha reimagining of the rise of China’s first and only female Emperor Wu Zetian set in the nation of Huaxia, a futuristic reinterpretation of Medieval China. In this episode we looked at patriarchal systems and how the main character, Wu Zetian, smashes them with a giant Mecha vermillion...

In Episode 8 we cover the early Afrofuturist novel Black Empire. The plot is essentially, what would it be like to have Marvel's Killmonger/A James Bond Supervillain as your boss. The book is a collection of two major serials stories from the 1930s compiled in the 1990s into novel format. It follows newspaper man Carl Slater, who, is kidnapped by Dr. Belsidus in the very first chapter after witnes...

Episode 7 covers Sinclair Lewis's 1935 Dystopian political novel, It Can't Happen Here. The book is about the rise of a fascist dictator in America and an allusion to the rise of Adolf Hitler, in a time when many American's didn't even know who Hitler was. In many ways, this book was a prescient warning about what was already unfolding in Europe, and, a book that echoes elements of our own time ni...

Episode 6 swashbuckles its way into the 2005 novel Zorro written by the legendary Isabel Allende. This book is a kind of Zorro origin story and covers his journey to become a champion of the common people and his fight against corrupt officials before the Spanish American War, when California was still a part of Mexico. We learn about Zorro's parents, his adventures in Spain, and what drives him t...

In our 5th Episode we will discuss the novel, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Published in 1939 The Grapes of Wrath is a novel about life during the Great Depression and in the midst of the Dust bowl. The book follows the Joad family as they are forced to leave their farm in Oklahoma and travel west to California in the hopes of finding work and a better life. 

In Episode 4, Michael Kilman and Matt Wellstrom discuss the book Passing by Nella Larsen. Originally published in 1929 the book tells the story of two women named Irene and Claire and their complex relationship and struggles with being a mixed race person in the early 20th century.

In our third episode, Michael Kilman and Matt Wellstrom tackle the experimental fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson as he tackles near future clifi (a subgenre of science fiction) to foster conversations about climate change, power, and resistance in his 2020 book, The Ministry for the Future.

In our second episode, Michael Kilman and Matt Wellstrom explore the themes of power and resistance in Alan Moore's and David Lloyd's graphic novel V for Vendetta. Themes will include: Direct Action, Effective Resistance, and will also close out some of our discussion from 1984.

In our inaugural episode, Michael Kilman and Matt Wellstrom explore the themes of power and resistance in George Orwell's famous novel 1984. We explore the eerily predictive ideas of double think, propaganda, language change, mass surveillance, social media, and more.