Episodes

  • The Politics of Andor (Season 2 Episodes 7-9): Truth and Discipline
    May 11 2025
    It’s the UConn Popcast, and we continue our analysis of Andor season 2 with episodes 7-9. We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the question of when in a rebellion must you break cover and insist - publicly - on the truth. We see a second major theme of this arc as discipline. The rebellion is moving from a para-military to a military posture, and requires increasing discipline from its members as it does so. Further, Cassian fights a battle in this arc between his belief that he makes his own decisions, and the discipline enforced on him by the needs of the rebellion and his own destiny. We consider how these themes of truth and discipline intersect with and shape the actions of Mon Mothma, Cassian Andor, Bix, Dedra, and Syril. We were delighted to be joined this week by Prof. Rob Farley. Rob blogs at Lawyers, Guns, and Money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • The Politics of Andor (Season 2 Episodes 4-6): Too Much Information
    May 3 2025
    It’s the UConn Popcast, and we continue our analysis of Andor season 2 with episodes 4-6. We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the mirrored political challenges faced by figures from the Empire and the Rebellion. We see a big theme of these episodes as “too much information,” as both sides struggle to distinguish friend from foe, signal from noise, the authentic from the inauthentic. We discuss classic political problems portrayed in the episodes such as collective action problems, anticipatory compliance, preference falsification, and treating people as means or as ends in and of themselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
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    55 mins
  • The Politics of Andor (Season 2 Episodes 1-3): The Personal is Political
    Apr 26 2025
    It’s the UConn Popcast, and today we react to Andor Season 2, episodes 1-3. We break down the politics of these episodes, focusing on the motives and aims of the rebellion and the Empire. Both sides have major coordination problems in these episodes, although the causes are very different. We explain and analyze the recurrent problems of authoritarian control and rebellion against it, and the way Andor comments upon them. We see a major theme of these three episodes as “the personal is political,” as micro motives are tied to macro causes on all sides. We also explore the dynamics of misinformation, double-talk, and masks worn by Dedra, Mon Mothma, Luthen Rael, and Cassian. We argue that Cassian is perhaps the most confident and action-oriented character at this point in the show, as he is able to operate out in the open as a mature and competent rebel leader. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
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    51 mins
  • Planetary Boundaries are Non-Negotiable: Kim Stanley Robinson and Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (JP)
    Apr 24 2025
    In Season 9, Novel Dialogue set out to find the Venn diagram intersection of tech and fiction—only to realize that Kim Stanley Robinson had staked his claim on the territory decades ago. With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, KSR has established a conceptual space as dedicated to sustainability as his own beloved Village Homes in Davis, California. All of that, though, only prepared the ground for Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020), his vision of a sustained governmental and scientific rethinking of humanity’s fossil-burning, earth-warming ways. In only five years, it may have become the most influential work of climate fiction ever—perhaps right up there with Uncle Tom’s Cabin in its thoroughly shocking ability to jump into the political fray. Flanked by Novel Dialogue’s John Plotz, KSR’s friend and ally Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (celebrated eco-critic and UC Davis professor) asks him to reflect on the book’s impact. He brushes aside the doom and gloom of tech bros forecasting the death of our planet and hence the necessity of a flight to Mars: humans are not one of the species doomed to extinction by our reckless combustion of the biosphere. However, survival is not the same as thriving. The way we are headed now, “the crash of civilization is very bad. And ignoring it…is not going to work.” Mentioned in the Episode: --Pact for the Future --COP 26 (2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference) --COP 30 (where KSR will be a UN rep….) --Planetary boundaries J. Rockstrom (et. al.) --Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds --Paris Agreement --Don’t Look Up --Tobias Menely, The Animal Claim: Sensibility and the Creaturely Voice --Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
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    51 mins
  • Badiucao and Mellissa Chan, "You Must Take Part in Revolution" (Street Noise Books, 2024)
    Feb 4 2025
    You Must Take Part In Revolution is a mind-bending graphic novel by award-winning journalist Melissa Chan and acclaimed dissident artist Badiucao. A near-future dystopia in the vein of George Orwell's Animal's Farm, the book explores technology, authoritarian government, and the lengths to which one will go in the fight for freedom. Three idealistic young people, forever changed by the real-life protests in Hong Kong in 2019, develop different beliefs about how best to fight against a techno-authoritarian China. The three characters take different paths toward transformative change, each struggling with how far they will go to fight for freedom and who they will become in the process. A powerful and important book about global totalitarian futures and the costs of resistance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
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    50 mins
  • Ben Berman Ghan, "The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits" (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024)
    Jan 19 2025
    Ben Berman Ghan is the author of the bestselling novel, The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024). The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits is a gorgeously complex work of literary speculative fiction. With elements of science fiction and horror dropped in amongst stunning literary prose, the debut novel spans centuries, covering humanity’s colonization of the moon, a war with alien beings, AI minds governing Canada, and a giant spacefaring whale. The book is centred around Toronto and shows a version of a Canadian future that will amaze and stun readers, while raising important questions about the ethics and power of AI, humanity’s claim to space, and the systematic destruction of our current planet. More About The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits: A gorgeously complex work of literary speculative fiction that spans centuries The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits starts in 2014 with a winged alien sowing the seeds of a strange forest on the moon. The novel then moves through humanity’s colonization of the moon and its consequences, onto a war with alien beings within a spacefaring whale, a cyborg mind that sleeps for hundreds of years after sheltering the city of Toronto from the worst of the war and finally a recreation of humanity. Ghan poses thoughtful questions about artificial intelligence, humanity’s quest for the stars and ecological destruction in this wide-ranging story, which is held together equally by beautiful writing and deft characterization. The end result is an ambitious debut that leaves the reader contemplating many amazing possibilities for the future of our world. More About Ben: Ben Berman Ghan is a writer and editor from Toronto, Canada, whose prose and poetry have been published in Clarkesworld magazine, Strange Horizons, the Blasted Tree Publishing Co., the /tƐmz/ Review and others. His previous works include the short story collection What We See in the Smoke. He now lives and writes in Calgary, Alberta, where he is a Ph.D. student in English literature at the University of Calgary. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
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    39 mins
  • Anna Moschovakis, "An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth" (Soft Skull, 2024)
    Dec 31 2024
    After a seismic event leaves the world shattered, an unnamed narrator at the end of a mediocre acting career struggles to regain the ability to walk on ground that is in constant motion. When her alluring younger housemate, Tala, disappears, what had begun as an obsession grows into an impulse to kill, forcing the narrator to confront the meaning of the ruptures that have suddenly upended her life. The drive to find and eliminate Tala becomes an existential pursuit, leading back in time and out into a desolate, dust-covered city, where the narrator is targeted by charismatic “healing” ideologues with uncertain motives. Torn between a gnawing desire to reckon with the forces that have made her and an immediate need to find the stability to survive, she is forced to question familiar figurations of light, shadow, authenticity, resistance, and the limits of personal transformation in an alienated, alienating world. Darkly comic, deeply resonant, and hallucinatory in tone, An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth (Soft Skull, 2024) will appeal to readers of Annie Ernaux, Dionne Brand, and Sheila Heti. Anna’s most recent book is Participation. A poet and a translator, Anna has won the James Laughlin Award for her poetry and shared the 2021 International Booker Prize with David Diop for his novel At Night All Blood is Black. A student of plants and herbalism, she is a member of the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse and a cofound of Bushel Collective. Recommended Books: Poupeh Missaghi, Sound Museum Renee Gladman, My Lesbian Novel Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things  Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
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    51 mins
  • Suzy Krause, "I Think We've Been Here Before" (Radiant Press, 2024)
    Dec 24 2024
    Suzy Krause’s latest speculative fiction novel, I Think We’ve Been Here Before (Radiant Press, 2024) is a compulsively readable and cosy story. Marlen and Hilda Jorgensen’s family has received two significant pieces of news: one, Marlen has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Two, a cosmic blast is set to render humanity extinct within a matter of months. It seems the coming Christmas on their Saskatchewan farm will be their last. Preparing for the inevitable, they navigate the time they have left together. Marlen and Hilda have channeled their energy into improbably prophetic works of art. Hilda’s elderly father receives a longed-for visitor from his past, her sister refuses to believe the world is ending, and her teenaged nephew is missing. All the while, her daughter struggles to find her way home from Berlin with the help of an oddly familiar stranger. For everyone, there’s an unsettling feeling that this unprecedented reality is something they remember. About Suzy Krause: Suzy Krause is the bestselling author of Sorry I Missed You and Valencia and Valentine. She grew up on a little farm in rural Saskatchewan and now lives in Regina, where she writes novels inspired by crappy jobs, creepy houses, personal metaphorical apocalypses, and favorite songs. Her work has been translated into Russian and Estonian. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
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    25 mins