Wizards Vs. Lesbians

A queer sf review podcast about the emerging wizards vs. lesbians microgenre.

BONUS: THE CHATELAINE 06/29/2025

BONUS: THE CHATELAINE Heather Rose Jones joins us to discuss a delightfully strange book - hell is real, and it's a giant monster that lives underground, and the devil's wife tricked him and took his keys, so she's in charge of it, and she's trying to form a strategic alliance with the king of France, which sucks for you because you're Belgian. Also it's 1328. Fans of Wizards vs Lesbians may enjoy Heather's , for obvious reasons. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37208525

A SWEET STING OF SALT 06/23/2025

A SWEET STING OF SALT This is a historical novel about life in a small fishing village in Nova Scotia in the 1830s, the options available to women at the time and what happens when a man takes an unwilling bride. In that capacity, it succeeds; as a fairy-tale deconstruction, which it's also trying to be, it doesn't. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37111945

THE SAPLING CAGE 06/08/2025

THE SAPLING CAGE A young adult novel about a trans girl who wants to be a witch. Witches in this world are feminist/anarcho-primitivist forest mercenaries, though, which doesn't complicate matters for our hero but does for a reader trying to make sense of what's happening. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36906425

BONUS: PIRANESI 06/01/2025

BONUS: PIRANESI This one's about a guy who gets stuck in a labyrinth. Lee joins us to discuss why the guy is there and what, if anything, it all means. We all agree it's a very good book but past that point things get a little contentious. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36804585

LOTE 05/25/2025

LOTE A synaesthete vagabond who wants to live like the Bright Young People accidentally goes to grad school instead. It's like if Foucault's Pendulum was funny. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36702420

ASUNDER 05/11/2025

ASUNDER What if the dude who is possessing you is actually a nice guy? And what if you're the kind of gremlin who can only be fixed by a live-in boyfriend, and by "live-in" I mean in your actual brain? /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36521515

BONUS: FANGIRL 05/04/2025

BONUS: FANGIRL Masha du Toit joins us to discuss a book about going to college and writing fanficiton which turns out to be laser-targeted at one of our hosts. So what we end up with is a strange mixture of cultural history and personal pain, much like the book itself. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36424365

SHORT FICTION ROUNDUP # 6 - 2024 NEBULAS EDITION 04/27/2025

SHORT FICTION ROUNDUP # 6 - 2024 NEBULAS EDITION It's this again! In this episode we discuss the following stories: /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36325905

ZETA BASE 04/13/2025

ZETA BASE We could do nothing but weird small press lesbian novellas on this podcast and I'd be happy. This one's about how we really need to blow up the sun but we're too busy having smoldering academic love triangles. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36115525

BONUS: SHELL GAME 04/06/2025

BONUS: SHELL GAME Lianyu Tan joins us for another foray into literature that started life as Xena AU fanfiction (or Xena Uber, in the parlance of the time.) This one starts out as a pirate romp featuring the world's brattiest sub/voluntary slave girl and ends up in some really dark places. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36025140

FEAST WHILE YOU CAN 03/30/2025

FEAST WHILE YOU CAN This is the most Wizards vs Lesbians book we've covered in ages, and it's also really good. It's a familiar setup - there's a thing in a pit in a little tiny town and the locals have to keep it fed. The beauty's in the execution. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35922790

BONUS: THE EXPEDITION (A LOVE STORY) 03/23/2025

BONUS: THE EXPEDITION (A LOVE STORY) We adventure into the realm of non-fiction - mostly - for the first time, courtesy of Isaac Fellman, who has joined us to discuss a book about two disasters. The first is the Andree Expedition, a real-life polar quest which failed both disastrously and predictably; the second is an exercise for the reader. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35824670

MOBY-DICK 03/16/2025

MOBY-DICK Finally, the all-caps title is correct! During the 2023 Wizzly awards we all said we were going to read Moby Dick by the time the next Wizzlies rolled around, and most of us did. It turns out it's really good. Like, I'd call it the great American novel, at least for the days before women were invented. Has anybody else heard about this? /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35714875

BONUS: STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND 03/09/2025

BONUS: STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND We kick off a new series of author's choice episodes with Cameron Reed, who has brought us a novel you can chew on like the ragged edge of a thumbnail. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35593090

THE GOLEM OF BROOKLYN 03/02/2025

THE GOLEM OF BROOKLYN This book is about whether murdering antisemites is a good idea or not, morally and strategically, and as such it's about Israel without ever discussing Israel, which as a rhetorical gambit has its advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage is that it's therefore a New York Novel and it comes with all the problems that implies. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35499140

BONUS: 4TH ANNUAL WIZZLY AWARDS 02/23/2025

BONUS: 4TH ANNUAL WIZZLY AWARDS We persevere through technical issues to bring you this, our annual extravaganza of self-indulgence. Is it possible four years in that we're actually worse at this than when we started? /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35396185

A DARK AND DROWNING TIDE 02/09/2025

A DARK AND DROWNING TIDE In fantasy Germany a fantasy Jewess and her fantasy Aryan forest princess must go up the river to save the cat, or something. Not as much blood as you'd expect in this one but there's plenty of soil. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35210390

AN EDUCATION IN MALICE 01/26/2025

AN EDUCATION IN MALICE We're dipping our toes into Dark Academia here. This book asks the question: what if your abusive academic advisor was literally a vampire? And the answer is it would be kinda cool. A classic example of horror elements blunting the actual horror, down to a 1960s setting that elides all the worst parts of the era. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/34824965

THE LYREMOUTH CHRONICLES (BOOKS 1 & 2) 01/12/2025

THE LYREMOUTH CHRONICLES (BOOKS 1 & 2) This one takes a while to get going - at first it seems like a genderswapped swords & sorcery novel, but it turns out that's only one part of a much larger world. Recommended for Steerswoman fans. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/34824885

THE MINISTRY OF TIME with Vajra Chandrasekera 01/05/2025

THE MINISTRY OF TIME with Vajra Chandrasekera A book about empire, memory, historical trauma and the consequences of dating your blorbo. Huge thanks to Vajra for suggesting this one and for coming on to talk about it! /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/34724655

BONUS: THE SUMMER PRINCE 12/29/2024

BONUS: THE SUMMER PRINCE Our esteemed pal P.H. Lee joins us for a rundown of this charming bit of YA. It's Brazilian! It's Really Brazilian! /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/34646845

THE SCORPION RULES 12/22/2024

THE SCORPION RULES We return to the schools that resemble the prisons for a book that predates the Ninth House but has a couple of startling similarities, including a proto-John Gaius Gen-X godhead. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/34571280

BONUS: Q & A 4 (100 EPISODES!) 12/15/2024

BONUS: Q & A 4 (100 EPISODES!) On the occasion of our 100th mainline episode we treat ourselves by answering your questions. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/34458955

KILL LA KILL 12/08/2024

KILL LA KILL In perhaps our most controversial take yet, we posit that this anime is good, actually. Your tolerance for breast collision physics will factor in whether you agree. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/34335335

THE SEEP 11/24/2024

THE SEEP Helpful alien friends take over the world and make everyone immortal and kind of chill, man. It's a metaphor for something or other. Maybe AI, maybe legal weed. Maybe california in general. It doesn't amount to much. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/34127741

BONUS: SCUM VILLAIN'S SELF-SAVING SYSTEM 11/17/2024

BONUS: SCUM VILLAIN'S SELF-SAVING SYSTEM We have fandom historian and BL expert Naked Bee on to discuss this extremely charming bit of gay metafiction. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/33961122

AMMONITE 11/10/2024

AMMONITE We return to Nicola Griffith to get a more measured take on the lesbian space colony genre, written if not in direct response to Daughters of a Coral Dawn then to books like it. (We know this because of a helpful author's note.) /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/33867667

BONUS: PALE FIRE 11/03/2024

BONUS: PALE FIRE We get to do a literary classic - significantly, an extremely funny literary classic - in the company of the excellent Kat Weaver. A joy. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/33763217

DAUGHTERS OF A CORAL DAWN 10/27/2024

DAUGHTERS OF A CORAL DAWN Vintage lesbian separatist science fiction from 1984. It's almost charming until the implications set in - since women can't commit sexual assault and men can't not, pederasty for the one and extermination for the other only makes sense. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/33630872

DAUGHTERS OF CHAOS 10/13/2024

DAUGHTERS OF CHAOS A lazy, racist, sexist, ahistorical wankfest of a novel. At least we got a podcast out of it. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/33437802

Wizards Vs. Lesbians

TOPICS