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, pales in ambition next to STAR MAKER, which presents nothing less than an entire imagined history of life in the universe, encompassing billions of years.
This relatively short novel is jam-packed with all the sense of wonder you could ask for. We talk about the seeds of any number of sf stories found within its pages, its perspective on aliens, the Omega Point, and much more. If you read Star Maker and enjoy it, we strongly recommend that you also read Last and First Men, Stapledon’s earlier work of science fiction.
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Welcome back for Season 2, Part 1 of SF Crossing the Gulf!
Here’s our notional reading list for the coming season:
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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.
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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.
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This week the two Karens squee mightily about 1998′s The Sparrow–and then get down to the nitty gritty of characterization, structure, theology, colonialism and intricate detail. The Sparrow is a novel rich in detail, as evidenced by this being our longest podcast yet. But like the novel, it is packed with speculation and revelation.
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This is THE Greg Egan podcast. In this episode we cover Egan’s stories “The Planck Dive,” “Glory,” “Singleton,” “Oracle,” and “Oceanic.” We talk about Egan’s approach to science and art, quantum mechanics, history, biography, religion, sexuality, and much else, putting these works into the context of all his other fiction and what little is known about his life experiences. In the process, Karen Burnham realizes that she will need to considerably re-write the introduction to the book on Egan’s work that she is currently finalizing.
Next episode we’ll be talking about the 1998 Clarke Award-winning novel The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.
