Each month we choose a speculative fiction book, read it, and talk about the ideas & themes it explores.
Episodes
Tuesday Jul 09, 2019
Tuesday Jul 09, 2019
What goes around comes around on the wheel of karma, so this month Matt & Adrian talking about the new novel from past guest Max Gladstone, Empress of Forever (https://amzn.to/2Jl9X94)!
We discuss a number of books, movies, TV shows, and RPGs in the general space opera subgenre. Here are some of the most relevant. If the links don't show up in your podcatcher, they will be available on the show notes at spectology.com.
- Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone
- This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max
- Journey to the West
- Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
- Ten Billion Days & 100 Billion Nights by Ryu Mitsuse (see our 10.1 & 10.2 episodes)
- Iain M Banks (see our 1.1 & 1.2 episodes on his Use of Weapons)
- Gnomon by Nick Harkaway (see our 5.1 & 5.2 episodes w/ Max as a guest)
- The New Space Opera & TNSO2, ed. Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan
- Sufficiently Advanced (RPG)
- Ghibli Fest 2019 (particularly Princess Mononoke)
- Neon Genesis Evangelion (on Netflix)
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We'd love to hear from you (tell us your definition of space opera!), either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submitting the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.
And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!
Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.
Tuesday Jun 25, 2019
Tuesday Jun 25, 2019
Welcome to our final episode on Ted Chiang's newest short story collection, Exhalation (https://amzn.to/2X5A0JW). Matt & Adrian start by going through all of the stories in this collection, then go really in-depth on a few specifically, just like we did with Exhalation in our last episode (https://www.spectology.com/e/152-exhalation-post-read-re-reading-stories-philosophy-of-mind-the-heat-death-of-the-universe/).
First 30 minutes: Intro, 2-3 minutes on each story, listing our favorites
29m 10s: "The Lifecycle of Software Objects": Mental & legal frameworks for how to relate to AI
1h 01m 14s: "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom": Character development & moral thought experiments
1h 17m 02s: "Truth of Fact, Truth of Feeling": How technology changes our cognition & identity
1h 29m 04s: "The Merchant & the Alchemist's Gate": Discussing the medieval Islamic setting
1h 37m 19s: "Omphalos": Short stories as jokes, young Earth creationism
1h 42m 53s: Discussing the structure, endings, & morals of these stories
1h 48m 43s: Wrap-up & outro
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We'd love to hear from you, either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submitting the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.
And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!
Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.
Tuesday Jun 18, 2019
Tuesday Jun 18, 2019
This week's minisode is an in-depth discussion of ONLY the title story from Ted Chiang's new collection, Exhalation (https://amzn.to/2RlWfVY). The story "Exhalation" is available for free online at Lightspeed magazine (http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/), so we thought we'd start with this to whet everyone's appetite, and give new readers a chance to read something by Chiang to decide whether you want to pick up the full book.
We dig apart Matt's experience of re-reading this story (something he rarely does), discuss the meaty themes the story presents, and offer a few other stories about the process of science. It's a fun short episode, and we hope you enjoy it & stick around for next week's full dissection of all the other stories in the collection.
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We'd love to hear from you, either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submitting the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.
And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!
Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.
Tuesday Jun 04, 2019
Tuesday Jun 04, 2019
Adrian & Matt are back on their own this month, reading & talking about the short story collection Exhalation, by Ted Chiang. A wonderful collection of short fiction, we've decided to do something a little bit different from the usual.
With this episode we talk about the power of short-form fiction, why we love Chiang's work so much, and (starting at 43:25) ask each other a couple tough philosophical questions of the type Chiang's stories attempt to answer.
Books & movies mentioned include (links help support Spectology, go to spectology.com if they're not showing up):
- Exhalation, by Ted Chiang
- Stories of Your Life & Others, by Ted Chiang
- Store of the Worlds, by Robert Sheckley
- The Best Stories of JG Ballard
- Her Smoke Rose up Forever, by James Tiptree, Jr
- Tobias Buckell's Patreon
- Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, ed. NK Jemisin
- The Best SF&F of the Year series, ed. Jonathan Strahan
- Interview w/ Chiang at Powel's
- Interview w/ Walter Mosley at Paris Review
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We'd love to hear from you, either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submitting the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.
And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!
Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.
Wednesday May 29, 2019
Wednesday May 29, 2019
The Demographically Similar Jenny's join us again for our post-read discussion of Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower (https://amzn.to/2EGiFvV). We liked it! We're talking about it!
We loved having them on so much, go listen to their podcast (https://readingtheend.com/thepodcast/) for more great book content. (#Content for the #Content #Gods!)
Other books mentioned on this podcast:
- The Broken Earth series by NK Jemisin (2nd person)
- The Inheritance Trilogy by NK Jemisin (gods as narrators)
- The Steerswoman series by Rosmary Kirstein
- Mission Child by Maureen F. McHugh (non-binary main character)
- Ninefox Gambit & follow-ups by Yoon Ha Lee (non-binary characters by a trans masc author)
(As always, links are at spectology.com if they don't show up in your podcatcher. And if I missed something mentioned in the episode, tweet at @spectologypod or @readingtheend and we'll find it for you.)
---
We'd love to hear from you, either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submitting the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.
And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!
Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.
Tuesday May 21, 2019
Tuesday May 21, 2019
Our guests this month, the Demographically Similar Jennys from the Reading the End Podcast & Blog, join Adrian for a round of "Things We Like" to go over some of our favorite undersung pop culture items we want to share with everyone! We are a little punchy as we're in hour 3 of recording (this was recorded after our Raven Tower post-read, which will come out next week)!
Our things are:
Gin Jenny:
- Into the Spider-Verse
- Batchelor Party & Here to Make Friends
- Genius (comic) vol. 1 & vol. 2
Whiskey Jenny:
- Anna Atkins' Cyanotypes
- Letterkenny (on Hulu in the US)
- Gar & Weever fish
Adrian:
- Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (in theatres in the US)
- The OA (on Netflix in the US)
- The Tick (on Amazon in the US)
(As always, links are at spectology.com if they don't show up in your podcatcher. And if I missed something mentioned in the episode, tweet at @spectologypod or @readingtheend and we'll find it for you.)
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For the first time ever, I forgot to call out our wonderful artists at the end: Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art, go check them out!
We'd love to hear from you, either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submitting the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.
And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!
Tuesday May 07, 2019
Tuesday May 07, 2019
This month, we welcome the Demographically Similar Jennys from the wonderful & charming Reading the End Podcast to Spectology to read Ann Leckie's newest book, The Raven Tower! (https://amzn.to/2VShdjK)
The four of us discuss our past experiences reading both fantasy & science fiction, and how gender is used within those genres, as well as how it drives decisions about how to market those genres by the larger publishing industry.
We couldn't have more well-read, fun, & knowledgeable guests for this discussion, so we really hope you enjoy this ep, and check out the Jennys' podcast as well. A great place to start would be Adrian's guest episode from last week: https://readingtheend.com/2019/05/01/podcast-ep-117-a-spectology-crossover-event/
Works mentioned this episode include:
* The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
* Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
* Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
* The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish
* The Clewiston Test by Kate Wilhelm
* NK Jemisin's 2018 Hugo Award speech (video embedded in article)
(As always, links are at spectology.com if they don't show up in your podcatcher. And if I missed something mentioned in the episode, tweet at @spectologypod or @readingtheend and we'll find it for you.)
---
We'd love to hear from you, either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submitting the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.
And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!
Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.
Tuesday Apr 23, 2019
Tuesday Apr 23, 2019
(Uploaded the wrong file earlier, if you have 2 versions of this episode, this is the correct one.)
This week we have a very special episode, as we're joined by Chris Beckett, author of April's book club selection Dark Eden. Chris was kind enough to call in from the UK to answer questions from Adrian, Matt, & Kevin (as asked by Adrian) about the book, his writing process, how he views political change, why his books don't have role models, his history with science fiction, and much more.
We hope you enjoy this episode! If you like it, let us know, and we'll try to do more author interviews in the future.
Many thanks to Chris Beckett for making time for us, it was an incredibly enjoyable & thoughtful conversation. Make sure to check out Chris' most recent book, Beneath the World, a Sea, which is available in hardcover & ebook in the UK and can be shipped to the US via sellers on Amazon.
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We'd love to hear from you, either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submitting the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.
And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!
Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.
Tuesday Apr 16, 2019
Tuesday Apr 16, 2019
We're once again joined by Kevin Kelsey of Heradas.com to discuss Dark Eden, by Chris Beckett (https://amzn.to/2TRcpX0). We've (re-)read this book and all loved it, and have a lot to dig into!
We talk about the political philosophy of the book. We discuss the psychological reality of the characters. Adrian rants about poverty for 5 minutes and why this book is personal for him, so that's on-brand. It's worth heeding the content warnings on this one, we talk in-depth about that stuff in the 2nd hour.
A few of the resources we mention:
- The sequels, Mother of Eden & Daughter of Eden—worth reading!
- NK Jemisin's review of Dark Eden in the NY Times
- Our own episodes on Semiosis
- The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin
- Critique of The Cold Equations by Cory Doctorow
- Chris's Q&A on the SF Book Club subreddit
- And if you're in the UK, pre-order Beckett's new book, Beneath the World, A Sea
(As always, links are at spectology.com if they don't show up in your podcatcher. And if I missed something mentioned in the episode, tweet at us and I'll find it for you.)
---
We'd love to hear from you, either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submitting the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.
And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!
Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.
Tuesday Apr 02, 2019
Tuesday Apr 02, 2019
To celebrate having been at the podcast for one full year, Matt & Adrian are joined by Kevin Kelsey of Heradas.com as we make our most self-indulgent pick yet: Dark Eden, by Chris Beckett (https://amzn.to/2TRcpX0).
Join us for a somewhat self-reflective episode on why this is one of our favorite books, and why we think everyone should read it. It has linguistics, it has sociology, it has long time scales, it has survival in a harsh world, it has society building, it has a page-turning story, and it is probably the book we've mentioned the most on this podcast without actually reading and talking about it in its own episodes.
Kevin joins us to help us ground the conversation for folks who haven't read the book yet, and in a few weeks we'll all three dig into the rich thematic depth of this novel.
Some other works mentioned include:
- Chris's Q&A on the SF Book Club subreddit
- Chris on his history being labeled disabled
- NK Jemisin's review of Dark Eden in the NY Times
- Review by a juror on the Arthur C. Clarke award
- Our own episodes on Children of Time, Romie Futch, Gnomon, & Semiosis
- Ice by Anna Kavan
- The Helliconia Trilogy by Brian Aldiss
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- And if you're in the UK, pre-order Beckett's new book, Beneath the World, A Sea
(As always, links are at spectology.com if they don't show up in your podcatcher.)
---
We'd love to hear from you, either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submitting the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment.
And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends!
Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.