At the recent WorldCon in Reno, Gary and I sat down to chat with Alastair Reynolds about, among other things, his new novel, Blue Remembered Earth.

At the recent WorldCon held in Reno, Gary and I sat down with Ian McDonald to discuss his new novel, Planesrunner, and a lot more.

Note: Apologies for taking so long to get this cross posted here.

This week saw the publication of Margaret Atwood’s new book of essays, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, which discusses her thoughts on science fiction in some detail.  We invited Ursula K. Le Guin to join us on the podcast to discuss Atwood, science fiction and her new book.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast.

Note: As mentioned at the end of the podcast, this will be the last newly recorded episode until mid-November. The next three episodes will be interviews with Alastair Reynolds, Ian McDonald, and Kim Stanley Robinson recorded in Reno at WorldCon.

After a lot of discussion about buzz and best of the year matters, Gary and I wrench our attention away from such matters and move on to discuss the one true mission of science fiction, the matter of small presses in SF  (a little), and the new new new new new space opera.  As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast!

As a continuation of our discussion on finding the best books of the year and understanding how buzz is generated, this week Gary and I turned to our reader’s comments (both here and over at my blog) about buzz;  the New Wave and women in SF, and much more.  We also repeat our call for reader’s to tell us about their best books of the year, which we hope to continue to discuss in coming months.  Listener Tansy Rayner Roberts has posted her terrific ‘Best of the Year so far‘ list, and we’d like to see yours!