About this episode
We’re closing out this strange year with a “big-picture” episode: editor & critic Dan Hartland is on to talk about trends and directions—or lack thereof—in recent speculative fiction. We talk about the interesting spread of books & awards this year, do some armchair speculating about genre shifts & their accompanying arguments, and have some very insider-baseball discussion of what gets reviewed (or not) and why. And, of course, Dan and Casella talk about their favorite reads from 2025.
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Guest: Dan Hartland
Host:Jake Casella Brookins
Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia
Artwork byRob Patterson
Opening poem by Bhart?hari, translated by John Brough
Transcribers: Kate Dollarhyde and John WM Thompson
References:
Critical Friends podcast
Gautam Bhatia's The Sentence
Vajra Chandrasekera's Rakesfall
Award spread this year- see for instance SFADB
Article on UK romantasy sales numbers
Romantasy, LitRPG, Progression Fantasy, Baen Books
Locus
SFT= Speculative Fiction in Translation
Strange Horizons issue on the NEA cuts and SFT
Richard K. Morgan
Orbus by Neal Asher
Jenny Hamilton’s work at Reactor
AO3= Archive Of Our Own
When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift
Metal from Heaven by August Clarke
Niall Harrison’s review of Swift
William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy
Hugboxing vs Scab-Picking
H.G. Wells
Sy
