Our 2024 book club concludes with Roger Zelazny’s 1963 novelette “A Rose for Ecclesiastes”, wherein a poet goes to Mars and discovers he’s not very good at describing dances.

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We have only good things to say about The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed (2021), though that doesn’t extend to the term “hopepunk” used in the marketing copy. Is this post-apocalyptic novella set in Alberta the best specifically Canadian piece of science fiction out there? We make the case that it is.

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90s fantasy is back, baby! We discuss The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (2019).

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Will we survive the fungal infestation that lurks beneath Toronto in The Marigold by Andrew F. Sullivan (2023)?

This horror/near-future science fiction/fantasy novel is packed with ideas and has plenty of relevant criticism of the direction Canada is heading, but doesn’t bring things together in a satisfactory way for the three of us. We talk about what we liked about the book, and the many (many) things that we didn’t.

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In the dying days of 2023, we came together to reflect on the best things that we read, watched, listened to and played this year. Tune in to the end for our “dishonourable mentions” as well, where we consider…the opposite.

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We wrap up our 2023 book club with a recent release, The Terraformers (2023) by Annalee Newitz. This throwback to the fix-up novel explores a lot of big ideas about ecology, biology and society, but do all the many, many elements work together as a whole? And what’s up with all the references to Canada? We discuss.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Our Opinions are Correct podcast with Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz

Tech Won’t Save Us podcast

A working-class memoir? In this day and age? We sit down to discuss Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (2022) by Kate Beaton.

Warning: Includes mentions of sexual assault and workplace harassment.

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We talk about Parable of the Sower (1993) by Octavia Butler, which begins in the far-future year of 2024. And yet somehow, this still seems like a shockingly plausible representation of what next year could like.

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We discuss Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges, and marvel at how much literature you can pack into so few pages.

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Just before the holidays, we’re back for a reflection on culture we experienced over the past year. Books, comics, films, TV, games – we talk about them all!

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