In this much-too-long-delayed episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we revisit stories from Cordwainer Smith’s The Rediscovery of Man, with especial focus on “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard”. More importantly, we discuss these stories with senior SF critic Gary K. Wolfe, who brings quite a bit more biographical information about Smith to our attention, to our m…

In this episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we revisit Season 2. There’s general consensus that our podcasts on Jagannath and Distances are among our favorites ever, and that there’s still a lot of value found in some of the older science fiction such as Olaf Stapledon and Cordwainer Smith. We will have a little bit of in-between-season content, since…

In this episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we tackle two short pieces from contemporary authors on our mathematical theme. We start out talking about Ken Liu’s “Single-Bit Error” and then we wind up raving about Vandana Singh’s novella Distances. We recorded this podcast live when Karen Lord visited me in Houston, TX. As such, I managed to screw up t…

In this episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we tackle two more short stories from The Rediscovery of Man, the complete collection of the short fiction of Cordwainer Smith from NESFA Press. We wound up finding so much to say about Smith’s stories that we decided to break this episode into two parts. In this installment we discuss “Alpha Ralpha Boulevar…

In this episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we tackle two short stories from The Rediscovery of Man, the complete collection of the short fiction of Cordwainer Smith from NESFA Press. We wound up finding so much to say about Smith’s stories that we decided to break this episode into two parts. In this installment we discuss “Scanners Live in Vain” (19…

In this episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we tackle Flatland (1884) by Edwin A. Abbott and “The Shadow Postulates” from Yoon Ha Lee’s debut collection, Conservation of Shadows. In one fell swoop we cover some of the most recent fiction yet (2008) and some of the oldest (1884). We hope you will agree that they are worth talking about together. Math f…

In this episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we tackle Napier’s Bones by Derryl Murphy. Murphy introduces some fascinating ideas, but undercuts them with info-dumping and a muddled ending. Dom has the ability to see and control numbers. After running from a desert confrontation between two other numerates, he ends up in a small Utah town with an adjunc…

In this episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we tackle Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, the first volume of the Book of the New Sun quartet, published in 1980. This is the first-person narrative of Severian, a lowly apprentice torturer blessed and cursed with a photographic memory, whose travels lead him through the marvels of far-future Urth, and…

After our previous episode discussing Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, the last novel written by C. S. Lewis, we decided that we needed a little more expertise than we were able to bring to bear. To that end, we’ve invited Beth Potterveld, a graduate of Wheaton College who has volunteered with the Wade Center and studied Inklings scholarship (a g…

In this episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we tackle Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, the last novel written by C. S. Lewis, published in 1956. At once more human and more mythic than his Perelandra trilogy, Lewis’s short novel of love, faith, and transformation (both good and ill) offers the reader much food for thought in a compact, impressively …

In this episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we tackle Star Maker, the 1939 classic by Olaf Stapledon. One moment a man sits on a suburban hill, gazing curiously at the stars. The next, he is whirling through the firmament, and perhaps the most remarkable of all science fiction journeys has begun. Even Stapledon’s other great work, LAST AND FIRST MEN, …

In this episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we enthuse about Jagannath, the award-winning collection from Karin Tidbeck. http://www.locusmag.com/sfcrossingthegulf/sfgulf10.mp3 We highly recommend this collection, an exemplar of the New Weird (although we never use that term in the podcast). Fantasy, fae, sf, and steampunk all collide in this amazing n…

Welcome back for Season 2, Part 1 of SF Crossing the Gulf! Here’s our notional reading list for the coming season: Children of God, Mary Doria Russell Jagannath, Karin Tidbeck Starmaker, Olaf Stapledon Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolfe Napier’s Bones, Derryl Murphy Selected short fiction of Cordwainer Smith [TBD] Fl…

In this episode, we (fondly, sadly) wrap up the first season of SF Crossing the Gulf. We reflect on what we’ve read so far, with discussions of POV, hard sf, immigrant tales, and international vs. slipstream fiction. While we’ve enjoyed this immensely, we both have deadlines to meet and other projects that need some TLC. http://www.locusmag.com/sfc…

In this episode we discuss Ghosts, a family drama set in the near future by Jamaican author Curdella Forbes. We talk about unreliable narrators, culture, symbolism, and snails. Links: Curdella Forbes on Facebook Karen Burnham on Twitter Karen Lord on Twitter http://www.locusmag.com/sfcrossingthegulf/sfgulf07.mp3 Next episode we’ll be back with a ra…