Fantasy protagonists are highly prone to getting stabbed, sliced, impaled, poisoned, bonked on the head, dropped off cliffs, and otherwise wounded. Which means they need someone to patch them up! So who does that in your invented world, and how do they learn to do it? Guest Jesse Aragon joins us to discuss emergency medicine and other issues of healing.

How much reality can you -- and should you -- bring into the medical components of your world? Waving a wand and curing all ills is easy, but potentially unsatisfying, but on the other hand, our heroes can rarely spare six months away from their Quest to let bones knit or infections pass. So just how much magic -- or sci-fi technology -- can you bring in to smooth the process along, and how do you make those things fit in with the rest of your world? Are there medical schools, or do you learn in a master-apprentice type system? How much experimentation is there? How well do your characters understand the real workings of the human body? And, most importantly: How do you get plot hooks out of it?

[Transcript TK]

Our Guest: Jesse Aragon* is a writer of sci-fi and fantasy, usually both at the same time. Her work features morally complicated protagonists, horror, tragedy, the numinous, and deep dives into the darkest, messiest parts of human nature.

She grew up overseas, and “home” for her is everywhere from Brussels, Belgium to Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has a Psychology BA, an EMT-I license, and a BSN. She has been an usher, a cashier, a server, a home health aide, an EMT, an ER tech, and a trauma RN—her jobs have consistently been much stranger than any fiction she writes.

When she’s not writing, she enjoys weightlifting, video games, and horror movies. She loves cats, green chiles, and UFO lore.

Her debut novel, THE DEMON STAR, is forthcoming from DAW/Astra in July 2026!

*Yes, this is a real name. No, it has nothing to do with Lord of the Rings. No, she is not (so far as she knows) a descendant of Catherine of Aragon. It is a very common surname for people of Hispanic descent in Mexico and the Southwestern US.

People and animals have lived together in lots of ways for thousands upon thousands of years -- and humans, as we know, will attempt to pack-bond with anything. But what does the domestication of animals mean in worlds that might have fantastical creatures or critters who can talk? Guest John Wiswell joins us to discuss the friend-shaped beings that inhabit our fantasy worlds.

When did your culture domesticate animals, and which ones, and why? What distinguishes a merely domesticated animal from a true companion? Which creatures might be normal pets, and which ones are more off-beat or even taboo? What does it mean if you can tame a dragon, or if your kitty familiar can talk to you? And then, of course, writers also need to consider what role these animals play in the story: Do they serve a narrative purpose? Or are they just there to fill out the world and acknowledge that, yes, humans generally love animals and want them around?

[Transcript for Episode 185 TK]

Our Guest: John Wiswell is a Nebula-winning and Locus-winning author who lives in the middle of the woods. His debut novel, SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN, was released from DAW Books in the U.S. and Arcadia Books in the U.K. in April 2024. John's work has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Tor.com, LeVar Burton Reads, Nature Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Weird Tales, the No Sleep podcast, Nightmare Magazine, Cast of Wonders, Podcastle, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and other fine venues. He has been a finalist for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and British Fantasy Awards. His fiction has been translated into ten languages.

He graduated Bennington College in 2005, and attended the Viable Paradise 17 workshop in 2013. He has multiple disabilities including a neuromuscular syndrome, and thinks healthy people's capacity to complain is very funny. He finds a lot of things very funny and would like to keep it that way.

He is frequently available for interview and for talks at conferences. He has done panels at places such as Worldcon, the Nebula Awards Conference, and the World Fantasy Convention.

So, you're building a fantasy city: Plunk a castle in the middle, put some houses around it, make sure there are some inns and taverns, maybe a church or temple, slap it on a nice body of water, and call it a day, right? NAH. We can do better than that. In this episode, we explore ways that you can create cities that feel natural, lived-in, and unique.

Cities are idiosyncratic creatures. So many factors contribute to the development of a city, whether intentionally planned or chaotically organic: the climate, the geography, natural disasters, wars, disease, social priorities, governmental and administrative needs -- They all mean that every city has its own personality. So how can you use those various factors to make sure that your fantasy cities don't all feel like they've been copy-pasted from one very basic mold? We've got thoughts, and we share some of our favorite resources about how cities come to be.

Also: Hugo Award voting is open until August 8th! Learn more, register to vote if you haven't already, get the massive voter packet crammed full of goodies, and submit your ballot on the LA WorldCon website.

Resources:

• Collections: The Lonely City, Part I: The Ideal City – A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, by Bret Devereaux
• Collections: The Lonely City, Part II: Real Cities Have Curves – A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, by Bret Devereaux
• Great Courses: Cities of the Ancient World by Stephen L. Tuck
  • Also on Audible
• Great Courses: London: A Short History of the Greatest City in the Western World by Robert Bucholz
  • Also on Audible
• Cities that Shaped the Ancient World, John Julius Norwich
• The Great Cities in History, John Julius Norwich
• A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome, Alberto Angela
• On the Map, Simon Garfield
• The Map of Early Modern London
• Boston garbage map
• Largest Cities in the World (3700 BCE - 2050 CE)