Join us this week for a rollicking good look at sidekicks in science fiction and fantasy. What are they doing there? What functions do they serve? What do they bring to the table--both in terms of furthering the plot as well as deepening our understanding of the relationships they inhabit with the main character or characters? We’re here to tackle the Heroic Helper, the Comic Relief, the Gal Pal™ or Bromance™, the Cute Factor, and many more sidekick archetypes. We’re here, too, to mess with your head a bit. When things get messy, we’re at our absolute best!

For further reading, if you’re comic-inclined, take a look at Morris’ “The League of Regrettable Sidekicks: Heroic Helpers from Comic Book History”--a part of Quirk Books’ growing stable of comic-related anthologies.

You can find ALL of our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email [email protected]. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.

We are BACK for the third and final (for now) episode in our series on science fictional and fantastical music! Here we wrap up our conversation with a quick survey of science fiction music videos, the transition from analog to digital, and the transition from digital to an unknown future medium. We dig into works blurring the line between music video and film, performance art, and more. We tackle generative music apps like Brian Eno's "Bloom," which may be one kind of future open to science fictional and fantastical music, music videos, and musicianship.

Check out the previous two episodes in this series in our backlist, and our music video playlist (linked from our Twitter account, below)! If you're looking for a little light reading on some of the musical subjects we've examined in the series to date, check out "What does progressive rock owe science fiction?" on The Portalist (https://theportalist.com/songs-that-reference-sci-fi-fantasy) and "32 of the most mind-blowing sci-fi music videos ever" on Syfy.com (https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/32-of-the-most-mind-blowing-sci-fi-music-videos-ever).

You can find ALL of our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email [email protected]. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.

Are you into science fictional or fantastical music? Yes? Good. Let's talk (some more).

This week, we return to our ongoing series about science fictional and fantastical music, focusing on space rock and its intersections with progressive rock, shoegaze, and more.

If you think that list looks incomplete, never fear! This is just part two of a series in which we will tackle more. MORE, we say. Watch this space in future weeks as we tackle concept albums, multimedia extravaganzas, the Internet of (Musical) Things, and eventually, yes, soundtracks and scores galore.

You can find our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email [email protected]. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.

Interrupting our series on music (thanks, TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES!), we return to our ongoing journey through Istvan Csicsery-Ronay's wonder of a work, "The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction." This week, we tackle Beauty #6 (the Grotesque). What exactly *IS* the Grotesque, and how does it relate both to science fiction at large as well as to Beauty #5 (the Sublime), which we discussed way back in Episode 55? We set out to answer this question, with deliberate pushback against the urge to get all academic up in here. Which is to say, if you *haven't* read "The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction," that's alright! You don't actually need to have done so in order to listen to this episode, or to enjoy our general bonkers-ness.

And yes, if you're wondering, we *do* talk a lot about "Alien" in this episode. And the intersection of queer and science fiction and the Grotesque.

You can find our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email [email protected]. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.

Are you into science fictional or fantastical music? Yes? Good. Let's talk.

This week, we muddy the waters as we always do by tackling a difficult-to-tackle subject: music inspired by science fiction and fantasy, as well as music that is science fictional or fantastical in *affect*, which may or may not be related. We're here to talk about Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, Florence + The Machine, M83 and more bands of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and other decades Kend and Tony may or may not have lived through. We tackle musical genres (subgenres, modes, cats) including prog rock, psychedelic rock, space rock, synthwave, synthpop, downtempo, synthetic and electronic sounds in music, and all sorts of music that ... well, let's just say it's a bit out of this world, if you catch our very *on the nose* drift.

If you think that list looks incomplete, never fear! This is just part one of a series in which we will tackle more. MORE, we say. Watch this space in future weeks as we tackle concept albums, multimedia extravaganzas, the Internet of (Musical) Things, and eventually, yes, soundtracks and scores galore.

You can find our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email [email protected]. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.

Welcome to part two of our introduction to science fiction and fantasy of the last decade. In this episode, we finish the conversations we started back in Episode 68, and broaden it to include discussions of comics, webcomics, young adult fiction, the New(est) Weird, and a do-your-homework-by-reading-these list of genre-shaping and genre-breaking texts we look to as guiding stars of the last decade.

Also: here be tarantulas.

You can find our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email [email protected]. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.

Are you looking to get into science fiction and fantasy for the first time, or are you a purveyer of bygone epochs of the science fictional and fantastical looking to refresh your reading list? This is the episode for you!

Join us this week as we take a look at the last decade in science fiction and fantasy both in print and on the big and small screen--at what's new, what's emerging, what's changed for good or ill, and what we think might yet be waiting in the wings. We're here for the feminists, for the LGBTQIA+ reader, for those who found themselves in drought in the early 2000s, and for those on both sides of our culture-wide love-hate relationship with superhero franchises. We talk novellas, protest fiction, works in translation, short-form science fiction television, and where all the market has shifted. Best of all, we lay the groundwork for discussing specific works that have shaped and reformed the genres (or cats) in the last decade.

This is not an episode to be missed!

You can find our back episodes on Youtube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email [email protected]. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.

Looking for the absolute BEST in science fiction and fantasy released in 2018? We've got you covered. Join us for our special annual award episode covering everything from best SFF novel of 2018 to best television show to best book cover art as determined by our *totally impartial* (and *totally humble*) dynamic duo.

You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email [email protected]. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.

Why talk about holidays on this podcast? Are we drunk enough to really get into it? Join us for this week's cozy sweater of a cast as we dig out the same books we dig out each year to bring ourselves back to ourselves, and to remind of us all good things in the world. Tony makes an argument for the "Harry Potter," "His Dark Materials," "Animorphs," "The Old Kingdom," "Kingkiller Chronicles," and "Wayfarers" series, while Kend glares from over the top of a stack of Sarah Gailey, Alessandro Baricco, Ian McDonald, Sheri Tepper, K. Arsenault Rivera, and Robin Sloan. We talk about lifelong faves and problematic faves alike. Tony lavishes endless praise on Chabon's "Kavalier & Clay" & Kend bemoans the loss of childhood favorites undercut by maturing awareness.

As you uncork your holiday cider, mull over these comforting favorites!

You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email [email protected]. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries.

Stay tuned for next week's mammoth #ImaginaryAwards2018 podcast!

Hit the road, jack, and don't you come back no more no more no MORE NO MORE

Okay, serenades aside, this week as you're preparing to undergo your own road trips and holiday journeys, we're back with a deep dive into the various manifestations of road trips in science fiction and fantasy. We ask all of the important questions, like: journey or destination--how do they relate? What separates a "road trip" from a standard "journey narrative"? What does a poem by Margaret Atwood have to do with ANY of this craziness? And why do we love road trip narratives as a whole, and why do we love some specific stories ... specifically?

Some of the many texts we interrogate include: David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas," JRRT's "Lord of the Rings," Brian K. Vaughan's greater body of comic work, Catherynne Valente’s "Space Opera" and its inspiration, Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide," Richard Powers' "The Overstory," Jacqueline Carey's "Starless," Seanan McGuire's "Ghost Roads" series, the film "Mad Max: Fury Road" and ... yes, a whole lot more. Even the Epic of Gilgamesh (the FIRST RECORDED STORY, WHAT) gets some brief, and laughing love.

You can find our back episodes on YouTube. Our Twitter handle is @imaginary_pod, our website www.imaginaries.net, and our email [email protected]. If you would like to help support our work, you can do so at www.ko-fi.com/imaginaries. And don't forget to vote on on our "What Should We Read Next?" lists on Goodreads! See our Twitter for more information on that.

Thanks for listening!