Wizards Vs. Lesbians

An extra-long episode covering the penultimate installment of the Ninth House series (assuming Homestuck denouement elongation syndrome doesn't strike.  Pray it away.)  You guys already know what this one's about.

Well, we made it to 50 episodes, and as promised we will try to figure out what Be-Papas thought they were doing. 

It's a retro episode!  (We will eventually make it through Nicola Griffith's entire catalog.)  This is a book about celebrity, hereditary wealth, toxic relationships and the science of water reclamation, and even though it was written in 1995 it feels extraordinarily current.  Recommended.

In far-future biopunk (ecopunk? mycopunk?) New Zealand, a queer cop joins a pirate gang and ends up on a trip to the fireworks factory.  It's all very first novel but it's got good politics.

In this episode we discuss Our Souls To The Moon by Tamara Jeree, Onward by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, and A Series of Steaks by Vina Jie-Min Prasad.  Tune in for Isaac changing his mind completely about one of these stories midway through the podcast!

A young girl growing up in interwar Los Angeles wants to be a star, which turns out to be alarmingly literal, since Hollywood is run by the fair folk.  Because of course it is.  A fantastically evocative book that solves the nativist magic problem we keep running into.

This episode is about the Renunciates trilogy, but it is more generally about Marion Zimmer Bradley. We're talking about her because she and her ghostwriters pioneered the wizards vs lesbians genre, and also because it is important to remember that the old SF community harbored, protected and enabled predatory monsters when we consider the ways the community has changed.

A milestone for Wizards vs Lesbians - our first advanced review copy!  That put us in a good mood but rest assured this one is great on its own merits.  Think Wodehouse, Nancy Mitford, Utena, but with wizards, lesbians, communists, and sinister White Russians.

Arthurian wizards vs lesbians!  And it's by Nicola Griffith, one of the all-time greats.  Find out why Percival's spear was so hard, and what she did with it.

A pair of novellas, both of which have the word Tiger in their title, even though only one of them has real tigers in it.  We had some audio issues with this one, but it does feature us discovering the work of Nghi Vo, who has since become one of our favorite authors.

The Sandman may not be Wizards vs Lesbians but it is certainly Wizards vs Women Generally, and we had a whale of a time revisiting what to us is a formative childhood text.  Featuring special guest Kiana, for whom it is decidedly not - check out her art at junkworldusa.tumblr.com.

In this book a gaggle of formerly gifted children drive off to look for America, only to find that this is not actually the best of all possible worlds. 

A whole bunch of wizards vs lesbians alumni were nominated for best novel this year, so we talk about it!  Featuring Leora Spitzer, who has read more of the nominated works than either of us have. 

A terrifying, hallucinatory parable about the breakdown of communism on an alien world, featuring settler colonialism, struggle sessions and lots and lots of goo.  High SF in the tradition of Dick and Lem, and one for fans of Annihilation. 

A really good YA novel about found family, bad parents, small town schools and the power of a good Discord server to change lives.  The selling point - that the server mod is an awakened AI - is the least interesting part of the whole thing, but hey, every book needs a hook.

A heist thriller set in fantasy Europe.   The best we can say for this one is that it's like Foundryside - very like Foundryside - but much shorter.

A novel-length parody of Ready Player One?  Snow Crash meets World of Warcraft?  Lucky Wander Boy, revamped for the mid-2010s?  This book is all these things, and less.

A blessed return to 90s Cyberpunk!  Feels like home.  Join us for a journey to far-future 1994, where cool lesbians fight cyber-corporations and grognard gatekeepers alike for the future of the internet itself (with help from sympathetic EU regulators.)

A murder mystery set in steampunk Cairo, with lesbians, wizards and jokes!  What could possibly go wrong?

It's the sequel to the Wizzly-winning Unspoken Name!  And we like it just about as much, which is to say, a lot.  Possibly more, even.

We stretched our remit to the breaking point with this one, but Ann Leckie definitely helped usher in the current W vs L zeitgeist so we felt the need to cover her work.  Provenance is a social sciences murder mystery, Cherryhesque in both its style and execution, and a lot of fun.

Today's book is a listener suggestion, and a bit of a throwback!  It's an epic fantasy brick, what we hear is referred to as a "cat squasher" in some circles.  It reminded us of the books we used to plow through as teenagers in the 90s, but, crucially, with lesbians.  Despite it violating our cardinal rule ("be short, please") we really enjoyed this one. 

Certainly the most romantic book we've done so far, and at the same time one of the wildest in terms of its worldbuilding.  An epistolary novella about two immortal far-future warriors falling in love.

It's a real meat'n'potatoes wizards vs lesbians - a gay orphan is content being raised by a bad mom in a colonized fantasy nation with a caste system (sumptuary laws!) before an alluring butch arrives from overseas to upset the applecart.  The ending is where it sets itself apart a bit - but you'll have to read it (or listen to us) to find out how.

It's our first short fiction anthology show!  This one features: How to Swallow the Moon by Isabel Yap Florilega; Or Some Lies About Flowers by Amal El-Mohtar The Demon-Sage's Daughter by Varsha Dinesh Which are increasingly weird adaptations of mythopoetic traditions from around the world (The Philippines, Wales and Kerala, specifically.)