Women Can Electrocute You
Alienating the Audience
In Naomi Alderman’s “The Power” women all over the planet suddenly develop the ability to shoot electrical shocks, to the point of lethality. The natural order is entirely inverted, with men easily overpowered by women, and resulting societal tumult. Katherine Mangu-Ward joins to discuss.
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Time Loops
Alienating the Audience
Getting thrown back to the same place in time, repeatedly, with little you can do about it has become an awesome sub genre in scifi. From Groundhog Day, to The Endless, we discuss time loops and their appeal in science fiction. Brian Brushwood joins to discuss.
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Holy Space Capitalism of the Feringi
Alienating the Audience
Star Trek’s Feringi are intergalactic traders, merchants, entrepreneurs, and feckless shysters. How did they get to be space capitalists when the Federation outgrew the concept of money altogether? Sean Finnerty joins to discuss Feringinar, the Rules of Acquisition, and the economy of the 24th century.
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Cheating with a Sexbot
Alienating the Audience
In "Subservience" Megan Fox plays a robot servant who goes off the rails, seduces her owner, and tries to kill his wife. Henrique Couto joins to discuss the ethical implications of cheating on your spouse with a robot, how we ought to treat robots even if they don't really have consciousness, and whether or not we'd buy robot servants in general.
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"Alien" is Dudes Afraid of Getting Knocked Up
Alienating the Audience
Fresh after seeing “Alien: Romulus,” Dickie Lynch and Heaton discuss Ripley Scott’s “Alien” franchise: the creepy aesthetics of H. R. Geiger, the deepest fears of the movie, the alien seeding of “Prometheus,” and the most recent installment as a best-of.
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A Canticle for Leibowitz
Alienating the Audience
It's three centuries after the apocalypse, and a small Catholic monastery in the desert is collecting and safeguarding whatever pre-calamite artifacts it can, to preserve knowledge until civilization gets going again. Brian Brushwood joins to discuss this post-apocalyptic "Jesuits in space" novel.
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A. I. As Monkeypaw Slaves
Alienating the Audience
How has A. I. been portrayed through history in science fiction, and what's it going to look like as it keeps getting better? Stone Lynch and J. C. Campbell join to discuss.
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A Clockwork Orange’s Secret Extra Chapter
Alienating the Audience
Anthony Burgess wrote his dystopian novel “A Clockwork Orange” in 1962, but two different versions appeared on either side of the Atlantic. The American version stops at chapter twenty, whereas the British version has an extra twenty-first chapter, which totally changes the book. Brian Brushwood joins to discuss.
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Faster Than Light Travel in Sci-Fi
Alienating the Audience
The universe is really, really big. Like huge. Really really really huge. Prompting science fiction to come up with workarounds so everyone isn't stuck on the same boring 'ol planet. Dickie Lynch rejoins to discuss.
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Stay Your Age Right Now Forever
Alienating the Audience
Drew Magary’s book “The Postmortal” explores a scenario in which a vaccine is made for aging. Whatever age you take it at, you are paused there indefinitely. How does that effect marriage, retirement, and society as a whole? Josh Jennings and Ashland Viscosi return to discuss.
info_outlineIf supervillains are so evil, why are they so captivating? Which crime lord would you serve under if you had to pick one?
Former Marvel editor Tom Brennan and comic book aficionados Jeremiah Johnson and Nick Sperdute join Heaton to discuss the underlying mystique and purpose of supervillains.
This file corrects for an audio issue in a previous upload.