Episodes 0 - 100
Episode 100: The Countdown: 100 of Our Favorite Things in SFF
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Join us for 100 of our very favorite things in SFF!
Episode 99: Gatekeeping
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Don't be a dick! Unless your name is Richard or a Philip K. You probably can't help that one.
Episode 98 : Molly Gloss on a Career of Wildernesses
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Molly Gloss is one of those authors who has helped create the foundations upon which the genres we love, from Western and place-based literature to science fiction, have been built. Join us as she talks us through everything from the first steps of her career to her horses!
Visit Molly at her website, or follow her on Twitter.
Episode 97 : Steve Brusatte on Dinosaurs and the People Who Love Them
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We’ve been wanting a dinosaur-centered episode forever, and who better to help us out than renowned paleontologist and all around great guy Steve Brusatte?
Learn more about Steve on his website or his faculty page at the University of Edinburgh, or follow him on Twitter.
Episode 96: Kali Wallace on Her Brilliant Salvation Day
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If you haven't yet read Kali Wallace's new book of sff and spacebound horror, you're missing out on one of our favorite things to break into (or out of) the genre in 2019.
Visit Kali on her website, or follow her on Instagram.
Episode 95: Daemons, Familiars, and Cute Animal Companions
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What do R2-D2, Pantalaimon, a weird robot koala thing, and Captain Marvel's Flerken friend Goose all have in common?
Episode 94: The Gargantuan
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Why is sff filled with so many BIG things? From statues to spaceships to giant floating heads, we figure it’s not all about metaphorical dicks. Just, you know, 80% or so.
Episode 93: Makiaa Lucier Helps Us Map Everything
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What do maps do? Why does fantasy, and to a lesser extent science fiction, make such a happy home for the cartographic impulse? What does including cartographers as characters allow a story to do? What can the real world offer an author setting out to craft a new world?
You can visit Makiia on her website, or follow her on Twitter.
Episode 92: Jonathan Michael Erickson on His Relics of Andromeda Series
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Where are we this week? Somewhere between the dystopian sprawl of Los Angeles and the lush raininess of the Pacific Northwest. Join us!
Visit Jonathan at his website.
Episode 91: Mary Robinette Kowal on Diverse and Intersectional Characters, and Much, Much More
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Join us for a quick and delightful chat about writing from and to history, making room for diverse characters—characters of color, LGBTQIA+ characters, neurodivergent characters—without reducing representation to a plot point.
Visit Mary Robinette at her website, or check out her Twitter.
Episode 90: The Ending of Empires
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Join us as we zoom in on the many ways sff finds to capture the last gasps of empires, federations, hierarchies, and governments. Maybe pick up some tips?
Episode 89: Graphic Novel Adaptations
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Why are we seeing so many now? What makes sff fit the visual so well? And what does sff offer the graphic novelist that other genres may not?
Episode 88: Dualities
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Is good vs evil at the heart of every work of sff? Will this genre always be science fiction and fantasy? What would we do without dualities, binaries, and opposites—or, maybe, how do we learn to work without them?
Episode 87 : Kim Stanley Robinson ("There is no pocket utopia.")
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Grandmaster KSR is here to talk with us, not just about where his books come from but about his thoughts on ecological fiction, green fiction, and climate fiction (cli-fi). Does climate change necessitate dystopia or inevitable pessimism about our shared future on this planet?
Stan doesn’t have his own internet presence, but you can check out what he’s been up to thanks to dedicated groups that keep track on a website, Facebook, and Twitter.
Episode 86: Tristan Palmgren on Time, Feudalism, Colonialism and Science Fantasy
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Tristan Palmgren has lots of thoughts, and they're all worth hearing--time, feudalism, colonialism, and the function of genre in science fiction and fantasy. Avail yourself of this thoughtful and wise human being!
Visit Tristan at his website, or follow him on Twitter.
Episode 85: Sarah Gailey on Fighting Fascism & Queering All the Genres
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This week, we talked with Sarah Gailey about writing queer people back into history using genres like alternate history, noir, and fantasy. They help us break the concept of genre wide open, and invite us all to stand in the midst of the ruins and build a better, more welcoming space for readers and writers and creators.
Visit Sarah at their website, or follow them on Twitter.
Episode 84: SFF Fashion
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Look, this episode exists basically so that Tony can talk about how the world was not ready for the unisex skant in the early seasons of TNG. Thick thighs save lives, yo.
Episode 83: SFF Comedy
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Why does a lot of sff comedy fall flat? Sure, there are the standouts like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Futurama, and Galaxy Quest, but for every hit, there’s a lot of chaff. Why is comedy so hard to do well in sff?
Episode 82: Horror, with special guest Jett Stanton
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What makes horror horrifying? Join us and our special guest, horror aficionado Jett Stanton, as we scratch the surface when it comes to big questions like: Where do the fears at the root of horror come from? What do we do without fear? What roles do trauma and disgust play in our creation and reception of works of horror?
Episode 81 : Deji Bryce Olukotun on Dinosaurs, Advocacy, and Making Room for Others
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Deji brings us thoughts on the influence of technology on his own writing as well as his work with Access Now and PEN America. He talks about obscure NASA publications about tracking stations, the narrative function of dinosaurs, advocating for other authors and storytellers, and much more!
You can learn more about Deji on his website.
Episode 80: What Makes Science Fiction Beautiful? with special guest Scott Selisker
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We invited Scott back (see Episode 16) to come and join us for a conversation about this very BIG question. Excited words ensue.
Learn more about Scott via his website, or follow him on Twitter.
Episode 79: The Seventh of the Seven Beauties of Science Fiction (The Technologiade)
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The day has finally arrived, dear friends, when we get to finish our longest-running series of episodes. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay's The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction may have taken two-and-a-bit years to journey through, but every step of that journey has been rich!
Episode 78: Suyi Davies Okungbowa on the Socioeconomics of the Post-Apocalypse
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Suyi helps us draw upon his recent book, David Mogo, Godhunter, as well as contemporary realities and the landscape of present-day Lagos to interrogate privilege, social norms, and our economic assumptions of disaster.
Learn more about Suyi at his website, and follow him on Twitter or support him on Patreon.
Episode 77: Single-Gender Utopias
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Whether we're talking about one of the earliest, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, or the kinds of worlds second-wave feminists built in The Gate to Women's Country, The Handmaid's Tale, and The Left Hand of Darkness, or perhaps even the weird gender-bending works by writers working in science fiction and fantasy today, such as The Stars Are Legion, Ancillary Justice, and Lumberjanes and many others—there's much to be said.
Episode 76: Solaris, with special guest Chris Cokinos
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We are joined by poet and professor Chris Cokinos to commemorate Stanislaw Lem’s death and to dig into what is perhaps his best and most widely-known work Solaris.
Learn more about Chris at the University of Arizona, via the Whiting Award, or at the Rachel Carson Center in Germany.
Episode 75: Becoming
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Not just the Michelle Obama autobiography (although we had both just read it!), because we really want to get at states of flux and dynamism in sff—Area X, Murderbot, Animorphs, and plenty more.
Episode 74: Sidekicks, Companions, and Secondary Characters
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This week, we tackle the Heroic Helper, the Comic Relief, the Gal Pal™ or Bromance™, the Cute Factor, and many more sidekick tropes. What do they bring to the table, both in terms of furthering the plot and deepening our understanding of the main characters?
Episode 73: Science Fictional/Fantastical Music, Part 3
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In the final part of this series, we dig into works that blur the line between music video and film, performance art, and more, including generative music apps and much, much more.
Episode 72: Science Fictional/Fantastical Music, Part 2
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We have another music playlist for this episode: Spotify.
Prog rock? Shoegaze? What are those science fictional sounds? We’re ready with speculations aplenty.
Episode 71: The Sixth of the Seven Beauties of Science Fiction (The Grotesque)
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If you're wondering, yeah, we talk a lot about Alien in this episode. And the intersection of queer and science fiction and the grotesque, but that’s just for fun.
Episode 70: Science Fictional/Fantastical Music, Part 1
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Playlist of the music featured in this episode: Spotify.
If sff had a sound, what would it be? Join us as we dive deeply into space and psychadelic rock, synthwave, electronic of all stripes, and plenty more!
Episodes 68 & 69: An Introduction to the SFF of the 2000s and 2010s
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Part 2 (Ep. 69): SoundCloud | iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher.
Are you looking to get into sff for the first time, or are you of the days of sff past looking to refresh your reading list? Either way, these are the episodes for you!
Episode 67: The Second Annual Imaginary Awards (2018)
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Looking for the absolute BEST in sff released in 2018? We have you covered. Books, TV, movies, comics, music, it’s all here.
Episode 66: Comfort Reads
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Join us for this week's cozy sweater of an episode as we dig out the same books we dig out each year to bring ourselves back to ourselves, and to remind of us all good things in the world.
Episode 65: Road Trips
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We star with The Epic of Gilgamesh, and since then, there’s only been, oh, a few thousand years of journey narratives to contend with. Come along for the ride!
Episode 64: Found Families
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Some people are born into families, some people make their own, and some people stumble onto theirs in the dark. There's something queer here…
Episode 63: The Legacy of the Harry Potter Series
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We have a lot of questions about what The Boy Who Lived has been doing in the years since that last epilogue, and we have some thoughts on what he's done to a brace of genres, and our brains, and the publishing industry.
Episode 62: Talking with Jess E. Owen
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What does fantasy’s role in identity formation have to do with a dedicated fanbase of self-identified furries? Jess Owen, that’s what.
Learn more about Jess on her website, or follow her on Twitter or Facebook. You can also support her on Patreon.
Episode 61: Body Horror
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Oh, god, is it on me? Is it still on me? What’s it doing? What is it doing?!
Episode 60: Cats
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Those furry little bastards are everywhere, and now so are we. Wherever a cat may roam SFF, so too shall the Imaginaries.
Episode 59: Worlds We Want to Live In
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Listen, we like to talk a crafty game, but sometimes you just want to curl up and escape into a particular world. That’s what this episode is all about!
BONUS EPISODE: Live at the University of Arizona MFA program colloquium series w/Chris Cokinos
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Ever wanted to know what it’s like to smoosh together a love for SFF, the history of SFF, a creative writing MFA, and a podcast? If you’ve asked that question, then this episode is for YOU!
Episode 58: We Gays
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This one’s specifically about the minority sexuality orientation. Queerbaiting! Bury Your Gays! Slash fiction! We cover it all, and it’s a trip.
Episode 57: Religion
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This one’s surprisingly personal, as we tackle everything from religious politics in SFF (*cough* Orson Scott Card and CS Lewis) and explorations of religion in SFF (Mary Doria Russell, Tristan Palmgren, Octavia Butler, and plenty more). Hint: there’s a lot of Christianity.
Episode 56: Orientalism in SFF
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We're here to talk about the history, the definition, the manifestations, and the long fight to combat orientalism in our most favorite of genres. But be ready! We don't exactly go easy on some of the SFF faves.
Episode 55: The Fifth of the Seven Beauties of Science Fiction (The Sublime)
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Hey, man, we did an episode about the sublime. That’s just sublime, man.
Episode 54: Invasions
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They happen, and they're not always great, but they’re worth investigating. Typically, we (humans, natch) are being invaded, but let’s talk a bunch about what happens when we are the invaders.
Episode 53: Space Opera
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What are space operas, and what is their relationship to science fiction? Join us this episode for a long talk on the ins and outs, the ups and downs, and the charms and stranges.
Episode 52: The Best SFF of the First Half of 2018
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Jacqueline Carey! Theodora Goss! Makiia Lucier! Nnedi Okorafor! C.L. Polk! Andromeda Romano-Lax! Steve Brusatte! Dhonielle Clayton! Tom Miller! …look, there was a lot of great reading to be had in 2018, okay?
Episode 51: Boring Writing
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Let’s face it: Sometimes a great idea is enough to carry bad writing, and sometimes it isn’t. SFF is all about ideas, but when those ideas aren’t expressed well, what are we to do?
Episode 50: Cities (Part 3 of the Enclosed Spaces Series)
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Cities have long been a construct familiar to the reader of sff, just as they have been familiar to the authors who put them to many diverse purposes. Here, we discuss the city as tackled by China Mieville, Nnedi Okorafor, Kim Stanley Robinson, Omar El Akkad, Nicola Griffith, Patrick Rothfuss, Chris Beckett, Octavia Butler ... and many, many others.
Episode 49: Whales
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Whales in space, space whales, whales with attitude. All the whales! We also make mention of dolphins and petunias, because, well, they've earned it, poor sods.
Episode 48: Camp
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If you grew up loving The Fifth Element and Doctor Who, you're already an expert on camp, and you're probably also used to defending the campy against those who equate camp with "poorly made" or "low budget" or "lowbrow." We're here to enliven that struggle, to advocate for camp, and to uncover what exactly it is which makes it so important, now and always.
Episode 47: Space Stations (Part 2 of the Enclosed Spaces Series)
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They're hospitals in space. They're prisons in space. They're cities in space. They're ... in space. Which is pretty cool.
Episode 46: The Legacy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
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Plenty authors of science fiction trace their literary DNA back to Mary Shelley and her masterwork. What does it mean for science fiction to trace its origins back to a woman? What does it mean for these authors we know and love (or don’t) today to bring her back into the conversation? What does it mean to claim Mary Shelley as an influence at all?
Episode 45: Spaceships (Part 1 of the Enclosed Spaces Series)
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Ye shall hear many things about design and function here, as well as laments, and diverse cheers. Do you have a favorite spaceship design? Or a least favorite? We'd love to hear from you.
Episode 44: Disco! (aka Star Trek: Discovery, season 1)
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Buckle up: it's time for our review of Star Trek: Discovery, the latest addition to the Trek franchise. Did we love it? Yes. Unreservedly? No.
Episode 43: Remembering Ursula K. Le Guin
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The incredible Ursula K. Le Guin passed away early in 2018, and in this podcast we set out to untangle just what it was that she did. Did she change science fiction? What will her legacy be?
Episodes 41 & 42: The First Annual Imaginary Awards (2017)
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Listen to Part 2 on SoundCloud | iTunes | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher.
We sure did have some opinions about the SFF released in 2017, and now we can share those opinions with you! More than we usually do, that is, because we’re giving out Imaginary Awards (pun intended) to all of our faves.
Episode 40: The Weird
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Let’s talk the unknown and unknowable! Weird fiction has quite a pedigree at this point, and we consider a long history including H.P. Lovecraft (and Lovecraftian work generally), China Mieville, Jeff VanderMeer, Kameron Hurley, Karin Tidbeck, and plenty more.
Episode 39: The Planets (Part 3 of the Celestial Bodies Series)
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How do we present planets in science fiction as a landscape and a function? Here, we tackle all of those heavenly bodies (moons included!) beyond the Moon and Mars. There are a lot. We get to as many as we can!
Episode 38: On Mars (Part 2 of the Celestial Bodies Series)
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What's the deal with Mars? How is setting a book or a colony on the Red Planet different from setting it elsewhere in our solar system? We get into the nitty gritty of Percival Lowell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Expanse, Mariner 1, Mark Watney's potatoes, and much, much more.
Episode 37: The Moon (Part 1 of the Celestial Bodies Series)
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The Moon, our Moon, has a long history in SFF. While we can’t connect every work that’s ever featured the Moon, we hope we get pretty close here!
Episode 36: Problematic Favorites
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Problematic, you say? Well, just consider how sometimes fandoms can become … a bit much. Or how Orson Scott Card turned out to be a vile homophobe. Or how some works have aged really poorly (poor Sheri Tepper…). We cover a lot of ground here, including some ways in which to discuss (or not discuss) contentious works of SFF with contentious people.
Episode 35: Libraries and Librarians
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What reader doesn’t love libraries? From Matilda’s origin story to Batman to the multitudes included in TNG’s Data, from Buffy to Lirael to Discworld, we talk about ‘em all!
Episode 34: The Fourth of the Seven Beauties of Science Fiction (Imaginary Science)
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We lost the third beauty to a hard drive crash, but here’s the fourth in all its imaginary loveliness! What role does the "science" in "science fiction" actually MEAN? What sciences count? When do all of our definitions start breaking down into one giant soup of goo? You be the judge!
Episode 33: War! What is it good for?
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Nah, but really, we want to know! Many SFF creators seem to argue that war is inevitable, or an inherent human need or dominion. Do we need it? On a human level? Or on a fictional level? Does writing war into SFF allow us to do things we simply couldn’t do otherwise?
Episode 32: Spiders
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We attempt to burn down the podcast. It’s the only way to be sure.
Nah, but what’s our obsession with spiders? We tackle everything from Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Ruin (sentient Earth spiders!) to spiderlike aliens to Arachnophia to legends and myths of spiders from cultures around the world. It’s a wild ride.
Episode 31: Spaceman of Bohemia, with special guest Parke Cooper
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We may not know Jaroslav Kalfar, author of Spaceman of Bohemia, personally ... but we DO know someone who knows him! Spend a delightful hour with us as we chat about existential angst and spider-aliens with a taste for Nutella.
Follow Parke on Twitter.
Episode 30: On Monsters
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Are we gonna flirt with the monster or is it going to eat us? That seems to be the everlasting question in SFF, as we tackle monstrous archetypes and some of our favorite queerings of the same.
Episode 29: The Hunt (Finding SFF in the Wild)
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This one’s all about bookstores. There are a few stores dedicated specifically to SFF in the US and abroad, and while we’ve been to a few of them, they’re not as widespread as you might like. If you want to leave the house to find a book, what are you to do?
Episode 28: Social Science Fiction
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Science fiction is based in and plays around with science. What happens when that science is psychology, or anthropology, or geography, or political science? We have a lot of fun answering those questions with some of our favorite works and ideas.
Episode 27: Divisive Opinions
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Kend likes Prometheus a lot. Okay? But we talk a lot more about just that, since it seems like there’s plenty that you’re supposed to like and dislike in SFF.
Episode 26: Queering SFF
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It’s complicated. And we say that as queer writers and readers ourselves!
Episode 25: Hard Science Fiction
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It’s supposed to be the best sort out there, but what is it? Does the hardness in science fiction represent the quality of the science, or is it more a way to say “this book is better than that one”?
Episode 24: Artificial Intelligence
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I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t allow you to listen to that.
Episode 23: Novellas
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Just a few years ago, you’d have had a job if you wanted to find a novella in print outside of a special edition of an established journal. Now, thanks in large part to Tor, SFF novellas are launching careers, establishing new universes, showcasing entire series, and more. Check ‘em out!
Episode 22: Remembering Octavia Butler
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You’d have quite a task if you tried to find a prior episode in which we didn’t talk about Octavia Butler at least once. Here, we finally gathered our shit and gave this titan her own episode. Read forever!
Episode 21: Season 1 of The Expanse
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While the first season was a bit mixed, it’s fun to think about where it all started: hardboiled space noir!
Episode 20: Jeff VanderMeer’s Area X trilogy
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Like the previous episode, we dedicate ourselves this time to digging into one of our favorite series by one of our favorite authors.
Episode 19: N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy
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Our first N.K. Jemisin episode is all about her award-winning and very personal trilogy.
Episode 18: Burn, Baby, Burn (Dystopias)
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Dystopias are an evergreen stable of young adult (YA) literature, but they’ve been a linchpin of social commentaries since the dawn of the novel, all the way back during the Restoration period of English history. We have a lot of opinions and we have many facts, too.
Episode 17: Systems of Magic
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How does magic work? Nearly every fantasy universe has its own explanation (or lack thereof), so we take a look at some of those that satisfy our need to know. Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series, Patrick Rothfuss’s The Kingkiller Chronicles, and the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender get some particular love.
Episode 16: The Outbreak Narrative, with special guest Scott Selisker
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What is it that so captures our imagination when it comes to fast-spreading disease and contagion? In this episode, we consider everything from zombies to the aptly named Contagion. We also have help from Scott Selisker, author of Human Programming: Brainwashing, Automatons, and American Unfreedom, as we discuss Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative by Priscilla Wald.
Learn more about Scott via his website, or follow him on Twitter.
Episode 15: Creature Features
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Fantastical animals are so hot right now, no? Here we take a look at the glut of creature features making the CGI rounds, though we focus upon two from 2016: The Jungle Book and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Episode 14: Pilots That Failed to Hook Us
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Maybe they led to a successful season or two, or more. Maybe they never made it past their first episode. Maybe other folks loved them. But for whatever reason, these pilots never drew us in. Is there something that’s common to all of them?
Episode 13: Rogue One
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So, what’s all the hype about these Star Wars spinoffs, eh? Let’s have a listen. (A warning, if you expect us not to like it: Kend really likes it.)
Episode 12: The Second of the Seven Beauties of Science Fiction (The Novum)
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This one’s important, as we spend a lot of time in future episodes talking about the novum, or the central new concept, in various works of SFF. Check it out!
Episode 11: Mother of Eden
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A great episode to pair with Episode 9, since this is the second book in Chris Beckett’s Eden trilogy.
Episode 10: Starship Troopers
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Book club, but with a twist. Heinlein’s book is quite different from the irreverent and saucily satirical 90s film, so we have a good time talking about both. If you really love the book, this is probably not the episode for you.
Episode 9: Dark Eden
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Book club returns! Chris Beckett’s a British author whose work we weren’t familiar with prior to this one, and we use it to talk about everything from rogue planets (on which this is set) to the inevitability of patriarchy (which is … complicated).
Episode 8: Arrival
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Listen to us talk about one of our favorite movies from 2016 and beyond! This episode pairs well with Episode 6, since we talk about what the creators did to adapt Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” so successfully. This is a good episode, and Amy Adams deserved more awards and nominations.
Episode 7: Politics in SFF
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Here’s a neat glimpse of The Imaginaries to come! In this episode, we tackle some of the state and government systems in SFF, but we also consider what ideas and intentions are at the hearts of those systems and why authors chose to use them to represent future or alternate worlds.
Episode 6: What makes SFF cinematic?
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What does it take to make a work of SFF that was originally a novel, a story, a comic, or a TV show into a successful movie? Well, the obvious answer is “a lot of money,” but in this episode we think about why some works make better adaptations than others, and what works that are pretty damn cinematic have been completely overlooked.
Episode 5: The First of the Seven Beauties of Science Fiction (Fictive Neology)
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The Beauties were one of our longest-running series. Essentially, we went through each of the reasons that science fiction critic Istvan Csicery-Ronay gives re: why science fiction is beautiful in unique ways in his book The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction.
Episode 4: Luna: New Moon
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Early on, we tended to focus on a single work and connect it to other works — but we were also very much a book club. This is when our audio becomes listenable, though.
Episode 3: A Wrinkle in Time
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This is the first episode in which we’re recognizable as The Imaginaries you know and love. The audio still isn’t great, though.
Episode 2: Shutter and Star Trek
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Yeah, somehow we tackled another classic sci-fi series along with a very queer comic series. We were not great about editing in the beginning. The audio? Still terrible.
Episode 1: The Alien Franchise
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Our first topic ever was this classic. Kend insists on saying Alien Cubed a bunch. The audio is still terrible.
Episode 0: Meet the Imaginaries
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Awful audio, but here it is: your chance to hear the first episode we ever recorded.