The SF in SF Podcast dj@somafm.com (SomaFM DJ)

Gail Carriger writes books that are hugs, mostly comedies of manners mixed with steampunk, urban fantasy, and sci-fi (plus cozy queer joy as G. L. Carriger). These include the Parasol Protectorate, Custard Protocol, Tinkered Stars, the San Andreas Shifter series for adults, and the Finishing School and Tinkered Starsong series for young adults. In addition, she's published the nonfiction book, The Heroine's Journey. She is published in many languages, has over a million books in print, over a dozen New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, and starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, and Romantic Times.

Amy Sundberg is the author of the recently released YA science fiction novel My Stars Shine Darkly as well as the novel To Travel the Stars, a YA retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in space. Her novels feature intrepid heroines, refined prose, and questions of agency, power, and possibility. She also reports on local news with an emphasis on public safety and the criminal legal system in Seattle and Washington State. You can read her work at the Urbanist and in her newsletter Notes From the Emerald City. Amy spent most of her life in the San Francisco Bay Area, but she is now living in Seattle with her little dog Nala.

Izzy Wasserstein is a queer and trans woman who was born and raised in Kansas and currently lives in California. She teaches writing and literature, writes poetry and fiction, and shares a house with a variety of animal companions and the writer Nora E. Derrington. A Lambda Literary Award finalist, she's the author of two poetry collections, When Creation Falls (Meadowlark Press (2018) and This Ecstasy They Call Damnation, the short story collection All the Hometowns You Can't Stay Away From, and her brand-new novella, These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart (Tachyon, 2024).

Please join SF in SF for a fabulous evening of Frankenstein and his Monster, Mary Shelley, an exciting space caper story and science fiction fun with authors David D. Levine and David M. Sandner!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

DAVID D. LEVINE is the author of the space-opera caper novel, The Kuiper Belt Job, recently published by Caezi SF & Fantasy. https://www.arcmanorbooks.com/caeziksf. The Kuiper Belt Job is a caper story in space, a mash-up of Ocean’s 11 and The Expanse with a dollop of Firefly and Leverage. It’s an ensemble piece with complex character relationships and a twisty, compelling plot, but beneath the entertaining surface it raises deep questions about identity and personhood. In a world where minds can be copied, what does it mean to be “me”?

Although Levine began as a writer of technical articles, he has long had an interest in reading and writing science fiction. He has primarily written short fiction, with his first professional fiction sale in 2001. A long-time member of SF fandom and an early member of MilwApa (the Milwaukee amateur press association), he also co-edited a fanzine, Bento, with his late wife, Kate Yule, and has served as a Convention Committee Chair for Potlatch. His short story “Ukaliq and the Great Hunt” appeared in The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology Volume 2 (2003). In 2010, he spent two weeks in a simulated Mars habitat of the Mars Society, in Utah. He currently resides in the Pacific Northwest, and blogs at https://daviddlevine.com/blog/.

His previous works include the Andre Norton Nebula Award-winning novel, Arabella of Mars, the sequels Arabella and the Battle of Venus and Arabella the Traitor of Mars, and over sixty science fiction and fantasy stories. His story “Tk’Tk’Tk” won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, and he has been shortlisted for awards including the Hugo, Nebula, Campbell, and Sturgeon. His stories have appeared in magazines such as Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF), Tor.com, numerous Year’s Best anthologies. His collection, Space Magic, from Wheatland Press, won the 2009 Endeavor Award for best science fiction book in the Pacific Northwest. All three of the Arabella books are being reissued as ebooks from Open Road Media, and will be available (with absolutely stunning covers!) after Feb. 13, 2024, wherever you get your ebooks.

DAVID M. SANDNER is an American academic and author, and a professor in the Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics at California State University, Fullerton. Sandner has a master’s degree from San Francisco State University and a doctorate from the University of Oregon. His doctoral thesis was titled The Fairy Way of Writing: Fantastic literature from the romance revival to Romanticism, 1712–1830, and was completed in 2000.

Professor Sandner’s latest book, The Afterlife of Frankenstein: A Century of Mad Science, Automata, and Monsters Inspired by Mary Shelley, 1818-1918, is just out from Lanternfish Press, along with a novella, His Unburned Heart (2024) from the horror press, Raw Dog Screaming.

Afterlife focuses on Dr. Frankenstein’s monster — one of the most iconic figures in English literature, popularized through decades of writing, film, and comedy. But even before the invention of film, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein profoundly impacted scores of writers, gathering force for the genre that would ultimately become what we know as science fiction. In this anthology, scholar of the fantastic David Sandner explores the first hundred years of Frankenstein’s influence. This collection of short stories and excerpts from work published between 1818 to 1918 demonstrates what a pioneering myth Frankenstein has always been—from the very day when lightning first struck and it opened its eyes on the world.

His recent fiction also includes the novelettes Mingus Fingers (with Jacob Weisman, Fairwood Press, 2019), and Hellhounds (with Jacob Weisman

Each author will read a selection from their work, followed by Q&A with the audience, moderated by author Cliff Winnig.

FRAN WILDE is an American science fiction and fantasy writer and blogger. Her debut novel, Updraft, was a 2016 Nebula Award nominee, and won the 2016 Andre Norton Award and the 2016 Compton Crook Award. Her debut middle grade novel, Riverland, won the 2019 Andre Norton Award, was named an NPR Best Book of 2019 and was a Lodestar Finalist. Wilde is the first person to win two Andre Norton Awards for both Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction. Her short fiction explores themes of social class, disability, disruptive technology, and empowerment against a backdrop of engineering and artisan culture, and has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Nature, Tor.com, Uncanny Magazine, and elsewhere. The Gem Universe, a trilogy comprising The Jewel and Her Lapidary, and The Fire Opal Mechanism, concludes with the upcoming The Book of Gems.

Her poetry has appeared in Fireside Fiction, The Marlboro Review, Articulate, and Poetry Baltimore. Wilde holds an MFA in poetry and an MA in information architecture and interaction design. She is one of the editors of the online The Sunday Morning Transport newsletter.

HENRY LIEN is a 2012 graduate of Clarion West. He is the author of the Peasprout Chen fantasy series, a delightful middle grade fantasy/adventure series about a girl determined to take top ranking at Pearl Famous Academy of Skate and Sword where she studies Wu Liu, a form that blends figure skating with martial arts. “Harry Potter Meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon . . . On Ice!” AND about immigration, girl power, sibling relationships, leadership, teamwork, and the importance of friendship!

His short fiction has appeared in publications like Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and he has served as arts editor for Interfictions Online. He is a four-time Nebula/Norton Award finalist. Henry also teaches writing for institutions including UCLA (which awarded him Instructor of the Year), the University of Iowa, Writing the Other, and Clarion West. Henry has previously worked as an attorney and fine art dealer. Born in Taiwan, Henry currently lives in Hollywood.

Annalee Newitz is a nonfiction and fiction author. The recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT, they also hold a Ph.D. in English and American Studies from UC Berkeley. Previously, they founded the well-known website io9, was the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a lecturer in American Studies at UC Berkeley. Newitz is currently a freelance science journalist, a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, and a columnist at New Scientist, as well as the co-host, with Charlie Jane Anders, of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.

Their nonfiction has appeared in Slate, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Wired, Smithsonian Magazine, The Washington Post, 2600, New Scientist, Technology Review, Popular Science, Discover, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. They are also the co-editor of the essay collection She's Such A Geek, and author of Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture. Their latest nonfiction book, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, was a national bestseller. Their first novel, Autonomous, won the Lambda Literary Award, and was nominated for the Nebula and Locus Awards. Their second novel, The Future of Another Timeline, received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Booklist, and their short story "When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis" was winner of the 2019 Sturgeon Award. They are also the author of Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in Science.

Newitz' current novel, The Terraformers, is "a sweeping, uplifting, and illuminating exploration of the future."

Naseem Jamnia is a former neuroscientist and recent MFA graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno. Their work has appeared in the Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, The Rumpus, The Writer's Chronicle, and other venues. Jamnia is a 2018 Bitch Media Fellow in Technology, a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction, and they recently received the 2021 inaugural Samuel R. Delany Fellowship.

In addition to cowriting the academic text Positive Interactions with At-Risk Children, Jamnia's work has been included in the Lambda Literary 2020 EMERGE anthology and We Made Uranium! And Other True Stories from the University of Chicago's Extraordinary Scavenger Hunt. Jamnia is the managing editor at Sword & Kettle Press, an independent publishing house of inclusive feminist speculative fiction. They are also the former managing editor at Sidequest.Zone, an independent gaming criticism website.

A Persian-Chicagoan and child to Iranian immigrants, Jamnia now lives in Reno with their husband, dog, and two cats.

Recorded February 26, 2023 at the American Bookbinders Museum in San Francsico

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON is an American writer of science fiction. He has published 19 novels and many short stories but is best known for his Mars books. His work has been translated into 24 languages. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, cultural, and political themes running through them and feature scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award.

Robinson’s work has been labeled by The Atlantic as "the gold-standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing." According to an article in The New Yorker, Robinson is "generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers."

CECELIA HOLLAND is an American historical fiction author, also well-known for her science fiction novel, Floating Worlds. Her first novel, The Firedrake, was published in 1966, and Holland has been a full-time professional writer ever since. Her character-driven plots, scrupulously researched, are often developed from the viewpoint of a male protagonist.

With plenty of action (her battle scenes are noteworthy for their bottom-up viewpoint and understated verisimilitude), her work focuses primarily on the life of the mind—whatever that might mean in a particular culture—and especially on politics, in the broadest sense, whatever politics might be in a monarchical, feudal or tribal society. Holland lives in rural Humboldt County, CA. For ten years, Holland taught creative writing classes at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, CA. She was visiting professor of English at Connecticut College in 1979. Holland was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981–1982.

Mia Tsai is a Taiwanese American author of speculative fiction. She lives in Atlanta with her family, and, when not writing, is a hype woman for her orchids and a devoted cat gopher. Her favorite things include music of all kinds (really, truly) and taking long trips with nothing but the open road and a saucy rhythm section. She has been quoted in Glamour magazine once. In her other lives, she is a professional editor, photographer, and musician.

Becca Gomez Farrell is a professional writer, creating works in the genres of fantasy, romance, horror, and science fiction, with side trips into personal essay and creative nonfiction. With nearly 20 short stories published, one epic fantasy novel, and a romance novella to her credit, she is currently also working on a new novel, Natural Disasters.

Wings Unfurled, her current novel out in the world, is the second part of her duology, Wings Rising. It was preceded by Wings Unseen, featured at Becca’s last appearance with SF in SF in September, 2017. Her other passion is writing about wine, cocktails, dining out, and travel, at her blog, The Gourmez, a fascinating dive into what makes a good meal, a great cocktail, and great restaurant recommendations. In this guise, she contributes to the award-winning Carpe Durham and WRAL Out and About blogs. In addition, she writes reviews and critiques of soap operas, network shows, and tweets short movie reviews and write occasional ones for plays, books, and concerts. A Bay Area resident since 2013. she’s also an owner of furry creatures, a wife of a fantastic front-end developer, a progressive politicker, and a formidable pinochle player.