A book about drugs that make you see god. It's day-after-tomorrow SF from the day before yesterday, and it gets all of its predictions so catastrophically wrong that its primary use case is as a time capsule from the war on terror. Also preserved: jokes we thought were funny ten years ago.

Afterparty - Daryl Gregory

It's Little Shop of Horrors but with lesbian Irish millennials! That's the whole pitch. It fulfills the brief, and arguably overdelivers.

Eat The Ones You Love - Sarah Maria Griffin

It's gay, it's magic, it's a literary classic. Featuring our old books correspondent Kat Weaver!

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

A charming little novel from 1926. We're normally pretty relaxed when it comes to spoilers, particularly for a book that's a century old, but we think the less you know about this one going in the better.

Lolly Willowes; or The Loving Huntsman - Sylvia Townsend Warner

A familiar setup - a misogynist demon who possesses girls and infects them with its predatory desires - executed in a way which is, yes, bad, admittedly very bad, but also very funny.

Sawkill Girls (2018) - Claire Legrand

A debilitating novel - simultaneously enormous and petty, tragic and hilarious, insightful and insular. It wrecked us down the stretch but left us unmoved at the end. We think it's great but we're not sure if you should read it.

We return to Nghi Vo's Singing Hills series and discuss the three next most wizlez-adjacent books in it (to date.)

Covered in this episode: The Empress of Salt and Fortune, The Brides of High Hill, and A Mouthful of Dust.

This week we're talking about a classic webcomic in both senses of the word, as it feels like it comes from a departed era of the internet despite being barely a decade old. Part of that vibe stems from the fact that you can still read it, in its entirety and ad-free, on its own dedicated website - an unimaginable luxury these days. Check it out (it's a classic for a reason) and then join us for a discussion of what's aged well and what hasn't.

It's a Cinderella retelling! But it's Freya Marsk, so it's better than it needs to be, and stranger.

Anthropological SF in the mold of Cherryh or Le Guin, updated for our era and its preoccupations - funny, surprising, and smart. We have a lot of fun discussing the return of Cameron Reed.

Our guest Louis Evans has a new story out! Find it here.