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.

Soo.... we've had a hard time keeping to a regular schedule recently, so Matt, Bee, & I (Adrian) have been discussing what we want the podcast to look like in the future.

In this episode, I just talk openly about those thoughts, our plan through the end of the year, and how the podcast might change come 2021. 

I may write up a longer thing later, but right now I just wanted to get this out in audio format & solicit feedback from everyone on what you might like to see & hear, and also ask for any notes you have for Matt which I can embarrass him on air with at some point before the end of the year.

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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, 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.

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.

Welcome to our inaugural Digital Book Tour, featuring Laura Lam, author of Goldilocks. Five women steal a space ship to save a human race beset upon by climate change, even while society doesn't believe they should be able to work due to their gender.

Our host Bee interviews Laura about genre conventions, found family, what to do when your novel becomes unexpectedly relevant, and eating algae. Laura also does a few short readings from the upcoming book.

Goldilocks is available for pre-order now, and will be released on May 5th. 

Links:

* Goldilocks on bookshop.org 

* Laura's Instragram, featuring live events w/ Laura

* Laura's patreon, featuring writing about crafts, writing, & more

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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 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.

A quick bonus episode this week, with Matt & Adrian discussing their favorite Aliens in science fiction and beyond. We revisit some books we've read for the pod, talk about some classics, and hit on a few under-represented gems. We hope you like it! 

A bit late, sorry about that! Quarantine time is weird. I'll try to get around to listing everything we talk about later but I want to get this out first: if there's anything in particular you'd like to get a link to, let me know at @spectologypod on twitter & I'll get it to you.

We'll be back next week with our post-read of The Tea Master & The Detective with Julia Rios! 

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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.

Matt & Adrian sit down for a chat looking back at 2019—which books ended up being our favorites, which episodes did we like, and how did we do in terms of diversity of authors, genres, and guests?

A big thanks to everyone who has stuck with us for two years now! Or who have just begun listening—we hope you'll stick around.

In addition, we were asked by a listener on Twitter (@spectologypod) to talk a bit about our favorite fantasy books, so we do that at the end. Here's a list of everything we mention (amazon links are affiliates):

* Bear Daughter by Judith Berman (now back in print!)

* The Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein

* The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie

* Finna by Nino Cipri 

* The Deep by Rivers Solomon

* The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

* The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip

* The Dying Earth (now published as Marizan the Magician) by Jack Vance 

* The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolf

* Lord Dunsany

* Arthur Machen

* The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

* The Cradle series by Will Wight

* Jade City by Fonda Lee

* The Tensorate series by JY Yang

* Monkey (an abridged translation of Journey to the West) by Arthur Whaley

* The Worm of Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison 

* The Ghormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake

* The Nightland by William Hope Hodgson

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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.

Really short bonus/emergency episode today. Adrian is on his own and off-script, giving you the insider scoop on how to nominate & vote in the Hugo Awards, as well as why you might want to. 

Short answer: go to https://members.conzealand.nz/memberships and sign up for the "Supporting Membership". This will allow you to vote on the 2020 Hugo Awards, and nominate works for the 2021 Hugo Awards next year. For more general information, check out the Hugos website https://www.thehugoawards.org/i-want-to-vote/ which offers evergreen information on how to sign up for a membership any given year (it changes).

This is something I'm passionate about, but if it's not your scene that's OK! But I hope you'll give me the chance to make the case that voting in the Hugo Awards is worthwhile.

We'll be back next week with our regular programing, in this case the Memory Called Empire post-read.

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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.

Join us as we reflect on a few of the novels we've read for the podcast so far, and imagine what they might look like as on-screen adaptations. Matt & Adrian play executive producers, coming up with concepts for the adaptations & directors, writers, and actors who might work on them. 

Time stamps for each:

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (Matt): 2m33s

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (Adrian): 13m05s

Player of Games (a Culture novel) by Iain M. Banks (Matt): 25m26s

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee (Adrian): 31m19s

This was a fun & somewhat silly episode, we hope you enjoy! If you have your own fancasting for these or any other books we've read, let us know by tweeting @spectologypod or emailing us at mailbox@spectology.com, we'd love to hear them.  

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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.