Our Episodes
Jeanne Cavelos on teaching genre writing
Every few years I see articles pop up in my news feed debating the merits of creative writing courses. Can you teach writing, they ask. Writing is a skill just like any other – you might not be able to imbue someone with a sense of imagination, but you can show them...
Fantasy, nostalgia, and working for hire with David Tallerman
It is very rare for Charlotte and I to agree. When we do, there's great celebration over at BtGS headquarters. David Tallerman's trope-inverting, Dungeons and Dragons inspired series The Black River Chronicles, is one of these rare gems (you can read my review here)....
Where are the tampons? with Tiffani Angus
In this episode, Charlotte and Lucy talk to writer and lecturer Tiffani Angus. They discussed the estrangement of women's bodies in apocalyptic fiction and the trends Tiffani discovered in her research on the subject. While there is a lot of genre fiction written...
Violence as climactic conflict
All stories require conflict of some kind... but does it always need to be violent conflict? There is certainly a trend in fantasy, science fiction, and horror to find narratives driving towards a massive violent conclusion. These have become set-pieces, the very...
The Bechdel-Wallace test
Back in 1985, Alison Bechdel had the characters of her cartoon strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, jokingly make a gender equality 'test' for films. 33 years later, the Bechdel (or Bechdel-Wallace, to give credit to her friend Liz Wallace for the idea) test is still used...
Christian mythology in fantasy with Jeannette Ng
Charlotte takes the lead in this episode, where we chat to Jeannette Ng about her use of Christian mythology in her debut novel, Under the Pendulum Sun. From using relatively unknown elements of Christianity to developing alternate patriarchies to highlight the...
2017 in review and anticipation for 2018
Are you ready for your to-read and to-watch lists to explode? Charlotte, Lucy, and I discuss our favourite genre pieces of 2017 and what we're most looking forward to in 2018. We lament terrible accents and characters that have no agency, celebrate all the books,...
Interview with RJ Barker
Regular listeners will already be familiar with the fabulous RJ Barker who joined us live at Nine Worlds to discuss realistic characters. This week, Charlotte interviews RJ about writing female characters, his favourite genres, and writing characters with...
Subverting social norms with Adrian Tchaikovsky
Most science fiction and fantasy focus on humans - or at least societal structures that are recognisable from within cultures on Earth. Given that genre fiction is meant to be one of unlimited imagination, why do we find it so difficult to imagine societies where...