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101: The Dog of the South

January 8, 2018 · by Roger · in Podcast

How many digressions can you dangle from a road-novel quest plot? How many varieties of crank and con-artist can you fit in a Buick Special? How much hilarity can you wring from the masterfully rendered voice of an insufferable American blowhard? (A lot!)

The Sometime Seminar discusses The Dog of the South (1979) by Charles Portis.

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100: What This Is

January 8, 2018 · by Roger · in Podcast

How do we pick our topics? Where do we get all of our great ideas? If this podcast were a tree, what kind of tree would it be? We turn the critical lens on ourselves in a brief meta-discussion about what this is and why we do it. If this seems self-indulgent, give us a break…it’s our 100th episode! 🎉🎉🎉

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99: Tales of Nevèrÿon

99: Tales of Nevèrÿon

October 31, 2017 · by Roger · in Podcast

Swords, sorcery, and semiotics! In our ninety-ninth episode, The Sometime Seminar discusses Samuel R. Delany’s masterful Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979), a collection of fantasy stories unlike any other.

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98: The Female Man

98: The Female Man

September 11, 2017 · by Roger · in Podcast

A withering satire, a feminist utopia, a work of rigorous science fiction and a high-spirited postmodern genre-buster…all for the price of one book!

The Sometime Seminar discusses The Female Man (1975) by Joanna Russ.

Note on e-texts: All available electronic editions of this book seem to be terrible. We’d strongly recommend reading it on paper.

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97: The Time Machine

July 24, 2017 · by Roger · in Podcast

How much cosmic imagination and speculative social history can fit in a pulp-adventure framework? Why do science fiction and modernism emerge at the same literary-historical moment? Does the future belong to giant crabs?

The Sometime Seminar discusses the work of H.G. Wells, with a focus on The Time Machine (1895).

Supplemental links: on the complex textual history of the story; the SF Encyclopedia entry on “Wells’s Law”

Note on e-texts: the Project Gutenberg text, on which most free e-texts of The Time Machine are based, is corrupt and error-ridden. We recommend instead the Penguin Classics edition, which comes with an excellent introduction by Marina Warner.

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96: Lilith’s Brood

July 17, 2017 · by Roger · in Podcast

Does utopia begin with extinction? Can gene-splicing aliens save humanity from itself?

The Sometime Seminar discusses Lilith’s Brood (also known as Xenogenesis), a trilogy of science-fiction novels by Octavia Butler: Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989).

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95: The Way We Live Now

June 12, 2017 · by Roger · in Podcast

In a large bag, combine shady financiers, dissolute aristocrats and marriageable heiresses; spice with lower-class stereotypes and brash Americans to taste; add one improbable paragon of old-fashioned virtue; shake vigorously for 800 pages; serve with comic relish, sentimental syrup and a pinch of melancholy.

The Sometime Seminar discusses Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now (1875), a sprawling novel of finance and marriage.

Supplemental link: John Lanchester argues the novel’s relevance to a 2010s audience for NPR

Note on e-texts: the Penguin Classics edition is terrible, riddled with errors and typos.

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94: Alien Hearts

May 22, 2017 · by Roger · in Podcast

What happens when the “modern woman” of the late 19th century takes a lead role in one of the oldest plots on the planet? How does social history finds its way into romantic psychology, and vice versa?

The Sometime Seminar discusses Alien Hearts (Notre coeur, 1890) by Guy de Maupassant (trans. Richard Howard, 2009).

Supplemental link: Julian Barnes on this and another recent translation of Maupassant in the LRB

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93: The Moonstone

May 3, 2017 · by Roger · in Podcast

Valuables vanish, comic/gothic stereotypes abound, the plot twists and the repressed returns as The Sometime Seminar discusses The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins, which is by some accounts the first detective novel.

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92: Norstrilia

92: Norstrilia

March 22, 2017 · by Roger · in Podcast

Whiz-bang pulp exuberance + witty, inventive style + just the right amount of psychological depth and moral/political seriousness = ???.

The Sometime Seminar discusses the midcentury science-fiction stories of Cordwainer Smith, the best of which are selected — along with the novel Norstrilia — in We the Underpeople. (Many other collections of Smith’s work are available.)

Supplemental links: Cordwainer Smith’s entry in the SFE; Graham Sleight discusses Smith in a Locus retrospective

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