Reader's Room: Extending Yourself
The Reader's Room talks about speculative fiction, science, and technology. This month, we ask what kinds of changes you might make to your body to improve your work, or better reflect your beliefs.
We also talk about the transhumans in Alistair Reynolds' new book, Elysium Fire, and his 2008 book The Prefect, as well as some of the people and technology taking us forward.
Show Links:
- Alistair Reynolds’ Revelation Space stories
- Diving for ancient ivory under the Bering Sea at the Anchorage Daily News
- Actress Angel Guiffria
- Elastic, self repairing sensors at Quartz.
Reader's Room: When One Thing Changes
This month we talk about the possibilities of making a single change in reality, and I get caught up on Charles Stross's Laundry Files novels.
Show links:
- The Atrocity Archives, Stross's first Laundry Files book.
- The Delirium Brief, the most recent novel in the series.
- Laundry Files Reading Order
- MIT's Neuron on a chip at MIT's media site.
- Rab the Giant versus the Witch of the Waterfall at Fireside Fiction
- ‘Atomic Bill’ and the Birth of the Bomb at undark.org, explores the ethics of the New York Times star reporter hired by the Manhattan Project to chronicle and cheerlead the nuclear age.
Reader's Room: Building Worlds
Reader's Room ponders the best speculative fiction and and science for the month. This edition we look at how and why authors create specilatve worlds, and their impact on storytelling.
Show links:
- We talk about Andy Weir's latest book, Artemis.
- If you have an hour, Weir did an interview about the process of creating Artemis on Conversations with Tyler on Medium. (Both audio and transcript.)
- If you only have five minutes, he also did an interview on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday in November. (Audio and text excerpts.)
- Charlie Jane Anders wrote the excellent, The Seven Deadly Sins of Worldbuilding, on her site, io9. It’s a few years old, but it all remains true. A good read for writers, but it'll also give readers some tools to figure out why they love or hate a story world.
- Imaginary Worlds is a bi-weekly podcast all about world building. It explores everything from author’s creation to fandom. I've mentioned it before, but it's a great resource for getting behind the scenes of your favorite creations, and learning to appreciate entirely new things.
Reader"s Room: Sentimentality
Reader's Room ponders the best speculative fiction and and science for the month. This month we talk about how we become attached to technology and Analee Newitz's new novel Autonomous. And there's a little piece of original flash fiction up front.
Show links:
- Highlights of the Cassini mission. from NASA.
- Autonomous: A Novel by Analee Newitz
- The Imaginary World podcast is a fascinating interview show about all kinds of worldbuilding.
- From Siri With Love the story of an autistic child and how his digital assistant became his best friend. (Also part of collected memoirs that just came out.)
- Short story Islands in the Dark by Sarah Goldman over at the Escape Pod podcast. (Audio and text are at the link.)
- Where we bury spacecraft over at Business Insider.
Reader's Room: Searching for Answers
Reader's Room ponders the best speculative fiction and and science for the month. This week we talk about searching for answers in the wake of worldwide disaster and local tragedy, and N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy.