Category: Books
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Episode 31: Paris in the 20s
View on Zencastr Joe and Mark are joined by beloved and bestselling Canadian author, Terry Fallis. Terry’s fiction has won the Leacock Medal for Humour twice, and his debut novel, Best Laid Plans, won Canada Reads in 2011. The annual CBC competition had a huge impact on his sales figures for that novel: more than…
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Episode 29: Machines of Loving Grace
View on Zencastr In 1969, an undergraduate astronomy student at Caltech had the chance to hear the iconic American poet Richard Brautigan read “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.” [see poem below] That student was David Brin, and the utopian poem foretold a future in which artificial intelligence (AI) was a boon to…
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Episode 27: The Time Machine
View on Zencastr Mark and Joe jump around in time with Nebula- and Hugo-Award winning author, Robert Charles Wilson. Robert brings H. G. Wells to the podcast, with a discussion of how fascinating it would be to see what happens in the future – an idea that had some impact on how he became a…
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Episode 24: Akira
View on Zencastr Mark and Joe chat with author Benoit Chartier about the anime film Akira. They begin with one of Mark’s questions: what piece of technology frightens you? Benoit admits he isn’t frightened by it, but he’s annoyed by ChatGPT and other AI techs, because it may flood the market with crap books. As…
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Episode 20: Songs of Innocence and of Experience
“We don’t so much think about reality, we think reality.” –Frank Faulk View on Zencastr Joe and Mark talk to the accomplished radio documentary maker Frank Faulk about Mr. Joy and Woe himself, William Blake. In this far-ranging and deep conversation we discover the impact that Blake’s poetry and thought had on Frank’s approach to…
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Episode 19: Grass
“When you write science fiction you feed from the work of many other fantastic people.” –Michèle Laframboise View on Zencastr Michèle found Sheri S. Tepper’s Grass totally engrossing; she especially enjoyed the well-drawn secondary characters, the planet itself, which was like a character, and how she managed multiple story lines. Tepper started to write later…
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Episode 18: Maps & Music
View on Zencastr This episode is a Re-Creative first, as Joe and Mark host two guests on the same show. Celu Amberstone and Paula Johanson are both writers and educators with a love of the natural world. They also both live in British Columbia. Paula’s inspiration is the map, particularly a map of Salt Spring…
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Episode 14: The Overstory
View on Zencastr The Overstory is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that had quite a meaningful and moving impact on this week’s guest: the writer, naturalist and limnologist, Nina Munteanu. Nina considers herself an environmental activist and ecologist, and much of her fiction is written in a sub-genre of SF: eco-fiction. She’s also a lover…
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Episode 11: Cat’s Cradle
View on Zencastr Joe and Mark are flying without a guest this episode, as they discuss Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut. They talk about Vonnegut’s life, in particular his experiences during World War II; Vonnegut was captured during the Battle of Bulge and then lived through the firebombing of Dresden. They talk about how this…
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Episode 8: The Color of Light
View on Zencastr Joe and Mark talk to author Robert Chazz Chute about his work and one of his greatest influences, well-known author and screenwriter William Goldman, focussing on Goldman’s novel The Color of Light. While many may recognize William Goldman’s name as the screenwriter who wrote the Oscar-winning scripts for Butch Cassidy and the…