Synthesized Sunsets

Kevin Kodama & Gordon Anderson

Synthesized Sunsets is a podcast about speculative fiction and the future of popular culture. This podcast is tied to the magazine of the same name, so episodes will correspond to the current issue's theme. Your hosts are niche media enthusiasts Kevin and Gordon, who hope to put you on to some hidden gems and goofy ideas. Join us as we talk to members of the speculative fiction community and other future-forward thinkers! synthesizedsunsets.substack.com

  1. XXV: Sci-Fi's Sense of Wonder w/ Lillian Wang Selonick

    FEB 20

    XXV: Sci-Fi's Sense of Wonder w/ Lillian Wang Selonick

    We were excited to have Lillian Wang Selonick back on the podcast as a repeat guest! We discuss her story published in Synthesized Sunsets “The Waters of Lethe”, her recent travels in Japan and Korea, the sense of wonder at the center of Sci-Fi, the evolution of the meaning of the word nerd, and more. Apologies for the really long delay between episodes. We have two more episodes recorded so the next few should come out in the next few weeks. In more exciting news, Kevin Kodama will be competing on Jeopardy this coming Wednesday February 25th, so check that out if you are interested. Hope you enjoy listening! TIMESTAMPS: 0:14 - Introduction 0:43 - Lillian’s recent trip to Korea and Japan 5:17 - It’s cool that for a character language your writing system doesn’t change over time 10:44 - Discussing Lillian’s story “The Waters of Lethe” 12:20 - Writing with a character voice very different from your own 18:35 - Researching the science for short stories 21:13 - Cixin Liu’s “Church of Sci-Fi” essay from “A View From the Stars” and the sense of wonder 25:41 - There is good Sci-Fi that doesn’t try to elicit this feeling 33:30 - Sci-Fi is more centered on this awe feeling in China 35:23 - Western translations try to add gravitas to Cixin Liu 38:03 - Sci-Fi movies like Interstellar and 2001 are good at creating this awe feeling 42:51 - Evolution of what it means to be a “nerd” 48:51 - Nerd culture used to have a high barrier to entry 53:19 - Being a nerd became way cooler in the early 2010s 55:38 - Prose can do things that video can’t 57:46 - Conclusion and Lillian’s story recommendation “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges 59:54 - Start of Synthesized Sunsets Backstage 1:02:23 - People come of age much more gradually nowadays 1:10:31 - Rehashing the Church of Sci-Fi essay 1:11:45 - Cixin Liu gets the same criticisms in China with regards to characters 1:14:52 - The universe should be a protagonist in Sci-Fi 1:22:32 - There is an unrealized demand for Sci-Fi with this focus on a sense of wonder 1:29:56 - Discussing Kevin’s article “There Is No Antimemetics Division as a Reminder of the Internet’s Wild Potential” 1:32:05 - SCP Foundation and “There Is No Antimemetics Division” 1:37:54 - SCP Foundation was a cool thing you would run into from time to time 1:46:27 - “There Is No Antimemetics Division” will probably not funnel people towards web fiction 1:48:46 - Going on the internet is like looking up at the night sky 1:51:41 - The ol’ reddit switcheroo 1:55:57 - More Sci-fi writers used to be on the cutting edge of science 1:57:02 - Conclusion This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 58m
  2. 11/27/2025

    XXIV: AI and Our Collective Dreams w/ Ken Liu

    This week’s guest is author, lawyer, and engineer Ken Liu— a man of many talents. You may know him for his collections The Paper Menagerie and The Hidden Girl, his fantasy quartet The Dandelion Dynasty, inspiring the show Pantheon, or perhaps even translating The Three-Body Problem. His recent novel All That We See or Seem is a near-future thriller about a beloved AI ‘dream artist’ who disappears without a trace, as well as the hacker trying to find her. It is the first of several planned ‘Julia Z novels’. In this episode, we discussed Liu’s inspiration for this new novel, his concept of ‘silkpunk’ in the context of The Dandelion Dynasty, and the uncertain future of art in the age of AI. You can find more information about him on his website kenliu.name or right here on Substack at The Lion's Teeth. Enjoy! TIMESTAMPS 00:00:12 – Intro 00:00:56 – Ken Liu’s new thriller All That We See or Seem 00:02:22 – “Dreamweaving” and why using AI feels like a dream 00:09:26 – Why did LLMs not make it into literature earlier? 00:18:13 – Writing near-future SF and “Real Artists” 00:27:36 – AI as a copying machine of the “desired original” 00:34:02 – Compensating artists in the age of AI 00:41:53 – Silkpunk and The Dandelion Dynasty 00:49:05 – Tax policy and cultural technology 00:56:23 – “All life is an experiment” 00:00:57 – Conclusion and final recommendations 01:02:51 – Synthesized Sunsets Backstage begins 01:05:17 – Ken Liu is unusually optimistic about AI art 01:12:22 – How will idiolects of AI and humans feed off each other? 01:18:03 – The Dandelion Dynasty as an experiment in exposition 01:23:45 – The character of Mata Zyndu and writing morality out of time 01:26:06 – The Paper Menagerie and The Hidden Girl are really different 01:27:44 – “Byzantine Empathy” by Ken Liu 01:30:29 – Ken Liu on the irrealism of fiction that avoids technology 01:33:03 – New season / reopening for submissions 01:35:03 – Conclusion and final recommendations This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 36m
  3. Summer 2025 Season Finale w/ Trevor Waldorf and Dylan O'Neal

    11/18/2025

    Summer 2025 Season Finale w/ Trevor Waldorf and Dylan O'Neal

    We brought back friends of the podcast Dylan O’Neal and Trevor Waldorf for more of a book club style informal conversation discussing some books and stories with a bit of a loose Halloween theme as we recorded this episode a few days before Halloween. We discussed the novel “Something Wicked This Way Comes” by Ray Bradbury, and short stories “All Summer in a Day,” also by Bradbury, “Mountain” and “Cannonball” by Cixin Liu, as well as “Mono no Aware” by Ken Liu. In the backstage portion of the podcast, we discuss Kevin’s article Cixin Liu’s Paracosmal Worlds as well as Gordon’s review of the Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer. We hope you enjoy listening! TIMESTAMPS: 0:12 - Introduction 2:02 - Discussing “All Summer In a Day” by Ray Bradbury 7:34 - Lots of media for children is written for adults 13:29 - Writing humanity as a character 17:00 - The ridiculous situation in which Kevin attempted to read “Something Wicked This Way Comes” 22:37 - Children’s horror is scarier than adult horror 25:25 - Monster House and other scary children’s movies 29:51 - Scary kids movies are supposed to be disorienting and strange 32:19 - Something Wicked This Way Comes is a better coming of age novel than a horror one 37:15 - Circus/Carnival Experiences 42:45 - There are less alternative lifestyles nowadays 47:09 - Kids used to do way more crazy s**t 48:54 - Cixin Liu writes stories that are childishly awesome 51:15 - Discussing “Cannonball” by Cixin Liu 58:31 - Cixin Liu is marketed in a very serious way that clashes with his fiction 1:03:24 - Discussing “Mountain” by Cixin Liu 1:05:26 - Cixin Liu crafts characters who have a single purpose 1:07:21 - Discussing “Mono no Aware” by Ken Liu 1:13:11 - Conclusion short story recommendation of “The Last Rung on the Ladder” by Stephen King and Dylan’s upcoming novel “Orange Sky, Dark Sun” 1:16:00 - Start of Synthesized Sunsets Backstage 1:16:20 - Getting an outsider’s perspective on Cixin Liu stories 1:18:05 - The swimming up the mountain scene in “Mountain” is awesome 1:25:18 - Discussing Kevin’s article, Cixin Liu’s Paracosmal Worlds 1:33:25 - Discussing Gordon’s Review of the Terra Ignota Series by Ada Palmer 1:38:18 - Some thoughts on Terra Ignota that eventually lead to this essay 1:41:44 - Too Like The Lightning is very difficult to follow 1:44:59 - Really difficult to make all 3 of really interesting speculative ideas, really interesting prose, and understandable 1:46:00 - The Dandelion Dynasty sort of solves this by not having many speculative ideas in the first book, then dumping more on you in future books when it is easier to follow 1:49:49 - Conclusion and Short Fiction Recommendation “Five Stages of Grief after the Alien Invasion” by Caroline M. Yoachim This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 53m
  4. 10/13/2025

    XXIII: Writing Realistic Children w/ Dylan O'Neal

    This week we talked to Dylan O’Neal, author of the first short story submission accepted by Synthesized Sunsets, Snowlight. In addition to the story, we discussed what got him into writing, how to write compelling children in stories, lucid dreaming, Game of Thrones, and the book he is working on currently, “Orange Sky, Dark Sun”. Similar to the last couple episodes this one was recorded a long time ago, but in the backstage portion was recorded more recently we discussed Kevin’s recent article in Republic of Letters, “Ah, The Nerdish Joys Of Quizbowl.” We hope you enjoy! TIMESTAMPS: 0:12 - Introduction 0:52 - How did you get into writing? 4:40 - Everyone reads in elementary school 7:17 - After a certain amount of reading you will probably feel compelled to write 8:26 - What is the starting point for your writing? 13:31 - Discussing Dylan’s story “Snowlight” 17:31 - Kids are often not believable in fiction 22:27 - Kids often don’t think about what they are capable of doing 27:20 - Lucid dreaming 32:42 - How do you create a dreamlike register? 36:06 - Many of Dylan’s favorite authors are Sci-fi adjacent (Kurt Vonnegut, George Saunders, George R.R. Martin, Stephen King) 37:45 - Do you see yourself as or becoming a sci-fi author? 40:06 - It’s hard to make phone usage seem beautiful 42:37 - Kurt Vonnegut and “Shapes of Stories” 45:26 - Stories with pretty much any shape can work well if executed well 50:08 - It’s hard for short stories to compete with other more attention grabbing forms of short media 53:29 - Screenwriting 57:03 - It’s tough to read a lot if you do not read primarily for entertainment 1:00:33 - A Song of Ice and Fire improves reading other fantasy series by raising the stakes 1:01:35 - Game of Thrones was the first fantasy book to really successfully break from the Lord of the Rings mold 1:04:38 - Dylan pitches his upcoming book “Orange Sky, Dark Sun” 1:10:11 - Conclusion and Short Story Recommendations: “The Man in the Black Suit” by Stephen King, “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, and “Two Talented Bastids” by Stephen King. 1:11:45 - Start of Synthesized Sunsets Backstage 1:12:13 - It’s cool to have a compulsion to write 1:15:15 - Children are often far more one-dimensional in stories 1:16:34 - Kids have agency 1:17:48 - Discussing Kevin’s Quizbowl article for Republic of Letters “Ah, The Nerdish Joys Of Quizbowl” 1:19:03 - Quizbowl is standardized academic trivia 1:21:54 - Quizbowl is mechanism for turning abstract knowledge into usable knowledge 1:26:33 - Gordon reads Kevin an example Quizbowl tossup 1:30:04 - What did the process of grinding for Quizbowl in high school look like for Kevin? 1:34:22 - Quizbowl is really good for learning history 1:35:49 - Math classes teach you application not just knowledge 1:37:31 - Quizbowl is an experience which burns knowledge into your mind 1:38:24 - Knowledge feels more real if you are able to apply it 1:40:25 - Conclusion and Short Story Recommendation “Call Girl” by Tang Fei This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 42m
  5. 09/16/2025

    XXII: Sinopticon and the World of Wǎngwén w/ Xueting Christine Ni

    This week on the podcast we had on Xueting Christine Ni, an independent researcher of Chinese culture who is most famous for her collections Sinopticon and Sinophagia (which focus on Chinese science fiction and Chinese horror, respectively), as well as her nonfiction writings on Chinese mythology. We spent a bit of time talking about the stories in those two collections, as well as the wide world of Chinese web fiction (wǎngwén) and the implications that it has for China and the rest of the world. This episode was recorded quite a long time ago, but the timing nicely coincides with Kevin’s last article “How 'Chinese Goodreads' Illuminates Forgotten Sci-Fi Classics”. We were very glad to hear Xueting’s unique perspective, who has spent quite a bit of time in both China and the UK, experiencing the fiction and life of both cultures. This episode was edited to be relatively light on spoilers in case people are interested in reading Sinopticon or Sinophagia afterwards— which we would highly recommend! Thanks for listening! TIMESTAMPS 00:00:12 – Episode Start 00:00:49 – Is Chinese speculative fiction more stratified than Western web fiction? 00:02:57 – Xueting's original entrypoint into wǎngwén (Chinese web fiction) 00:05:02 – What is the 'mission statement' of Sinopticon? 00:07:03 – “The Fall of Adam” by Wang Jinkang and getting stories past the publisher 00:10:32 – 2023 WorldCon in Chengdu and a Reddit thread about the nominees that reveals cultural gaps in science fiction 00:14:48 – “The Great Migration” by Ma Boyong and notes about translation 00:17:54 – Xueting talks about her elite translator notes in Sinopticon and Sinophagia 00:26:44 – “The Waking Dream” by Fan Zhou 00:31:28 – “Net Novels and the She-Era” by Xueting Christine Ni 00:35:52 – Understanding the scale of the Chinese web novel economy 00:44:17 – What a Western web fiction market might look like and Seven Seas Entertainment 00:47:47 – Xueting and Gordon talk about how the insular web fiction community enables certain kinds of playful experimentation with recurring elements 00:51:55 – Conclusion and final recommendations 00:52:43 – Xueting asks Kevin and Gordon about wuxia 00:55:26 – Synthesized Sunsets Backstage begins 00:57:08 – Talking to curators v. authors about their work 00:58:53 – “Flower of the Other Shore” by A Que 01:01:35 – “The Tide of Moon City” by Regina Kanyu Wang 01:03:58 – Kevin goes on a long side tangent about hating unnecessary frame stories 01:07:48 – Kevin’s article “How 'Chinese Goodreads' Illuminates Forgotten Sci-Fi Classics” 01:12:27 – Kevin’s initial “wrong” conclusions about Chinese science fiction 01:15:19 – Why “The Martian” was so popular 01:16:21 – Kevin talks about meeting Chinese science fiction fans 01:18:39 – Is Cixin Liu that popular in China? 01:21:08 – The popularity of Japanese mystery fiction in China 01:23:00 – Curators are to authors as original contexts are to foreign contexts? 01:25:35 – Conclusion and final recommendations This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 27m
  6. XXI: Is Sci-fi Suffering from Success? w/Lillian Wang Selonick

    09/01/2025

    XXI: Is Sci-fi Suffering from Success? w/Lillian Wang Selonick

    We were super excited to talk to science fiction writer and fellow Substacker Lillian Wang Selonick. We discuss some topics from her essays on the value of Worldbuilding, the adoption of sci-fi tropes in literary books, what is meant by the term speculative fiction, Death’s End, Philip K. Dick, and more. Apologies for the long delay between episodes. We recorded this episode about three weeks ago, but due to going to Worldcon, Gordon getting sick (twice!), and Kevin going on vacation it took a while to publish. In the backstage portion, we talk about our experience at Worldcon and accepting fiction submissions for Synthesized Sunsets. Also, if you like the episode you can check out Lillian on the Futurist Letters podcast as well. Hope you enjoy listening! TIMESTAMPS: 0:12 - Introduction 1:17 - Discussing “Worldbuilding” 3:38 - You don't need to have a rigorous, highly-engineered, world to write a SFF story 5:53 - Is worldbuilding overused as a concept for fantasy? 6:40 - Worldbuilding vs. world conjuring 8:43 - What makes something real science fiction 11:55 - It's cool when it is clear an author is really passionate about science 13:37 - Sci-fi has become a bit too defined by its tropes 14:46 - Speculative-literary hybrid books 17:32 - We shouldn't be giving sci-fi awards to successful literary books 19:53 - What is meant by the term speculative fiction? 22:27 - Speculative fiction partially evolved as a term due to sci-fi authors seeing it as more serious 23:46 - Defining speculative fiction by its community 26:44 - Speculative is starting to be used more for literary books with some tropes 28:45 - The Dune movies were big for sci-fi 30:49 - Villeneuve has been an ambassador for sci-fi 31:38 - Blade Runner 2049 looks amazing but is unmemorable otherwise 33:49 - What makes Philip K. Dick so good? 35:48 - PKD creates fiction that plays with epistemic certainty 39:33 - Ray Bradbury and PKD feel similar 40:55 - PKD is very popular in China 43:13 - Talking about “Death's End” 45:15 - Death's End starting at the Siege of Constantinople was crazy 49:02 - How is PKD similar to Saul Bellow? 52:26 - The different types of men writing women 58:40 - Writing at Futurist Letters 1:01:05 - Discussing Lillian’s story “A Riot at Red Plan-It! Park” 1:04:52 - Conclusion and Short Story Recommendation of “Hinterlands” by William Gibson from his collection “Burning Chrome” 1:06:18 - Start of Synthesized Sunsets Backstage 1:06:42 - Poorly remembered thoughts on the episode 1:07:26 - Discussing “Ubik” and “The Lathe of Heaven” 1:13:57 - Elaborating on the case for a circular definition of speculative fiction 1:18:41 - Military sci-fi is becoming less speculative fiction 1:20:40 - A genre being defined circularly is less strange than it may sound 1:21:25 - Our experience at Worldcon 1:22:01 - It's very easy to see and talk to relatively famous people at Worldcon 1:25:49 - Ada Palmer was really impressive 1:28:38 - Interesting Joanna Russ panel with friend of the pod Rich Horton 1:31:25 - Talking about the Hugo Awards 1:32:51 - It would have been cool if the Hugo Awards were more of a spectacle 1:36:52 - The Hugo Awards should be more focused around Best Novel 1:37:21 - The convention as a whole was quite well run 1:41:28 - Our experience receiving fiction submissions 1:43:30 - We've been pleasantly surprised with the general level of quality from submissions 1:46:34 - Conclusion and Short Story Recommendation of “10207” by Emma Burnett This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 47m
  7. 07/16/2025

    SPRING 2025 FINALE: ONE YEAR OF SYNTHESIZED SUNSETS

    Today marks exactly one year since the first post on Synthesized Sunsets. To celebrate the occasion, Gordon and Kevin take a look back at how it all began. We also discuss Kevin’s recent article, “Shunrō Oshikawa, ChatGPT, and the Birth of the "Pre-Translator"”, as well as its follow-up post and the ways in which AI translation might (or might not) pave the way for a utopian multilingual Internet future. It’s been a great season at Synthesized Sunsets, and we thank you all for reading! We’ll see you next season for the Hugo Awards!! TIMESTAMPS 00:00:12 – Episode Start 00:00:37 – Inspiration for Synthesized Sunsets 00:03:57 – How did Gordon react to being asked to co-host Synthesized Sunsets? 00:08:06 – Synthesized Sunsets was not originally super sci-fi focused 00:10:47 – Has Synthesized Sunsets become audience-captured? 00:14:39 – Favorite “core memories” of Synthesized Sunsets and the first post on Synthesized Sunsets: 'The Wandering Inn' Allows Us to Properly Fear the Sea 00:19:08 – Kevin did not expect to get particularly into visual art 00:21:37 – Synthesized Sunsets is less popular but more influential at this stage than Gordon + Kevin expected 00:25:02 – Has Synthesized Sunsets become audience captured? (cont.) 00:27:53 – Does Synthesized Sunsets plan to experiment with the form of fiction? 00:29:29 – Why haven't Gordon and Kevin written more fiction? 00:31:43 – Hoping for more audience engagement / possible trivia events in the future 00:33:52 – Discussion of “Shunrō Oshikawa, ChatGPT, and the Birth of the "Pre-Translator"” begins 00:39:21 – Somewhat fair negative feedback of the article 00:40:35 – Attempting translation is a very novel experience 00:47:39 – Kevin would have done some things differently in retrospect 00:49:40 – How gatekeep-y is translation and is this good? 00:51:02 – Will monolingual translation ever become widespread? 00:52:21 – Kevin speculates about our glorious multilingual Internet future 00:56:07 – Conclusion and final recommendations 00:57:45 – Thank you to everyone who has supported Synthesized Sunsets! We are very grateful for your support!! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/subscribe

    59 min
  8. XX: A Career in Science Fiction Criticism w/Rich Horton

    07/10/2025

    XX: A Career in Science Fiction Criticism w/Rich Horton

    This week we spoke with long time Science Fiction reviewer and anthologist Rich Horton. We talked about his experience in the early internet sci-fi community on Usenet, his career in sci-fi criticism at Tangent and Locus, his work creating sci-fi/fantasy best of the year anthologies, our thoughts on the current slate of Hugo Award nominees, and more. We hope you enjoy! TIMESTAMPS: 0:14 - Introduction 0:39 - What drew you to Substack? 1:33 - Rich Horton started Substack by reading people already here (Ted Gioia, Lincoln Michel, Naomi Kanakia) 2:25 - Usenet as a hub for sci-fi discourse 6:07 - Substack is a place where you can talk about books 7:07 - Stories about sci-fi discussion on Usenet 13:08 - Starting Writing Reviews for Tangent 18:19 - Becoming a columnist at Locus 21:13 - Creating SFF best of the year anthologies 25:49 - It was cool to publish stories from literary writers in sci-fi anthologies 28:38 - The challenge of only writing positive reviews 29:57 - It's hard to write negative reviews for people you know 32:32 - Should you be able to spoil a story as the critic? 33:40 - It's easier to write bad reviews for already well-aclaimed books 38:18 - Society doesn't have much respect for critics 39:55 - Newspaper book reviews are dying off 41:18 - The best critics are worth reading even outside of any engagement with the original text 44:57 - Rating books by entertainment and ambition 45:40 - Discussing Hugo Award Nominee Novels 48:54 - Having separate literary and speculative ratings 52:04 - A lot of "hard" science fiction is written by people with an actual background in science 56:13 - Experiences at WorldCon and other sci-fi conventions 1:04:13 - Conclusion and short fiction recommendations of short story The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar and novella New Light On the Drake Equation by Ian R. MacLeod 1:06:22 - Start of Synthesized Sunsets Backstage 1:07:32 - It was cool to learn about early sci-fi internet with Usenet 1:08:22 - A higher barrier to engagement can create better conversations 1:10:42 - Discussing Hugo Awards Review #3: The Tainted Cup + A Sorceress Comes to Call 1:11:08 - We both liked The Tainted Cup a lot 1:13:09 - The Tainted Cup had a somewhat unambitious style 1:16:20 - The Ana + Din scenes in The Tainted Cup remind Kevin of ASMR videos 1:17:29 - Neither of us liked A Sorceress Comes To Call 1:17:55 - A Sorceress Comes to Call would be a pretty good kids book 1:19:27 - It's hard to separate personal opinion from objective quality when reviewing something 1:20:48 - It's important to believe in a character's existence 1:25:57 - Knowledge of the artist's vision can enhance the enjoyment of some art object 1:27:19 - "Earlier in my life I was unable to connect with the art objects of music" (songs) 1:28:28 - Discussing The SFF Magazine Canon 1:29:27 - The line between prozines and semiprozines is quite blurry 1:33:26 - Magazine recommendations * Reactor has longer form stories and is the most approachable as a sci-fi novel reader * Lightspeed has the widest variety of sci-fi stories * Beneath Ceaseless Skies has the most consistent style of secondary world fantasy stories 1:36:59 - Conclusion and short story recommendation of “The Electric Ant” by Philip K. Dick This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/subscribe

    1h 38m

About

Synthesized Sunsets is a podcast about speculative fiction and the future of popular culture. This podcast is tied to the magazine of the same name, so episodes will correspond to the current issue's theme. Your hosts are niche media enthusiasts Kevin and Gordon, who hope to put you on to some hidden gems and goofy ideas. Join us as we talk to members of the speculative fiction community and other future-forward thinkers! synthesizedsunsets.substack.com