Octothorpe

John is on the periphery, Alison is carving, and Liz went to Japan.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to [email protected], join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on X or on Mastodon or on Bluesky) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: con artistry, privilege, racism

• Letters of comment

• Jake Casella Brookins

• Sankey diagrams on the Ancillary Review of Books

• I’m a Fan of That

• SH@25 is a new, year-long interview and feature series that will delve into the archives, celebrate the work of past contributors and staff, and highlight the contributions of Strange Horizons to SFF publishing and the wider community.

• Booking flights on a phone

• World Fantasy Awards

• Strange Horizons review in two parts: one, two

• Erin Cairns has reported that Ekpeki stole a story and passed it off as his own

• On Bluesky

• Gautam Bhatia

• John: Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

• Alison was given free tickets by the venue’s PR team

• Neat effects like Tokyo Disneyland’s Pepper’s ghost or Shiriki Utundu

• Cover art: “Octothorpe, Octothorpe, Octothorpe” by Alison Scott

• Alt text: A pumpkin carved with an image of Beetlejuice, with the words “Episode 122” at the top of the image and “Octothorpe, Octothorpe, Octothorpe” at the bottom.

John, Alison and Liz read Grass by Sheri S Tepper.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to [email protected], join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on X or on Mastodon or on Bluesky) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: Rape, consensual interspecies sex, murder, classism, plague/disease

• Adam Roberts’ review of Grass

• Cover art: “Three Little Hippae” by Alison Scott

• Alt text: Three hippae stand on a landscape of alien grass and plants in blue, purple, red, teal, and orange underneath a pinkish sky. The words “Octothorpe 121” appear at the top and the words “Grass Sheri S Tepper” appear at the bottom.

John does a funny voice, Alison recoils, and Liz loves big stats and she cannot lie.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to [email protected], join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on X or on Mastodon or on Bluesky) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: Death (chapter 5)

• Letters of comment

• Abigail Nussbaum

• Alison closing a parenthesis

• Upcoming eclipses

• 2024 Sankey diagrams

• John: The Substance

• Definitely not Subterranea

• Cover art: “Judge Coxon” by Alison Scott

• Alt text: Words read ‘Octothorpe 120: Introducing Judge Coxon. “I am the lore”’. They are around a picture of John as a Judge in the style of 2000AD, holding a big stack of books. The logo of the Clarke Award may or may not appear in the artwork.

John is not assigning blame, Alison is someone, and Liz is bludgeoning.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to [email protected], join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on X or on Mastodon or on Bluesky or on Instagram) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: Sexual assault (Neil Gaiman allegations, at 39:28 to 42:02).

• Letters of comment

• Niall Harrison

• Andy on Mastodon

• Alan Fleming

• Chris Garcia

• June Young (email, 9 September)

• Martin Freeman circa 2001

• Tero on Mastodon

• Hugo finalists: Raj on Mastodon

• Ali Baker Brooks, Angela Rosin, Catherine Pickersgill, Curt Phillips, Damien Warman, Dave Coxon, España Sheriff, Farah Mendlesohn, Fiona Moore, Fran Dowd, Gav Reads, Iain Clark, Jonathan Baddeley, Julie Faith McMurray, Karen Schaffer, Leigh Edmonds, Lilian Edwards, Malcolm Hutchison, Mike Scott, Neil Ottenstein, Phil Dyson, Roseanna Pendlebury, Trish

• File 770

• Seattle 2025

• Seattle is having a Poetry Hugo

• Good guests

• John: Alien: Romulus

• Cover art: “We got a lot of letters” by Alison Scott

• Alt text: A famous photograph of Margaret Hamilton standing beside printed outputs of the code that took the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, overlaid with the words “Octothorpe 119” and “Our Listeners Write In”.

John is savage, Alison hates paper, and Liz likes stationery.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to [email protected], join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on X or on Mastodon or on Bluesky) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: harsh criticism (Publications), racism (Picks)

• Glasgow wants your feedback on Facebook

• Glasgow 2024 photographs on Flickr

• Staples

• Join fancon.dev on Discord

• John: The Acolyte

• Cover art: “Armadillo Pins” by Sara Felix (lettering by Alison Scott)

• Alt text: Three pins of armadillos flying colourful spaceships are on top of a piece of paper with blobs of glue that look like planets. The lettering “Octothorpe 118” appears above in a similar style to the pins.

John liked the entertainment, Alison didn’t queue, and Liz wanted soup.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to [email protected], join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on X or on Mastodon or on Bluesky) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: None

• Letters of comment

• Doug Faunt

• We are recusing for at least the 2025 Hugos

• “Allison [sic] looks exactly like she sounds lol. john does not”

• Stitch and Bitch by Kalanadi

• Cardinal Cox

• Back to Our Futures

• Cover art: “Hugo Evolution” by Iain J Clark (arranged by Alison Scott)

• Alt text: Three photographs dominate the centre of the image. The left-hand photograph is of a prototype Hugo made of rough wood and cardboard; the centre photograph is of a rough-ish wood base and tin foil rocket but with the actual acrylic and etching, and the right-hand photograph is of the finished Hugo Award. Text below the photos reads “protoprototype”, “prototype”, and “2024 Hugo”. Above, the words “Octothorpe 117” appear.

John, Alison and Liz have won Hugo Awards.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to [email protected], join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on X or on Mastodon or on Bluesky) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: It’s a live recording!

• Credits

• Cover art: “Octothorpe and Others” by Simon Bubb (CC BY-NC 2.0)

• Alt text: John, Liz and Alison (I know, listener, I know) are looking off to the right holding their Hugo Awards as people take photographs of them on the stage at the SEC Armadillo.

John is a busy bee, something’s bugging Alison, and Liz meets a wasp.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to [email protected], join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on X or on Mastodon or on Bluesky) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: Vote rigging and bureaucracy.

• Glasgow programme

• Saturday, 11:30: “Table talk: Octothorpe Podcast”

• Friday, 14:30: “Ahsoka: Fusing Clone Wars, Rebels and Heir to the Empire”

• Friday, 10:00: “The Difficult Second Album”

• Nothing because she’s saving herself just for you, listeners 💜

• Access is through the members’ portal

• File 770’s report

• Chris Garcia’s in-depth dive into the agenda is at Claims Department #74

• The “don’t do that Dave” resolutions (C1, 3–4): we are in favour

• Consultative vote on the indie film category

• We are in favour of Conann, Lovely, Dark and Deep, Mars Express, Tiger Stripes, and Mollie and Max in the Future

• The Boy and the Heron: released 8 December on 2,325 screens, made $35mn in 2023

• WSFA

• Glasgow has ~8,400 WSFS members, WSFS membership is £45, so 5% is ~£18k

• Here are links to the text of the two redacted resolutions

• D11 Statement of Values for Transparency and Fair Treatment

• c.f. our discussion of Kevin Standlee’s foot in his mouth on Episode 103

• Some of this stuff matters but it shouldn’t get debated this year

• We didn’t think that all of them were worth discussing, so you can assume we’re in favour/ambivalent of the ones we don’t discuss (unless we forgot one that’s very heinous)

• Cover art: “All the Popcorn” by Alison Scott

• Alt text: A giant stripy purple bucket of popcorn on a cinema screen says “Octothorpe 115 WSFS Special”, and John, Alison and Liz sit in the audience, silhouetted in the style of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. John is saying “We’re gonna need a bigger box of popcorn.”

John, Alison, and Liz discuss what they’re voting for in the Hugo Awards.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to [email protected], join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on X or on Mastodon or on Bluesky) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode:

• Letters of comment

• Ali Baker Brooks

• Fantasy Book Swap

• Alison Scott, Marianne Dreams and Tamarind and the Star of Ishta

• Novella

• ”Gathered in Translation” by Ken Liu

• The Midnight Pals that made Liz laugh

• John: Star Wars: Jedi: Survivor

• Cover art: “Worldcon Community Group Bingo Card” by Alison Scott

• Alt text: ”Octothorpe 114” is at the top, and the word ”Octothorpe” is written on a series of lottery balls. Below that, a bingo card, and below that, the words ”Worldcon Community Group Bingo Card". The items on the card are as follows:

• Can I convert pounds to Scottish money?

John is doing Discord, Liz is doing programme, and Alison isn’t working on the Worldcon.

An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to [email protected], join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on X or on Mastodon or on Bluesky) when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: None

• Letters of comment

• Karen Schaffer

• Peach and bourbon pie

• Farah Mendlesohn

• The Great Paladin Hunt by Mike Brunton

• Glasgow 2024 Worldcon Community Group on Facebook

• Humble Bundle

• The Streisand Effect

• (I know I got it slightly wrong in the episode!)

• 2024 Locus Award winners

• Brisbane in 2028

• File 770 report (with details of their socials/mailing list)

• The 2024 New Zealand NatCon

• John: Alan Wake 2

• Saga Anderson’s sweater

• Cover art: “Massive Lizard” by Alison Scott

• Alt text: Three stick figures run from Godzilla, who is depicted in the style of Godzilla Minus One. The words “Octothorpe 113” used to be at the top of the art, but Godzilla has knocked off the letters “O C T O”, is holding “H”, and is trying to eat “T”.