Michal Wojcik's Blog, page 2
November 12, 2023
Episode 52 – Terraforming Moose
We wrap up our 2023 book club with a recent release, The Terraformers (2023) by Annalee Newitz. This throwback to the fix-up novel explores a lot of big ideas about ecology, biology and society, but do all the many, many elements work together as a whole? And what’s up with all the references to Canada? We discuss.
Download the Podcast (archive.org page)
Mentioned in this episode:
Our Opinions are Correct podcast with Charlie Jane A...
August 31, 2023
Episode 51 – Quack, Quack
A working-class memoir? In this day and age? We sit down to discuss Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (2022) by Kate Beaton.
Warning: Includes mentions of sexual assault and workplace harassment.
August 1, 2023
Episode 50 – Parable of the Podcasters
We talk about Parable of the Sower (1993) by Octavia Butler, which begins in the far-future year of 2024. And yet somehow, this still seems like a shockingly plausible representation of what next year could like.
April 8, 2023
Truncating war
Gwynne Dyer, The Shortest History of War (2022)
Not long ago, I went to see a public lecture by military historian Gwynne Dyer called “War in the 21st century.” The title did not speak to the bulk of the talk, which ended up being a wide-ranging discussion of the human behavioural impulse towards violence. A good thing, because that ended up being a more interesting topic to sit through.
The talk came in the wake of Dyer’s most recent book, The Shortest History of War, which likewise has a broa...
April 5, 2023
Episode 49 – A Labyrinth-like Conversation
We discuss Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges, and marvel at how much literature you can pack into so few pages.
December 23, 2022
Episode 48 – 2022 End of Year Spectacular
Just before the holidays, we’re back for a reflection on culture we experienced over the past year. Books, comics, films, TV, games – we talk about them all!
Download the Podcast (archive.org page)
Some things we mentioned:Order of the StickTigress QueenHonbarianFrom a Knight to a LadyThe Remarried EmpressCritical RoleYou’re Wrong AboutThe Triple Click PodcastTech Won’t Save UsNovember 26, 2022
Sailing away from Sarantium
Guy Gavriel Kay’s last three novels all share a common setting and timeframe: the Mediterranean in the 16th century, a couple of worlds removed from our own. Characters in Children of Earth and Sky appear in A Brightness Long Ago and All the Seas of the World, though at different stages in their life and removed from the main stage. These loose connections abound, but it’s not necessary to read the other books to understand any one novel; each one is self-contained. It will enrich your experienc...
November 13, 2022
Episode 47 – An Episode for the Cybernetic Age
We triumphantly re-convene after over a year’s absence to talk about The Cyberiad by Stanisław Lem, a book of fairy tales for robots, by robots, about robots.
Download the Podcast (archive.org page)
July 4, 2022
My title character is a planet
Earthsong is a Canadian webcomic by Crystal Yates that began in 2004 and ended in 2016. I was unaware of it when Yates was publishing to the web, and would not have heard of it had I not stumbled across the five self-published print versions at my local library.
There are markers of the early webcomics scene in Yates’s presentation: the comic has a very early digital art look, with blurred background and too-smooth gradients, that I think fare better when printed than on a screen. The story an...
May 5, 2022
Dancing by herself
Charles R. Saunders took a long break from writing after the 1980s, focusing on his career as a journalist. Returning to the craft late in life, he started out focusing on short stories and revising his long-trunked final Imaro novel. Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau was his first fresh novel in decades. Unlike his character Imaro, Dossouye’s tale hadn’t come to a definite ending.
The Dancers of Mulukau follows the short story collection Dossouye (which I reviewed here). The exiled woman-warrio...
