A Meal of Thorns

The Ancillary Review of Books
  • 5.0 (18)
  • Books
  • Updated Biweekly

A critical book club from the Ancillary Review of Books. Host Jake Casella Brookins invites writers, scholars, and critics to discuss thorny works of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres.

  1. 10h ago

    A Meal of Thorns 59- OF ONE BLOOD with Garrett Bridger Gimore

    Out of print for the greater part of the 20th century, Hopkins’ Of One Blood looks a lot like Afro-futurism, using ancient Ethiopian technology and the new science of mesmerism to think about racial politics. But it’s actually a bit stranger than that—Garret Bridger Gilmore returns to walk us through some of the novel’s contexts and theories. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Garret Bridger Gilmore Title: Of One Blood, or, The Hidden Self by Pauline E. Hopkins Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré  The Fog by James Herbert The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe by D. G. Compton J.G. Ballard Japan Sinks by Sakyo Komatsu, translated by Michael Gallagher Plessy V. Ferguson Mesmerism, Vitalism, Magnetism H.G. Wells William James Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Martin Delany Black Panther Hazel V. Carby's edited collection of Hopkins' Work Deborah E. McDowell MIT Radium Age series Minister Faust George S. Schuyler's Black Empire Marcus Garvey H. Rider Haggard's She Geoffrey Sanborn's "The Pleasure of Its Company: Of One Blood and the Potentials of Plagiarism" Edward Bulwer-Lytton Our Stand On Zanzibar Episode W.E.B. DuBois & double consciousness Mississippi Quarterly article on race in the Southern Reach trilogy Cora Jean Moten’s “The Creeping Thing”

  2. Sep 7

    A Meal of Thorns 58- LACON V

    Worldcon episode time: we’ve got interviews, we’ve got a coffee report, we’ve got an only-mildly chaotic group podcast attempt! Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guests & Collaborators: Thomas Ha Alex Kingsley Frauke Uhlenbruch Marshall Ryan Maresca & Cass Morris of Worldbuilding for Masochists Kevin Anderson & Lori Anderson of Hugo, Girl! John Coxon of Octothorpe Helen Montgomery Sam Kim of Kumquat Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Additional sounds & music: The Los Angeles Metro “Surf Shimmy” by Kevin Macleod “Through the Woods We Ran” by Vindsvept And the cool theremin sounds Kevin made for Hugo, Girl! Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Thomas Ha’s Uncertain Sons The Best of Jeffrey Ford and Pandemonium Waltz Steve Rasnic Tem & Brian Evenson Michel Siffre, French cave-and-sleep explorer J.S. Fields Zoe Franznick DePaul Pop Culture Conference Sabrina Mittermeier: The Routledge Handbook of Star Trek and Fighting For The Future Alien vs. Predator, Hellraiser, Dogma The Bible in Motion, edited by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch Memory Alpha Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park Chuck, Earth: Final Conflict, Scavengers Reign, Battleship The Speculative Literature Foundation and their Deep Dish reading series HWA (Horror Writers Association) Playground Chicago Strong Branch SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association) Goblin Market Mary Robinette Kowal, Curtis Chen Alexy on Bluesky & Instagram Space Wizard publishing Loquat coffee Artist Devon Sinead Arboretum and Botanical Garden at Cal State Fullerton E.G. Condé Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman Uketsu’s Strange Houses, Strange Pictures,Strange Buildings, translated by Jim Rion Jo Walton Lightspeed and Reactor Alasdair Stuart & Marguerite Kenner (of projects like The Full Lid and Escape Artists) Liza Groen Trombi of Locus Magazine Cube Gene Wolfe The Prestige by Christopher Priest The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov Green Marsby Kim Stanley Robinson Widow’s Bay Fonda Lee, Shannon Chakraborty, Gabriella Buba SFF Addicts Robert Shearman’s Tiny Deaths, Ian Mond’s pick for a recent episode Nerds of a Feather

  3. Aug 24

    A Meal of Thorns 57- THE WATER STATUES with Langdon Hickman

    A deeply strange and arresting short novel, The Water Statues defies easy categorization but has a powerful and cerebral atmosphere, putting us in mind of a lot of other works—including Clarke’s Piranesi. Langdon Hickman, last unshriven host of Death // Sentence, joins to discuss. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Langdon Hickman Title: The Water Statues by Fleur Jaeggy, translated by Gini Alhedeff  Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Recent episodes with other Death // Sentence hosts (Sisyphean with Gareth Watkins & Diaspora with Eden Kupermintz) Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume Roberto Bolaño W.G. Sebald'sAusterlitz & The Rings of Saturn Hugo Nominees, UKLG Nominees Frank Herbert’s Dune Holism vs reductivist materialism Object oriented ontology & speculative realists Nick Land, Graham Harman, Timothy Morton Set theory Jacques Derrida on “logos” Greg Egan's Incandescence & related stories Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen Kim Stanley Robin’s Aurora (AMOT episode w/ Hilary Strang) Jayaprakash Satyamurthy of Djinn and Miskatonic M.R. James Eugene Thacker’s An Ideal For Living Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi(AMOT episode w/Misha Grifka Wander) & Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Hemingway’s “Iceberg theory” Lydia Davis, Samuel Beckett Decadent & Aesthetic movements Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner Negative Capability Keats’ letter to Richard Woodhouse, October 1818 Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Sofia Samatar David Michell’s Cloud Atlas (AMOT episode with Abigail Nussbaum) William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” Jorge Luis Borges’ “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” Hilary Putnam The Caretaker by Doon Arbus Death // Sentence Treble Zine Consequence of Sound Langdon's newsletter

  4. Aug 10

    A Meal of Thorns 56- KILLER, COME BACK TO ME with Aigner Loren Wilson

    More famous for his science fiction and dark fantasy, Ray Bradbury also tried his hand at crime fiction, with often-fascinating results. Writer, critic, and editor Aigner Loren Wilson talks us through the strange flourishes and tonal experiments of Killer, Come Back To Me! Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Aigner Loren Wilson Title: Killer, Come Back To Me by Ray Bradbury Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: The Possession of Alba Díaz & Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues The Ship of Death by Kyle Winkler Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shroud Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction by Jonathan R. Eller & William F. Touponce Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett Dandelion Wine, Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles Damon Knight "The Smallest Assassin" Leigh Brackett The Chucky franchise Frank Miller’s Sin City, Shane Black’s The Nice Guys Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures "Dead Men Rise Up never" "Where Everything Ends" "The Town Where No One Got Off" "The Utterly Perfect Murder" The Bradbury Chronicles by Sam Weller "Punishment Without Crime" "The Whole Town’s Sleeping" & "At Midnight in the Month of June" "The Women" from I Sing the Body Electric "And So Died Riabouchinska" "The Smiling People" "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" "Some Live Like Lazarus" Octavia E. Butler Darker Times Writing Skins, Aigner’s newsletter Aigner's website Scene Builder

  5. Jul 29

    A Meal of Thorns 55- Readercon & the PSRB

    In this con-coverage episode, Casella talks to folks at Readercon in Boston, including Lisa from Narrated, author Sara S. Messenger, and editor Carl Engle-Laird. We also visit Porter Square Books, an indie bookstore that has recently launched their own book review. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Readercon Porter Square Books Lisa from the Narrated podcast The Hugo Awards Elizabeth Bear’s White Space series C.J. Cherryh & Lois McMaster Bujold Sara S. Messenger “Jennifer’s Daughter” in Nightmare Magazine “When We Loved Giants” in Lightspeed Karel Čapek Hope Mirrlees’ Lud-in-the-Mist (good AMOT episode on that!) AMOT episode on Ready Player One Clark Seanor’s “Recycled Air: Wayfarers and the Tyranny of the Everyday” in Strange Horizons Lovestruck Books in last year’s Readercon episode Katherine @ Porter Square Books K.A. Applegate’s Animorphsseries Chuck Tingle Ann Patchett’s Whistler Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou Roseanna Pendlebury’s review of Sour Cherry Sunny Moraine (from our Pattern Recognition episode) Will McMahon Scott Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic podcast Benjamin Rosenbaum (from our Fire Logic episode) Carl Engle-Laird, editor at Tor Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction Jon Bois’ 17776 Cambridge Porchfest & the Good Trouble Brass Band Gracenote & Broadsheet coffee Thomas Wensma has an interview with Australian barista champ Jack Simpson & coffee farmer Juan Pablo Campos about the Ombligon cultivar at Perfect Daily Grind, if that caught your ear Bujold’s Vorkosigan series & Barrayar Josh Cook of Porter Square Books & the Porter Square Review of Books PSB’s Bluesky Josh’s articles at LitHub Poly Barton’s What Am I, A Deer? Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps & Acid Green Velvet

  6. Jul 13

    A Meal of Thorns 54- SUNSHINE with Laura Zats

    Literary agent and Print Run podcaster extraordinaire Laura Zats is on to talk about a novel that is the most urban fantasy you can imagine, and yet seems to run towards different traditions and ideas the closer you examine it—Robin McKinley’s award-winning but under-discussed Sunshine.   Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books.   Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Laura Zats Title: Sunshine by Robin McKinley Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Christopher Buehlman’s Blacktongue Thief & Between Two Fires Peter Rock's Makeshift Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven Totally not the heist film Oceans 11 Newberry Honor & Mythopoeic Award Charlaine Harris’s The Southern Vampire Mysteries/Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood series Kim Harrison Bram Stoker's Dracula Twilight & Buffy the Vampire Slayer Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series Dunning-Kruger effect McKinley's Deerskin Editor Sharyn November & the Firebird imprint Charles De Lint, Anne Rice, Anita Blake "Contemporary Fantasy" Stephen Graham Jones Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires & Horrorstör Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla Matt Kirkland’s “Dracula Daily” RS Benedict’s “Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny” Lee Mandelo's The Woods All Black Indra Das's The Devourers John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids The Print Run podcast Erik Hane's “The Fandom Strain”

  7. Jun 29

    A Meal of Thorns 53- TINY DEATHS with Ian Mond

    Critic & reviewer Ian Mond talks us through Tiny Deaths, a very funny and frequently morbid collection. We also think bigger: about the place and status of humor and seriousness in genre literature, and why non-genre imprints and translated literature might be places to look for this energy. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Ian Mond Title: Tiny Deaths by Robert Shearman Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: The Writer and The Critic Tayari Jones’ Kin Boyhood by David Keenan Centreouropa by Vicente Luis Mora, translated by Rahul Bery Edward Royston’s Transgressing Time Christopher Priest's The Recollections Priest & Allan’s The Illuminated Man Sturgeon's Law (“90% of everything is crap”) Dr. Who & Stephen King Gallifrey One convention Donald Barthelme, Ishmael Reed, T.C. Boyle, Kelly Link Lisa Heschong’s Thermal Delight in Architecture Rachel Khong’s My Dear You The Simpsons Blindness by José Saramago, Julio Cortázar Shearman’s Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, Everyone’s Just So So Special, and We All Hear Stories in the Dark “Chimes At Midnight” and “The Holy Terror” Douglas Adams Machine of Death, edited by Ryan North Jon Stone’s The Monster At The End Of This Book Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria Groundhog Day, directed by Harold Ramis James Morrow's Towing Jehovah & Only Begotten Daughter Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” Leyna Krow's Sinkhole and Other Stories Ed Park's An Oral History of Atlantis Michael Swanwick & Jeffrey Ford collections "Gate 9" in Pandemonium Waltz Hilary Leichter, Sayaka Murata, Liliana Colanzi Translated Hugo Initiative Words Without Borders Locus Award for Best Translated Novel Isaac Fellman's Notes From A Regicide Incandescent by Emily Tesh Sean McTiernan's SFUltra Locus Magazine Ian's Substack & Facebook & Goodreads

  8. Jun 15

    A Meal of Thorns 52- STAND ON ZANZIBAR with Dan Hartland

    Brunner’s prescient classic about overpopulation: is it about overpopulation? Was it prescient? And, for that matter: what does it mean to be a classic? Reviewer and editor Dan Hartland joins to discuss these questions and more. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Dan Hartland Title: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Strange Horizon’s 2026 fund-drive Strange Horizons’ Critical Friends podcast The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of J.G. Ballard by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan Prism, Plastic, Void by Violet Allen This Is How You Lose The Time War by Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir We The Parasites by A.V. Marraccini  Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Trade of Blood, Mr. Shivers, and Divine Cities trilogy Orion’s “SF Masterworks” series Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War The Club Of Rome’s report “The Limits to Growth” Brunner’s “Club or Rome Quartet”: Stand on Zanzibar, The Sheep Look Up, Shockwave Rider, Jagged Orbit John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy New Worlds magazine "New Wave" science fiction Timothy Leary The Beatles’ Please Please Me versus Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Jad Smith’s John Brunner Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s The Sirens of Titan & Cat's Cradle William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson Thomas Disch's 334 & Camp Concentration The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich & Anne Howland Ehrlich Soylent Green, dir. Richard Fleischer Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic” Vajra Chandrasekera China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Network, dir. Sidney Lumet Marshall McLuhan Taylor Sheridan & John Linson’s Yellowstone series Transmetropolitan comic series by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson et al. Going Rogue podcast Warren Ellis sexual coercion allegations; lots more but here’s an early overview from the Guardian “FogHorn Barge” from Daniel Simon @ SoundBible, CC BY 3.0 James Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand David Runciman’s “Are we doomed?” for LRB Degrowth KSR’s The Ministry for the Future E.J. Swift’s When There Are Wolves Again Strange Horizons’ “Ageing in Science Fiction” special issue Shintaro Kago’s Dementia 21 Julia Armfield’s Private Rites Jacqueline Nyathi’s Harare Review of Books David Brin's Earth Jerry Pournelle Dan's Bluesky The Clarke shortlist discussion will appear on Nerds of a Feather Tenacious D The Long Winters The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA)

See All (59)

5
out of 5
18 Ratings

About

A critical book club from the Ancillary Review of Books. Host Jake Casella Brookins invites writers, scholars, and critics to discuss thorny works of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres.

Information

  • Creator
    The Ancillary Review of Books
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    59
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © CC BY-NC
  • Show Website
    A Meal of Thorns

You Might Also Like