Imagination. Reality. We follow the writers who connect them.
32 RTB Books in Dark Times 8: Paul Saint-Amour (JP 5/20)
Who better to talk about Dark Times than the author of an unforgettable scholarly book about the grimness of the interwar years, Tense Future? Paul Saint-Amour, Professor of English at University of Pennsylvania and author of various prizewinning books and brilliant articles, joins John to talk about realism, escapism and the glories of science fiction.…
Pandemic in the Pacific: Kurt Vonnegut’s COVID novel
Just about every adult human being back then had a brain weighing about three kilograms! There was no end to the evil schemes that a thought machine that oversized couldn’t imagine and execute. … This was a very innocent planet, except for those great big brains. There is a volcanic archipelago in the Pacific that…
29 RTB Books in Dark Times 6: Kim Stanley Robinson (JP)
Kim Stanley Robinson, SF novelist of renown, has three marvelous trilogies: The Three Californias, Science in the Capital and, most celebrated of all, Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars. His honors include many Locus, Hugo and Nebulae awards. Small fact connecting him to RTB-land: he completed a literature PhD directed by Frederic Jameson with…
14 In Focus: Cixin Liu (in English, with Pu Wang, JP)
In this episode, John and Brandeis professor Pu Wang talk with the bestselling science fiction author Cixin Liu. Mr. Liu is the author of The Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death’s End, and other works. When he visited Brandeis to receive an honorary degree, Liu paid a visit to the RTB lair to record…
14x Afterthoughts about the Cixin Liu interview (Pu Wang and John)
In May, John and Pu interviewed SF superstar Cixin Liu (you will want to listen to that episode before this one). In August they entered the studio again to work on the final edits for that interview in both its Chinese and English versions. While they were there, they took some time to reflect on…
7 In Focus: Samuel Delany in conversation with John Plotz (Nevèrÿon, Triton, Gertrude Stein and more….)
On August 6, 2019, an article based on this podcast interview appeared in our partner publication, Public Books. Fresh on the heels of our conversation with Madeline Miller, author of Circe, John Plotz has a talk with Samuel Delany, living legend of science fiction and fantasy. You probably know him best for breakthrough novels like Dhalgren and Trouble…
Recall This Book 