Spectology: The Science Fiction Book Club Podcast

Today Adrian is joined by Will Frank, this year's Hugo Awards Administrator, to talk all things Hugos. We discuss why you might want to nominate and vote for the Hugos, how exactly to get membership to do so (anyone can do it!), the special Video Game award, and why recent events that might have turned some people off will hopefully not be repeated this year. 

I was really happy Will came on, and found it really fascinating to learn about how the Hugos actually work behind the scene, and the people like Will who actually count votes and work hard to make the Hugos happen. I appreciate him taking some challenging questions from me about past Hugos and how things are improving. I also was really happy to learn about how to volunteer in the Hugos, something I hadn't considered as an option before but is open to everyone.

This came about through Olav at the wonderful Hugo Book Club blog after hearing my In Conversation: How & Why to Vote for the Hugo Awards episode, so many thanks to them for putting this together.

Finally, this is our first episode after a long hiatus! More are to come very soon, Matt is back in the recording studio and we'll be doing our podcast finale & wrap-up over the next month or so, along with some returning guests. 

Links:

Worldcon for general & historical Hugo information: https://www.worldcon.org
DisCon III for nominating & voting, and attending memberships: https://discon3.org 
Volunteering: https://discon3.org/get-involved/volunteer/ 
Memberships: https://discon3.org/membership/membership-information/ 

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As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit 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 week Bee is joined by writer & artist Kathleen Jennings to talk about her book Flyaway.

Flyaway is a fairy tale-influenced (or structured?) Australian Gothic novel (or novella?). Small town landscapes and linguistics, productive misinterpretations of fairy tales, Kurt Vonnegut, and what it's like to write a strict first-person novel with a slew of other voices in it are some of the topics discussed.

* Kathleen's website: https://www.kathleenjennings.com/   

* Flyaway on Kindle: https://amzn.to/3n21V6Q

* Flyaway on Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781250260499 

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Make sure to follow Bee at their twitter & patreon.

As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast if 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!

To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop.

Many thanks to Dubby J our music.

This week, Adrian is joined by Somaiya Daud to discuss her new book, Court of Lions, the 2nd in the Mirage Duology (https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781250126450). 

Somaiya and Adrian discuss genre mash-ups, body doubles, court politics, the legacy of French colonialism on Moroccan culture, the lack of beautiful dresses in the newest Star Wars trilogy, and how our cats are handling quarantine. I had a wonderful time talking to her and am absolutely loving Mirage, the first book in this duology, so I hope you listen, pick up her books, and enjoy!

* Mirage on bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781250126436 

* Court of Lions on bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781250126450

* The Mirage Duology on Kindle: https://amzn.to/3khFfxl 

* A Phoenix First Must Burn: https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781984835659 

* Somaiya on Twitter (https://twitter.com/somaiyadaud) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/somaiiiya/)

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As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit 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!

To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop.

Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.

This month Adrian is joined by Bee & Estelle to talk about Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by new British author Temi Oh (https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781534437401). 

Bee of course is from the Spectology podcast, where they run our Digital Book Tour. And Estelle runs the phenomenal Abolish Time zine on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abolish_time/ . You can also find an interview Bee did with Estelle at their blog: https://uninterpretative.blogspot.com/2019/09/talking-about-new-society-requires.html 

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? tells the story of a group of teenagers who, in an alternate history where rocketry was developed earlier & for longer, are selected to go on a life-long mission to Terra-Two, an Earthlike planet found orbiting a nearby star. Bee & Estelle both call it one of their favorite novels ever, likening it to something by Butler or Le Guin. 

I hope you enjoy the episode and the book! It was a pleasure recording with everyone. And we should have the post-read out towards the end of the month. 

* Do You Dream of Terra-Two? on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781534437401

* Do You Dream of Terra-Two? on Kindle: https://amzn.to/3jZBkVP

* The Assets & Androids episode I mention: https://androidsandassets.ca/a-memory-called-canada/

* Bee's patreon: https://www.patreon.com/benladen

* Estelle's patreon: https://www.patreon.com/abolishtime 

* Abolish Time: https://www.instagram.com/abolish_time/ 

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Make sure to follow Bee at their twitter & patreon.

As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast if 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!

To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop.

Many thanks to Dubby J our music.

Lydia joins us again as we discuss The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull! 

We absolutely loved this novel, which details the life of island inhabitants living under a passively repressive regime of extra-terrestrials, who are here on Earth for unspecified reasons. 

There is resistance, there are people who want to work with the aliens, there are people who don't care. Their lives each gets looked at in depth. It's a beautiful book and one worth reading, and we have a really fun conversation, which I hope you will enjoy too!

* The Lesson on bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781094081298

* The Lesson on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/31gXsTN

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As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit 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!

To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop.

Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.

This week we're joined by WM Akers to promote his new novel, Westside Saints (https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9780062854049). 

Bee and WM talk Westside Saints (and its predecessor, Westside), an alternate history detective novel about a woman who solves "tiny mysteries" until they get much bigger. They also talk about how tabletop RPG design reflects and influences novel writing, the uprising in Philadelphia (Lakay Nou has since been renamed Camp JTD and is still regularly facing evictions), the scope of sequels, and more.

* Westside Saints on bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9780062854049

* Westside Saints on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2CECqq0 

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Make sure to follow Bee at their twitter & patreon.

As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast if 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!

To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop.

Many thanks to Dubby J our music.

Today Bee is joined by Nick Mamatas, Bram Stoker award-winning editor & author of the just-re-released novel Move Under Ground. (https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9780486841861)

Bee & Nick talk about writing modern Lovecraftian stories & his looming influence, the joy of reading referential stories, and typographic style as a carrier of meaning. 

The audio is a bit rough in this one, apologies! Nick was a pleasure to have on the pod though, and we're glad we were able to work through those audio issues. 

* Move Under Ground on Amazon
* Move Under Ground on Bookshop

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Make sure to follow Bee at their twitter & patreon.

As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast if 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!

To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop.

Many thanks to Dubby J our music.

We're back? We're back. Mostly.

This month Matt is still out, and Adrian is joined by Lydia, a childhood friend of his from Homer, Alaska, to talk about the post-colonial alien invasion story The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull (https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781094081298).

It's about life on the US Virgin Islands after an alien spaceship takes up home on St. Thomas, bringing both technology and violence with them. This episode was recorded nearly a month ago, and while we hadn't finished the book then, I can report from the future that it's super-great! 

Lydia and I talk about life growing up in rural places, the history of European colonial rule & its ties to capitalism, and of course go on a few tangents along the way. We hope you enjoy! And please do pick up this book, it's short and effecting and probably unlike any other book you've read recently.

* The Lesson on bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781094081298

* The Lesson on Amazon:  https://amzn.to/31gXsTN

* A Brief History of the Corporation: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-the-corporation-1600-to-2100/

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As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit 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!

To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop.

Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.

Sometimes a book comes along that is both so unlike anything that came before it, but also so vital & perfectly voiced that once reading it, it's impossible to imagine a world where that book hasn't always existed. Nino Cipri's novella Finna (bookshop or ebook) is one such book. 

It's a story about life under late capitalism, about that eerie feeling you get whenever you get lost in one of those large Swedish furniture stores, about navigating awkward post-breakup feelings, and about labor. 

Bee interviews Nino about the book, their writing process, and labor organizing. It's a wonderful conversation, and I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I have.

* Nino's twitter: https://twitter.com/ninocipri

* Nino's newsletter, Cool Story, Bro

* And their website: https://ninocipri.com 

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Make sure to follow Bee at their twitter & patreon.

As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast if 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!

To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop.

Many thanks to Dubby J our music.

For our fourth Digital Book Tour episode, Adrian is joined by Serje Jones, whose new book The Fortress (https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781645660026) has been published by our friends at Erewhon books. 

Serje & Adrian discuss restorative justice, writing trans-inclusive feminist science fiction, and feeling emotions in the body instead of in the mind. She also performs two readings from the book. 

As a personal asside, I think this is the best novel I've read so far this year, and I really hope folks enjoy this episode & pick up the book. It's a startling, difficult, and radical look at another possible world. 

Description from Erewhon:  

Jonathon Bridge has a corner office in a top-tier software firm, tailored suits, and an impeccable pedigree. He has a fascinating wife, Adalia; a child on the way; and a string of pretty young interns as lovers on the side. He’s a man who’s going places. His world is our world: the same chaos and sprawl, haves and have-nots, men and women, skyscrapers and billboards. But it also exists alongside a vast, self-sustaining city-state called The Fortress where the indigenous inhabitants—the Vaik, a society run and populated exclusively by women—live in isolation.

When Adalia discovers his indiscretions and the ugly sexual violence pervading his firm, she agrees to continue their fractured marriage only on the condition that Jonathan voluntarily offers himself to The Fortress as a supplicant and stay there for a year. Jonathon’s arrival at The Fortress begins with a recitation of the conditions of his stay: He is forbidden to ask questions, to raise his hand in anger, and to refuse sex.

Jonathon is utterly unprepared for what will happen to him over the course of the year—not only to his body, but to his mind and his heart. This absorbing, confronting, and moving novel asks questions about consent, power, love, and fulfillment. It asks what it takes for a man to change, and whether change is possible without a radical reversal of the conditions that seem normal.

Content notice: The Fortress contains references to objectification of and violence against women, pedophilia, sexual assault, submission, and toxic masculinity.  

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Make sure to follow Bee at their twitter & patreon. (They didn't do this interview, but have several already recorded & others in the making.)

As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at mailbox@spectology.com, or submit 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!

To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop.

Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.