Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda recently reviewed Keith Roberts’ magestic novel, Pavane, in The Washington Post, describing it as a fix-up novel, a term coined by the late A.E. van Vogt. The review sparked a conversation about fix-ups, what they are and where the term comes from, and how terminology forms in the SF field. It’s digressive, unresearched, and un-factchecked, but at least it’s not talking about awards. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

And then we rambled… After several weeks hosting some wonderful guests, this week Gary and I just fired up Skype and rambled away about stuff: the Nebulas, some old Hugos, whether having a Golden Age at all is a good idea.  While we apologise for the self-indulgence, we nonetheless hope you enjoy the podcast.  Only ten more till the big one!

This week Gary and I are joined by Campbell Memorial Award winning author Barry Malzberg to discuss the Library of America’s American Science Fiction Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, how the ’50s were the last “Hot Time” in science fiction (or not), and other matters science fictional.  As always, we hope you enjoy the discussion.

This week we invited award-winning actor, broadcaster, editor and writer Ellen Kushner to join us to discuss the excellent audiobook adaptation of her novel Swordspoint, which was recently released by Audible, her thoughts on the rise of audiobooks, and her many other projects..

• The Witches of Lublin (Audible); and
• the audiobook of Swordspoint (US information; UK information).

We would like to apologise for the audio quality of some of the podcast, which is a little below what we’d normally hope for.  Our primary recording of the ‘cast failed, but we were saved by our newly installed backup recording system.  We continue our hunt for improvements, but in the interim thank Ellen, and look forward to seeing you all next week.

This weekend Gary and I discussed the Locus Recommended Reading list (very briefly), Gwenda Bond’s wonderful news, Saladin Ahmed’s new novel, subgenre’s and answered a lot of reader questions from Twitter. As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!