Spectology: The Science Fiction Book Club Podcast

We've finished The Killing Moon by NK Jemisin (https://amzn.to/2L9Wdh0), and have a lot to say about it as usual! 

The book forced us to ask a lot of hard questions about the moral weight of actions of all of the main characters. We spend some time in a discussion on sympathetic villains and the importance of passing judgement on actions even while being sympathetic to motivations. We also discuss our own history with dreams, lucid dreaming, waking dreaming, and meditation. 

Also the moon!

Related & discussed links (available at spectology.com if they don't show up in your podcatcher):

* Waking Life by Richard Linklater

* The Dreamblood Duology by NK Jemisin (both books in 1)

* The Red Book by Carl Jung

* Tinariwen, desert folk/blues music from Northern Africa

* The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger

* Perplexities of Consciousness by Eric Schwitzgebel ("do you dream in color" studies)

* Mike Boyd (learning channel on youtube)

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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 mailbox@spectology.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.

Hey folks! Short description bc it's already very late & I'm trying to get this out. I may update this later w/ more info, check spectology.com in the next day or two if you'd like more links to all the other books we mention. 

The book this month is The Killing Moon by NK Jemisin! It's a great book, potentially my favorite of hers. https://amzn.to/31DKqyr

Matt & I spend a very long time talking about worldbuilding, different ways of doing it, books we love that do it well, etc.. It's quite the pre-read. Also, we're having some technical difficulties due to travel, so the sound is listenable but not to our usual standards. We should be better next episode, & back to normal next month.

The connected short story I mentioned ("The Narcomancer") is available as a podcast here: https://podcastle.org/2010/01/05/podcastle-85-giant-episode-the-narcomancer/

NK Jemisin's worldbuilding presentation is available here: https://nkjemisin.com/2015/08/worldbuilding-101/

And finally, her patreon is: https://www.patreon.com/nkjemisin

---

We'd love to hear from you, either by chatting with us on twitter at @spectologypod, sending us an email at mailbox@spectology.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.

This is the first in a new series of episodes we're calling "Critical Conversations", where we take a critical work & discuss it in-depth. 

This time, Matt & Adrian discuss the article "Critics: Endgame" by Soraya Roberts & published in Longreads (https://longreads.com/2019/05/03/critics-endgame/).

Roberts asks what the purpose of pop culture criticism is in 2019, when fascism is ascendant and global warming is killing the planet, particularly criticism that is itself fandom. It's a critical essay which is critical of criticism, which ends up being a vital way for us to being talking about what we do on the podcast. Is it all too meta? Maybe! But it's the kind of thing we love talking about, so maybe you'll enjoy hearing us talk about it (and if not, we'll have a new pre-read next week so stay tuned for that).

A few of the resources we mention in the episode: 

* "Stay in your lane" originator: https://twitter.com/prisonculture 

* Matt's current favorite critic: https://andrewbatson.com & his twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewbatson 

* Adrian's current favorite critic: https://uninterpretative.blogspot.com & their twitter: https://twitter.com/Benladen & their patreon: https://www.patreon.com/benladen/overview.

* Another critical work about art vs. criticism we touch on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kaTDKDaj2M & his twitter: https://twitter.com/ShadowTodd