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New Books in Science Fiction

New Books in Science Fiction

By: New Books Network
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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fictionNew Books Network Art
Episodes
  • Deb Olin Unferth, "Earth 7" (Graywolf Press 2026)

    Deb Olin Unferth, "Earth 7" (Graywolf Press 2026)
    Jun 9 2026
    With thanks to “forever” plastics, the earth has reverted to sand and dust. Dylan has been raised by her scientist mother, in a pod under the sea, and longs to escape the loneliness of being confined. The only friend she ever had was a pen pal from Mars, who disappeared. With great effort, she’s escorted onto land, to the place of her mother’s employment where she becomes the groundskeeper. Unofficially, she begins studying sand. After a few years, the company sends her on a vacation and she meets Melanie, possibly a robot. Love flourishes on the floundering planet, but death is never far, and Dylan’s pen pal returns too late in Earth 7 (Graywolf Press 2026), a dystopian novel about the frailty of the planet, the ongoing need for scientific research, and the human struggle for survival. Deb Olin Unferth is the author of seven books, including the novels Barn 8 and Vacation, the memoir Revolution, finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, two story collections, and the graphic novel I, Parrot. Her fiction and essays have appeared in over fifty magazines and journals, including Harper’s, the New York Times, The Paris Review, Granta, and McSweeney’s. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship, three Pushcart Prizes, a Creative Capital Fellowship for Innovative Literature, fellowships from the MacDowell, Yaddo, and Ucross residencies.  She’s a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches for the Michener Center, the New Writers’ Project, and she also directs the Pen City Writers, the prison creative-writing program at a south Texas penitentiary. Unferth founded and directs the Pen City Writers, a creative writing program for incarcerated men at a maximum-security prison in south Texas. The program has been running for ten years, and the students regularly win writing awards from Pen America and the Insider Prize. Their work has appeared in many places, including Vice, StoryQuarterly, the Texas Observer, the Stranger's Guide, and the Marshall Project. Deb and her friend, Lucy Corin, have gone on several research and writing trips together, including to the Sahara Desert for the sand; in 2024, they spent a month in the Arctic to see ice, trying to get as close to the North Pole as possible, and reaching the 82nd parallel. Last year, they rented two pods in a scrub desert Dark Sky area of the US to see darkness. Originally from Chicago, Unferth lives in Austin with philosophy professor Matt Evans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
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    24 mins
  • Christina Lord, "Reimagining the Human in Contemporary French Science Fiction" (Liverpool UP, 2023)

    Christina Lord, "Reimagining the Human in Contemporary French Science Fiction" (Liverpool UP, 2023)
    Jun 7 2026
    The study of French science fiction – even in France – remains an underexploited field. Only recently have French literary scholars been able to gain recognition for the validity of studying SF, but their works are often literary histories. Reimagining the Human in Contemporary French Science Fiction (Liverpool UP, 2023) is the first book-length study to take into account both French and Anglo-American intellectual trends, theories, and SF scholarship and apply them to a corpus of French works. It shows how contemporary French SF imagines two broad philosophical inquiries into the powerful, yet terrifying geological age of the Anthropocene: posthumanism and transhumanism. While the posthumanist perspective calls attention to the interdependence and co-evolution of humans and nonhumans within a complex ecosystem of life, the transhumanist view of coping with the Anthropocene offers more pragmatic, tool-based solutions, rather than a reworking of the human imagination. Given the history of philosophical thought’s entanglement with literature in France, French SF can tell us a lot about this existential crisis of Anthropos as both destroyer and savior of worlds and bodies alike. With a focus on encounters between humans, nonhumans, and posthumans in selected works, this book investigates both the immaterial (the psychological state of the mind) and material (the body) stakes of posthumanist or transhumanist thinking in French SF. Guest Christina Lord is Associate Professor of French at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. As a scholar of French and francophone studies and science fiction (sf) studies, she often writes about nonhuman beings in literary and visual storytelling. In addition to Reimagining the Human She has published essays in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Oeuvres et Critiques, Studies in the Fantastic, and European Comic Art, among others. She also serves as contributing editor for the section on “Speculative Studies in French” for the bibliographic journal, The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies. Her current research focuses on transnational and transmedial processes of circulation, recycling, and adaptation of sf imagery and narratives. Her current work focuses on the "alien aesthetic" of Denis Villeneuve’s sf films and the iconography of mid-twentieth century French comics, Valérian et Laureline. Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript underreview on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
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    44 mins
  • Keith Cooper, "Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact" (Reaktion, 2025)

    Keith Cooper, "Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact" (Reaktion, 2025)
    Apr 15 2026
    Have you ever wondered what it would be like to watch a double sunset on Tatooine, stand among the sand dunes of Arrakis or gaze at the gas-giant planet Polyphemus from the moon Pandora? In Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact (Reaktion, 2025), Keith Cooper explores the fictional planets of films such as Star Wars, Dune and Avatar, and discusses how realistic they are based on our current scientific understanding and astronomical observations. The real exoplanets astronomers are now discovering are truly stranger than fiction, as the author shows. Featuring insights from over a dozen scientists and award-winning science-fiction authors, including Charlie Jane Anders, Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds, Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact is perfect for readers of popular science and fans of science fiction. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction
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    50 mins
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