A Meal of Thorns

Casella heads to Seattle for the World Science Fiction Convention, reporting on his travels and the convention. Includes interviews with Worldcon guests & conrunners, thoughts on the Hugos and the event, and, of course, a quick coffee report.

Credits:

References:

Calypso by Oliver K. Langmead

Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a literally giant work that’s an exemplar of the chain-bookstore and mass-market epic fantasy boom. Author, editor, and critic Karlo Yeager Rodríguez joins to talk about the trilogy’s second entry, Stone of Farewell: its position within and influence upon the genre, and how it holds up.

Credits:

References:

Casella heads to Readercon, a Boston-based science fiction convention that’s unusually good at keeping the focus literary. This episode includes an interview with one of the conrunners, a discussion of translated SFF and the Translated Hugo Initiative, and a visit with a new romance bookstore in Cambridge. Some quick coffee reporting, as well.

Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

References:

Banks’ Culture novels, about a utopian space-faring civilization, are hugely influential in both SF literature and the tech industry. Award-winning critic Abigail Nussbaum joins us to discuss Excession, a Culture novel about proxy conflicts and interventionist politics, existential threats, and…problematic exes?

Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

References:

Cherryh’s influence on speculative fiction is vast but, some would say, under-acknowledged. Author Arkady Martine joins to help rectify that situation, with a discussion of 40,000 in Gehenna, an anthropological, generational science fiction story about realpolitik, language, cloning, giant intelligent lizards, and gender—and that’s kind of just the top notes. Casella also provides a mini-report on Minneapolis’s 4th Street Fantasy Convention.

Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

References:

Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

• Guest: andré m. carrington
• Title: Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough
• Transcribers: Kate Dollarhyde and John WM Thompson

References:

• andré’s Speculative Blackness, The Black Fantastic, and Audiofuturism (forthcoming)
• The Eaton Conference
• Malik Gaines & Alexandro Segade's cosmic opera Star Choir, based on the work of Octavia E. Butler
• Hanna Yanagahira's To Paradise
• Tochi Onyebuchi’s Harmattan Season
• George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire
• N.K. Jemisin
• Michael Zapata’s The Lost Book of Adana Moreau
• Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do
• Andew Stanton’s Wall-E
• Becky Chambers' Monk & Robot
• Olaf Stapledon
• Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future
• andré's Bluesky
• Audio.futurism Instagram

Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

• Guest: Roseanna Pendlebury
• Titles: The 2025 Hugo Novel & Novella List
• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough
• Transcribers: Kate Dollarhyde and John WM Thompson

References:

• Hugo Novella Finalists:
• The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo
• The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed
• Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard
• The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar
• The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler
• What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher
• Hugo Novel Finalists:
• Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
• Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
• A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
• The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
• The Clarke Award list
• Paul Kincaid’s Coulorfields
• Roseanna’s “A Path Through the Landscape” for A Reader of Else, plus Paul Kincaid’s “The Books That Made Me” for Through the dark labyrinth
• Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti
• Casella’s idea of a Hugo for Best Translated Work
• Renay's Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom
• Alex Jeffers’s A Mourning Coat
• Lorraine Wilson’s Last to Drown
• The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize
• The Ignyte Awards
• Premee Mohamed’s The Siege of Burning Grass
• Vajra Chandraskera’s Rakesfall
• Jared Pechaček’s The West Passage
• Seth Dickinson’s Exordia and The Traitor Baru Cormorant
• Emet North’s In Universes
• Eden Robin’s Remember You Will Die
• Scott Guild's Plastic
• Aliya Whiteley's Three Eight One
• T. Kingfisher’s Saint of Steel books
• Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons
• Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities and Founders trilogies
• Adrian Tchaikovsky’s House of Open Wounds
• Greg Egan
• Charlie Stross's Neptune’s Brood
• Zachary Gillan’s “Reading Weird Fiction in an Age of Fascism”
• Foz Meadow’s A Strange and Stubborn Endurance
• Roseanna's review of Someone To Build A Nest In
• Brad Wright’s Travelers
• Helen MacDonald and Sin Blaché’s Prophet
• Roseanna’s Small Press Dispatch column
• Nerds of a Feather

Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

• Guest: Maia Gil′Adí
• Title: The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata
• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

References:

• Palgrave SFF: A New Canon
• The Zombie Archive
• Doom Patterns: Latinx Speculations and the Aesthetics of Violence
• Augustina Bazterrica's Tender is the Flesh
• Fernanda Trias' Pink Slime
• Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go
• Colson Whitehead's Zone One
• Toni Morrison's Beloved
• Fernanda Melchor's Hurricane Season
• Indrapramit Das
• Brendan Shay Basham's Swim Home to the Vanished & Casella’s review
• Mariana Enriquez's Our Share of Night
• Fredric Jameson
• Chicago Review of Books Awards
• Ilana Masad’s “Holocaust Beach Reads” for The Maris Review
• Jason (Friday the 13th)
• Simón Bolívar
• August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, C.L. Moore
• Moebius/Jean Giraud
• Ancient Aliens
• Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter & adaptation
• Studs Terkel
• US Occupation of the Dominican Republic, 1916
• Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
• Jonbar points
• Aimee Pokwatka's Self-Portrait with Nothing
• Lavie Tidhar's The Circumference of the Earth & Unholy Land
• Rob Nixon's Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
• Sesshu Foster's Atomic Aztecs
• Maia on Bluesky

Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

• Guest: Sean McTiernan
• Title: Dreams of Amputation by Gary J. Shipley
• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough
• Transcribers: Kate Dollarhyde

References:

• The SFUltra podcast
• Alasdair Gray’s Lanark & Poor Things
• James Joyce’s Ulysses
• Fredric Jameson
• Absolute DC comics
• Michael Comeau’s Hellberta
• Alan Grant & John Wagner’s Doomlord
• Ray Nayler’s Where the Axe is Buried
• Neil Sharpson’s When The Sparrow Falls
• Michael Mann's Blackhat
• Later Die Hards
• Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State
• Jean Baudrillard
• Shipley’s Stratagem of the Corpse, Crypt(o)spasm, and Serial Killing: A Philosophical Anthology
• Dennis Cooper
• Blake Butler’s “Sci-Fi Doesn’t Have to Be Dominated by Horny Bro Wizards” for Vice
• Darko Suvin
• Manuela Draeger's Kree (and Antoine Volodine’s other work)
• Mark Danielewski
• B.R. Yeager
• Apocalypse Party
• William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch
• Neal Stephenson
• Daniel Dennett
• Memetics
• Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly
• J.G. Ballard, M. John Harrison, John Updike
• Blake Butler’s Uxa.gov & the SFUltra episode
• Christopher Priest’s “Hull 0, Scunthorpe 3”
• Brian Evenson, Pierre Guyotat
• Harrison's Nova Swing
• Tad Williams' Otherland
• Derek Raymond (Rober Cook)’s He Died With His Eyes Open
• Thomas Metzinger The Ego Tunnel
• Bernard Wolfe’s Limbo
• Evenson’s Last Days / Brotherhood of Mutilation
• William Gibson, Bruce Sterling
• Warhammer 40k
• Ballard's Crash
• Curt Siodmak’s Donovan's Brain
• Matt from Bookpilled
• Nick Land
• CCRU & Dark Enlightenment
• Baudrillard’s The Transparency of Evil, Cool Memories, The Perfect Crime
• Mark Fisher, Kodwu Eshun, Kode9
• Fisher’s “Exiting the Vampire Castle”
• Andrea Dworkin
• Brion Gysin
• Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes
• Walter Hill's The Driver
• Brian Catling
• Ian Sinclair
• SFUltra episodes on Lanark, Poor Things, and Catling

Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

• Guest: Christian P. Haines
• Titles: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, and The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz 
• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough
• Transcriber: Kate Dollarhyde

References:

• Stephen King's The Shining and Carrie
• Rafael Bernal’s His Name Was Death
• Michel Nieva’s Dengue Boy
• Daryl Gregory’s When We Were Real
• Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model, Christian’s review for ARB
• Io9
• Our Opinions Are Correct
• Heinlein’s Starship Troopers
• Christian’s The Terraformers review for LARB
• Newitz’s Autonomous
• Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky, The Rolling Stones
• Archer
• Milton Friedman
• Orwell’s 1984
• Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
• James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse
• Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy
• Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed
• Ian McDonald’s New Moon trilogy
• Frank Herbert’s Dune
• Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17
• Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness
• Jo Walton's Among Others and our episode on it
• Holly Jean Buck’s After Geoengineering
• "Engineering Swallows Up Politics"
• Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock
• KSR’s Aurora
• McKenzie Wark’s Molecular Red
• Ulrich Haarbürste’s Roy Orbison Wrapped in Clingfilm
• Star Trek's “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”
• Spinoza’s idea of conatus
• Walter Kaufman's introduction to Martin Buber's I and Thou
• Kant's Categorical Imperative
• Abbot Elementary
• Delany’s Trouble On Triton
• Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Talents
• Marx’s Capital
• John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar
• Kohei Sato’s Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto
• KSR’s The Ministry for the Future, New York 2140
• Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest
• Gamers with Glasses
• Five Theses on Antifascist Game Criticism