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:

Magazines and journals have been a foundational part of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror since the very beginning and provide us with the stories, art, and critical analysis that keep the genre vibrant. These collaborations are a labour of love and the lifeblood of the literary scene. With us to talk about the work of editing and producing them are two rising stars in the field, Josh Wilson, editor of The Fabulist, and Alexandra Pierce, editor of Speculative Insight.

Show Notes:

1. The Fabulist
2. The Fabulist on Bluesky
3. The Fabulist on Instagram
4. Speculative Insight
5. Speculative Insight on Bluesky
6. Speculative Insight on Instagram
7. Letters to Tiptree
8. Luminescent Threads
9. Radon Journal
10. Clarkesworld
11. khōréō
12. Trollbreath

The famous introduction to Star Trek lays out the mission of the Starship Enterprise: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before! Later on, they changed it to be more inclusive—where no one has gone before. But the fundamental problem remains—if no one has gone there, what exactly are all those new civilizations? Could science fiction and fantasy have a colonialism problem? With us to discuss this thorny issue and the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers challenging Eurocentric assumptions is Suzan Palumbo, author of Countess and co-founder of the Ignyte Awards.

• Show notes:
• Suzan's Bluesky
• Suzan's Instagram
• 2024 Nebula Awards shortlist
• Stelliform Press
• 
  
• Reading list:
• “The Butcher of the Forest” by Premee Mohamed
• “The Tusks of Extinction” by Ray Nayler
• “Lost Ark Dreaming” by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
• “Countess” by Suzan Palumbo
• “The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain” by Sofia Samatar
• “The Dragonfly Gambit” by A. D. Sui
• “Green Fuse Burning” by Tiffany Morris
• “We Speak Through the Mountain and “Annual Migration of Clouds” by Premee Mohamed
• “Blackheart Man” by Nalo Hopkinson
• 
  

Anyone who’s ever written fantasy has faced this problem: You have hit the point of conflict in a story where problems can no longer be worked out with witty retorts or a magic spell. The orcs are at the gates, the peace talks have broken down…that’s right—you’re going to have to write a battle scene. In this episode, we talk to Suzannah Rowntree, author of How to Write a Fantasy Battle: Basic Medieval and Modern Military Tactics for Authors, The Watchers of Outremer Series, and other historical fantasies, about how to get a battle right.

Show Notes:

• Suzannah's Bluesky: suzannahrowntree
• Suzannah's Instagram: suzannahsnaps
• Suzannahrowntree.site
• How to Write a Fantasy Battle: Basic Medieval and Modern Military Tactics for Authors
• Western Warfare In The Age Of The Crusades, 1000-1300 by John France
• Byzantine flamethrower
• Battle of Antioch (1098)
• Battle of Hattin (1187)
• Seventh Crusade
• Medicine in the Crusades: Warfare, Wounds and the Medieval Surgeon by Piers D. Mitchell
• Magistra Hersend
• Godfrey of Bouillon
• The Rebellion Of Count Hugh Of Jaffa
• 
  

Happy Halloween! We're talking about WITCHES! A staple of fantasy, horror, and Broadway musicals, witches can be anything from a murderous presence in the woods to the friendly neighbourhood Wiccan who revives your dying African violet. So let's get our witch on!

Show Notes:

• Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
• Spirited Away (2001)
• VenCo by Cherie Dimaline
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Helpless"
• Barbie-Yaga Dream Hut
• Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, "Baba Yaga: Everyone's Favorite Witch From Folklore" Part 1 and Part 2
• Baba Yaga: The greatest 'wicked witch' of all?
• The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
• Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici
• A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher
• "Love Potion No. 9" by the Clovers
• The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag
• Season of the Witch (2011)
• Bewitched (1964-1972)
• The Good Witch (2008)
• The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018-2020)
• Charmed (1998-2006)
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