In this special episode, I got to ask a really smart person lots of questions. Specifically, the author, voice actor, puppeteer, and science communicator Mary Robinette Kowal, author of the Lady Astronaut series— starting with The Calculating Stars, The Fated Sky, and the new novel coming out July 14th - The Relentless Moon. We talk about why her books are set in the past, how she researches her novels and more.

Karly’s Recommendations

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (novel)

Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda (graphic novel)

The Vast of Night dir. Andrew Patterson (film)

Mary Robinette’s Recommendations

Avenue 5 (TV) available on HBO and Amazon Prime

The War I Finally Won by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (audiobook)

The Light from Other Stars by Erika Swyler (book)

Shop this list of recommendations through my affiliate link at Bookshop.org https://bookshop.org/shop/fasf and support the show!

The Relentless Moon hits shelves on July 14, celebrate the book launch at this Zoom event and get a paperback copy with your ticket.

See the process for recording The Relentless Moon audiobook here for a limited time! [This message will self-destruct on July 14]

Subscribe, rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and PodcastAddict. Follow the podcast on Twitter @FactandScifi and find other content on the blog factandsciencefiction.com

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I was going to create a podcast episode on afrofuturism but I found that this genre/aesthetic/artform can speak for itself so instead I'm going to link all my research sources and then make a pledge to ensure all @FactandScifi eps from now on include black and non-black POC media rep. Afrofuturism, broadly defined, imagines a future, past or present of the African diaspora freed from colonialism (and from white people.) It's not just black characters in science fiction, it centers the black experience. It challenges western, white-centric ideas of sci-fi

• Space is the Place by Sun Ra (available on Youtube) - part funk and experimental jazz music performance part scifi imagines a home for black people away from whites (note Sun Ra liberates black people in Oakland very much like Wakandans want to do in the Black Panther movie)
• Learn the history of Afrofuturism in music and its connections to modern day hip-hop including Missy Elliot, Kendrick Lamar and OutKast in the pod Bottom of the Map: Culture in the Cosmos: AfroFuturism, Hip-Hop, and Black Joy
• How did Black Panther (2019) open up Afrofuturism to the world? Listen to this interview with Shawn Taylor from Nerds of Color as he explains Afrofuturism in academia, music, film and seminal books of the genre
• Watch this short film called Robots of Brixton about a riot of underclass robots against their oppressors. This is the first time I can remember seeing robots that don't look like white people
• How is Afrofuturism different from African science fiction? I can't speak to the quality of this podcast overall but this interview with Dr. Moradewun Adejunmobi about Afrofuturism and what it signals about future expectations was fantastic.
• Watch this short film called Afronauts, an alternate history about the first African astronauts during the space race

• Kindred by Octavia Butler
• Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond ed. by Bill Campbell and Edward Austin Hall
• Shuri: The Search for Black Panther
• War Girls by Tochi Onyebuch

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In this episode I discuss real examples of cyborgs, cybernetic organisms living today, human or otherwise, and these examples may surprise you. I’ll define what exactly cybernetic means, and why exactly cybernetics is an exciting industry to watch. 

New Segment! Recommendations:

-Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel (book, 2016)

-Color out of Space dir. Richard Stanley (movie, 2019)

-She-Ra and the Princesses of Power cr. Noelle Stevenson (TV, 2018-2020)

-Prophet cr. Rob Liefeld (comic)

-ArchAndroid by Janelle Monae (music, 2010)

Research from MIT News, Forbes, CyborgAnthropology, and Where are the Cyborgs in Cybernetics?

Follow the podcast on Twitter @FactandScifi, the transcript for this episode is live on factandsciencefiction.com

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