Joe and Mark listen to some fascinating interviews that Joe did in 2003 with John Scalzi and Larry Niven–and discuss their experiences of attending science fiction conventions.
View on Zencastr Joe and Mark are joined by the super successful and super-fun science fiction writer, John Scalzi. Scalzi tells the lads about how he almost missed his first WorldCon, in Toronto, 2003, because he forget his passport at the airport. He rushed there just in time to sit on his first panel, where…
View on Zencastr Mark and Joe chat with the Canadian poet and science fiction doyenne, Candas Jane Dorsey. Candas is well-known in Canadian science fiction circles for her work as a novelist (Black Wine, A Paradigm of Earth) and editor-in-chief of The Books Collective, which included River, Slipstream and Tesseract Books. They start the conversation…
View on Zencastr Joe and Mark are joined by entrepreneur, cyclist and avid reader Ben Fox to discuss a book that had a huge impact on him. Native Son, by Richard Wright, was assigned to Ben as a senior in high school. “I hated it from the depths of my soul, but now this book…
View on Zencastr Joe and Mark are joined this week by D.G. Valdron, a Canadian writer of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction. (And author of one of Joe’s favorite books, The Mermaid’s Tale.) The topic of this week’s discussion is Doctor Who, in particular the expansive, creative and fascinating world of fan-produced films, plays and…
View on Zencastr Joe and Mark are joined by London, Ontario author and journalist, Mark Kearney, to talk about an early pioneer of Hollywood, Al Christie. (The one on the right in the photo.) Christie went to Hollywood in 1911, when it was just a village, some fruit trees and farms. “There had been a…
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…
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…
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…
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…