Episode 580: Christopher Rowe and the Instrumentality of Influence

These Prisoning Hills

This week, Jonathan and Gary are joined by the brilliant Christopher Rowe, whose novella These Prisoning Hills appears next week from Tordotcom, revisiting the wonderful and bizarre world first introduced in his earlier stories “The Voluntary State” and “The Border State.”

We cover quite a bit of territory, ranging from Christopher’s own influences, what it means to be associated with a particular region (such as Kentucky and Tennessee in Christopher’s case), the nature of influence in SF, and Christopher’s own discovery of the work of Cordwainer Smith, whose stories he’s been assiduously collecting in their original magazine appearances.

As usual, we would like to thank Christopher for taking the time to talk to us, and we hope you enjoy the podcast.

One thought on “Episode 580: Christopher Rowe and the Instrumentality of Influence”

  1. Gary:

    I also used to be bothered by exactly the point you made about Jim Gunn, his insisting that sf was the fiction of ideas. All fiction is full of ideas, and many of the “ideas” that sf is so proud of are either trivial or simply prejudices tricked up as “science.”

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