Spectology: The Science Fiction Book Club Podcast

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.

Hey all, a few things: 1. This is really late. Sorry about that! It's because of: 2. The audio quality is really bad. Matt's computer essentially crashed during recording, so we had to use the back-up recording which was also screwed up by the whole situation. So it's bad, and I've done my best to make it listenable.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this episode were we talk about Zen Cho's The True Queen. It's a wonderful little book about sisterhood, magical academies, scary fairies, and issues of race & gender in Regency era England.

Please enjoy the episode! We'll be taking June off of more books to publish a few bonus episodes & book tour episodes, and then be back with a new book in July.

Oh and also check out Gin Jenny on twitter, the Reading the End blog, podcast, & patreon. Really please do follow them & listen to the podcast, it's the best general book pod around.  

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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.

Once again we're joined by Seth Heasley of the Hugo's There podcast (https://hugospodcast.com) to talk about science fiction films! This time, we're talking about our favorite SF movies we think are underrated in some way. Maybe they bombed at the box office, maybe critics hated them, or maybe they have just been forgotten and deserve another viewing. 

What did we pick? You'll have to listen to find out! But it was a load of fun to have Seth back on, and you should check out his podcast (the episodes where Adrian or Matt guested are good places to start). 

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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.

Hi everyone! We're excited to announce a project we've been working on to help tide everyone through the lockdown. Friend of the podcast & former guest Bee is joining us to interview SF authors with new books out. They will be bonus episodes happening on the main feed, but in addition to the regular book club & conversational bonus episodes that we do.

Our first one, a conversation between Bee & Laura Lam, author of the upcoming novel Goldilocks, comes out tomorrow. From there, we'll have these out irregularly, sometimes on Tuesdays & sometimes on Thursdays if we have another regular episode scheduled that week. We've got some great authors scheduled, and are looking forward to talking to them. 

We hope you enjoy these! And make sure to follow Bee at their twitter & patreon, where they have all the sourdough content you could ask for. 

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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.

Julia Rios of the This is Why We're Like This podcast is back for our post-read discussion of Aliette de Bodard's wonderful space murder mystery novella, The Tea Master & the Detective (https://amzn.to/3aD8cOU). 

In this episode we discuss power structures within & outside of large organizations like unions or monasteries, the friendship between the main characters, and doing worldbuilding with non-Western cultures. It's a fun conversation, and we were so happy to have Julia on the podcast! If you haven't picked up this novella, I highly recommend the book as a nice corrective to our current crazy times.

Also, a quick note on scheduling: We've had to be a bit nimble this last month as both Matt & I adjusted to new life situations. It also turns out I published the pre-read a week early because I wasn't paying attention to the dates. So this episode is coming out on a highly unusual Friday. We'll have another bonus episode next Tuesday, and we have multiple bonus & book club episodes w/ special guests already recorded & ready to go for next month. So expect regular, frequent content from us after this, and thanks for sticking with us while the world got turned upside down! 

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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 March, Spectology brings you a discussion on the little-known but largely influential novel by David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781564782113). Written from the perspective of the last woman on Earth, it's a sad and clever novel about loss, the Western cannon, the meaning of art, and the importance of other people in creating our identies. 

In this episode, we discuss the philosophy underlying the novel. Who is Wittgenstein, and how do his ideas about the philosophy of language underly the project of this novel? How do Bertrand Russel, Kurt Gödel, & Søren Kierkegaard fit into this puzzle? And what other novelists have been influenced by Markson?

It's a discussion worthy of Adrian's 2nd annual "self-indulgent pick", and we hope you'll enjoy being along for the ride.

One note: this novel isn't available on ebook or audio book. It's still in print in paperback, so if possible please try finding it at a local book store! Baring that, it's available through Amazon, or the new bookshop.org online sellers: https://bookshop.org/a/1159/9781564782113

Also, here is the interview with Markson we reference several times: https://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_07_005963.php 

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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.

Join us for a fun & punchy look back at Spectology's first year in books. Matt & Adrian discuss the favorite books we read in 2018, some of our favorite episodes to record, and just generally have a good time while reflecting on what a wonderful year we had together & with you all.

Major thanks goes out to everyone who has helped us so far! Our guests in 2018: Tobias, Britt, Max, Ellie, Kevin, & Charlotte. Dubby J & Noah Bradley for providing music & art to us. Seth for hosting me on his podcast. And of course anyone who has told a friend, submitted us to reddit, tweeted about us, or just listened to some of our episodes. We're so lucky to have such awesome listeners, and we're looking forward to reading another dozen books in 2019! We've got a great list of books and authors coming up this year, I can't wait to share them all.

As always, you can find us at @spectologypod on twitter, or email us at mailbox@spectology.com. We'd love to hear your favorite moments of our from 2018! 

Two quick announcements today, since we weren't able to get our usual pre-read episode recorded in time.

The first is that our November book will be Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is a book neither of us has read, but won the Clarke award and has themes that we're both interested in. Should be a good time.

The second is that Adrian guest hosted on the Hugos There Podcast (https://hugospodcast.com) a few days ago to talk about Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. It was a great conversation about one of his favorite books, so check that out if you need something to tide you over before our Children of Time pre-read drops next week. 

Final bonus announcement for our Americans who read the show notes: VOTE! This is voting day, and there are a bunch of important local elections on the ballot, from your state legislators to various criminal justice ballot reforms to just your local sheriffs & judges. We live in a dystopian hellscape, but you can make it mildly better by voting. And you can listen to me talk about Le Guin while you wait on line. 

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

July's book is The New and Improved Romie Futch, by Julia Elliott. Julia is an English and Women's & Gender Studies professor at the University of South Carolina, as well as an accalimed short story writer. Her first novel, Romie Futch follows the titular character, Roman, as he goes from schlubby taxidermist in rural South Carolina to a brain-enhansed schlubby taxidermist in rural South Carolina. 

In this spoiler-free, pre-read episode, Adrian & Matt give you the book facts, as well as discussing rural life in modern America, how education acts as a gateway between social classes, and masculinity in science fiction. We also touch on the genre of "weird fiction" and discuss the different influences on Romie Futch, from Faulkner to Lovecraft to Le Guin.

Some of the books & articles we mention:

- Adrian's short article Six SF Books to Read in the Age of Trump, where he talks about Romie Futch in #5.
- NYT Review of Romie Futch
- Tin House Magazine ("Candy" has a story by Julia, and "Summer Reading" features the last story by Ursula K. Le Guin)
- William Faulkner (southern gothic)
- The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Three Moments of an Explosion, stories by China Miéville
- Ice by Anna Kavan
- The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier

In addition, you should check out the last episode we recorded, the interview with Tobias Buckell. A lot of that discussion will be relevant towards Romie Futch—we talk about climate change, economics of rural places in American, and more. 

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As always, we'd love to hear from you! Tweet us at @spectologypod, submit the episode at r/printSF, or email us at mailbox@spectology.com with your thoughts about the book.

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

A new month, a new book! Or in this case, series of books. The Binti Trilogy is a set of short novellas by Nnedi Okorafor. Together they are about the same size as a novel (and about the cost). They tell the story of a young woman in Western Africa who gets an invitation to the best university in the galaxy, and leaves everything she knows to attend. However, these aren't your typical chosen one or fish out of water school stories, and they take a lot of unexpected twists and turns along the way.

We loved the first two novellas when we read them, and so we're excited to get to re-read and finish the whole trilogy, especially after the diappointment of our last book! In this spoiler-free episode, Adrian and Matt discuss the musical and literary roots of Afrofuturism, Adrian's experience going from a rural town to a major university, and why we love these books so much. 

Instead of doing one post-read episode this month, we're going to be doing a shorter post-read episode week for a successive novella. The novellas and our schedule are:

- Binti (June 12)
- Binti: Home (June 19)
- Binti: The Night Masquerade (June 26)

And some of the other works we mention include:

- Afrofuturism by Ytasha L. Womack (highly recommended intro)
- Sun Ra & His Archestra
- A Love Supreme by John Coltrane
- Harnessed the Storm by Drexciya
- ATLiens by OutKast
- Blazing Arrow by Blackalicious
- Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe (album / movie)
- Bloodchild and Lillith's Brood by Octavia Butler
- Dhalgren and Nova by Sam Delany
- The Broken Earth Trilogy by NK Jemisin
- Black Panther by Ryan Coogler (soundtrack by Kendrick Lamar)

As always, we'd love to hear from you! Tweet us at @spectologypod, submit the episode at r/printSF, or email us at mailbox@spectology.com with your thoughts about the book. In particular, check out our twitter this month, where we'll be posting a lot of great Afrofuturist art, music, and other resources. 

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