Daniel Abraham has written or co-written over twenty novels, among them some of my favorite recent science fiction and fantasy series. You may know him as one of the creators of the popular SyFy show The Expanse, but most recently he's just finished up his excellent series The Dagger and the Coin, the last installment of which—The Spider's War—came out in March. In our conversation, Daniel and I talked about many of the ideas and characters from his books, as well as what it's like to collaborate with another writer, and the process of adapting a story for television. In the second segment, Daniel started us off with a discussion of Johan Huizinga's book Homo Ludens, and its central concept of play behavior being the root of all human culture. From there we branched out to everything from the idea of money as a form of ritual magic to the competing narratives playing out in contemporary American society. It's heady stuff, but I had a blast talking to him.

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Show Notes:

• Daniel Abraham
• The Long Price Quartet
• MLN Hanover
• The Expanse (books)
• The Dagger and the Coin
• Daniel Abraham: The Two Tolkiens
• Medici Money (Tim Parks)
• Kushiel's Dart (Jacqueline Carey)
• Babylon 5
• The Diary of a Man in Despair (Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen)
• The Queen's Gambit (Walter Tevis)
• The Expanse (show)
• Le Ton Beau de Marot (Douglas Hofstadter)
• Homo Ludens (Johan Huizinga)