Ben Percy discusses the Sky Vault, the third book in The Comet Cycle.

James Ellroy discusses his latest novel, The Enchanters, in a phone conversation.

James Ellroy discusses The Enchanters.

John Scalzi discusses Starter Villain.

Andrew F. Sullivan discusses The Marigold.

Michael Finkel discusses The Art Thief.

Jacqueline Woodson discusses Remember Us.

Randall Kennedy discusses the essays in his collection Say It Loud!

Tananarive Due discusses her novel The Reformatory.

Cory Doctorow discusses The Lost Cause.

Garrett Graff tells the story of UFO.

Richard Kadrey discusses The Pale House Devil, The Dead Take the A Train co-written with Cassandra Khaw and his music.

Michael Finkel discusses The Stranger in the Woods.

Natalie Haynes dicusses Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth.

Priya Guns discusses her novel Your Driver is Waiting.

Andy Greenberg discusses Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency.

Andy Greenberg discusses Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency.

Chris D'Amelio discusses his memoir, co-written with Reid Maruyama, Life and Death at Cape Disappointment: Becoming a Surfman on the Columbia River Bar.

Laurie R. King discusses her novel The Lantern's Dance.

Daryl Gregory discuss his novel Revelator.

Jeffrey Rosen discusses The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical writers on virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.

Stephen Graham Jones discusses The Angel of Indian Lake and The Indian Lake trilogy.

Sarah Langan discusses her novel A Better World..

Gwendolyn Kiste discusses her novel The Haunting of Velkwood.

Charlie Huston discusses his novel Catchpenny.

Angela Slatter discusses her novel The Briar Book of the Dead.

Craig Foster discusses his book Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World.

Francesco Dimitri discuses his novel The Dark Side of the Sky.

Nathan Ballingrud discusses The Atlas of Hell: Stories and Crypt of the Moon Spider.

Avik Jain Chatlani discusses his novel This Country Is No Longer Yours.

Nathan Ballingrud discusses The Atlas of Hell: Stories and Crypt of the Moon Spider.

Keith Donohue discusses his novel The Boy Who Drew Monsters.

Boyce Upholt discusses his book The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi.

Lindsay Ellis discusses her Noumena series, Axiom's End, Truth of the Divine, Apostles of Mercy.

Elizabeth Stix discusses her collection of linked short stories Things I Want Back From You.

Keith Donohue discusses his novel The Motion of Puppets.

Keith Donohue discusses his novel The Motion of Puppets.

Paolo Bacigalupi discusses his novel Navola.

Ivy Pochoda discusses her novel Sing Her Down.

Nick Bryant Discusses The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with Itself.

Stephen Graham Jones discusses his novel I Was a Teenage Slasher

Re-podcast of edited interviews with Kamala Harris discussing her book Smart on Crime and Muhammed Yunus discussing his book A World of Three Zeros.

Martin Hogue discusses the stories behind the words and pictures in his book Making Camp.

Keith Donohue discusses his novel The Girl in the Bog.

Iris Yamashita discusses her novel Village in the Dark.

Annalee Newitz discusses her book Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind

Dan Slater discusses his novel The Incorruptibles.

Johnny Compton discusses his novel Devils Kill Devils.

Sarah Pinsker discusses her books Haunt Sweet Home and Lost Places.

Neuroscientist Richard Cytoowic discusses his book Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload.

Catherynne Valente discusses her novels Space Opera and Space Oddity.

Char Miller discusses his book Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning.

Cara Giaimo discuses Atlas Obscura: Wild Life: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Living Wonders.

Andrew Yang and Stephen Marche discuss their new novel, The Last Election.

Melanie Challengeer discusses her book How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human.

Nick Cutter and Andrew Sullivan discuss their horror novel The Handyman Method.

Susan Casey discusses The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean.

Lilith Saintcrow discusses The Salt-Black Tree, the second half of The Dead God's Heart duology, after Spring's Arcana.

TC Boyle discusses his novel Talk to Me.

Jennifer Ackerman discusses her new book What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds.

Richard Kadrey discusses his writing, the short story collection The Secrets of Insects and his art.

Cassandra Khaw discusses her novellas Nothing But Blackened Teeth and The Salt Grows Heavy.

Richard Kadrey discusses his writing, the short story collection The Secrets of Insects and his art.

Lilith Saintcrow discusses her new book, Spring's Arcana.

Dare Según Falowo discusses the stories in his collection Caged Ocean Dub.

Ramona Emerson discusses her novel Shutter.

Tananarive Due discusses her collection of short horror fiction, The Wishing Pool.

TC Boyle discusses Blue Skes, in many senses of the words.

Dacher Keltner discusses his book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life

David Grann discusses The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

Molly Prentiss discusses her novel Old Flame.

Brendan Slocumb discusses his novel Symphony of Secrets.

Nathan Ballingrud discusses his novel The Strange.

"... basically, everyone is corrupt ..."

A Not-So-Quick-Guide to Writing in China

The Bourbaki New Math Hoax Exposed

Not Quite Richard Bachman

"I didn't have a governor ... that is ... anything, endgame, was me killing somebody."

Elizabeth Mackenzie discusses her novel The Dog of the North.

Helene Wecker discusses The Hidden Palace.

Watch out for falling anvils.

A 2016 mini-interview with Adam Haslett about his book Imagine Me Gone.

Jasper Fforde 'The Eyre Affair' and 'Lost in a Good Book'

The Chemistry of Tears

'Any Day Now' at Capitola Book Cafe

Book People

"...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."

One Summer: America, 1927

The Days of Anna Madrigal

"...it gives a realism to what I think is this ideal searching..."

Ray Russell and Rosalie Parker discuss Literary Hauntings: A Gazetteer of Literary Ghost Stories and 50 Forgotten Books.

"Sometimes your life just feels like a story" Genre: Non Fiction, Memoir

WARNING Potentially VERY offensive and very entertaining.

Ayize Jama-Everett reading from 'The Liminal People,' backed by Fanyang Smith.

"I couldn’t put it down, I had to finish it."

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief

Fiona Barton discusses Local Gone Missing.

The Demiurge : God Wakes Up

"...give it a rest, go out and do something..."

"...a lot of my work in the first draft looks like prose..."

"...by the end, given all the amazing people I met out there, I've changed my views about that."

Bees in the Bonnet

'Sixty Days and Counting'

'Matterhorn' by Karl Marlantes, 'Lost; by Alice Lichtenstein, 'The Good Son' by Michael Gruber

'The Drowned Life'

The history of recent civilization as seen through our garbage and economic habits.

Lies, Damn Lies and Therapy

Canada

Life is the gnarly zone

Grape vs Grain

"I know that culture that exists in my country, that is carried on by women, generations of women."

American Classics

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction

Eye-Biting, Funny or Horrific

"The stories were after me ...."

"It just makes no sense that one little island with terribly bad cuisine would take over the world."

The Three

Dan Slater discusses Wolf Boys: Two American Teenagers and Mexicos Most Dangerous Drug Cartel.

Michael Katakis and Xinran

Walking Dead

Robert Wright discusses his book Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment.

Robin Sloan discusses his new novel Sourdough, robotics, and cultures of all varieties.

Drama in Three Voices

"They still have to do their laundry, even if you're sleeping in dirt"

"There needs to be an explanation for that person."

Mystery writer Laurie R. King on Cities in Noir Fiction; Genre: Non-fiction, Genre-fiction studies, Mystery Fiction

"...and know that you're never going to se a tree again..."

'Welcome to Your Brain : Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive'

Eric Hanson discusses his collection of stories, What I Was Afraid Of.

"It Was a Big Train Wreck"

The New American Meal

"This was the world's first tech start-up."

A 2016 mini-interview with Sean Carroll about his book The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself.

Email me your suggestions

From Bookseller to Movie Producer

Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies ; Joseph Kanon, Instanbul Passage ; Paul Theroux, The Lower River

Homeland

Bad Magic and the San Diego Zombie

Odds Against Tomorrow

"You can spend a lot of money on a watch."

"I knew it wouldn't work."

The Teller View

T. C. Boyle discusses The Terranauts.

Episode 1: Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time

"..if any of you have ever spent any time in academia, you can imagine what this meant..."

On 'The Street of a Thousand Blossoms'

'The Astral' by Kate Christensen, 'Miss New India' by Bharati Mukherjee and 'Robopocalypse' by Daniel H. Wilson

Hearing Voices

"These Families are making incredible sacrifices..."

Fiction or Science Fiction

Riding the Drive In Omnibus

Texas state of mind, comics, Bubba Ho Tep

Saints of the Shadow Bible

Andrew Komarnyckyj discusses Ezra Slef: The Next Nobel Laureate in Literature.

Sorry Please Thank You

Republic, Lost

Alexander Weinstein discusses After Yang, Kogonada's film adaptation of his short story Saying Goodbye to Yang from the collection Children of the New World.

"Is there an essential self?"

"...you're more interested in how these parts interact..."

Varanger

Battery-Powered Adventures in PA

"I will try to read more slowly."

Talking to 'The (real) Futurist'.

"An imperial government is incompatible with democracy"

"Fear is easy to sell"

"It was the most amazingly eventful and magical summer..."

Vlad Kreimer discusses music,art, Russia, and the Lyra-8.

"...twenty things that are too cool not to use..."

History in the Un-Making

Emily Dreyfuss discusses the creation of Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America co-written with Joan Donovan and Brian Friedberg.

"Wake up and smell the burning flesh."

Entire interview

"Everything I know about writing I've learned from reading books."

"I feel like something very large is laughing at me."

"Quote"

Return to Sender

"We try to replicate the experience of what the show was like."

"I had to do it; it was a way of both coming to terms with the experience, of documenting the experience, of commemorating it..."

Fantasy occurs, really, in the corner of the eye

Laurie R. King discusses Back to the Garden.

Words, Music, Magic

Robert J. Sawyer Reads from 'Triggers'

"The Dark Boy"

Robert Lloyd discusses The Poison Machine.

"We're going to bring in people from all different menus who have talked about Mars."

Agony Column Podcast News Report : Barry N. Malzberg Reads at SF in SF : Exercise for Students

"I write in order to see what comes next."

Elegy Beach

"In the Wake of Giants"

Novella

Chain / Library / Independent

In Time's Ten Best

Labor, Film and Mayday

"...he proceeded to shout at me for approximately 30 minutes..."

Kirsten Menger-Anderson, Sean Stewart and Aimee Bender

Writing "Reading Grandpa's Head"

Alan Garner, 'Red Shift' ; Stephen King, '11/22/63' ; Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, 'The Night Eternal'

5,000 Words A Day

"This wacky, off-center sub-genre was being generated by real events."

So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures

A Perfect Blood

Live at the Swedish American Music Hall Courtesy Booksmith

Last Day on Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter

"Well, I call him up and tell him I'm going to the Grand Banks and he pretty much signs himself right up."

"If anyone thinks it's absurd that the government might assassinate the founder of WikiLeaks, it's quite a bit less absurd than I wish it were..." -- Barry Eisler

"Our approach was: 'OK, what happens next?'"

Don Delillo: 'Point Omega,' Robert Stone: 'Fun With Problems,' Douglas Preston: 'Impact'

"..they did Jimmy Olsen that, didn't they?" - John Shirley

REAMDE

Jeff Carlson Reads from 'Plague Year'

"We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."

A conversation about Armada and science fiction.

Not enough future to go around.

"It was too hot to rebel."

Drew Magary discusses his new novel The Hike.

Andy Weir discusses Artemis.

Barbara Feinman Todd discusses her book Pretend I'm Not Here: How I Worked with Three Newspaper Icons, One Powerful First Lady, and Still Managed to Dig Myself Out of the Washington Swamp.

"More Government, Please!"

"...it would not have been true to his character..."

Red Moon

"...the sort of culture that develops a Robin Hood myth, that tells you a lot about the time and place that story comes from..."

"So first, I decided, OK, I'll get rid of the Christian mythology ...."

S. G. Browne and Lev Grossman Moderated by Terry Bisson

"..it suddenly hit me; I almost cried..."

An in-depth interview with Yann Martel about his book The High Mountains of Portugal.

The Flame Alphabet and The Vanishers

'The Wolf Gift' by Anne Rice, 'Arctic Rising' by Tobias Buckell and 'The Third Gate' by Lincoln Child

We've Got Five Years

The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al-Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia

"It gives me the opportunity to meet some of my influences"

"Even knowing how the ending comes out, at least in our temporality..."

A Conversation With Miceal Ledwith at Gateways Books and Gifts

Robert J. Sawyer and Rachel Swirsky with Terry Bisson

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

"...we'd have to change ourselves..."

"To me, there is only one draft."

Gwendolyn Kiste discusses the literary and genre origins of Reluctant Immortals.

Vampire Fang Installation Nightmares

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit

"I don’t find plotting all that hard once I have the characters in place."

Agony Column Regular

"...the way I "think" about things, with quotes around think, is I tend to write them down..."

Boulder Book Store

Jeff Guinn discusses his masterful biography of Jim Jones, The Road to Jonestown.

"...so I add a little more citrus..."

"...scanning the heavens in our solitary vigil for words that will redeem us..." from "Radio" by Morton Marcus, as read by Gary Young

"Writing a novel like this is like inviting the zeitgeist in for tea."

Moriarty Returns, After An Introduction

Scary Monsters and Super-Creeps

The Unknowns

"The murder, the atrocity, the barbarity of the race being dug up out of the ground."

The Agony Column Digest Radio Broadcast: September 14, 2008

"Almost a religious zeal on the part of physicists"

Lili Wright discusses her new novel Dancing With the Tiger.

"...you have so little control and not nearly enough information..."

Lisa Desrochers and Karen Joy Fowler

The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies

"Well, God, when he was writing this book, and I think it was a bestseller in its day, he didn't really take into account the fact that we, ourselves, are animals."

"Soldiers like to tell stories ... and I'm a good listener."

"I didn't have a governor ... that is ... anything, endgame, was me killing somebody."

November 15, 2008

SF in SF March 16, 2008

Agony Column Podcast News Report : Legally Informed, A 2008 Interview With Justin Peacock

"...the reporting for this book was emotionally difficult at times..."

An in-depth interview with Ron Lieber about his book The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money.

December 7, 2008

"...he's like a really tough, pissed-off dad...he's not perfect, and he's not all-powerful, either...."

Cottonwood, The West and Pulp Noirs

Ringing in the Changes

"The dynamic tension between the two edges of the field made for a fascinating time to get into the field."

"I thought, that looks pretty cool, and it actually looked pretty easy."

"I'm gonna write it ... and if Viking doesn't publish it, everyone can just come over to my house and look at it on my laptop."

Carl Brandon and "Pigs in Space"

"...most of our politicians are morons..."

Invention Versus Tradition

"'You should really write a cookbook,' and I thought, 'Yeah, that's a good idea...'"

Andrew Sean Greer discusses his book Less.

The Buried Giant

A Criminal Environment

Scratch Pegasus

"I'm the type of writer for whom anything can be a story."

MP3 Format of NPR Report

'Radiance'

'Firt'

The Professional Cockroach and other Tales of Terror

"This is not a how-to book."

James Frey on A Million Little Pieces

"I end up making all sorts of pizzas with this crust."-Zoe Francois

Hopefully this will offend someone.

"There can be this awful sense of momentum."

Pulling the Wings From Disney's Fairies

"The Flight to San Francisco"

Live at KUSP

Epics and Students

'Boom!'

"I started typing ...."

Mardi Horowitz and Aimee Bender Reading

Dan White discusses his new book Under the Stars: How America Fell in Love with Camping.

Thanks out to KUSP.

Original Music by The Church

"...it devastates the people around the polio victim..."

"I like the idea of making the religious transaction more difficult."

Speaking With Jeremey Lassen Episode 2

Non-Fiction Steampunk

The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes

Panel Discussion at SF in SF, March 16, 2008

Part Two

From 'Every Last Drop' to Everyone's Last Gasp

"You don't dehumanize the enemy."

"I'm like a magician who is distracting you with these details and what you haven’t questioned is, 'There's a talkin' horse.'"

Mary Roach discusses Fuzz.

"..it's hard to legitimately isolate characters..."

Policy and Humanity

In conversation with Cory Doctorow about the Pandemic as Singularity, siene fition literatur in a science fiction world, and his book Radicalized.

"We're looking at the shape of the text on the page..."-Amy Kossow

'The Errand Boy'

Agony Column Podcast News : More SF in SF

William Styron ' The Suicide Run: Five Tales of the Marine Corps,' Brian Kiteley, 'The River Gods,' and Margaret Atwood, 'The Year of the Flood'

Politics, Fantasy, Monsters, monsters.

Joe Hill discusses his new book The Fireman.

"Keep going with me and everything will be fine."

Siri

The View From Spyglass Park

"What we get back when we put it on someone else's neck, that's what's meaningful to us"

Wave Theory

A Brief History of Literary Movements

"I started out knowing one thing: my main character was somehow going to become a zombie."

Sandman Slim

Ace Editor

Amanda Ellison discusses Splitting: The inside story on headaches.

AI Ain't What It Used to Be

Daniel J. Levitin discusses his new book, A Field Guide to Lies: Critical thinking in the Information Age.

" I really wanted to get to the heart of America..."

"I disagree—" "Good.." "—that it's all about story..."

Angela Slatter discusses her novel The Path of Thorns.

"...she could wake up the Bat Man who lives inside that tree..."

"I was very much into Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs." - Rudy Rucker "I said there were five sequels." - Diana Paxson

Life's a.

"The Tax Lady"

Flytrap

Fantasy, Satire, sales Fanfic and marketing

Easy, Fast, Delicious Fresh and Left Over

The Horror Genre in 2013

Underground Marsupials

"...it felt like some kind of kinship..."

Science Fiction Tips the Universe on Its Side

"..we wanted to combine our packs and combine our lives and they sold our house out from under us..."

"...for me there was a really funny, strange opportunity to write a biography about someone who listened to the same music as me."

Spider in a Tree

"And that meant three major characters didn't make the cut."

We have the future.

Peter S. Beagle, Karen Joy Fowler, Michael Swanwick, and M. Rickert

"...three more steps, and you're at a komodo dragon eating a live deer."

The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death

"All of us have within us cemeteries of old lovers"

"...we create myths, we create religion, we create beliefs..."

Words Without Pictures

"I quite enjoyed writing fan fiction, I found it very liberating."

: "The longest and the shortest pieces."

The Girl You Left Behind

"Do you know what it's like to cut up your best friend with a hacksaw?"

The Abominable

"...being at Small Beer has actually introduced whole worlds to me ..."

London bombings, terrorism

Analee Newitz talks about patent failures, emotions, robots, humans and her new novel, Autonomous.

"I'm still screwed up, but not nearly as badly as I was."

The Body Keeps the Score

"...and I just thought, 'Really? Do you have to bum me out? 'Cos this is pretty much no backsies."

Christine Carter in a short interview about her book The Sweet Spot.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove

'Dark's Tale' and 'London Calling'

Caravan of Thieves

Death and taxes.

Michael Harvey and David Levien

Rick Wartzman discusses his book The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America.

Jeffrey Ford, John Kessel and Delia Sherman

"We kind of assemble ourselves from this buffet of other people's selves."

"We Now Bring You This Discussion, Already in Progress"

31 Years of Dark Carnival

"Who Nobody Wants to Be"

"Our knives and monsters are ever ready, and as real as we need them to be."

'The Gargoyle'

Balance Your Checkbook

Antiquarian Bookseller

Muhammed Yunus discusses micro-lending, social business and his new book, A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions.

"I do things like character design boards..."

"I think that I'm involuntarily very imitative of voice and rhythm..." - Karen Joy Fowler

"I learned to write, as many authors do, by reading."

Gavin Grant, Karen Joy Fowler, and Kelly Link on 'Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet'

Current Events

The Manual of Detection

The Possibilties

Justin Cronin discusses his new book The City of Mirrors, which completes The Passage trilogy.

Let's Sing

Are We There Yet?

"Fantastic stories have to move on this invisible slippage..."

"We're kind of surrounded by the artifacts of fantasy every day and it is part of our daily life."

Katherine Stewart discusses her book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.

Joe R. Lansdale Reads from 'Flaming London'

"Fiction is agonizing sometimes."

Laurie R. King and Karen Joy Fowler on Politics and Literature

:"Ironically, confession is a little bit addictive."

Unpacking 'Les Miserables'

"We want editors who are hiring"

"I meant to spend all of November and December search through the old data sets, and I will admit to having looked at baby name books and developmental biology books..."

"...the weapon looked complicated..."

Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy

Panel with Claude Lalumiere and Dick Lupoff

"Would you call these stories fantasy or science fiction?"

Girls, Earn Big Money Doing Webcomics!

"...it's the sort of restless, screwed-up dead..."

Laurie R. King, Sharan Newman, Julia Spencer-Fleming and Zoe Ferraris

"I let him go over and I was comfortable with that..."

Curating the Travel Guide

Get ready to go.

A Round Table Discussion

"We find ourselves grappling daily at every level with questions we can neither bear nor answer."

"How could I write a story that starts with a burn..."

Steve Silberman discusses his masterful history of autism, Neurotribes.

Idea Soup

"I really think you need to respect the antsyness of kids."

The Chalice and the Blade

"My father was a psychologist."

Christoper Hobbs discusses Christopher Hobbs's Medicinal Mushrooms: The Essential Guide: Boost Immunity, Improve Memory, Fight Cancer, Stop Infection, and Expand Your Consciousness.

Tea Obreht discusses Inland.

"I think it was so important to articulate at that point the rule of law."

"There can be this awful sense of momentum."

Interview With Editor-in-chief Maria Garcia Teusch

: 'Zen and Now'

"The name Watts is from a John Hughes movie called Some Kind of Wonderful..."

From Surfer to Director

'Promise of the Wolves'

"So I choose to believe that this whole existence makes sense."

New Fantasy Triangle, Steampunk and Illuxcon II

Steven Kotler discusses his book co-written with Jamie Wheal, Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work.

The Big Read: A Class to Attend

The Doubt Factory

Sweden

Rosalie Parker discusses her short story collection, Dream Fox.

Florence Williams discusses her book The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative.

"Well, I thought if I do faeries then nobody's going to say that I've got it wrong."

"...that floating quality to the voice that I enjoyed ..."

Thomas Frank Joins the Snake Flag Set

America the Petty, Perversion and Amororous doings in the 'Burbs.

Mark Bittman in a short interview.

Oops

Sub-Mariners

"Books that flirt with epic and hop into bed with endless just upset me so much."

"I had a great time being able to explore all those different viewpoints."

Adam Haslett discusses his new book Imagine Me Gone.

More's the Pity

"...he goes to Las Vegas to this debt-buyers' convention..."

"A lot of my favorite comedy writers actually write horror"

"It's us, the everyday people who change that world."

Fantasy, Satire, sales Fanfic and marketing

Ariel Levy discusses her memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply.

Van Gogh: The Life

Force of Nature and Pineapple Grenade

Canonizing the Fantastic

"There isn't a general agreement about what normal and good is."

Senator George Mitchell and Alon Sachar discuss the history of and prospects for peace in the Middle East.

For Day to Day

Kevin Kelly discusses his new book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future.

The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance and Empower the Mind

Terry Bisson, Peter S. Beagle, Mark Ferrari Discuss Fantasy

"There's always a potential price to pay with any kind of advances."

"Lucio Fulci's Zombi back in 1978, that was actually a double feature with Scanners..."

Interview with Dick Lupoff

"There had to be a two-page spread of a flaming submarine."

A Handbook of American Prayer

He takes the stage...

Fantasy and History

"If I have my unbreakables, I can set my conditionals."

Magnus Toren Sings for His Supper

"That was something I never understood until I saw a 70 foot wave."

"...I walked away from that meeting in 2008 with an old friend of mine and literally saw at least the outline of the book in front of my eyes..."

A Loud Humming Noise

'Drood' (Part 1)

Three Stores Are Better Than One

Allegra Goodman, 'The Cookbook Collector,' Noam Shpancer's 'The Good Psychologist' and Elie Wiesel 'The Sonderberg Case'

Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry

"...without intention or recognition, we're playing important roles in the lives of other people..."

Old Albert: An Epilogue and Dreams of Shadow and Smoke: Stories for J.S. Le Fanu

'The Cut'

"...this character just started yelling at me from my sketchbook..."

A Permanent Member of the Family

Karen Joy Fowler discusses Booth.

Meg Gardiner discusses her book Unsub.

"I really liked that idea of one of the characters eavesdropping and the things that she would be aware of in that housing community."

Quantum Wellness, Veganist and The Lean

"I don't know."

Handselling Books

High-Quality Direct from NPR MP3

Michael Kurland's The Maltese Omelet

The Goat Cutter

"The people you deal with at the publishers ... if they last the end of the week, you're lucky."

"Take Heed of that message that we're getting from somewhere deep inside of us that something needs to change..."

"This is from a group of stories I call The Doctor Diaries...."

The Mystery of Writing

"..knit a formal coherence by way of sound and rhythm..."

Paul McComas and Steven Sullivan discuss Uncanny Encounters.

Fast Rewind.

'What I Didn't See' by Karen Joy Fowler, 'Our Kind of Traitor' by John Le Carre and 'Nemesis' by Philip Roth

Talulla Rising

"Ayahuasca doesn't always give you what you want ... but she usually gives you what you need."

'By Schism Rent Asunder'

Five Authors of a Second Novel

"...she abolished capital punishment..."

"...you have to produce the world where your characters and conflicts are set."

"There were two people standing at the foot of the bed"

America's Only Horror-Only Bookstore

Song of Slaves in the Desert

An Essay on Author Robert Nathan

Carry On, Warrior

Little Bee Now on Tour

Cover Story

"...what helped most of all was thinking about really good science fiction..."

"..we haven't lived up to what people's illusions and dreams are..."

A 2016 mini-interview with Ian Rankin about his novel Even Dogs In The Wild.

"... the biggest bank robbery in the history of the world ..."

Right Life

The World We Found

"Roosevelt and Riis were out looking, and if they did find a cop, he was talking to a streetwalker."

A Dolphin for President

"...they should be running a much larger deficit...."

"There can be this awful sense of momentum."

Alan Furst discusses his new book A Hero of France.

Too Much Money, Dominick Dunne; The Privileges, Jonathan Dee; Adam Haslett, Union Atlantic; The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak; Wild Child, T. C. Boyle

"I've decided to let you all in on a little secret that I'm working on."

Midnight in Europe

Preview For Podcast of Monday February 26, 2007

"I like when the inexplicable follows certain rules."

"...his mental life was full of so much drama."

Kim Newman Brings down the opening house.

"I kind of rejoice when I wake up from a dream..."

Lunatics

"If you've never..."

Bella Ellis discusses her novel The Diabolical Bones.

Equalizing SF and F

"What I realized I had to do for this character is throw out everything"

Guy Gavriel Kay discusses his new novel Children of Earth and Sky.

A Moment of Disregard

"It scares the mainstream"

The Confabulist

A 2009 Report on Crime Fiction in Imaginary Cities

Science fiction and literature

"You've got to show them something else when they turn the corner."

Ariel Levy discusses her memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply.

Deborah Grabien, Michael Boatman and Janis Bell

"I call it loving revisionism...because I still haven't lost my very high regard for him."

Breaking 'The Shotgun Rule'

Agony Column Podcast News Report : NPR All Things Considered Report

"The atmosphere of that age is still palpable in my mind."

From the "Podcast" to the "Web-O-Net"

Agony Column Podcast News : From Readers to Writers

Deciding to write horror, minimalism and Portland

Nights and Days of Night Shade

They drink it and piss it up against a wall, or buy an expensive truck.

"...an even bigger threat. which is us, the humans..."

Thomas E. Ricks discusses Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom.

Rick Wartzman discusses his book The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America.

Wendy Suzuki discusses her book, Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion.

"Trying to figure out how you can get around the restrictions is what makes fantasy and the Regency for me very interesting."

"I wanted a book about survivors"

The Big Read: The Poetry of Robinson Jeffers

In One Person

The Mirrored World

Interview With Ping Pong Fiction Editor Jessica Breheny: Speculative Fiction

The Good Swearer

Agony Column Podcast News Report from Capitola Book Café

Forrest Leo discusses his new novel The Gentleman..

"I guess we're always just talking, poets, about a handful of things...I've never read it before, let me see if I even have it here."

1918 Flu epidemic, the afterlife, history, memory, aging, Karl Capek

"...signature companies are beginning to hire much more aggressive people.." - Joe Mathews "We allow people to write policies into the Constitution, to make them even harder to change..." - Mark Paul

"Everything people have always feared about photography comes true underwater."

"I was raised to respect the printed word so much, when I was in school, I couldn’t highlight books..."

"You're handing us all the problems..." Paolo Bacigalupi "That gray area is so important for readers..." A. S. King

"...this guy went on to be a private investigator for years and years and he still does it..."

East Texas Westerns

Night Film

Clear the Clutter

'The Billionaire's Vinegar'

A 2007 Interview With Michael Krasny and Review of 'Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life'

A Cure by Color

Breakdown

"...the dark hilarity of not feeling the way one is supposed to be feeling..."

Joyce Carol Oates, Little Bird of Heaven, Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice, David Eagleman, Sum, Special Guest Star: Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

23 Miles of Books

Bad Paper: Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld

The Natural History of Selborne Re-Imagined

"..then I'll look up all those words that were arcane..."

Laura Anne Gilman discusses her novel Uncanny Times.

"Tibet, in those days, was truly unknown..."

Idea Soup

Bible

Does It Always Have to Be All About You Yes

Signing Up SF

Malcolm Nance discusses The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West.

"...usually, I like to be the person who has the great idea and somebody else does the work of making it happen..."

"Off With Their Heads!"

Reaching Inward

"...characters become their ideas, become their ideals..."

Eavesdropping on the bus, Incendiary

"Every day is a fight, you've got to get up and you've got to feel optimistic."

Bonnie MacBird discusses The Three Locks.

"... an attempt to get at what it feels like to be alive..."

January 17, 2009

"The first constitution was a complete disaster."

Robert Repino discusses Malefactor.

Interview with Claude Lalumiere

Alexander Weinstein discusses his short story collection Children of the New World.