A Meal of Thorns

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Credits:

• Guest: Garrett Bridger Gilmore
• Title: The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

References:

• “The Horror At Redhook” by H.P. Lovecraft
• Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
• The Night Ocean by Paul LaFarge
• Lone Women by Victor LaValle
• The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft
• “The Lovecraft Boomlet” of adaptions/retellings/reworkings
• Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• Get Out directed by Jordan Peele
• Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther run, Between the World and Me, The Water Dancer
• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
• The World Fantasy Award
• Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
• Kindred by Octavia Butler
• Slapboxing with Jesus by Victor LaValle
• James by Percival Everett
• Aida Levy-Hussen’s How to Read African American Literature- reparative & prohibitive readings
• Toni Morrison’s Beloved
• P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout
• “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
• HPL’s At the Mountains of Madness
• "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" by The Mountain Goats, from Heretic Pride
• Vajra Chandrasekera’s The Saint of Bright Doors
• R.F. Kuang’s Babel, or The Necessity of Violence
• Garrett's twitter
• Pauline Hopkins’ Of One Blood

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

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

• Guest: Shinjini Dey
• Title: Tainaron: Mail From Another City by Leena Krohn, translated by Hildi Hawkins
• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

References:

• George Eliot’s Silas Marner, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx 
• The “Post-Exotic” novels by Antoine Volodine etc- Kree, Mevlido’s Dreams, Postexoticism in 12 Lessons
• The New Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
• On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara Haveland
• Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer
• Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities
• Renee Gladman’s Houses of Ravicka
• "Big Dumb Objects"
• Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach
• Jeff VanderMeer’s Hummingbird Salamander & Casella’s review
• "The Look", "The Gaze"
• Entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre & mystic Angelus Silesius
• Emmanuel Levinas & Martin Buber
• Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger In Olondria
• Nghi Vo’s The City in Glass & Casella’s review
• Protagoras
• “Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose”
• Longhorn beetles
• J.R.R. Tolkien’s idea of “sub-creation”
• Shinjini’s website & twitter
• How did I fail to mention TMBG's "Snail Shell"?

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

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

• Guest: Sunny Moraine
• Title: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

References:

• Your Shadow Half Remains
• Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History
• Looming Low
• Singing With All My Skin and Bone
• Serial horror podcast Gone
• The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox
• Gibson's Neuromancer, Virtual Light, Mona Lisa Overdrive, “The Gernsback Continuum”, The Peripheral, “Fragments of a Hologram Rose”
• Frank Herbert’s Dune and Dune Messiah
• Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness
• Nathan Ballingrud’s Crypt of the Moon Spider, The Strange, and North American Lake Monsters
• China Miéville’s The City and the City
• Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopia
• Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation
• William Gibson & the Futures of Contemporary Culture edited by Mitch R. Murray and Matthias Nilges
• Sheryl Vint & Charles Yu
• Beat writers; Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs
• Imagism 
• Mono No Aware
• Speculative Realism/Object Oriented Ontology; Jane Bennett, Graham Harman, Timothy Morton
• C.J. Cherryh's notion of “Third Person Intense Internal”
• Aimee Pokwatka’s Self Portrait With Nothing
• Kids by The Midnight
• Sonic Nurse by Sonic Youth
• Amplitudes edited by Lee Mandelo
• Sunny on Bluesky
• World Fantasy Awards

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

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

• Guest: Juan Martinez
• Title: Gilded Needles by Michael McDowell
• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

References:

• Juan’s collection Best Worst American & horror novel Extended Stay
• Jackleg Press
• StoryStudio
• Tananarive Due's The Reformatory
• Eden Robins’ Remember You Will Die
• Sofia Samatar's The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain
• Ananda Lima's Craft: Stories I Told the Devil
• Jesse Ball's The Repeat Room
• T.E.D. Klein’s The Ceremonies
• Peter Straub
• Beetlejuice, directed by Timothy Burton
• Tales from the Crypt & Tales from the Darkside
• The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick
• McDowell's The Elementals
• "A little bit like Edith Wharton with more murder"
• Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg
• Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame & Les Misérables
• Triangle of Sadness, directed by Ruben Östlund
• Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo
• The Abominable Dr. Phibes, directed by Robert Fuest
• They Might Be Giants
• Lydia Lunch
• Robert Mapplethorpe
• Patti Smith
• Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus & Julie Taymor’s film adaptation
• Thomas Ligotti, Bruno Schulz, & Franz Kafka
• McDowell's Death Collection
• Stephen King, Philip K. Dick, & C.J. Cherryh
• Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird
• The Ghosts of Where We Are From
• Juan’s DNC protest coverage at the Believer, parts one & two
• Follow Juan on Instagram & Threads for the good doodle content

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

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

• Guest: Amal El-Mohtar
• Title: The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

References:

• Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera
• In Universes by Emmet North
• The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar
• Amal’s review of those three novels
• The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
• The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone
• Star Wars
• Wicked problems
• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
• Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R.F. Kuang
• The Battle of Algiers directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
• Tony Gilroy’s Star Wars series Andor
• The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
• The sequels to Traitor Baru, The Monster Baru Cormorant & The Tyrant Baru Cormorant
• Commedia dell’arte
• Lee Mandelo's writing on Eve Sedwgick, paranoid & reparative reading
• Kameron Hurley & Arkady Martine
• Exordia by Seth Dickinson
• The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies
• Amal's next book, The River Has Roots
• The ballad of The Two Sisters/The Bonny Swans
• Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

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

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

• Host: Jake Casella Brookins
• Guest: Dan Hartland
• Title: The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

References:

• This blog has a round-up of articles and commentary on the Gaiman allegations.
• Dan’s Snap! Criticism series at Ancillary
• Handheld Press
• Vonda McInty’re The Exile Waiting & Dreamsnake
• The 2024 Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Annie Luong on Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last
• Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle
• Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise & Casella’s review
• Don DeLillo’s White Noise
• Winterson’s Written on the Body, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal, and Frankisstein
• Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels
• William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and The Winter’s Tale
• China Miéville’s The City & The City (though I don’t think we actually name it)
• Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis
• Julian Barnes’ A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
• The 1980s: A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction edited by Emily Horton, Philip Tew, and Leigh Wilson
• Neil Gaiman, Jeff Noon, Steph Swainston
• “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot
• Frank Herbert’s Dune
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Wendy Roy on Cherie Dimaline
• William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition and others
• Dan’s piece in LARB on Christopher Priest and his last novel, Airside

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

Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon!

Credits:

• Guest: A.V. Marraccini
• Title: The Employees by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

References:

• Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor
• Anton Hur’s Toward Eternity and Casella’s review
• A.V.’s forthcoming book, These New Fragilities
• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain Gang All-Stars
• Presses discussed:
• Lolli Editions
• New Directions
• FSG Press
• Fitzarraldo
• Seven Stories
• Tor
• Inside the Castle
• Kristina Carlson’s Eunuch translated from the Finnish by Mikko Alapuro
• Psychedlic Ray Bradbury covers
• Jenny Hval’s novels, such as Paradise Rot
• Samuel R. Delany
• Vajra Chandrasekera’s The Saint of Bright Doors
• Gretchen Felker-Martin Manhunt and Cuckoo
• John Trefry
• Olga Ravn's My Work
• Lea Guldditte Hestelund's sculpture
• Interview with Ravn about Hestelund 
• Le Guin's Carrier Bag theory of fiction
• Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick’s 2001
• Stanislaw Lem’s Fiasco
• Angélica Gorodischer
• Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future
• Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? & Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner
• Battlestar Galactica
• Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness
• Jorge Luis Borges & Italo Calvino
• E. Catherine Tobler's The Necessity of Stars
• Stanislaw Lem's Solaris
• Ravn's Twitter @OlgaRavn
• AV on Twitter @saintsoftness

Taylor Driggers joins us to talk about the second volume in C.S. Lewis's SPACE TRILOGY. A richly-described and philosophical science fiction story, PERELANDRA has a lot that's interesting and a lot that's pretty weird when you think about it.

A Meal of Thorns is a podcast from the Ancillary Review of Books.

Credits:

• Guest: Taylor Driggers
• Title: Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

References:

• Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature: Fantastic Incarnations and the Deconstruction of Theology by Taylor Driggers
• The Ursula Le Guin Archives
• Laurie Marks’ Elemental Logic novel series
• Philophantast conference
• The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow
• Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman (and our episode on it)
• The Two Doctors Górski by Isaac Fellman
• The other two novels in the Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength
• Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia
• The Inklings (wiki link)
• Lewis’s A Grief Observed
• Lewis’s final novel Till We Have Faces
• Ursula Le Guin’s review of Lewis’s The Dark Tower
• Lewis’s The Great Divorce, Pilgrim’s Regress, and The Screwtape Letters
• Stephen Metcalf, “Language and Self-Consciousness: The Making and Breaking of C.S. Lewis’ Personae” in Word and Story in C. S. Lewis: Language and Narrative in Theory and Practice ed. Peter J. Schakel & Charles A. Huttar
• Lewis’s debate with Elizabeth Anscombe
• J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
• Ridley Scott’s Alien
• “Sehnsucht”, the concept of inconsolable longing
• The Transformers franchise
• Aamer Rahman on defeating Nazis
• Satan (Milton’s version)
• Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and specifically the religion/philosophy of the Handdara
• Sofia Samatar’s The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain
• Casella’s essay on (not) defending science fiction against criticisms of complicity
• Taylor’s seminar for his work with the Le Guin Fellowship on historicizing queerness in fantasy and “queer hiddenness in the archive”, available online this fall/winter.
• Greg Egan’s “Oracle”, available on his site (and in the collections Oceanic and The Best of Greg Egan)

RSS feed | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | +lots of other platforms (let us know if it’s not on your favorite)

You can follow A Meal of Thorns on Twitter and Bluesky.

Email us at [email protected].

You can support the podcast (and the Ancillary Review of Books) by joining our Patreon. For $5 and up, you get access to ARB's exclusive monthly newsletter, our Discord community, and more to come.

Interested in purchasing a book we mentioned on the show? Check the show notes for Bookshop links; we get a cut if you buy them through our Bookshop!

It seems small, but it really does help: like and share our posts! Leave a comment or review wherever you find us. The internet's kind of broken, but that kind of thing really does help people hear about the work we're doing.

Ancillary Review editors Jake Casella Brookins and Misha Grifka Wander discuss Susanna Clarke's PIRANESI: epistolary realism and the novel, numinous personhood, and glimpses of utopia in rejecting capitalist expectations.

A Meal of Thorns is a podcast from the Ancillary Review of Books.

Credits:

Guest: Misha Grifka Wander

Title: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia

Artwork by Rob Patterson

Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

References:

• Misha’s interviews with Sofia Samatar and Vajra Chandrasekera
• Exordia by Seth Dickinson
• Arrival (Villeneuve’s adaptation of Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”)
• Weird Black Girls by Elwin Cotman
• Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou
• Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven’s film adaptation)
• The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar
• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
• Through the Looking Glass & Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Christopher Nolan’s Memento
• Philosopher’s including John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Rawls
• Augustine’s Confessions
• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
• “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges
• Anathem by Neal Stephenson
• A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar
• The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells
• David Lynch’s Twin Peaks
• Nic Pizzolatto’s True Detective

Contact

RSS feed | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | +lots of other platforms (let us know if it’s not on your favorite)

You can follow A Meal of Thorns on Twitter and Bluesky.

Email us at [email protected].

Support the Show!

You can support the podcast (and the Ancillary Review of Books) by joining our Patreon. For $5 and up, you get access to ARB’s exclusive monthly newsletter, our Discord community, and more to come.

Interested in purchasing a book we mentioned on the show? Check the show notes for Bookshop links; we get a cut if you buy them through our Bookshop!

It seems small, but it really does help: like and share our posts! Leave a comment or review wherever you find us. The internet’s kind of broken, but that kind of thing really does help people hear about the work we’re doing.

Host Jake Casella Brookins talks to critic Roseanna Pendlebury about Isaac Fellman's DEAD COLLECTIONS (a novel about a trans vampire archivist) and how it addresses grief, portrayals of bodies and identities over time, fanfic and low-budget television, and the place of more experimental fiction in genre publishing.

Contact

• RSS feed | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | +lots of other platforms (let us know if it’s not on your favorite)
• You can follow A Meal of Thorns on Twitter and Bluesky.
• Email us at [email protected].

Support the Show!

• You can support the podcast (and the Ancillary Review of Books) by joining our Patreon. For $5 and up, you get access to ARB’s exclusive monthly newsletter, our Discord community, and more to come.
• Interested in purchasing a book we mentioned on the show? Check the show notes for Bookshop links; we get a cut if you buy them through our Bookshop!
• It seems small, but it really does help: like and share our posts! Leave a comment or review wherever you find us. The internet’s kind of broken, but that kind of thing really does help people hear about the work we’re doing.