In this episode, Alan and Cat talk to writer Thomas Ha. They discuss the effects of covid on genre, Lit RPG, cozey fiction, writing across genres, Clarkesworld Magazine, Matt Diniman, Brian Evenson, preserving the status quo, writing villains, writing children, killing children in prose, inventing monsters, Thomas' recent collection, Uncertain Sons, and much more.

You can find Uncertain Sons And Other Stories here: https://undertowpublications.com/shop/uncertain-sons

In the third part of our column about the alt-right and Speculative Fiction fandom, Alan and Jordan break down a number of important concepts needed to understand the alt-right and how they view Speculative Fiction. Concepts include low time preferences, metapolitics, Archeofuturism, Faustianism, and mutant romances. we discuss the right wing and fandom and much more.

In this episode Alan reviews (books linked below):

• Double Edged Sword & Sorcery 1 published by Brackenbury Books 2024
  • The Walls of Shira Yulun by Dariel R.A. Quiogue
  • Waste Flowers by Bryn Hammond

• How to Surf a Hurricane by Todd Medema published by Atmosphere Press 2025

• Vigilance by Allen Stroud published by Flame Tree Press 2024

• Sub-Liminal by Alastair Miles published by Shadow Dragon Press 2025

• Unseen Gods by Justin Holley published by Flame Tree Press 2025

In this episode, Alan and Diane talk to writer and neuroscientist Arula Ratnakar. They discuss Phillip K. Dick, computational neursocience, hard science fiction, science and math communication, preceptions of reality, the neuroscience of neurodiversity, psychedelics, being neurodiverse in a neurotypical world, AI, Clarkesworld, evolving in public, and much more.

You can find most of her fiction here: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/?s=arula+ratnakar

In this episode, Alan talks to author and musician Josh Denslow. They discuss writing dialogue and movie scripts, music's influence on his writing, Marlon James, the break down of walls between speculative fiction and Literature, suprheros and comics, the importance of exploring new forms of art, Josh's novel Super Normal, living outside the US, extreme politics and family, humor in fiction, listening to music, their mutual struggle to have "favorite" bands, and Josh's new collection Magic Can't Save Us: Eighteen Tales of Likely Failure.

This time Paul Jessup tackles the politics of zombies in the classic Night of the Living Dead, as well as modern Train to Busan. He also discusses why hope is not naive and, as always, how horror can provide us with hope.

Be sure to check out his new book Cancer Eats the Heart. https://firebirdcreative.myshopify.com/products/cancer-eats-the-heart

Alan and a couple of engineers from the the Solapunk community, Navarre Bartz and Todd Medema, discuss everything you want to know about electric vehichles, battery technology, EVs that are not Tesla, and charging stations. Todd also discusses his new book, How to Surf a Hurricane, and how he got involved with Solapunk, and much more!

You can find How to Surf a Hurricane here: https://howtosurfahurricane.com/

In this episode, Alan and Diane talk to scholar, laywer, and author Gautam Bhatia. They discuss Bhatia's book The Sentence, The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, Anarchism, the Paris Commune of 1871, the Mondragon Cooperative, publishing in India, the views on genre in India, the sequal to The Sentence, and much more.

As discussed in the episode you can find the article Forest and Factory here: https://endnotes.org.uk/posts/forest-and-factory

In the second part of our column about the alt-right and Speculative Fiction fandom, we discuss the right wing and fandom. Alan and Jordan discuss why nerds/geeks are easy pickings for the alt-right, neurodiversity, eugenics, how the right wing uses fandom, Sad Puppies, Robert Heinlien, and much more.

In this episode, Alan and Cat talk to writer, aid worker, and sociologist Malka Older. They discuss new installments of The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, developing characters over the course of multiple books, exploring different forms of governance, writing mysteries, neurodiversity, Sherlock Holmes, Global Voices, justice in fiction, and much more.