Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 5 days 8 hours 41 minutes
Discworld rests on top of four giant elephants standing on a giant turtle traveling through space. But the fantasy of Discworld rests on Terry Pratchett’s views about human nature, his sharp sense of satire, and the way he expressed himself through his characters.
In 1666, Margaret Cavendish wrote The Blazing World as a philosophical treatise and a response to scientific ideas of her day. She had no idea she was pioneering a new genre called science fiction.
For 100 years, Weird Tales magazine struggled to keep publishing issues, if it was publishing at all. But now Weird Tales is seen as the Big Bang of modern sci-fi, fantasy and horror subgenres.
The first big sci-fi alternate reality games on The Internet was meant to be a joke. It got a lot darker and weirder than anyone anticipated.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t just about regaining territory. It’s also a cultural war being fought in libraries, bookstores, publishing houses and people’s imaginations.
I look at parallel stories about visual artists whose livelihoods are being threatened by powerful forces in Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
I talk with novelist Nghi Vo about the dark magic of her novels set in the dawn of the modern age.
What happens to a town or a city when you layer a fantasy story on top of it? We look at how the tourism of fandom is changing places in the real world.
We revisit my 2016 episode about Octavia Butler in honor of the 75th anniversary of her birth. And we hear a new reading from one of Butler’s classic novels.
We look at the subgenre of analog horror, where something sinister might be lurking in the horizontal lines and vertical holds of those old VHS tapes.