Episodes

  • #156 Superstructure: The World Inside (1971) by Robert Silverberg
    May 8 2025

    Confinement and culture shock in a hyper-urban world

    Recent projections suggest that the human population will peak somewhere around 2085; it could even occur, according to some models, as early as 2060. But what would society look like if it was governed by an obsessive push to increase population - to strain against every social and ecological obstacle?

    Originally published in 1971, The World Inside is Robert Silverberg's exploration of extreme human population growth and density. It is set in the 24th century, at a time when the world government is close to achieving a population of 75 billion.

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    8 mins
  • #155 Fork in the road: The Two-Timers (1968) by Bob Shaw
    May 1 2025

    A personal struggle with cosmic consequences

    Some people are their own worst enemy - that's particularly true for John Breton. One night, he finds himself confronted with an identical, rival version of himself - who has crossed over from another timeline.

    Originally published in 1968, The Two-Timers is the second novel by Bob Shaw, a follow-up to his debut Night Walk which was covered in episode 129. Both a painful exploration of a collapsing marriage, and an SF story about a threat to the integrity of the universe, this book combines the domestic and the cosmic with powerful effect.

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    8 mins
  • #154 Trial by fire: Rite of Passage (1968) by Alexei Panshin
    Apr 25 2025

    Coming of age on a hollowed-out asteroid

    The critic Algis Budrys said of this novel, "one feels a real shock as one realizes that Panshin after all has never been a girl growing up aboard a hollowed-out planetoid". He was praising Rite of Passage, Alexei Panshin's 1968 novel which went on to win the Nebula Award for Best Novel while up against tough competition.

    A part of the first series of Ace Science Fiction Specials edited by Terry Carr, Rite of Passage is both a powerful coming of age story in a science fiction setting, and a challenging allegory for the world economic system.

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    7 mins
  • #153 Scarcity and abundance: Ring Around the Sun (1953) by Clifford D. Simak
    Apr 16 2025

    A tall tale of impossible products, mutants, and parallel Earths

    Clifford D. Simak explores the parallel worlds theme to intriguing, energetic effect in his 1953 novel Ring Around the Sun. In this tall tale, originally serialised in Galaxy magazine, a young writer discovers that he has the power to visit many alternate versions of the Earth, each unsullied by human hands.

    One of these worlds is already in use, however, to make seemingly impossible products that threaten to topple the world economy. The protagonist must discover the secrets about himself, and protect our world from devastating retaliation by the big business interests that depend on scarcity.

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    9 mins
  • #152 The last city: Cinnabar (1976) by Edward Bryant
    Apr 10 2025

    Entropic tales from the end of time

    It is a bit of a truism to say that people are entranced by imagining the end of the world. But what about the end of time? In this immensely distant scenario, entropy has had its way with the universe, life has withered away, and all change and incident has ceased. A true entropic scenario leaves little room for story-telling, and so SF writers tend to cheat, finding ways to keep some eccentric humans alive at the end of time.

    Cinnabar is a 1976 collection of linked stories by the US author Edward Bryant. Set in the last city on a ruined Earth, it is a showcase for Bryant's speculations about the deep future of humankind, and for his New Wave writing style. What does Cinnabar have to say about a world seemingly without a future, and a city run by a suicidal AI?

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    8 mins
  • #151 Ancient mistakes: Look to Windward (2000) by Iain M. Banks
    Apr 3 2025

    The Culture is run by Minds - AI constructs of immense computing power, some of the greatest intelligences in the galaxy. But no amount of intelligence can prevent you from making mistakes.

    The sixth novel in the Culture series by Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward was first published in 2000. It deals with effects of mistakes made by the Minds. As part of Banks' extended examination of the topic of intervention, it particularly focuses on an attempt to mould the future of a race of cat-like aliens, with resulted in disaster. The Chelgrians were plunged into a brief but appalling civil war. Now, the Culture may be about to feel the consequences.

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    8 mins
  • #150 The First Classic SF with Andy Johnson Q&A
    Mar 27 2025

    Answering listener questions about all things classic SF.

    Can you believe it, it's episode 150! To mark this milestone, this episode is a special Q&A. Questions and answers take a tour of Ursula K. Le Guin, J. G. Ballard, Dune (1965), book collecting, getting started with Philip K. Dick, the "cosy catastrophes" of John Wyndham, and more.

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    24 mins
  • #149 Celebration of wounds: Crash (1973) by J. G. Ballard
    Mar 20 2025

    A shocking collision of warped sexuality and twisted metal

    "I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit - and force it to look in the mirror." With these words, J.G. Ballard described the aim of his 1973 novel Crash. A harrowing descent into a bizarre subculture of damaged outcasts whose sexual fetishes centre on the car crash, the novel is Ballard's disturbing diagnosis of the 20th century. The writer described it as a "deranging book to write", which made him hate himself because he felt he was "dealing in deadly things.. like a sort of arms salesman."

    Welcome to a tour of an unsettling vision of the highways and byways of a concrete dystopia, and a novel which is science fiction of a unique kind - a deranged hellscape of the here and now.

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    9 mins
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