By Brent Gaisford, Cody Troyer
4.8
5252 ratings
The podcast currently has 68 episodes available.
As always, no spoilers until the end when we clearly call it out before getting into the full plot explanation and discussion.
This episode is sponsored by The Song of Immaru: Earth's Door by PJ Dudek, which you can get on print, audiobook, or kindle here.
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This episode is sponsored by The Dawn series by Ray N. Kuili, which you can get on print, audiobook, or kindle here.
All the books in the episode (with YT links to those we've got full episodes on, or search for them in your podcast app):
The Mercy of Gods follows a team of research scientists trying to survive an alien invasion. The Carryx are ruthless - killing 1/8 of the population immediately as they arrive to encourage the survivors to cooperate. Our team, along with many others, are then abducted and brought to a Carryx planet, where they are set loose in an open-air prison populated by hundreds of other alien races. They’re told that if they want to survive they must be useful to the Carryx. Will they resist, or decide to serve the alien overlords? And what does service even mean to aliens who think totally differently?
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A radio astronomer discovers a signal coming from Alpha Centauri - strange, beautiful alien voices, singing. While the rest of the world is transfixed by the broadcast, a catholic order, the Jesuits, take action and launch a mission to the planet of Rakhat. But from the outset we know the mission is doomed to tragedy, because a second storyline follows Emilio Sandoz after his return to Earth. The only survivor of the mission, he struggles to heal his wounds and to reconcile his faith with the deaths of his friends, and prepare to tell the world the truth of what happened on Rakhat.
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In the 23rd century Johnny Rico enlists in the Mobile Infantry, the heart of the human military. As he nears completion of an intensely rigorous training program to learn how to fight and use his power armor, war breaks out between humanity and the bugs. The bugs are aliens with a hive mind, who attack and destroy Buenos Aires, and Johnny and his friends must strive to survive and defend humanity through the brutal war.
It's also full of deeply interesting (and controversial) ideas about duty, service, crime and punishment, and so much more. If you like military sci-fi this is a must-read, and if you are into philosophical SF you are going to be pleasantly surprised how much it will stick with you and make you think.
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We rank the nominees for the 2024 Hugo award, plus 6 more from last year!
The books:
Over the years we've built up a pretty big backlog of short novels that we really liked but hadn't had a chance to cover on the show - so today we're bursting that dam.
The seven books we recommend in this ep:
There is only one human settlement on the planet of Arieka. There, in Embassytown, a young woman named Avice grows up in a strange world between worlds, where all that is human and all that is alien collide without ever really coming together. That's not much of a summary, but this is a book that really benefits from going in mostly blind, so we made sure to keep things really clean in the pre-spoilers section too.
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If you want to see the complete survey results, including all the top books, favorite authors, and short stories come find them on the discord.
Video version of this episode available on YouTube.
The 2024 Nebula awards are coming up, so we read and ranked all the books for ya. And we've got good news, this was a great year for fantasy and sci-fi!
The short listed books:
The podcast currently has 68 episodes available.
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