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Only in its 5th year of operation, the Le Guin Fiction prize has already become something of a critical darling, with very interesting shortlists and winners that rarely overlap with other genre awards. Critic and reviewer Roseanna Pendlebury returns to the podcast to share opinions and insights on the nine books on this year’s list. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Roseanna Pendlebury Titles: The Ursula K. Le Guin Fiction Prize Shortlist, 2026 Audition by Pip Adam (Coffee House Press) Sunward by William Alexander (Saga Press) Call and Response by Christopher Caldwell (Neon Hemlock) Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (Algonquin) The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (Tor Books) Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman (Tor Books) Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta (DAW Books) One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed (Psychopomp) Slow Gods by Claire North (Orbit) Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: C.J. Cherryh’s Gate of Ivrel Eastercon Toshiyuki Kusakihara’s Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave LA Worldcon Hugo Awards Clarke Awards Otherwise Awards Olga Ravn's The Employees (AMOT episode) Stanislaw Lem The End of Everything by M. John Harrison Iain M. Banks …as opposed to Banksy Niall Harrison Ann Leckie Paradox’s Stellaris Becky Chambers Martha Wells' Murderbot series “squeecore”, originally proposed on the Rite Gud podcast; elaborated a bit in Simon McNeil’s “Notes on Squeecore”  Elizabeth Sandifer’s idea of "torwave" T. Kingfisher's Astarion (and bizarre discourse thereon) Phobos Sarah Palin Arturo Serrano Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater Oliver Langmead AMOT’s First Episode with Dan Hartland China Miéville’s Bas-Lag trilogy Alex Pheby’s Cities of the Weft K.J. Bishops’s The Etched City Rebecca Roanhorse Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi (AMOT episode) Elwin Cotman’s work, eg Weird Black Girls Le Guin’s Changing Planes In Your Spare Time, a podcast where various people read entries from Le Guin’s blog Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves Premee Mohamed’s The Siege of Burning Grass Sarah Mueller's The Bone Orchards Ursula Whitcher's North Continent Ribbon Adrian Tchaikovsky's Tyrant Philosophers Le Guin’s Four/Five Ways to Forgiveness & The Word for World Is Forest A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine Gene Wolfe & Harlan Ellison Colson Whitehead & Marlon James Le Guin (and Virginia Woolf), “Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown” Frodo & Sam from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Roseanna & Casella’s AMOT discussion of Fellman’s Dead Collections Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest The Mulai by Munir Hachemi, translated by Julia Sanches Fitzcarraldo office shoot Nerds of a Feather Small Press Dispatch series at ARB Roseanna's blog & bluesky Roseanna & Dan Hartland discussing the Clarke shortlist at NoAF

Out of print for the greater part of the 20th century, Hopkins’ Of One Blood looks a lot like Afro-futurism, using ancient Ethiopian technology and the new science of mesmerism to think about racial politics. But it’s actually a bit stranger than that—Garret Bridger Gilmore returns to walk us through some of the novel’s contexts and theories. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Garret Bridger Gilmore Title: Of One Blood, or, The Hidden Self by Pauline E. Hopkins Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré  The Fog by James Herbert The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe by D. G. Compton J.G. Ballard Japan Sinks by Sakyo Komatsu, translated by Michael Gallagher Plessy V. Ferguson Mesmerism, Vitalism, Magnetism H.G. Wells William James Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Martin Delany Black Panther Hazel V. Carby's edited collection of Hopkins' Work Deborah E. McDowell MIT Radium Age series Minister Faust George S. Schuyler's Black Empire Marcus Garvey H. Rider Haggard's She Geoffrey Sanborn's "The Pleasure of Its Company: Of One Blood and the Potentials of Plagiarism" Edward Bulwer-Lytton Our Stand On Zanzibar Episode W.E.B. DuBois & double consciousness Mississippi Quarterly article on race in the Southern Reach trilogy Cora Jean Moten’s “The Creeping Thing”

Worldcon episode time: we’ve got interviews, we’ve got a coffee report, we’ve got an only-mildly chaotic group podcast attempt! Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guests & Collaborators: Thomas Ha Alex Kingsley Frauke Uhlenbruch Marshall Ryan Maresca & Cass Morris of Worldbuilding for Masochists Kevin Anderson & Lori Anderson of Hugo, Girl! John Coxon of Octothorpe Helen Montgomery Sam Kim of Kumquat Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Additional sounds & music: The Los Angeles Metro “Surf Shimmy” by Kevin Macleod “Through the Woods We Ran” by Vindsvept And the cool theremin sounds Kevin made for Hugo, Girl! Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Thomas Ha’s Uncertain Sons The Best of Jeffrey Ford and Pandemonium Waltz Steve Rasnic Tem & Brian Evenson Michel Siffre, French cave-and-sleep explorer J.S. Fields Zoe Franznick DePaul Pop Culture Conference Sabrina Mittermeier: The Routledge Handbook of Star Trek and Fighting For The Future Alien vs. Predator, Hellraiser, Dogma The Bible in Motion, edited by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch Memory Alpha Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park Chuck, Earth: Final Conflict, Scavengers Reign, Battleship The Speculative Literature Foundation and their Deep Dish reading series HWA (Horror Writers Association) Playground Chicago Strong Branch SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association) Goblin Market Mary Robinette Kowal, Curtis Chen Alexy on Bluesky & Instagram Space Wizard publishing Loquat coffee Artist Devon Sinead Arboretum and Botanical Garden at Cal State Fullerton E.G. Condé Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman Uketsu’s Strange Houses, Strange Pictures,Strange Buildings, translated by Jim Rion Jo Walton Lightspeed and Reactor Alasdair Stuart & Marguerite Kenner (of projects like The Full Lid and Escape Artists) Liza Groen Trombi of Locus Magazine Cube Gene Wolfe The Prestige by Christopher Priest The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov Green Marsby Kim Stanley Robinson Widow’s Bay Fonda Lee, Shannon Chakraborty, Gabriella Buba SFF Addicts Robert Shearman’s Tiny Deaths, Ian Mond’s pick for a recent episode Nerds of a Feather

A deeply strange and arresting short novel, The Water Statues defies easy categorization but has a powerful and cerebral atmosphere, putting us in mind of a lot of other works—including Clarke’s Piranesi. Langdon Hickman, last unshriven host of Death // Sentence, joins to discuss. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Langdon Hickman Title: The Water Statues by Fleur Jaeggy, translated by Gini Alhedeff  Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Recent episodes with other Death // Sentence hosts (Sisyphean with Gareth Watkins & Diaspora with Eden Kupermintz) Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume Roberto Bolaño W.G. Sebald'sAusterlitz & The Rings of Saturn Hugo Nominees, UKLG Nominees Frank Herbert’s Dune Holism vs reductivist materialism Object oriented ontology & speculative realists Nick Land, Graham Harman, Timothy Morton Set theory Jacques Derrida on “logos” Greg Egan's Incandescence & related stories Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen Kim Stanley Robin’s Aurora (AMOT episode w/ Hilary Strang) Jayaprakash Satyamurthy of Djinn and Miskatonic M.R. James Eugene Thacker’s An Ideal For Living Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi(AMOT episode w/Misha Grifka Wander) & Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Hemingway’s “Iceberg theory” Lydia Davis, Samuel Beckett Decadent & Aesthetic movements Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner Negative Capability Keats’ letter to Richard Woodhouse, October 1818 Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Sofia Samatar David Michell’s Cloud Atlas (AMOT episode with Abigail Nussbaum) William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” Jorge Luis Borges’ “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” Hilary Putnam The Caretaker by Doon Arbus Death // Sentence Treble Zine Consequence of Sound Langdon's newsletter

More famous for his science fiction and dark fantasy, Ray Bradbury also tried his hand at crime fiction, with often-fascinating results. Writer, critic, and editor Aigner Loren Wilson talks us through the strange flourishes and tonal experiments of Killer, Come Back To Me! Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Aigner Loren Wilson Title: Killer, Come Back To Me by Ray Bradbury Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: The Possession of Alba Díaz & Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues The Ship of Death by Kyle Winkler Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shroud Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction by Jonathan R. Eller & William F. Touponce Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett Dandelion Wine, Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles Damon Knight "The Smallest Assassin" Leigh Brackett The Chucky franchise Frank Miller’s Sin City, Shane Black’s The Nice Guys Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures "Dead Men Rise Up never" "Where Everything Ends" "The Town Where No One Got Off" "The Utterly Perfect Murder" The Bradbury Chronicles by Sam Weller "Punishment Without Crime" "The Whole Town’s Sleeping" & "At Midnight in the Month of June" "The Women" from I Sing the Body Electric "And So Died Riabouchinska" "The Smiling People" "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" "Some Live Like Lazarus" Octavia E. Butler Darker Times Writing Skins, Aigner’s newsletter Aigner's website Scene Builder

In this con-coverage episode, Casella talks to folks at Readercon in Boston, including Lisa from Narrated, author Sara S. Messenger, and editor Carl Engle-Laird. We also visit Porter Square Books, an indie bookstore that has recently launched their own book review. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Readercon Porter Square Books Lisa from the Narrated podcast The Hugo Awards Elizabeth Bear’s White Space series C.J. Cherryh & Lois McMaster Bujold Sara S. Messenger “Jennifer’s Daughter” in Nightmare Magazine “When We Loved Giants” in Lightspeed Karel Čapek Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist (good AMOT episode on that!) AMOT episode on Ready Player One Clark Seanor’s “Recycled Air: Wayfarers and the Tyranny of the Everyday” in Strange Horizons Lovestruck Books in last year’s Readercon episode Katherine @ Porter Square Books K.A. Applegate’s Animorphsseries Chuck Tingle Ann Patchett’s Whistler Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou Roseanna Pendlebury’s review of Sour Cherry Sunny Moraine (from our Pattern Recognition episode) Will McMahon Scott Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic podcast Benjamin Rosenbaum (from our Fire Logic episode) Carl Engle-Laird, editor at Tor Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction Jon Bois’ 17776 Cambridge Porchfest & the Good Trouble Brass Band Gracenote & Broadsheet coffee Thomas Wensma has an interview with Australian barista champ Jack Simpson & coffee farmer Juan Pablo Campos about the Ombligon cultivar at Perfect Daily Grind, if that caught your ear Bujold’s Vorkosigan series & Barrayar Josh Cook of Porter Square Books & the Porter Square Review of Books PSB’s Bluesky Josh’s articles at LitHub Poly Barton’s What Am I, A Deer? Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps & Acid Green Velvet

Literary agent and Print Run podcaster extraordinaire Laura Zats is on to talk about a novel that is the most urban fantasy you can imagine, and yet seems to run towards different traditions and ideas the closer you examine it—Robin McKinley’s award-winning but under-discussed Sunshine.   Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.   Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Laura Zats Title: Sunshine by Robin McKinley Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Christopher Buehlman’s Blacktongue Thief & Between Two Fires Peter Rock's Makeshift Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven Totally not the heist film Oceans 11 Newberry Honor & Mythopoeic Award Charlaine Harris’s The Southern Vampire Mysteries/Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood series Kim Harrison Bram Stoker's Dracula Twilight & Buffy the Vampire Slayer Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series Dunning-Kruger effect McKinley's Deerskin Editor Sharyn November & the Firebird imprint Charles De Lint, Anne Rice, Anita Blake "Contemporary Fantasy" Stephen Graham Jones Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires & Horrorstör Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla Matt Kirkland’s “Dracula Daily” RS Benedict’s “Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny” Lee Mandelo's The Woods All Black Indra Das's The Devourers John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids The Print Run podcast Erik Hane's “The Fandom Strain”

Critic & reviewer Ian Mond talks us through Tiny Deaths, a very funny and frequently morbid collection. We also think bigger: about the place and status of humor and seriousness in genre literature, and why non-genre imprints and translated literature might be places to look for this energy. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Ian Mond Title: Tiny Deaths by Robert Shearman Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: The Writer and The Critic Tayari Jones’ Kin Boyhood by David Keenan Centreouropa by Vicente Luis Mora, translated by Rahul Bery Edward Royston’s Transgressing Time Christopher Priest's The Recollections Priest & Allan’s The Illuminated Man Sturgeon's Law (“90% of everything is crap”) Dr. Who & Stephen King Gallifrey One convention Donald Barthelme, Ishmael Reed, T.C. Boyle, Kelly Link Lisa Heschong’s Thermal Delight in Architecture Rachel Khong’s My Dear You The Simpsons Blindness by José Saramago, Julio Cortázar Shearman’s Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, Everyone’s Just So So Special, and We All Hear Stories in the Dark “Chimes At Midnight” and “The Holy Terror” Douglas Adams Machine of Death, edited by Ryan North Jon Stone’s The Monster At The End Of This Book Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria Groundhog Day, directed by Harold Ramis James Morrow's Towing Jehovah & Only Begotten Daughter Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” Leyna Krow's Sinkhole and Other Stories Ed Park's An Oral History of Atlantis Michael Swanwick & Jeffrey Ford collections "Gate 9" in Pandemonium Waltz Hilary Leichter, Sayaka Murata, Liliana Colanzi Translated Hugo Initiative Words Without Borders Locus Award for Best Translated Novel Isaac Fellman's Notes From A Regicide Incandescent by Emily Tesh Sean McTiernan's SFUltra Locus Magazine Ian's Substack & Facebook & Goodreads

Brunner’s prescient classic about overpopulation: is it about overpopulation? Was it prescient? And, for that matter: what does it mean to be a classic? Reviewer and editor Dan Hartland joins to discuss these questions and more. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Dan Hartland Title: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Strange Horizon’s 2026 fund-drive Strange Horizons’ Critical Friends podcast The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of J.G. Ballard by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan Prism, Plastic, Void by Violet Allen This Is How You Lose The Time War by Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir We The Parasites by A.V. Marraccini  Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Trade of Blood, Mr. Shivers, and Divine Cities trilogy Orion’s “SF Masterworks” series Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War The Club Of Rome’s report “The Limits to Growth” Brunner’s “Club or Rome Quartet”: Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, Shockwave Rider, Jagged Orbit John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy New Worlds magazine "New Wave" science fiction Timothy Leary The Beatles’ Please Please Me versus Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Jad Smith’s John Brunner Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s The Sirens of Titan & Cat's Cradle William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson Thomas Disch's 334 & Camp Concentration The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich & Anne Howland Ehrlich Soylent Green, dir. Richard Fleischer Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic” Vajra Chandrasekera China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Network, dir. Sidney Lumet Marshall McLuhan Taylor Sheridan & John Linson’s Yellowstone series Transmetropolitan comic series by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson et al. Going Rogue podcast Warren Ellis sexual coercion allegations; lots more but here’s an early overview from the Guardian “FogHorn Barge” from Daniel Simon @ SoundBible, CC BY 3.0 James Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand David Runciman’s “Are we doomed?” for LRB Degrowth KSR’s The Ministry for the Future E.J. Swift’s When There Are Wolves Again Strange Horizons’ “Ageing in Science Fiction” special issue Shintaro Kago’s Dementia 21 Julia Armfield’s Private Rites Jacqueline Nyathi’s Harare Review of Books David Brin's Earth Jerry Pournelle Dan's Bluesky The Clarke shortlist discussion will appear on Nerds of a Feather Tenacious D The Long Winters The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA)

Science fiction readers love a mechanism, they love a bit of world-building and mystery-solving. Premee Mohamed joins us to discuss Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus, a book that asks: what if a science fiction book intentionally avoided all of that?  Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Premee Mohamed Title: The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Mercutio by Kate Heartfield Pretenders to the Throne of God by Adrian Tchaikovsky Orbit 10 anthology edited by Damon Knight William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just To Say” and its many responses Premee’s And What Can We Offer You Tonight Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon Heart of Darkness by Josef Conrad The Vorrh by B. Catling The face dancers from Frank Herbert’s Dune series Mystique and the Kree from the Marvel/X-Men comics Michael Swanwick's Stations of the Tide Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire Premee’s The Butcher of the Forest & Wickhills "sentients" & "sapients" “The Great Chain of Being” Star Wars series The Bad Batch and The Clone Wars Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead Octavia Butler's Dawn Tolkien's On Fairy Stories Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? & Ridley Scott's Bladerunner Premee’s The Siege of Burning Grass Hilary Putnam's “Twin Earth” Premee's Patreon, Website, Bluesky Wickhills & From the Library of Jurgen Leitner The Carl Brandon Society

A rain of corpses is falling from the sky, insectoid femme fatales are setting their compound eyes on our tender thoraxes, and our cattle drive across an expanse of nanotech goo is starting to go off the rails. So we ask ourselves: do we still have to go to work tomorrow? Critic, author, & podcaster Gareth Watkins joins to discuss Dempow Torishima’s delightfully strange Sisyphean. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Gareth Watkins Title: Sisyphean by Dempow Torishima, translated by Daniel Huddleston Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Death // Sentence Muskism by Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff  Peter Thiel One Piece by Eiichiro Oda Slavoj Žižek René Girard Carl Schmitt Thiel/Douthat NYT interview Jeff VanderMeer Haikosoru Viz Comics Battle Royale by Koushun Takami Finnegans Wake by James Joyce The Doloriad by Missouri Williams M. John Harrison’s essay on worldbuilding Marmite/Vegemite Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel "Professor Jiang" Isaac Asimov's Foundation New Chronology Tartarianism Franz Kafka & Philip K. Dick A Scanner Darkly H.R. Giger Phil Tippet’s Mad God Kameron Hurley's The Stars are Legion Antoine Volodine's Radiant Terminus Manuela Draeger's Kree Mike Judge’s Office Space David Cronenberg Raymond Chandler Antonio Gramsci Nick Land Friedrich Nietzsche's eternal recurrence Yoss's Planet for Rent Deleuze & Guitarri The Sex Pistols & Avril Lavigne H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" Ayn Rand Jeff VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts Torishima's Kanadete no Nufuretsun Gareth's bluesky Just Plain Evil: Cruelty, Extinction, and the Authoritarian Mind  Gareth's appearances on Blood Work

Stop explaining and start exploring: critic & reviewer Molly Templeton walks us through this gem of 1980s mass market fantasy, with many asides and theories on shifting patterns of publishing and reading patterns. Plus, we spill the beans on the most fun book club, also known as the most fun cult. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Molly Templeton Title: Moongather by Jo Clayton Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: ARB’s Fundraiser! Donations & shares greatly appreciated! Kurt Vonnegut's asterisk John Darnielle's This Year "Cold Milk Bottle" "First Few Desperate Hours" Claire North's Slow Gods Hebe Stanton’s review at ARB Molly’s discussion of Slow Gods and being stuck on a book Gary Wolfe & Jonathan Strahan's Coode Street Podcast Arkady Martine & Ann Leckie The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Violet Allen's Prism, Plastic, Void Little Puss Press Casey Plett Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose The Time War Vajra Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall A.V. Marraccini’s We The Parasites Clayton’s Diadem from the Stars Brandon Sanderson Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea Forgotten Realms J.R.R. Tolkien's “On Fairy Stories” & Lord of the Rings Ged & the otak from Earthsea "Fridging" & "Bury Your Gays" The Arrowverse TV shows Ron Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Film "Explaining vs Exploring" Bora Chung's Midnight Timetable The Toyota Tercel The soot-sprites from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner Bethany Jacobs’ This Brutal Moon, conclusion to The Kindom Trilogy Jacobs’ website Philip Pullman's The Rose Field The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey David Eddings’ The Belgariad Parallel Worlds Bookshop Cherryh's Rusalka & The Paladin The Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation & Prize Molly's writing at Reactor & Bluesky & Website

The pleasures and perils of nostalgia & reference, the importance of identifying real play versus gamified labor, and whether the internet used to be fun: Matthew Leggat of the Utopian & Dystopian Fictions podcast joins to discuss Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Matthew Leggatt Title: Ready Player One by Ernie Cline Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: ARB’s Fundraiser!!! Matthew’s Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror, Play in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction, and Wastelands and Wonderlands The Utopian & Dystopian Fictions podcast I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman Chicano Frankenstein by Daniel A. Olivas U&DF episode with Olivas Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash & Reamde William Gibson’s Neuromancer K.A. Teryna’s Black Hole Heart translated by Alex Shvartsman Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenya’s Chain Gang All-Stars Was It Yesterday: Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television edited by Matthew Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code Gamergate “Playing the Game of Literature: Ready Player One, the Ludic Novel, and the Geeky ‘Canon’ of White Masculinity” by Megan Amber Condis Captain Crunch: phreaker John Draper Kyle Chayka’s "Why the internet isn't fun anymore" William Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum” Ling Ma's Severance Helen MacDonald & Syn Blaché’s Prophet MacDonald’s H is for Hawk Stanislaw Lem's Solaris Alice Landsberg's Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture The television series Stranger Things Mark Fisher's Ghosts of My Life Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green (based on Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room!) & Paul R. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb Samuel Butler’s Erewhon B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two Voight-Kampf Test from Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner / Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The "lusory attitude" from Bernard Suits' The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia Ernst Callenbach's Ecotopia Philip Nel’s “I Love the ‘80s: Dystopia, Nostalgia, and Ready Player One” Michael Jackson 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back (That's Mike Nelson of MST3K Fame) High Fidelity by Nick Hornby Jordan Carroll's Speculative Whiteness Paul Hardisty'sForcing trilogy

A nested novel that very pointedly bridges the litfic/specfic divide, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas takes some big swings at tricky topics. Abigail Nussbaum returns to the podcast with some thoughts on how the novel has aged, and how it’s still relevant to genre thinking today. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Abigail Nussbaum Title: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: ARB’s Fundraiser!!! Track Changes Aliya Whiteley’s The Misheard World & Abigail’s review Nina Allen Alexis Hall's Hell's Heart Olivia Waite Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick Lincoln Michel's Metallic Realms Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire Hanya Yanagihara's The People in the Trees Readerville forum & Salon Magazine's “The Well” The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan Jonathan Lethem's Girl in Landscape & Motherless Brooklyn Kate Atkinson's Case Histories Our episode on The Historian Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union New Wave, Cyberpunk, Mundane SF, The New Weird China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station The “New Adult” category of books Taylor Jenkins Reed Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin The Marvel Cinematic Universe Aragorn’s Tax Policy Jeremy Rosen’s Genre Bending Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Russel Hoban’s Riddley Walker, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World Sofia Samatar’s The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain Jean Baudrillard William Gibson The Stanford marshmallow experiment The Chatham Islands, Moriori & Māori peoples Charlie Jane Anders’ piece on Cloud Atlas The Velvet Underground joke (not many people listened, but everybody who did started a band) Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go Niall Harrison’s “In Search of Green Overshoots” The Coral Bones by E.J. Swift In Ascension by Martin MacInnes Gnomon by Nick Harkaway Abigail's Blog & Bluesky Tolkien Series: Roseanna Pendlebury & Ed Morland’s, Ranged Touch’s Shelved by Genre, Nick Hubble, Jared Pechaček, Weird Studies

We’re leaving speculative genres for just a moment! Author Max Gladstone joins to discuss style & structure in Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled classic The Big Sleep, a work that’s been massively influential across SFF literature, games, & film. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Max Gladstone Title: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Additional music from David Hilowitz’s “Future Cities”, CC BY-NC 4.0 And a couple of seconds from the end of The Mountain Goats’ “Cadaver Sniffing Dog” Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Nominate for the Hugos! Nominate for the Le Guin Prize! Support Locus Magazine’s Fundraiser! ARB Kickstarter coming soon! Stranger Things Metro City by Kurt Busiec et al. Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky Kieron Gillan Balsam Karam's Event Horizon John Darnielle's This Year Song Exploder episode on the Mountain Goats song “Cadaver Sniffing Dog” 'Pataphysics Waigong & neigong Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” Dorothy Parker William Gibson L.A. Confidential, dir. Curtis Hanson Tracer Bullet in Bill Waterson’s Calvin & Hobbes Snoopy in Charles Schulz’s Peanuts Dashiel Hammett Haruki Murakami'sHard-Boiled Wonderland & The End of the World Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light & The Dead Man's Brother The Raymond Chandler Papers, edited by Tom Hiney & Frank McShane James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity Chandler’s essay “The Simple Art of Murder” Max Payne, directed by Petri Järvilehto & written by Sam Lake Albert Camus & Jean-Paul Sartre Robert A. Heinlein Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun Hammet's The Maltese Falcon Chandler’s The Long Goodbye Fix-ups & “cannibal novels” William Faulkner & Leigh Bracket To Have and To Have Not, directed by Howard Hawks Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall Chandler’s The High Window Rex Stour's Nero Wolfe stories, such as Black Orchids “The CSI effect” Jeffrey Rowland's “Science Cop” bit in Wigu David Lynch Paul Aster Peter Brooks' Reading for the Plot Dead Hand Rule, the latest Craft novel (one more to come!) Max's website & newsletter