A word on AI-generated content.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.
Reader's Room: Manufacturing Reality
Reader's Room ponders the best speculative fiction and and science for the week. This week I visit some of the same craters that the Apollo astronauts walked on fifty years ago, and we talk about making up some history just so we can mess it up later.
Show links:
- Cinder Lakes Training Field (PDF) where the Apollo astronauts trained.
- S. (aka Ship of Theseus) by Doug Dorst and J. J. Abrams
- Linkdump:
- Steal The Stars Tor Labs weekly dramatic podcast
- The Economist explains algorithms
- Robot Priests leading funerals in Japan at the Guardian.
- Ten best SF stories you can read for free at The Chicago Review of Books
- Support:
- Nevada Museum of Art, launching a satellite for the sake of art. (Kickstarter)
- Escape Pod, weekly genre podcasts. (Patreon)
- Story Hospital weekly, quality writing advice from a talented editor.
Reader's Room: Making a Journey
Reader's Room ponders the best speculative fiction and and science for the week. This week think about what makes up a journey, and Kij Johnson's novel The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe.
Show links:
- Should robots be given copyright protection?
- Advice for journalists writing about (and readers reading about) artificial intelligence.
- Uncanny Magazine's Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction
- Supported creators:
- Clarkesworld Magazine and Podcast.
- Fireside Fiction
- Author Yoon Ha Lee
- A print from Yuko Shimizu
- Space T-shirt from Julieah Kaliski