The sixth episode of Infinite Danger, plus a quick vocal warmup. Episode 6, Katie and the Whale, the lifetime fish drama episode: Cosby Mysteries. Major Briggs. Elective Mutism. Iron Deficiencies. Why we don’t know much about whales. Marineland’s Scenic Empty Field. Bjossa. Everyone knows that the captain of a ship is in charge of the ship. But did…

What’s in a name? A lot, really. That’s why they’re so hard to come up with. Parents agonize over picking the right baby name for their children. We gave up on naming this podcast. And as authors, sometimes it’s hard to come up with a good name for your character or your imaginary monster, or your fake magical bullshit. So in this episode, a writer…

What’s in a name? A lot, really. That’s why they’re so hard to come up with. Parents agonize over picking the right baby name for their children. We gave up on naming this podcast. And as authors, sometimes it’s hard to come up with a good name for your character or your imaginary monster, or your fake magical bullshit. So in this episode, a writer…

The fifth episode of Infinite Danger brings you HUGE GAMING NEWS! Episode 5, The Contender, in which Jonah could have saved the starving third world if it weren’t for The Woman: Legit tennis bonafides. The Burger Shack. Space Command. Tarzan, Tarzan, Tarzan. Darwin’s Nightmare. Dad’s new breeding techniques. Why Jonah must overcome slave morality. …

A lot of this podcast is about the publishing industry: breaking into it, working within it, and our frustrations with it. But some writers and artists strike out on their own. Joining us in this episode is Evan Dahm, writer and artist of 3rd Voice, Rice Boy, and other online serialized fantasy-adventure comics. Links: Rice-boy.com Evan Dahm on Top…

A lot of this podcast is about the publishing industry: breaking into it, working within it, and our frustrations with it. But some writers and artists strike out on their own. Joining us in this episode is Evan Dahm, writer and artist of 3rd Voice, Rice Boy, and other online serialized fantasy-adventure comics. Links: Rice-boy.com Evan Dahm on Top…

The fourth episode of Infinite Danger, Brought to you by the city of Neom, and HRH Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Vision 2030 plan. Episode 4, Salmon Run, featuring Grant Roberts, fish detective: DaVinci’s Inquest and the 37th Mayor of Vancouver. Donnelly Rhodes’s side project. Edible evidence. Columbo Villains. Antique auto maintenance for the visual…

I can show you the world. Shining, shimmering splendid. Tell me, writer, now when did you last read a worldbuilding guide? In this episode, returning champions Karlo Yeager Rodriguez and Simon McNeil join us to talk about worldbuilding. Links: “As the Shore to the Tides, So Blood Calls to Blood” Simon’s essay that absolutely no one is mad at Image …

I can show you the world. Shining, shimmering splendid. Tell me, writer, now when did you last read a worldbuilding guide? In this episode, returning champions Karlo Yeager Rodriguez and Simon McNeil join us to talk about worldbuilding. Links: “As the Shore to the Tides, So Blood Calls to Blood” Simon’s essay that absolutely no one is mad at Image …

The third episode of Infinite Danger, in which Deep Video Game Lore is discussed. Episode 3, The Wharf Rat, “The Rabies Episode:” Michele Chan and the tale of 11.5 Billion Dollars. King of the Cosmos. Boat Hobos. Delicious spaghetti sauce. Unnecessary hovercrafts. “Old Yeller Time.” Maybe if I drink all the water in this well I’m trapped in, there’…

In this episode, we’re talking to Matt Wolfbridge about his new online magazine, Typebar. We discuss how and why he put the magazine together, the grim state of internet-based publishing, and typewriters. Links: Typebar Magazine “Don’t hate me because I’m rich!” Wingspan and Post-Capitalist Forms of Competition Just my typewriter Abridged Thoughts …

In this episode, we’re talking to Matt Wolfbridge about his new online magazine, Typebar. We discuss how and why he put the magazine together, the grim state of internet-based publishing, and typewriters. Links: Typebar Magazine “Don’t hate me because I’m rich!” Wingspan and Post-Capitalist Forms of Competition Just my typewriter Abridged Thoughts …

In the second ever episode of Infinite Danger: Will waits patiently to receive his roses. ***** Episode 2, Running Free: in which they give up on ocean stuff immediately and pivot to being a western: Bacterial Kidney Disease. A shady past in early 80s South Africa. A dialogue on the ethics of documentary filmmaking. Becky, my love. “The Suplex.” **…

We’re back from our brief sabbatical with an all-new episode to discuss the most important work of utopian–or dystopian, depending on your interpretation–fiction of the past decade: i Pony: Blueprint for a New America by libertarian presidential candidate and boot model Vermin Supreme. About Rite Gud: R. S. Benedict is an author, appearing in Fanta…

We’re back from our brief sabbatical with an all-new episode to discuss the most important work of utopian–or dystopian, depending on your interpretation–fiction of the past decade: i Pony: Blueprint for a New America by libertarian presidential candidate and boot model Vermin Supreme. About Rite Gud: R. S. Benedict is an author, appearing in Fanta…

Howdy, Matt here! As you may remember from last month’s episode, Rite Gud is taking this month off. We’ve taken out one of our book club episodes from behind the paywall to share with you all. We’re looking at the Ionesco’s Rhinoceros with Simon McNeil, recorded in August of last year. If you like this and want more, the Book Club is available for …

In this podcast, we talk a lot about transgressive art and pushing the envelope. We rail against censors and prudes. And for that reason, we’ve gotten a little bit of a reputation as shock jocks and edgelords. And we have definitely attracted some shock jocks and edgelords. But, in this episode, we’re going to talk about the limits of shock value. …

We all incorporate the real world into our fiction. It’s impossible not to. Maybe we base a character on someone we love–or hate. Maybe we write a story inspired by a real life event–something that happened to us, or something we heard about in the news, or in a history book. But what are the ethics of this? Are we “stealing” other people’s experie…

Everybody loves a winner–either a hyper competent alpha male who always saves the day, or maybe a relatable underdog who beats the odds and comes out on top. But in this episode of Rite Gud, we’re paying tribute to literary losers, fuck-ups, and failures. Joining us is J.R. Bolt. About Rite Gud: R. S. Benedict is an author, appearing in Fantasy and…

In this episode, we’re talking about physical disability. How do we portray disabilities in fiction? How should we portray them? What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? James McPherson joins us to examine how disabilities are portrayed in works like Fury Road, Avatar, Game of Thrones, Evil Dead and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Links: …

There’s a trend in contemporary SFF to soften or humanize monsters. We have nice vampires who don’t kill people, sad ghosts who don’t torment the living, succubi who don’t fuck anyone. Some people find this charming, but here at Rite Gud, we like it when monsters are monstrous. Links David Cage denies allegations of toxic workplace culture at Quant…

Welcome to Rite Gud, the podcast that helps you write good. I’m RS Benedict, and I’ll be your waiter this evening. On tonight’s menu, we’re starting off with a discussion about the lack of physicality in contemporary speculative fiction. Then we’ll move on to the entree, in which we chew on why, exactly, it’s so important to consider food in your w…

The average American consumes 100,000 words a day. But what do we retain? What have we learned? We think that bigger is better, and more is better, but what about quality over quantity? Will reading more books make you smarter? Does writing more books mean you’re a better author? And what’s the difference between a binge and a feast? Here to talk a…

A sense of place can ground your story, or create a mood, or give it something really unique. Unfortunately, in an era in which we are all way too online, it’s easy to neglect this, and stick our characters in a weird featureless void. So how can we escape the set design from THX-1138? One way is by engaging with nature. Here to talk about it is As…

While you studied writing, I studied the blade. While you were having critique sessions, I mastered the parry. While you wasted your days at writing workshops in pursuit of sentence craft I cultivated grip strength. And now that you’re trying to write an epic fantasy novel and you don’t know how to handle swordplay you have the audacity to come to …

Welcome to Rite Gud, the podcast that helps you write good. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of writing advice out there that doesn’t help you write good. In fact, it helps you write pretty bad. And some of this advice is from professional, published writers. Here to join us once again for another episode about bad writing advice is Mattie Lewis. We ta…

There’s a long tradition in Western literature of exoticizing other cultures, particularly the East and the Global South. And recently, there’s been a major effort to undo all that–to de-exoticize the way we depict other cultures. And that’s a a step in the right direction, for sure. Stereotyping and dehumanizing people from other cultures is bad. …

In this episode, we talk to Jonny Pickering, founder and editor-in-chief of Seize the Press. [Transcript here] About Rite Gud: Raquel S. Benedict is an author, appearing in Fantasy and Science Fiction and Gardner Dozois’ The Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction. Matt Keeley, founder of Kittysneezes, is producing Rite G…

In this episode, we’re talking about artificial intelligence. Not the sympathetic kind played by Haley Joel Osment, not the mean but hot kind like SHODAN, but the kind that generates content. There’s been a lot of hype lately about the power of AI to create writing, visual art, and music. In this episode, Wendy Xu joins us once again to talk about …

Coziness. Comfort. Hygge. We all enjoy it. Maybe we have a favorite comfort food, or a favorite piece of comfort media, or a favorite comfort character. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you need it. But when the pursuit of comfort takes over your entire life, and your entire worldview, your art suffers, and maybe society does too. In …

We’re all online–excessively online–far too much of the time. For writers, social media can be a valuable tool for networking and self-promotion. But is it necessary? And can the drawbacks outweigh the positives? In this episode, Matt Keeley and Magen Cubed join us to talk about the difference between writing and posting. Transcript available here.…

A few months ago, we read Marge Piercy’s 1976 novel Woman on the Edge of Time for our book club. The main character of the novel is Mexican-American, and the author is a non-Latinx white woman, and unfortunately sometimes that shows. It’s a little clunky in parts. It’s a really good book, highly recommended, no disrespect to Marge Piercy, but there…

[Transcript here] Many things in the world have not been named, and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility, unmistakably modern—a variant of sophistication, but hardly identical with—it that goes by the cult name of Sleepaway Camp. In today’s very special episode of Rite Gud, Magencubed…

[Transcript] In our culture, it’s taboo to talk about money. You don’t ask another person how much they make, or how much their possessions cost, or how much they have in the bank. That’s especially true in publishing. Writers don’t usually talk openly about money. But they should. People should know the kind of money writers actually make. Readers…

Transcript here. A lot of horror stories start like this: a family moves into a suspiciously cheap dreamhouse. Over the course of the story, the house reveals its sinister nature–voices whisper unsettling things, mirrors reflect people who aren’t supposed to be there, the walls bleed–and at last the occupants discover its terrible secret. You can’t…

In this episode, we’re taking a look at a rather different kind of writing: writing for games. Our guest, Caitlin Fortier, makes TTRPGs–that’s tabletop role playing games–and she’s going to tell us how it works from inception to publication. Full transcript available. Links: Burgerpunk Kickstarter RentAThug store Guinea Pig Press on Twitter Jeff’s …

In this episode, we’re going a little outside of our comfort zone to talk about visual media: in this case, sequential art, or graphic novels, or comics. Joining us for this episode is comics artist and illustrator Wendy Xu, who made Tidesong, Mooncakes, and the upcoming The Infinity Particle. Wendy was kind enough to join us and answer some questi…

As part of this podcast’s dedication to sparking controversial, attention-getting discourse, we have a new piping hot take for you here today: libraries are good. But in this country, libraries are under attack by a small but zealous movement among the far-right. [Full Transcript Here] Links: America’s Culture Warriors Are Going After Librarians US…

[Full Transcript Here] This is a writing podcast, so we talk a lot about reading. Most of the time, we’ve been discussing what we read, but today we’re going to discuss how we read and why we read. What’s the point of reading when there are other ways of getting information? Does reading make you a better person? And why are so many Americans so ba…

[Full transcript available here.] Science fiction and fantasy can imagine many things–impossible worlds, unthinkable technology, fantastic creatures, magic, gods and monsters–but for some reason, a lot of SFF authors have a hard time imagining stories about poor people. Fantasy stories often focus on royalty. Sci-fi protagonists tend to be middle o…

In part two of our discussion on diverse sci-fi and fantasy, we turn our attention to the later half of the 20th century, when the field opened up a little more to BIPOC and queer authors. This is a huge topic and we couldn’t possibly cover everyone, so here’s a list of recommended authors who we didn’t get a chance to discuss in depth in this epis…

Women have always been in science fiction, ever since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, but far too many of them have been forgotten or at least underappreciated. In this episode of Rite Gud, we are joined by Stephen Mazur, former Assistant Editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, to talk about the women of sci-fi’s pulp era. Books and M…

In fiction, a plot is the sequence of connected events that make up a narrative. These events aren’t random things that happen–there’s a relationship between them, usually a causative one. Generally, a plot in fiction leads up to a climax that answers a central question or resolves a central conflict. Unless you’re writing really experimental ficti…

Sci-fi and fantasy are imaginative genres that can show us new, impossible worlds. Sometimes, they offer us escape from our dreary lives. But there’s one thing contemporary SFF can’t seem to escape. As Mark Fisher once said, “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. ” In this episode of Rite Gud, Simon McNeil joins us…

Writer, podcaster, editor, and mall explorer Kurt Schiller joins us to discuss how he started his magazine, Blood Knife. Since its inception a few short years ago, Blood Knife has become a notable voice in cultural criticism, and has been cited by NPR, the BBC, and the New York Times. In this episode, Kurt shares what it takes to launch a magazine,…

Sci-fi, fantasy, and horror have always used speculative elements to express political ideas. HG Wells wrote War of the Worlds as a reaction to British colonialism, Tolkien explored his feelings about World War I and industrialization in The Lord of the Rings, and Mary Shelley had a lot to say about gender and modernity in Frankenstein. Many specul…

Writers are often under pressure to follow rules, to write to the market, to carefully fit themselves into a safe cultural and commercial niche. You have to stick to one genre, and follow the standard recipe for that genre, or else audiences will get mad and your book won’t sell. At least, that’s what publishers say. But some writers know better. I…

The internet is a huge part of our lives, but putting it into our fiction can be difficult. Many writers leave it out of their stories entirely. Others try to incorporate it into their work with awkward results. How should our fiction handle the internet? Should our fiction try to handle the internet at all? Cartoonist RE Parrish joins us to talk a…

When you send a short story to a magazine, it probably doesn’t go directly to the editor. Instead, it ends up in what’s called the slush pile–the pool of unsolicited work waiting for review. Who reviews it? Weirdos like us. In this episode of Rite Gud, we’re joined by slush readers NM Whitley and Karl P to talk about why stories get rejected, retro…

They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but it is way easier to kill a guy with a sword than with a pen. We love art–it’s important to us and it’s meaningful and a worthwhile pursuit–but art alone does not change the material world. What, then, is the purpose of writing? Why do we do this if we’re not saving the world? Here to talk about this …