Synthesized Sunsets

This week’s guest is qntm: he is most well known as the author of There Is No Antimemetics Division, a sci-fi horror novel depicting humanity’s battles against malevolent entities which erase all memory of their presence. He also has written a number of other fantastic short pieces of speculative web fiction you can find on his website or short story collection Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories.

In addition to the book itself we discuss how There Is No Antimemetics Division’s origins as a collection of tales on the collaborative fictional database SCP-Foundation, Kevin’s article on Antimemetics, and the future of fiction on or about the internet.

Hope you enjoy listening!

TIMESTAMPS:

0:12 - Introduction

1:01 - What is an antimeme?

5:24 - How did There Is No Antimemetics Division come to be?

7:54 - Antimemetics is a book where characters are forced to act without context

9:21 - Similarities between Antimemetics and a time travel story

11:12 - Writing characters who do not have a consistent memory and narrative

13:50 - Very little of what we sense is actually remembered

17:07 - Antimemetics had a lot of momentum

18:15 - Serialization forces you to make something happen in every chapter

18:58 - Does qntm view himself as a web fiction author?

22:48 - Writing a realistic portrayal of the internet

25:08 - When writing internet chatroom fiction don’t use the backspace key

26:08 - Maintaining old versions of stories

28:58 - It is instructive to have access to earlier versions of a work

29:45 - Discussing Kevin’s article “There Is No Antimemetics Division as a Reminder of the Internet’s Wild Potential”

30:12 - Fiction is less optimistic about the internet than it used to be

33:16 - There are less websites nowadays

35:58 - The internet is no longer opt-in

38:35 - Conclusion

39:47 - Start of Synthesized Sunsets Backstage

41:15 - Discussing Valuable Humans in Transit Collection

41:47 - These are stories that are clearly written on the internet

43:10 - Discussing “The Difference”

48:41 - “Cripes does anyone remember google people”

51:57 - Cool to read a story that successfully predicted the future

53:31 - Versioning stories complete with a list of dependencies

57:30 - Discussing Kevin’s recent article “The Brilliance & Excess of The Wandering Inn”

1:00:36 - The genre of The Wandering Inn is “long”

1:05:36 - When writing a story this long you already have reader buy-in to do whatever you want as an author

1:08:31 - The Wandering Inn tells big world spanning stories from the perspective of individuals

This week’s guest is Cairo Smith: a prolific novelist and filmmaker who edits the literary magazine Futurist Letters here on Substack. We sat down to talk about his extremely online novel Scenebux and the extremely online subcultures that inspired it.

We also talk about his novels Current Affairs and Komodo, as well as his short AI horror film Red Team. And we couldn’t resist talking about Vibecamp, which makes a brief cameo in Scenebux as “Edgelands”. Check out Cairo on Substack at Futurist Letters or at Askari Productions, where you can find out all about his upcoming projects.

(This episode was recorded quite a long time ago, so we apologize if anything is out of date.)

TIMESTAMPS

00:00:12 – Intro

00:02:20 – Reinventing old forms of media in the Internet age

00:04:51 – The novelty of seeing tech slop Twitter in a real novel

00:08:36 – Why indie fiction is able to be more up-to-the-minute than trad pub

00:10:30 – ALL THAT WE SEE OR SEEM and the irrealism of “realistic” fiction in 2026

00:14:10 – When should you take the L for the art?

00:17:46 – The excitement of independently coming to ideas at the same time as everybody else

00:21:27 – Scenebux and the vibes at Vibecamp

00:27:47 – Kevin’s anecdote about the “smell guy”

00:31:28 – The importance of subcultural preservation in literature

00:31:56 – Jargon as an antimemetic defense against subcultural dilution

00:32:38 – The short film Red Team by Cairo Smith

00:37:36 – The changing role of the writer across eras

00:42:17 – Will anything replace the Hollywood film?

00:46:06 – Conclusion and final recommendations

00:48:42 – Synthesized Sunsets Backstage begins

00:49:26 – Brief synopsis of Komodo and Current Affairs

00:52:35 – Komodo discussion

00:55:13 – Kevin’s thoughts on Scenebux

01:00:25 – What is Vibecamp?

01:01:40 – Gordon explains why being waterboarded is fun

01:08:56 – Kevin yaps about his upcoming novel

01:14:35 – Conclusion and final recommendations

This week is a special episode with lawyer and sports podcast host James Hirsh who recently competed against Kevin Kodama on Jeopardy! We talked about their experience on the show and sports in Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Hope you enjoy!

TIMESTAMPS:

0:14 - Introduction

0:30 - Was the Jeopardy experience as expected

2:18 - Jeopardy was more fun than expected

4:02 - Anything especially nerve-wracking about Jeopardy

7:05 - Daily Double strategy

13:41 - Lack of sports in SFF

17:41 - Sports in SFF normally involve actual death

21:16 - Sports will have to reckon with continued advances in technology

27:13 - Sports need to be willing to change incrementally

27:40 - Conclusion and Recommendation of “1984 and Beyond” Playboy Magazine Interview (Unfortunately was unable to find this online but it appears in Playboy’s July 1963 issue)

29:35 - Start of Synthesized Sunsets Backstage

31:47 - Kevin got along well with Ken Jennings

34:06 - Lowbrow culture doesn’t really appear in SFF

35:27 - SFF stories, even futurist ones, don’t have modern economies

39:11 - Hockey does a great job of crafting a good watching experience through its rules

41:21 - MMA is more strategic than might be expected

45:26 - Recommendation of “Heretics” by GK Chesterton

We were excited to have Lillian Wang Selonick back on the podcast as a repeat guest! We discuss her story published in Synthesized Sunsets “The Waters of Lethe”, her recent travels in Japan and Korea, the sense of wonder at the center of Sci-Fi, the evolution of the meaning of the word nerd, and more.

Apologies for the really long delay between episodes. We have two more episodes recorded so the next few should come out in the next few weeks. In more exciting news, Kevin Kodama will be competing on Jeopardy this coming Wednesday February 25th, so check that out if you are interested.

Hope you enjoy listening!

TIMESTAMPS:

0:14 - Introduction

0:43 - Lillian’s recent trip to Korea and Japan

5:17 - It’s cool that for a character language your writing system doesn’t change over time

10:44 - Discussing Lillian’s story “The Waters of Lethe”

12:20 - Writing with a character voice very different from your own

18:35 - Researching the science for short stories

21:13 - Cixin Liu’s “Church of Sci-Fi” essay from “A View From the Stars” and the sense of wonder

25:41 - There is good Sci-Fi that doesn’t try to elicit this feeling

33:30 - Sci-Fi is more centered on this awe feeling in China

35:23 - Western translations try to add gravitas to Cixin Liu

38:03 - Sci-Fi movies like Interstellar and 2001 are good at creating this awe feeling

42:51 - Evolution of what it means to be a “nerd”

48:51 - Nerd culture used to have a high barrier to entry

53:19 - Being a nerd became way cooler in the early 2010s

55:38 - Prose can do things that video can’t

57:46 - Conclusion and Lillian’s story recommendation “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges

59:54 - Start of Synthesized Sunsets Backstage

1:02:23 - People come of age much more gradually nowadays

1:10:31 - Rehashing the Church of Sci-Fi essay

1:11:45 - Cixin Liu gets the same criticisms in China with regards to characters

1:14:52 - The universe should be a protagonist in Sci-Fi

1:22:32 - There is an unrealized demand for Sci-Fi with this focus on a sense of wonder

1:29:56 - Discussing Kevin’s article “There Is No Antimemetics Division as a Reminder of the Internet’s Wild Potential”

1:32:05 - SCP Foundation and “There Is No Antimemetics Division”

1:37:54 - SCP Foundation was a cool thing you would run into from time to time

1:46:27 - “There Is No Antimemetics Division” will probably not funnel people towards web fiction

1:48:46 - Going on the internet is like looking up at the night sky

1:51:41 - The ol’ reddit switcheroo

1:55:57 - More Sci-fi writers used to be on the cutting edge of science

1:57:02 - Conclusion

This week’s guest is author, lawyer, and engineer Ken Liu— a man of many talents. You may know him for his collections The Paper Menagerie and The Hidden Girl, his fantasy quartet The Dandelion Dynasty, inspiring the show Pantheon, or perhaps even translating The Three-Body Problem. His recent novel All That We See or Seem is a near-future thriller about a beloved AI ‘dream artist’ who disappears without a trace, as well as the hacker trying to find her. It is the first of several planned ‘Julia Z novels’.

In this episode, we discussed Liu’s inspiration for this new novel, his concept of ‘silkpunk’ in the context of The Dandelion Dynasty, and the uncertain future of art in the age of AI. You can find more information about him on his website kenliu.name or right here on Substack at The Lion's Teeth. Enjoy!

TIMESTAMPS

00:00:12 – Intro

00:00:56 – Ken Liu’s new thriller All That We See or Seem

00:02:22 – “Dreamweaving” and why using AI feels like a dream

00:09:26 – Why did LLMs not make it into literature earlier?

00:18:13 – Writing near-future SF and “Real Artists”

00:27:36 – AI as a copying machine of the “desired original”

00:34:02 – Compensating artists in the age of AI

00:41:53 – Silkpunk and The Dandelion Dynasty

00:49:05 – Tax policy and cultural technology

00:56:23 – “All life is an experiment”

00:00:57 – Conclusion and final recommendations

01:02:51 – Synthesized Sunsets Backstage begins

01:05:17 – Ken Liu is unusually optimistic about AI art

01:12:22 – How will idiolects of AI and humans feed off each other?

01:18:03 – The Dandelion Dynasty as an experiment in exposition

01:23:45 – The character of Mata Zyndu and writing morality out of time

01:26:06 – The Paper Menagerie and The Hidden Girl are really different

01:27:44 – “Byzantine Empathy” by Ken Liu

01:30:29 – Ken Liu on the irrealism of fiction that avoids technology

01:33:03 – New season / reopening for submissions

01:35:03 – Conclusion and final recommendations

We brought back friends of the podcast Dylan O’Neal and Trevor Waldorf for more of a book club style informal conversation discussing some books and stories with a bit of a loose Halloween theme as we recorded this episode a few days before Halloween. We discussed the novel “Something Wicked This Way Comes” by Ray Bradbury, and short stories “All Summer in a Day,” also by Bradbury, “Mountain” and “Cannonball” by Cixin Liu, as well as “Mono no Aware” by Ken Liu.

In the backstage portion of the podcast, we discuss Kevin’s article Cixin Liu’s Paracosmal Worlds as well as Gordon’s review of the Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer.

We hope you enjoy listening!

TIMESTAMPS:

0:12 - Introduction

2:02 - Discussing “All Summer In a Day” by Ray Bradbury

7:34 - Lots of media for children is written for adults

13:29 - Writing humanity as a character

17:00 - The ridiculous situation in which Kevin attempted to read “Something Wicked This Way Comes”

22:37 - Children’s horror is scarier than adult horror

25:25 - Monster House and other scary children’s movies

29:51 - Scary kids movies are supposed to be disorienting and strange

32:19 - Something Wicked This Way Comes is a better coming of age novel than a horror one

37:15 - Circus/Carnival Experiences

42:45 - There are less alternative lifestyles nowadays

47:09 - Kids used to do way more crazy s**t

48:54 - Cixin Liu writes stories that are childishly awesome

51:15 - Discussing “Cannonball” by Cixin Liu

58:31 - Cixin Liu is marketed in a very serious way that clashes with his fiction

1:03:24 - Discussing “Mountain” by Cixin Liu

1:05:26 - Cixin Liu crafts characters who have a single purpose

1:07:21 - Discussing “Mono no Aware” by Ken Liu

1:13:11 - Conclusion short story recommendation of “The Last Rung on the Ladder” by Stephen King and Dylan’s upcoming novel “Orange Sky, Dark Sun”

1:16:00 - Start of Synthesized Sunsets Backstage

1:16:20 - Getting an outsider’s perspective on Cixin Liu stories

1:18:05 - The swimming up the mountain scene in “Mountain” is awesome

1:25:18 - Discussing Kevin’s article, Cixin Liu’s Paracosmal Worlds

1:33:25 - Discussing Gordon’s Review of the Terra Ignota Series by Ada Palmer

1:38:18 - Some thoughts on Terra Ignota that eventually lead to this essay

1:41:44 - Too Like The Lightning is very difficult to follow

1:44:59 - Really difficult to make all 3 of really interesting speculative ideas, really interesting prose, and understandable

1:46:00 - The Dandelion Dynasty sort of solves this by not having many speculative ideas in the first book, then dumping more on you in future books when it is easier to follow

1:49:49 - Conclusion and Short Fiction Recommendation “Five Stages of Grief after the Alien Invasion” by Caroline M. Yoachim

This week we talked to Dylan O’Neal, author of the first short story submission accepted by Synthesized Sunsets, Snowlight. In addition to the story, we discussed what got him into writing, how to write compelling children in stories, lucid dreaming, Game of Thrones, and the book he is working on currently, “Orange Sky, Dark Sun”.

Similar to the last couple episodes this one was recorded a long time ago, but in the backstage portion was recorded more recently we discussed Kevin’s recent article in Republic of Letters, “Ah, The Nerdish Joys Of Quizbowl.”

We hope you enjoy!

TIMESTAMPS:

0:12 - Introduction

0:52 - How did you get into writing?

4:40 - Everyone reads in elementary school

7:17 - After a certain amount of reading you will probably feel compelled to write

8:26 - What is the starting point for your writing?

13:31 - Discussing Dylan’s story “Snowlight”

17:31 - Kids are often not believable in fiction

22:27 - Kids often don’t think about what they are capable of doing

27:20 - Lucid dreaming

32:42 - How do you create a dreamlike register?

36:06 - Many of Dylan’s favorite authors are Sci-fi adjacent (Kurt Vonnegut, George Saunders, George R.R. Martin, Stephen King)

37:45 - Do you see yourself as or becoming a sci-fi author?

40:06 - It’s hard to make phone usage seem beautiful

42:37 - Kurt Vonnegut and “Shapes of Stories”

45:26 - Stories with pretty much any shape can work well if executed well

50:08 - It’s hard for short stories to compete with other more attention grabbing forms of short media

53:29 - Screenwriting

57:03 - It’s tough to read a lot if you do not read primarily for entertainment

1:00:33 - A Song of Ice and Fire improves reading other fantasy series by raising the stakes

1:01:35 - Game of Thrones was the first fantasy book to really successfully break from the Lord of the Rings mold

1:04:38 - Dylan pitches his upcoming book “Orange Sky, Dark Sun”

1:10:11 - Conclusion and Short Story Recommendations: “The Man in the Black Suit” by Stephen King, “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, and “Two Talented Bastids” by Stephen King.

1:11:45 - Start of Synthesized Sunsets Backstage

1:12:13 - It’s cool to have a compulsion to write

1:15:15 - Children are often far more one-dimensional in stories

1:16:34 - Kids have agency

1:17:48 - Discussing Kevin’s Quizbowl article for Republic of Letters “Ah, The Nerdish Joys Of Quizbowl”

1:19:03 - Quizbowl is standardized academic trivia

1:21:54 - Quizbowl is mechanism for turning abstract knowledge into usable knowledge

1:26:33 - Gordon reads Kevin an example Quizbowl tossup

1:30:04 - What did the process of grinding for Quizbowl in high school look like for Kevin?

1:34:22 - Quizbowl is really good for learning history

1:35:49 - Math classes teach you application not just knowledge

1:37:31 - Quizbowl is an experience which burns knowledge into your mind

1:38:24 - Knowledge feels more real if you are able to apply it

1:40:25 - Conclusion and Short Story Recommendation “Call Girl” by Tang Fei

This week on the podcast we had on Xueting Christine Ni, an independent researcher of Chinese culture who is most famous for her collections Sinopticon and Sinophagia (which focus on Chinese science fiction and Chinese horror, respectively), as well as her nonfiction writings on Chinese mythology. We spent a bit of time talking about the stories in those two collections, as well as the wide world of Chinese web fiction (wǎngwén) and the implications that it has for China and the rest of the world.

This episode was recorded quite a long time ago, but the timing nicely coincides with Kevin’s last article “How 'Chinese Goodreads' Illuminates Forgotten Sci-Fi Classics”. We were very glad to hear Xueting’s unique perspective, who has spent quite a bit of time in both China and the UK, experiencing the fiction and life of both cultures.

This episode was edited to be relatively light on spoilers in case people are interested in reading Sinopticon or Sinophagia afterwards— which we would highly recommend! Thanks for listening!

TIMESTAMPS

00:00:12 – Episode Start

00:00:49 – Is Chinese speculative fiction more stratified than Western web fiction?

00:02:57 – Xueting's original entrypoint into wǎngwén (Chinese web fiction)

00:05:02 – What is the 'mission statement' of Sinopticon?

00:07:03 – “The Fall of Adam” by Wang Jinkang and getting stories past the publisher

00:10:32 – 2023 WorldCon in Chengdu and a Reddit thread about the nominees that reveals cultural gaps in science fiction

00:14:48 – “The Great Migration” by Ma Boyong and notes about translation

00:17:54 – Xueting talks about her elite translator notes in Sinopticon and Sinophagia

00:26:44 – “The Waking Dream” by Fan Zhou

00:31:28 – “Net Novels and the She-Era” by Xueting Christine Ni

00:35:52 – Understanding the scale of the Chinese web novel economy

00:44:17 – What a Western web fiction market might look like and Seven Seas Entertainment

00:47:47 – Xueting and Gordon talk about how the insular web fiction community enables certain kinds of playful experimentation with recurring elements

00:51:55 – Conclusion and final recommendations

00:52:43 – Xueting asks Kevin and Gordon about wuxia

00:55:26 – Synthesized Sunsets Backstage begins

00:57:08 – Talking to curators v. authors about their work

00:58:53 – “Flower of the Other Shore” by A Que

01:01:35 – “The Tide of Moon City” by Regina Kanyu Wang

01:03:58 – Kevin goes on a long side tangent about hating unnecessary frame stories

01:07:48 – Kevin’s article “How 'Chinese Goodreads' Illuminates Forgotten Sci-Fi Classics”

01:12:27 – Kevin’s initial “wrong” conclusions about Chinese science fiction

01:15:19 – Why “The Martian” was so popular

01:16:21 – Kevin talks about meeting Chinese science fiction fans

01:18:39 – Is Cixin Liu that popular in China?

01:21:08 – The popularity of Japanese mystery fiction in China

01:23:00 – Curators are to authors as original contexts are to foreign contexts?

01:25:35 – Conclusion and final recommendations

We were super excited to talk to science fiction writer and fellow Substacker Lillian Wang Selonick. We discuss some topics from her essays on the value of Worldbuilding, the adoption of sci-fi tropes in literary books, what is meant by the term speculative fiction, Death’s End, Philip K. Dick, and more.

Apologies for the long delay between episodes. We recorded this episode about three weeks ago, but due to going to Worldcon, Gordon getting sick (twice!), and Kevin going on vacation it took a while to publish. In the backstage portion, we talk about our experience at Worldcon and accepting fiction submissions for Synthesized Sunsets.

Also, if you like the episode you can check out Lillian on the Futurist Letters podcast as well.

Hope you enjoy listening!

TIMESTAMPS:

0:12 - Introduction

1:17 - Discussing “Worldbuilding”

3:38 - You don't need to have a rigorous, highly-engineered, world to write a SFF story

5:53 - Is worldbuilding overused as a concept for fantasy?

6:40 - Worldbuilding vs. world conjuring

8:43 - What makes something real science fiction

11:55 - It's cool when it is clear an author is really passionate about science

13:37 - Sci-fi has become a bit too defined by its tropes

14:46 - Speculative-literary hybrid books

17:32 - We shouldn't be giving sci-fi awards to successful literary books

19:53 - What is meant by the term speculative fiction?

22:27 - Speculative fiction partially evolved as a term due to sci-fi authors seeing it as more serious

23:46 - Defining speculative fiction by its community

26:44 - Speculative is starting to be used more for literary books with some tropes

28:45 - The Dune movies were big for sci-fi

30:49 - Villeneuve has been an ambassador for sci-fi

31:38 - Blade Runner 2049 looks amazing but is unmemorable otherwise

33:49 - What makes Philip K. Dick so good?

35:48 - PKD creates fiction that plays with epistemic certainty

39:33 - Ray Bradbury and PKD feel similar

40:55 - PKD is very popular in China

43:13 - Talking about “Death's End”

45:15 - Death's End starting at the Siege of Constantinople was crazy

49:02 - How is PKD similar to Saul Bellow?

52:26 - The different types of men writing women

58:40 - Writing at Futurist Letters

1:01:05 - Discussing Lillian’s story “A Riot at Red Plan-It! Park”

1:04:52 - Conclusion and Short Story Recommendation of “Hinterlands” by William Gibson from his collection “Burning Chrome”

1:06:18 - Start of Synthesized Sunsets Backstage

1:06:42 - Poorly remembered thoughts on the episode

1:07:26 - Discussing “Ubik” and “The Lathe of Heaven”

1:13:57 - Elaborating on the case for a circular definition of speculative fiction

1:18:41 - Military sci-fi is becoming less speculative fiction

1:20:40 - A genre being defined circularly is less strange than it may sound

1:21:25 - Our experience at Worldcon

1:22:01 - It's very easy to see and talk to relatively famous people at Worldcon

1:25:49 - Ada Palmer was really impressive

1:28:38 - Interesting Joanna Russ panel with friend of the pod Rich Horton

1:31:25 - Talking about the Hugo Awards

1:32:51 - It would have been cool if the Hugo Awards were more of a spectacle

1:36:52 - The Hugo Awards should be more focused around Best Novel

1:37:21 - The convention as a whole was quite well run

1:41:28 - Our experience receiving fiction submissions

1:43:30 - We've been pleasantly surprised with the general level of quality from submissions

1:46:34 - Conclusion and Short Story Recommendation of “10207” by Emma Burnett

Today marks exactly one year since the first post on Synthesized Sunsets. To celebrate the occasion, Gordon and Kevin take a look back at how it all began. We also discuss Kevin’s recent article, “Shunrō Oshikawa, ChatGPT, and the Birth of the "Pre-Translator"”, as well as its follow-up post and the ways in which AI translation might (or might not) pave the way for a utopian multilingual Internet future.

It’s been a great season at Synthesized Sunsets, and we thank you all for reading! We’ll see you next season for the Hugo Awards!!

TIMESTAMPS

00:00:12 – Episode Start

00:00:37 – Inspiration for Synthesized Sunsets

00:03:57 – How did Gordon react to being asked to co-host Synthesized Sunsets?

00:08:06 – Synthesized Sunsets was not originally super sci-fi focused

00:10:47 – Has Synthesized Sunsets become audience-captured?

00:14:39 – Favorite “core memories” of Synthesized Sunsets and the first post on Synthesized Sunsets: 'The Wandering Inn' Allows Us to Properly Fear the Sea

00:19:08 – Kevin did not expect to get particularly into visual art

00:21:37 – Synthesized Sunsets is less popular but more influential at this stage than Gordon + Kevin expected

00:25:02 – Has Synthesized Sunsets become audience captured? (cont.)

00:27:53 – Does Synthesized Sunsets plan to experiment with the form of fiction?

00:29:29 – Why haven't Gordon and Kevin written more fiction?

00:31:43 – Hoping for more audience engagement / possible trivia events in the future

00:33:52 – Discussion of “Shunrō Oshikawa, ChatGPT, and the Birth of the "Pre-Translator"” begins

00:39:21 – Somewhat fair negative feedback of the article

00:40:35 – Attempting translation is a very novel experience

00:47:39 – Kevin would have done some things differently in retrospect

00:49:40 – How gatekeep-y is translation and is this good?

00:51:02 – Will monolingual translation ever become widespread?

00:52:21 – Kevin speculates about our glorious multilingual Internet future

00:56:07 – Conclusion and final recommendations

00:57:45 – Thank you to everyone who has supported Synthesized Sunsets! We are very grateful for your support!!