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Hosted by The Ancillary Review of Books · 🇺🇸 US · EN-US · 54 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
A critical book club from the Ancillary Review of Books. Host Jake Casella Brookins invites writers, scholars, and critics to discuss thorny works of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres.
The Ancillary Review of Books hosts A Meal of Thorns, a arts show with 54 episodes published.
Critic & reviewer Ian Mond talks us through Tiny Deaths , a very funny and frequently morbid collection. We also think bigger: about the place and status of humor and seriousness in genre literature, and why non-genr
Brunner’s prescient classic about overpopulation: is it about overpopulation? Was it prescient? And, for that matter: what does it mean to be a classic? Reviewer and editor Dan Hartland joins to discuss these quest
Science fiction readers love a mechanism, they love a bit of world-building and mystery-solving. Premee Mohamed joins us to discuss Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus , a book that asks: what if a science fiction bo
A rain of corpses is falling from the sky, insectoid femme fatales are setting their compound eyes on our tender thoraxes, and our cattle drive across an expanse of nanotech goo is starting to go off the rails. So we ask
Stop explaining and start exploring: critic & reviewer Molly Templeton walks us through this gem of 1980s mass market fantasy, with many asides and theories on shifting patterns of publishing and reading patterns. Plus,
The pleasures and perils of nostalgia & reference, the importance of identifying real play versus gamified labor, and whether the internet used to be fun: Matthew Leggat of the Utopian & Dystopian Fictions podcast joins
A nested novel that very pointedly bridges the litfic/specfic divide, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas takes some big swings at tricky topics. Abigail Nussbaum returns to the podcast with some thoughts on how the novel
We’re leaving speculative genres for just a moment! Author Max Gladstone joins to discuss style & structure in Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled classic The Big Sleep , a work that’s been massively influent
In this science fiction novel, translated from the French, dreamers “dive” into their own subconscious and return with mysterious & valuable objects. Translator, author, & scholar Alexander Dickow joins to di
Reviewer and historian Liz Bourke joins to discuss religion, historical overlaps, and examinations of gender in Paladin of Souls and fantasy more generally. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillar
Greg Egan’s work exemplifies a certain kind of “hard” science fiction: not that it’s obsessed with big manly space battles, but rather that it’s using science to really dig into some complic
Charles Saunders’ sword and soul narratives, pulp-fantasy-inspired tales of Black and African heroes, helped blaze a trail for the genre—but, like Saunders himself, they have a complicated and still-developin
If you read Dracula and thought: “I like the ancient shapeshifting nemesis and the homoerotic subtext, but I don’t like how subtle the sexual and national anxieties are,” you’re in luck! Editor, r
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 tal
We’re tracking down the wellspring of “dark academia” in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History , and plucking on threads that stretch out to current fantasy and science fiction literature, with reviewe
Academic, critic, and prolific podcaster Cameron Kunzelman joins for a far-ranging discussion about how climate fiction, science fiction, and personal and political connections to the environment intersect. Bonus hog sig
Vampire scholar, science fiction studies editor, and ARB co-founder Sean Guynes joins to discuss Kostova’s 2005 historical vampire thriller. We both have fairly negative opinions of the book, but it did lead us to talk a
Writer, scholar, and academic organizer E.F. McAdam joins to talk about human evolution & extinction, AI, pseudo-science, and much more in Kawakami’s very strange and really quite funny far-future novel. Podcasts,
Barthelme’s surreal, post-modern writing was massively influential for the short story market and for evolving conceptions of literary realism and irrealism, but he’s not often discussed in speculative circle
Combining cyberpunk, space opera, and a strong interest in artistic creation and gaming, Burning Bright is an unusual SF novel from a very specific era. Author Ursula Whitcher joins us to talk about the novel’s man
Premee Mohamed
author of The Annual Migration of Clouds
1 appearance on this show
Max Gladstone
1 appearance on this show
Cameron Kunzelman
academic, critic, podcast network co-founder, PhD
1 appearance on this show
Arkady Martine
author of A Memory Called Empire
1 appearance on this show
Juan Martinez
leader of the #1 Century 21 office in Las Vegas · Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust
1 appearance on this show
Amal El-Mohtar
author
1 appearance on this show
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A Meal of Thorns is hosted by The Ancillary Review of Books. The show is categorised under arts (books) and has published 54 episodes.
A Meal of Thorns has published 54 episodes.
A Meal of Thorns regularly covers arts, books, fiction. It sits in the arts category, with a books focus.
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Episodes of A Meal of Thorns average 71 minutes, giving guests a long-form format with plenty of time to expand on their expertise.
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