Ellie is a brilliant radio astronomer who has often felt alone in the world. When she detects an indisputably intelligent signal emanating from the Vega system, that all changes - for her and for the entire human race. 

The nations and people of the world begin to come together in the face of the alien intelligence, and humanity faces a simultaneous revival and crisis of faith. Ellie works with an international team of scientists to decode the layers of the Message, and eventually, they realize the Message contains plans for some kind of Machine. Should humanity invest the resources to build the Machine? And if they do, what will happen when they turn it on?

• Join the book club on discord!
• Related books we recommend:
  • Cosmos by Carl Sagan
  • Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
  • The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video (and see the short videos we've started posting every other week).

Hope you love it, keep reading y'all!

Hiro Protagonist is a self-described hacker working as a pizza-delivery driver and living in a storage unit at LAX. He lives in a US that has been fully corporatized - from Judge Bob’s Judicial System to Pastor Wayne’s Pearly Gates. 

To get away, Hiro spends much of his free-time in the Metaverse, where he wrote many of the subroutines that underpin the virtual world. One of his hacker friends, Da5id, is given a new virtual drug called Snow Crash that not only crashes his computer, but also destroys his brain in the real world. Hiro (and a hilarious cadre of friends) are drawn ever deeper into the worldwide conspiracy that is spilling out of the virtual world to threaten the real world.

• Link to buy the book (and help support the show!)
• Join the book club on discord!
• Written (and more shareable) review
• Related books we recommend:
  • Neuromancer by William Gibson
  • Babel-17 by Samuel Delany
  • Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video.

Keep reading y'all!

Michael Crichton was fresh out of Harvard Medical School when he wrote the Andromeda Strain - and we're so glad he did! The book that launched his literary career and all that followed, from Jurassic Park to Sphere.

Here's the setup:

A US government program is sending satellites with scoops into orbit, looking for alien organisms that can survive the void of space. When one of the scoops comes down in the Arizona desert two soldiers are sent out to pick it up. But as they get closer, they realize the signal has moved - someone has already picked up the object and moved it into the tiny town of Piedmont. As the two men pull into town, bodies line the streets. In less than five minutes they are dead too. 

The United States government is forced to mobilize Project Wildfire, a top-secret emergency response protocol. Four of the nation’s most elite biophysicists are summoned to a clandestine underground laboratory where they must race to understand and contain the crisis. But the Andromeda Strain proves different from anything they’ve ever seen - and what they don’t know could not only hurt them, but lead to unprecedented worldwide catastrophe.

• Link to buy the book (and help support the show!)
• Join the book club on discord!
• Related books we recommend:
  • The Hot Zone
  • Jurassic Park
  • Children of Ruin
  • Rendezvous with Rama
  • Red Mars

Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video.

Keep reading y'all!

The story is told via the diary of a Handmaid - a young woman living in Gilead, an extremely repressive, patriarchal society that has taken over the United States. We explore the dark world through her eyes, and follow her struggle to express herself, escape, or just take control back over any part of her life. 

What are the rules of this brutal society? And will the Handmaid ever see the people she loves again?

• Link to buy the book (and help support the show!): https://amzn.to/3DqPTxP
• Join the book club on discord! https://discord.gg/fHejh3PpR2
• Related books we recommend:
  • 1984 - https://amzn.to/3Y71TMO
  • The Testaments - https://amzn.to/3XTM1Oa
  • Brave New World - https://amzn.to/3kW4CKM
  • Never Let Me Go - https://amzn.to/3DsPFWP

Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video.

Keep reading y'all!

Jason Dessen is walking home one night when he realizes he is being followed. A strange man in a geisha mask abducts him at gunpoint, drives him to an abandoned building, takes his phone and clothes, and injects him with a strange drug. 

When Jason wakes up, he’s surrounded by strangers congratulating him for something he’s supposed to have achieved. In this world he’s not a college professor - they say he’s created something that seems impossible. He looks for his wife - but in this world she says she’s not his wife. His son was never born.

Is this world real, or a dream? And no matter what this place is, how can he get back to the people he loves?

Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video.

We also launched three new things this week!

1. A website - hugonauts.org - where you can read written reviews & see related books!
2. A Hugonauts book club discord to talk about books together (and everything else)! We're giving away 8 great sci-fi books to kick off the channel, enter to win on the discord channel.
3. Providing links to buy the books we recommend. It doesn't cost you any extra, but a percentage of anything you buy after clicking these links goes to the show, and the support really means a lot!

Keep reading y'all!

The story is told from the first person perspective of Laurence Smith—the self-styled “The Great Lorenzo”—a down-and-out actor who spends most of his time in bars. He's approached by a space-pilot who offers him a drink and, despite some trepidation about Lorenzo’s high opinion of himself, offers him a dangerous job at a very high pay rate. One of the solar system's most important politicians has been kidnapped, and they need someone to impersonate him until he's rescued. Lorenzo is quickly pulled deeper and deeper into the conspiracy, and has to keep up the act to avoid his own death and an all-out planetary war.

Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video.

Drop us a line:

• https://twitter.com/hugonautspod
• https://www.instagram.com/hugonautspodcast/
• https://www.tiktok.com/@hugonautspodcast 
• [email protected]

It’s the year 2025, and society is descending into anarchy in the face of climate change and other disasters. We see the world through the diary entries of Lauren Olamina, a teenager living in a walled-in neighborhood in the exurbs of Los Angeles. Jobs are scarce, food and water are increasingly expensive, and armed gangs and drug addicts control the streets outside. Lauren’s father, a pastor and professor at a local college, tries to keep their little community safe, but Lauren feels things going to pieces and is always preparing for things to get worse. When it all comes crashing down, will she be ready?

Or you can watch the episode on YouTube if you prefer video.

Drop us a line:

•  https://twitter.com/hugonautspod 
• https://www.instagram.com/hugonautspodcast/ 
• https://www.tiktok.com/@hugonautspodcast 
• [email protected]

Seth Fishman is one of the biggest movers and shakers in the world of sci-fi publishing, representing Cixin Liu, Ann Leckie, Mary Robinette Kowal, Becky Chambers, Mur Lafferty, River Solomon, P Djeli Clark, and many others (plus huge names in lots of other genres too, like Randall Munroe, the creator of XKCD). 

We had a great time talking with him about what's happening behind-the-scenes in sci-fi, what the publishers like are looking for, and an honestly inspiring speech about how to talk about your own work.

After this episode we’re taking a break for the holidays and closing out our first season (and so Cody can take his honeymoon!) We'll be back on December 6th to talk about Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, and then returning to our regular schedule every two weeks starting January 3rd. We'll be missing y'all till then!

Drop us a line:

[email protected]

https://twitter.com/hugonautspod

https://www.instagram.com/hugonautspodcast/

Aliens have taken a snapshot of the entire earth, down to 1 meter of resolution - we know because they lit the entire sky on fire to do it. 

Then, humanity detected something out at the very edge of the solar system sending a signal - but not to us. The signal is being sent out, into deep space, to another planet, or to something already on the way to Earth. 

A ship is dispatched with a crew of five - including two technical specialists who have been deeply biologically and technologically enhanced, a soldier, a resurrected Vampire who interfaces with the ship AI to lead the crew, and our protagonist, Siri, whose job is to understand those specialists and translate their insights for the people back home. What will they find, out in the darkness? 

As always, we also recommend and discuss some similar books if you are looking for more great books to read. This week we recommend: 

• The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
• Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

Or you can watch the episode on YouTube here.

This week we are so excited to interview Ken Liu! All of his writing and translation work is excellent, but if you haven't read his short story collection The Paper Menagerie  we recommend you start there, it's full of incredibly memorable stories.

We talked with Ken about:

• Growing up in both China and America
• Robo-Ken - the neural network he built to help write a story
• The singularity and uploading your consciousness
• His background as a programmer and lawyer
• The importance of family in his stories
• The meaning of silkpunk and his series The Dandelion Dynasty

We'll be releasing more bonus content from the Hugo Awards on YouTube over the next week - check those out on our YouTube channel if you haven't already subscribed!

Next episode we'll be discussing Peter Watt's Blindsight - look forward to talking with y'all then. Happy reading everybody!