The SF in SF Podcast

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

The Podcast from Science Fiction in San Francisco - A perfect fit. Located in the City of Sn Francisco, we host a monthly series of author readings from the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and genre literary fields, hosted by Terry Bisson or Cliff Winnig.

  1. 07/25/2024

    July 2024: Paolo Bacigalupi and Tim Pratt

    This is the first SF in SF to be recorded at our new venue, The Lost Chuch, a nonprofit performance space in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. PAOLO BACIGALUPI is an internationally bestselling author of speculative fiction. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, John W. Campbell and Locus Awards, as well as being a finalist for the National Book Award and a winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, for Shipbreaker. Paolo's work often focuses on questions of sustainability and the environment, most notably the impacts of climate change. His writing has appeared in WIRED, High Country News, Salon.com, OnEarth Magazine, The Magazine of F&SF and Asimov's. His short fiction has been anthologized in various "Year's Best" collections of short science fiction and fantasy, nominated for three Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, and won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story of the year. His collection Pump Six & Other Stories was named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly. His debut novel The Windup Girl was named by TIME as one of the ten best novels of 2009, and also won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards. Internationally, it has won the Seiun Award (Japan), The Ignotus Award (Spain), The Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis (Germany), and the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire (France). His other work includes a sequel to Shipbreaker, The Drowned Cities, Zombie Baseball Beatdown, The Doubt Factory, and The Water Knife. His long-awaited new novel, Navola, releases July 9, 2024. "With echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather, and Game of Thrones, Navola is a stunning feat of world-building and a mesmerizing depiction of drive and will." https://windupstories.com/ TIM PRATT is a Hugo Award-winning SF and fantasy author and editor, with over 30 books to his credit, most recently the kinky multiversal space opera The Knife and the Serpent. His fiction and poetry have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, the Best American Erotica, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Subterranean, and Tor.com, among many other places. He’s written several roleplaying game tie-in fantasy novels, including one for Forgotten Realms and five for Pathfinder Tales. In October 2007 he began publishing a series of urban fantasies featuring ass-kicking sorcerer Marla Mason, and you can find the “Marlaverse” online at https://marlamason.net/ His debut collection Little Gods was published in 2003,and his second, Hart & Boot & Other Stories, 2007, was a World Fantasy Award finalist. He won a Hugo Award (for “Impossible Dreams” in 2007), and has been nominated for a Nebula Award, Stoker Award, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, a couple of Gaylactic Spectrum Awards, a Seiun Award, a Scribe Award, and two Ignotus Awards, among others. In 2004 he was a finalist for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Tim is a senior editor and occasional book reviewer at Locus, the magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field. Since 2013 he’s published a new story every month at www.patreon.com/timpratt, he makes jokes on Bluesky @timpratt.org. and you can see what else he’s up to online at https://www.timpratt.org/ He lives in Berkeley, CA with his wife and kid.

    1h 16m

  2. 07/24/2024

    June 2024: Robin Sloan, Clara Ward and Rudy Rucker

    ROBIN SLOAN was raised and educated in Michigan, and attended Michigan State University, where he co-founded the literary magazine Oats and graduated with an economics degree in 2002. He worked for about a decade at the intersection of media and technology before publishing his first novel. In 2003, he founded the SnarkMarket blog with some friends, and then moved to the SF Bay Area in 2004 to work, first at Current TV as a media strategist/interactive producer, and then at Twitter as a media manager. His new novel, Moonbound, has just been published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He has developed a special website as a companion to the novel, here: https://www.robinsloan.com/moonbound/ Sloan's first novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, was released in 2012. His second novel, Sourdough, was released in September 2017. He has written fiction and commentary for many publications, including the NY Times, the Atlantic, and MIT Technology Review. His novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Sloan and his partner Kathryn Tomajan produce olive oil under the Fat Gold brand, harvested off leased land in Sunol, California. RUDY RUCKER is, quite honestly, one of the most important and visionary figures in science fiction literature working today. A writer, mathematician, artist, and a Silicon Valley computer science professor emeritus, Rucker is regarded as a contemporary master of science-fiction, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. He received the very first Philip K. Dick award for his cyberpunk novel, Software, and another for Wetware. It's worth noting that his novel Software (1982), was the very first SF work to introduce the (by now very familiar) notion of transferring a human personality to a bot. What's more, Software was the first SF novel in which robot minds are evolved, rather than being designed. As well as writing cyberpunk, Rucker writes SF in a realistic style known as transrealism—where the author uses SF archetypes to symbolize the concerns of the characters. Rucker's forty published books include non-fiction books on the fourth dimension, infinity, and the meaning of computation. Rucker has also worked on several software packages; he runs a podcast of his talks; and you can browse some of his works online, including his autobiography Nested Scrolls and his Complete Stories. https://www.rudyrucker.com/ CLARA WARD lives in Silicon Valley, California, on the border between reality and speculative fiction. Be the Sea, their latest novel, takes place in the same near future as “Dream the Sea,” available here online from Small Wonders Magazine and is a science fantasy journey across the Pacific featuring sea creature perspectives, human tech, chosen family, and the world's best chocolate. Clara's short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Decoded Pride, and The Arcanist. When not using words to teach or tell stories, Clara uses wood, fiber, and glass to make practical or completely impractical objects. More of their words along with crafted creations can be found at https://clarawardauthor.wordpress.com/

    1h 31m

  3. 05/31/2024

    May 2024: Samantha Mills, Hana Lee and Caitlin Chung

    HANA LEE is a biracial Korean American writer who also builds software for a living. She has an undying love for fantastical stories in all their forms, especially video games, and a habit of writing to moody indie rock playlists. A graduate of Stanford University, she's always loved the dark, the gothic, and the occult, so there's usually a picturesque ruin of some kind lurking in the background of her novels. Her short writing has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and Uncanny Magazine, and her first novel, Road to Ruin, is out now from Saga Press (debuting at SF in SF!) It's the first book in the Magebike Courier series, as well as a love letter to her favorite movie, Mad Max: Fury Road. She lives in California with her partner and two beloved and ridiculously fluffy cats. Learn more about this author who's definitely off to a great start at https://authorhanalee.com/about SAMANTHA MILLS is a multiple award-winning author living in Southern California. Her debut science fantasy novel, The Wings Upon Her Back, is out now from Tachyon Publications. She has published a dozen short stories, appearing in Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod and others. In addition to winning the Nebula, Locus, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial awards for her short story “Rabbit Test” in 2023, Sam has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, made the Locus Recommended Reading List and the BSFA long list multiple times, and was included in the best-of anthologies The New Voices of Science Fiction and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2023. Sam grew up in Southern California, where she still lives with her family and cats. She graduated from the University of Santa Cruz with a B.A. in Pre- and Early Modern Literature, and received a Master's in Information and Library Science from San Jose State University. In the other half of her life, she is a trained archivist specializing in primary documents, with a particular focus on helping local historical societies and research libraries preserve and manage their collections. When Sam isn't working, writing or taking care of children, she's watching B-movies, binding books, and crocheting stuffed animals. You can find more about this talented author at www.samtasticbooks.com. AITLIN CHUNG has lived in the Bay Area her whole life. She is a teacher, an expert eavesdropper, a fan of infomercials, and is known to be a supporter of superstitions. She has on many occasions been justly accused of being a Luddite. She lives in Oakland with her husband and their cat. Ship of Fates was her first book, and a Foreword INDIES Finalist. Out from Lanternfish Press, Ship of Fates is a historical fantasy weaving together western fairy tales and Asian-American history and mythology. Beginning in the gridlocked harbor of San Francisco's Barbary Coast, with a ship hung with red paper lanterns draws crowds eager to gamble and drink. Aboard it, the fates of two young women will be altered irrevocably—and tied forever to that of an ancient lighthouse keeper who longs to be free. Set against the backdrop of Gold Rush-era San Francisco's Chinese immigrant community, Ship of Fates is a coming-of-age fairy tale that stretches across generations. We look forward to more fantastic fiction from this local author – in the meantime, learn a bit more here: https://www.breakingtheglassslipper.com/2020/07/23/five-questions-with-caitlin-chung/

    1h 33m

  4. 03/26/2024

    March 2024: Gail Carriger, Amy Sundberg, and Izzy Wasserstein

    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).

    1h 48m

  5. 02/29/2024

    February 2024: David D. Levine & David M. Sandner

    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/. 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, Fairwood Press, 2022, with a complete novel, Egyptian Motherlode, due out from Fairwood Press in late 2024. Sandner’s nonfiction includes The Fantastic Sublime: Romanticism and Transcendence in Nineteenth-century Children’s Fantasy Literature (Greenwood, 1996), The Treasury of the Fantastic (with Jacob Weisman, Tachyon Publications, 2013), and Philip K. Dick: Essays of the Here and Now (McFarland, 2020).

    1h 3m

  6. 02/12/2024

    June 2023: Fran Wilde and Henry Lien

    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.

    1h 33m

  7. 02/12/2024

    SF in SF Feb 2023: Annalee Newitz & Naseem Jamnia

    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

    1h 14m

  8. 02/12/2024

    January 2020: Kim Stanley Robinson and Cecilia Holland

    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.

    1h 34m
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About

The Podcast from Science Fiction in San Francisco - A perfect fit. Located in the City of Sn Francisco, we host a monthly series of author readings from the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and genre literary fields, hosted by Terry Bisson or Cliff Winnig.

Information

  • Creator
    dj@somafm.com (SomaFM DJ)
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2024
  • Episodes
    51
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    The SF in SF Podcast

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