It’s the 20th anniversary of Blindsight! David and Rachel sit down in Rachel’s living room with marine biologist, critically acclaimed author, and enemy-of-the-state Peter Watts to drink two bottles of wine and talk about theories of consciousness, cigar-shaped harbour seals, the climate collapse, and why dystopian sci-fi authors are in fact childishly optimistic.

Additional audio engineering by Rick Innis.

Show Notes:

• Rifters
• The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?
• The Sheep Look Up, John Brunner
• The Limits To Growth
• Philosophical Zombie
• Consciousness and its function, David M. Rosenthal
• Michael Timothy Bennett
• Erik Hoel
• Mirror Test
• The Hidden Spring
• Arthur Jafa

Continue the conversation on the Wizards & Spaceships Discord or on Facebook!

The podcast is part of the oral tradition, and joining us to talk about ancient epics, living texts in dead languages, Babylonian Pride parades, and how all of this relates to sci-fi, fantasy, and horror is writer, translator, and cultural historian Sophus Helle.

Show notes:

• Sophus’ website
• Electronic Babylonian Library
• Babylonian Myths, Sophus Helle
• Critical Antiquities, including Human: Babylonian Reflections on Labour, Sophus Helle
• Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, J.R.R. Tolkien
• Beowulf: A New Translation, Maria Dahvana Headley
• The Complete Mahabharata (online)
• The Mahabharata (Penguin Classics)
• Ovid's Metamorphoses: A New Translation, C. Luke Soucy
• Query, Zilla Novikov
• The Ur-Pisode: The Queer Heart of the Epic of Gilgamesh, ft. Julian Gunn

Continue the conversation on the Wizards & Spaceships Discord or on Facebook!

A contract with one of the five big publishing companies means placement in bookstores and libraries, reviews in major publications, award nominations, and a huge advance—even a chance to get on the bestsellers list. But is this actually the case? Joining us to talk about how the sausage gets made is Jeremy Szal, author of the Common Trilogy.

• Show Notes:Jeremy’s website
• Follow him on:Bluesky
• Instagram
• TikTok
• “Everything is random in publishing. Success is random. Bestsellers are random. So that is why we are the Random House!”
• Are there more libraries or McDonald’s?
• Author (and professional chef) Rohan O’Duill trying out one of the recipes from the Sad Bastard Cookbook

Continue the conversation on the Wizards & Spaceships Discord or on Facebook!

Welcome to our new season! To celebrate, we’re kicking it up a notch by holding an all-star roundtable of some truly incredible writers. Vajra Chandrasekera, Samantha Mills, and Gregory A. Wilson join us to discuss didactic genre fiction. Is it a skill problem? Is it a media literacy problem? Can you hammer home a message without alienating (sorry/not sorry) your audience?

We're nominated for an Aurora Award for Best Fan-Related Work!

Check out the ballot (and consider casting a vote for us) at the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association.

Show Notes:

• Vajra's website
• Samantha's website
• Gregory's website
• Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein (and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein)
• Dante’s Inferno
• Katabasis, R.F. Kuang
• Rabbit Test, Samantha Mills
• A Sound of Thunder, Ray Bradbury
• Dune, Frank Herbert
• The Witcher, Andrzej Sapkowski
• Le Roman de Silence
• From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain, Minister Faust
• The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
• Island of Doctor Moreau, H.G. Wells
• Star Trek TOS: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
• One star review of Pride and Prejudice
• World Bank literacy stats
• Grendel, John Gardner

Genre fiction is full of strong, independent women, badass heroines, brave Final Girls, and virginal princesses. Frankly, we’re getting a little sick of it? For our season finale, with us to discuss difficult women is the queen of messy, complicated, and antiheroic female protagonists herself, the legendary Silvia Moreno-Garcia!

1. Silvia's website
2. Silvia's Instagram and Threads
3. Signal To Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (find out why Rachel is correct and all of the Goodreads reviewers are wrong)
4. Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
5. Countess by Susan Palumbo
6. Unknown Number: The High School Catfish

Rachel’s Problematic Faves

1. Bellis Coldwine (The Scar by China Miéville)
2. Baru Cormorant (The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickson)
3. Essun (The Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin)
4. Catra (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power by Nate Stevenson)

David’s Problematic Faves

1. Morgan Le Fay (Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory)
2. Cersei Lannister (A Song Of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin)
3. Jadis (The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis)

Silvia’s Problematic Faves

1. Eleanor and Theodora (The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson)
2. Constance and Merricat (We Have Always Lived In the Castle by Shirley Jackson)
3. Everything by Tanith Lee
4. Rebecca and Rachel (Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier)
5. Emma Bovary (Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert)

Are they genre? Nah, but we still love them

1. Cass Neary novels by Elizabeth Hand
2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
4. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
6. Washington Square by Henry James
7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

We are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Amazing Stories Magazine. It started way back in March or April, of 1926, depending on who you ask. With us to talk about the magazine's past, present, and maybe even the next hundred years, are its publishers and editors: Steve Davidson, Kermit Woodall and Lloyd Penney.

Show notes:

1. Amazing Stories Magazine online
2. Wikipedia's entry
3. Galactic Central
4. SF Encyclopedia

Charles R. Saunders was a Halifax journalist and, with his Imaro novels, the founder of the "sword and soul" genre and a Black Canadian literary icon. When he died in obscurity in 2020, journalist Jon Tattrie joined fans worldwide to uncover where he was buried, commemorate his life, and bring him the prominence he deserved. For Black History Month, we're joined by Jon to tell us about Charles' remarkable career and his new biography, To Leave a Warrior Behind: The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy.

Show Notes:

1. To Leave a Warrior Behind: The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy by Jon Tattrie
2. Write Now with Jon Tattrie
3. The New Moon’s Arms by Nalo Hopkinson
4. The Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin
5. The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar
6. Interview With the Vampire (2022-)
7. Blade
8. Star Man’s Son by Andre Norton
9. Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen
10. Annaka by Andre Fenton
11. Dark Fantasy zine
12. Jaycen Wise URAEUS
13. Mshindo I. Kuumba
14. Charles in the CSFFA hall of fame

Charles R. Saunders' select biography: