Fantasy Novel Recommendations w/ Author Nicola Griffith + Moon Knight Ep 3 & Comic News

your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture. In today's episode, and previously on lots of comic book news, lead casting announcement in the upcoming Percy Jackson series on Disney Plus Plus. The MCU's Ironheart series has named its directors, and we will do our recap of episode three of Moonnight. In the airlock. We're gonna be talking about out fantasy and

sci fi authors, especially by queer and marginalized authors. And then for the Hive Mind, we'd be talking to award winning author of many stories including Ammonite, including So Lucky and one of Rosie and My favorites Hilled Nicola Griffith, and in our nerd out, a listener will pitch us on the Illuminatus trilogy. Joining me today to talk about all of that and more is The Great, the Powerful The Godzilla comic book creating various theory pieces, writing the

great content creating. Rosie Knight, Rosie, how are you?

and the novelist Derek Landy. This apparently is going to be a kind of like it seems just reading parsing the press release tea leaves gonna be something of a Ultimates kind of take on the Avengers, more action packed. Certainly, you know, the press release basically says they're going to just drop you media res into the middle of some pitch battle and it's going to be like that, just fight, fight, fight, fight fight, action action action action. Your thoughts, Yeah, thoughts on Greg Land?

He can be good, he can be good like and you know what, the thing that I really like about this is it's doing the thing that Marvel does best, which is where Marvel looks to what indie comics are doing, looks to what weird other licenses are doing, and it's like, oh, we should be doing that. And there's been this incredible space. You know, We've talked about that, James Stoko, Godzilla stuff like there is you know, these unbelievable artists, Michael Fife, like,

there's all these different people who are making these comics. Well, when you pick them up, you feel like you're just in an action movie. You feel even that, you know, I have a lot of moral quandaries with it, but the Keanu Reeves comic that he that he wrote with Matt Kintzak. You know that those comics, there's just this unbelievable tone, just boom boom boom boom, action explosions. It's not necessarily about like a deeper narrative or selling an

ip for a movie. It's about the kinetic force of what comic book art can do. Like Young Avengers, you know, we talk about that a lot, that era of Marvel. They were doing stuff where you just go, oh my god, how how did this happen? How did you put this on the page? And I love that the description is they're just like action explosions, no questions. So I want

to see what that looks like. And I'm hoping it's going to be weird and explosive and kind of really exciting, because that's not something I feel like we're getting as much in Big two comics. So I will be open minded to it, and I will definitely put the first issue on my pull list.

was teased with showed the phoenix for symbol. No further details were available, but of course we learned back in twenty twenty one that Lady Phoenix, who is the original host of the Phoenix well original the host of it that we know right right, the host of the Phoenix Force in a million BC, is actually Thor's real mom. So there is da There was that reveal, So this is going to be very interesting. Your thoughts.

word cosmic stuff, so I'm open to it. As always, as we always say on the shows to the people who listen, anything like this is always interesting to keep an eye on if you love the MCU, because when they set up something like this, it could end up in a different way. I'm not saying that in Thor, Love and Thunder Thor is gonna suddenly hold the Phoenix Force or connect with it, but the idea of changing Thor's origin, of introducing something that's not fully as Guardian,

that seems like they could be seeding something. Also, that issue Avenges forty three, that's got letters by like one of my favorite letters, Corey Pettit, so shout out to Corey anytime I see his name. I'm like, yeah, those's good.

This complex saga will pay off various plants thirds that have defined these franchise in recent years, including muton Kinds new found immortality, the Eternals discovery of long hidden truth about their species, and the Avengers intense dealings with the Celestials. So a pretty big crossover event with and this one, I think for sure will have some revealed absolutions in the MCU going forward.

That's a badass team up explosion. It's the kind of thing everyone wants to see and now that the Eternals exist in the MCU, it seems like it's probably not a coincidence to reimagine that battle including the Eternals, who have often been on the outside of things. I'm sure there's a different universe, a different timeline that we would be living in where this would be Avengers, X Men and the Inhumans, but that's not the world we're living in. We're living in the world of the Eternals, you know,

And so I think it's very telling. I think this is really exciting because I read amore X Men number one, which was Kieran Gillan jumping back on the X Men after a while, and it was so good and so funny and so exciting. It launches the new age of the Second Age of Krokoha, which they're calling the Age of Destiny, because the lady and icon Destiny is back. I love her, and she's.

But this is one I think to keep an eye on because, like we said, blockbuster Creative Team unreal art, but also could potentially seed some things that we may be seeing in the future of them.

to come. But I keep thinking, so, you know, in the comics, the Avengers eventually move into the like the body of a celestial to use as their new Age Q And of course at the end of Eternals, right, we've got this celestial that is sticking out of the ocean and very cool looking, very very cool, and I have to assume that at some point an Avengers team is going to move in there. Do you have any thoughts about who would be a member of that team?

a long time. I think that we could see I think that we're on the right track imagining that we're going to see multiple different versions of the Avengers. But I think that if we're going to get like a primary just Avengers team, I think we're looking more at that kind of like Jacket Avengers kind of wild era that also is an era that could cross over with like a Monica Rambo. Yeah, Avengers, you know which I think is very likely. So could we see a sword

kind of created Avengers. I want to see them living in that celestial That was like so cool.

up this villainous group. In preview RT for Justice League number seventy five, which is out will be out next week. It has come from the creative team Josh Williamson and artist Ralfisnoval your thoughts on the death of Justice League in Dark Crisis.

were doing with DC. It was really over the top and kind of ninety six. Dream Raffer is a great artist, so I think this is really interesting. It it feels almost a bit like to me, like people aren't talking about it, and I feel like when it happens, people are going to start talking about it, you know, Like this is even though we know as comic book fans, the Justice League is not gonna go away forever spoiler right, spoiler,

it's still a big deal. Like remember when they killed Superman Superman, that's we still talk about that event, Like this is a thing that is occurring. I mean it's.

want to know how this affects it. What does it mean for Trial of the Amazons? You know, is it gonna be is that gonna leave a power vacuum that's gonna impact that? Or is this more of a kind of will there be a twist that means this doesn't really affect it. I like to see how these things tie in, so I think it's really cool.

by the streamer back in back in January. This is relevant because, and particularly for today's episode, where we're trying to focus on creators who are elevating voices and working from a personal experience that is out of perhaps what

people are considered the mainstream. We're talking about disability, literature, queer creators, queer characters, etc. And Percy Jackson has both ADHD and dyslexia and triumphs and takes part in a bunch of rip roaring adventures despite these his disabilities NERD and has long been an advocate for marginalized and underrepresentative

of voices in why fiction. And I know that this is something as our producer Saul was telling us in the pre pro meeting, this is something that a lot of fans of the series have really been waiting for.

it's helpful, it's what makes him him, you know. It's very much in the mindset of how people think about disability now, which is it's a part of you, and it's a good part of you. It's just society that

doesn't see it. And I'm a big fan of Rick, not just because of these books, which obviously, like we read, they were one of those primary sci fi fantasy kind of books when you're a kid, but he has a he actually has an imprint called Rick Rawdan Presents, which is like specifically focused on publishing brilliant middle grade and kind of sci fi fantasy, magical books but like from

underrepresented authors. And I've seen so many incredible books come out of that imprint, and I just think he's kind of doing that thing that you always hope when somebody writes something that's really special to you, which is the bigger his platform grows, the more good he does with it.

And I think something that's really exciting about a Percy Jackson show on Disney plass is I think that that mentality is going to come through into the show and I'm really excited to see how it translates to the on screen representation as well. And I like that they cast the actual kid this kid as well, he's a baby, Like that's what I want to see.

She will get her own advanced suit of armor. And of course we're down, We're down in iron Man right now. We need we need someone in the armor right now, and it very much could be Reree Williams at some point in time. Your thoughts, This is really exciting, Yeah, it's really exciting.

is like this unbelievably smart student. I don't think it's a coincidence that Ryan Coogler is producing that show and that Black Panther is one of the few movies were kinda Forever that has ever been allowed to film actually on the MIT campus because they said it would elevate

the school and promote the meanings. I don't think that you're going to go to MIT and not see re Re, you know, and we just say, you know, Rua Williams created by Eve Ewing, who's just so brilliant, Mike Darto, Brian Michael Bendis, Kevin Lebron, They're like, this is a crew. But Eve was such a huge part of bringing Reedy to life and making this character that we just all

love so much who immediately became a fan fave. And also, if you think about re Read, the thing I think is really exciting about this is this is not just about new black characters. We're about to go into Armor Wars, so we're gonna have this story where Roady is going to be at the center of Armor Wars. It's going to be a story about somebody misusing Stark Tech, and Roady is going to need as many people as possible on his side who understands Stark Tech, who understand technology.

Tony is no longer there. I would love to see re Re brought in have a major part of that storyline.

Brown superheroes in the MCU. Let's go to our recap of Moonnight episode three, The Friendly Type, written by Bodomeo and Peter Cameron and Sabir Prasada and directed by Mohammed Diab. This was I was not expecting this episode to delve into Stephen slash Marks experiences with this kind of like consciousness dislocation, essentially mental illness in the way that it presents, and this did it in a really evocative and interesting way.

Let's get into recap. Okay Layla had We open with what we can only expect to be some kind of cold open of which we will learn more. Layla is having her passport forged, and she is griping about Mark and what just went down with the SCAAB and how now she has to go back to home to Egypt, and she's not really too enthused about going back to Egypt.

She's been gone ten years, during which time she has been busy repatriating ancient relics, which is a highly moral, of course activity, also a very illegal activity, and also one which she's not exactly doing out of the goodness of her heart. She is she admits, like, yeah, making money from some of that, Like I returned most of them, and then some of them I do sell for a profit. Layla's father, we learn, was archaeologist, which is very much

in keeping with the original Moon Night. Yeah, it's the original moon Night comic.

the tomb of Ahmit. Elsewhere we meet Mark media res like he is running into three tough guys, three local guys who have just killed some person that has information that Mark needs. And they are apparently in some way either working for or affiliated with Arthur Harrow, and they have knives and they twirl them flashily, and then Mark fights them and he seems to have things pretty much in hand, but then he seizes reflection in a knife blade, and all of a sudden, he's hurtling through time and

we understand that he's lost time. Now this is very interesting because you'd think, and we have been primed to expect that when something like this happens, the Stephen or whoever the other person is that is, you know, waiting on the bench, will then seize the body. But instead

Mark has just lost an unknown amount of time. And he finds himself in the back of a taxi on the way to the airport, and he as he's driving by, he sees two of the tough guys that he was just fighting on the street and he goes out and he goes to fight them again, but then another glance at his reflection, and the cycle repeats, and now Mark is somewhere else in the city having just murdered one of the guys. What do you think is going on here? Is because this is interesting, This.

And I think that, though it doesn't really get explored much further here, I think a lot of people who are watching the show are wondering when we're going to see that, because it's such a key part of his personality. And this definitely hints that we're on the way there, and also that both Mark and Stephen are less comfortable with violence than we first thought.

So it becomes a situation where it's the two of them together understanding whatever is about tappen next in this episode and the following three.

the other gods for help? Well, you know, why don't we? Why don't we tell them what hero is planning? And kan She was like, no, they would, they wouldn't. They would just get annoyed. They're tired of me. They don't want to listen to me. They if if I'm involved, they will just ignore it. But I but actually I think I do know a way how we could get their attention without you having to go with them. Uh, and it's a bad plan, but just let me go.

So basically, Kanshu causes an eclipse. So immediately the gods opened a portal and are like, Mark, come here, you need to talk to us, because this is a no no, just kind of like displaying to the to humanity that we exist. Mark goes to the portal. He finds himself inside the Great Pyramid at Giza. Mark meets the avatars of the gods. Basically, they're human representatives on Earth who the gods will speak through on occasion. One of them is Yatsul, who is the representative of hathor goddess of

music and love and apparently you're left too. We are left to surmise an old flame of Kanshu, just like left on red after a while.

They don't really care about us anymore. So we've kind of been, you know, doing things in the background. Kan Chu finds this to be weak. A weak course of action is like basically cowardly, and he charges Arthur Harrow, his former avatar, with attempting to release Omit. Harrow arrives through a portal to defend himself. He denies that this

is what he's doing. Kan Chu then using the Mark Spector receiver and Grant body takes a swing at Arthur Harrow, He's stopped by one of the gods who's like, listen, you can't do that here. There's no violence here. What are you doing. Haro then accuses Kanshu of essentially exploiting a mentally ill manned Stephen Grant slash Mark Spector, a person who is, you know, a quite willing servant, an avatar of Kanchu, but also one who is not in a place, is not in a place to really give

their consent to be the avatar of Kanchu. And I think Haro, from what we've seen, I think Arthur Harrow has something of a point. But of course we don't know the whole story yet, but I would say that it certainly it looks bad for Kanschhu. He was not the most trustworthy of gods. From what we've seen.

through it, and Harrow came off looking good. So no surprise is that the gods were.

global scale. And then the gods are likenh we go with Harrow and the matters closed. That's it, We're shutting it down. They leave, but then Yatzil hangs around clearly has some sort of warm feeling for Mark, and she points Mark to a clue by which he might find Omit's tumb without the scareub the Sarcophagus of Senfu, which apparently has recently hit the black market. Leyla and Mark reunite. You get a feeling from these scenes that clearly they

were actually in love. At one point, and Mark tells her that he's listen, I'm sorry for hiding how much I was struggling from you, and they come to an uneasy piece. They then arrive at the home of Mogart, the antiquities dealer on the banks of the Nile, where they are going to find sin Foo's sarcophagus. Leaylan and Mark are posing as this kind of like married couple who just want to study this sarcophagus for a second. Mogart is like, why are you so interested in sin

foo sarcophagus? And Mark's like, ADDI yeah, don't worry about it.

and the sarcophagus. Before they can learn anything, Mogart interrupts and takes Mark prisoner. Then Harrow interrupts, offering Mogart the Scarab in exchange for Layla and Mark, who's surely like he's gonna kill soon after. Harrow then vows Wow's Mogart with a small display of its power. Mark dons the suit and then we get the big fight and it is an action packed episode Moonnight and Laylah versus Harrow's people and and Mogart's people. Laila we see can really handle herself.

morphs into the Mister Knight variety. He immediately gets impaled by a spear and he's like, okay, you know what, Mark, you take it? Yeah, I got about you take it. And so Mark is just like back in the body and is immediately like double speared by by some of

Morgart's men. Meanwhile, Layla is at the Sarcophagus and she's fighting one of Margo's henche's, and we watch as Layla takes off her necklace, which we think is just like a stylish and striking statement piece, but no, it's actually like a double edged like dagger, too dagger than street.

She straight up murders a sorry back and then runs to Mark's rescue, but gets the wind knocked out of her by Margot and Mark needing to run to her rescue, then like just basically snaps all the spears out of his body, which is a really impressive display of healing factor. He then kills Margot with a moon orang. Layla grabs the whatever was in Sanfu's tomb, which we've later learned as a map, and they and they go off to

find out. In the car, Laila and Mark are talking about what Harrow had said about Mark and all the things he had revealed about how Mark was mentally ill and how he's struggling, although they don't quite you know, name it as anything. And she's upset that. She's like, you know, every time I find out something about you, it's like you're a whole new other person. It's like I don't know you at all. And Mark, kind of surprisingly but also refreshingly, he's like, you're right, you don't

know me. Now. Don't let Harrow, you know, get in between us. Don't let him poison us against each other, because we need to stay strong right now. And after a while they arrive at a place in the desert where they can read this map, which turns out to be a star map. They have to call Stephen again because he's the only one that can put all these pieces together in the way that they need to go together.

Mark is annoyed again, but he knows it's right. Stephen takes over, and what I think is one of the best single moments of acting, like in a Disney plus Marvel show, is Oscar Isaac looking into his reflection as Mark Spector and then wordlessly transforming into Stephen Grant with just like a relaxation of his face. It was really really cool. Stephen then swings into action. He's really excited by all this. He assembles the map while man explaining

ancient Egyptian navigation techniques. But apparently, here's the thing. The map was created thousands of years ago. The stars have moved since then, so they need to know the actual date of when this map was created in order for them to figure out where Amus tomb is. Kanshu comes back Conch. She's like, oh, you know what, I remember the night that this was created. Really well, give me a hand, Stephen, do do what I do. Let's turn the stars back to the positions they were thousands of

years ago on the night this map was created. So they do so, and people all around the world, we would assume, although we only see people in Egypt, but we would assume all around the world people would see the sky just warping with trails of stars as the sky gets rewound back centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries. And of course we understand that the gods had already warned Kanshu about the eclipse, and so they as as soon as they get wind of this, which is quite quickly,

they are going to lock Kanchu up. Yeah, and Kanhu's like, listen when that happens, Mark, I need you to free me. So okay, They're gonna lock me up, and then I need you to free me. The god's an imprisoned Conshu in a que country statue. They just like suck his energy. It was there already there are and and his energy

goes into it. Stephen collapses or Mark or whoever he is in that moment, Jake Blockley who knows, and the gods avatars show Harrow the Conshu statue and Haro's like, hey, can I be alone to just kind of like talk

shit to this. He can hear me in there, right, and they're like, yeah, we think so He's like, all right, let's just give me a little privacy so I can talk shit to this to Kanchu Haro, it's quite clear from the things he says now carries a lot of animosity and probably rightly so, from his time as Conchu's avatar. And then he essentially says, listen, what I'm gonna do with AMA's help, I e Mass murder on a global scale.

It's really it's really your fault. It's your fault, one hundred percent, your fault for the way that you treated me as your avatar and for the things I had to do as your avatar. And we are onto episode four next week. Your thoughts on this on this episode, Rosie.

all debuted in nineteen seventy five Store two three nine. Like, I thought that was really interesting because I wonder if we're gonna ever get to the space of having like an ancient Egyptian as guardian kind of space in the Marvel universe. We know that they mentioned are the members in Black Panther, you know they mentioned bast so I thought that was really cool. I like anything that's like cosmic or mythological. I think the Jake Lockley was it him?

Was it not? Is there another altar coming through? That's the big theory piece. I also think that this is a really big episode for Leila, who is definitely like huge one of our favorite characters. May Klamaui is just so great. She has this real evy from the Mummy energy. She's very like cheeky, and she turns up in Egypt to help Mark even though he's mad, disrespectful, he wanted to get divorce. He didn't tell her. He has like a secondary personality like Steven's kind of winning creepy to her,

but she was just there. She was like, pow, I don't care I'm going to Egypt. I'm gonna help you out and in this so we really learn in this episode that they're definitely leaning into the scarlet scarab thing. If you actually watch the trailers, there's a photo of Layla and her dad and next to it is a scarlet piece of cloth with a scarab onnet. So I really think we're getting that Marlene mixed with this potential

connection that she may have to the Scarab. I'm I'm really interested to see where things go, because this is another show like Hawkeye Wear. For example, Anton Mogart, who you mentioned, is this in this is this kind of art dealer, black market dodgy guy. He's been to madrapor with Leila. That's a big drop. In the comics, he

is a Moonnight villain. He debuted in Moonnight number three and he was called Midnight Man Midnight Man, And so did he really die in this episode or are we going to see him come back again and kind of be a more primary antagonist. It looked like he didn't do very well, but in the comics he gets like disfigured and then comes back as a kind of masked hero who works alongside the Number one Missing character from

this series likely a good thing. Ral Bushman, who is like a was Moonnight's partner on the Fateful Trip where he gained his powers. That's a very problematic character, so if they reimagined, it would have to be kind of like a Umbaku Star reimagining, where you take a character that has really problematic elements and make something really special.

The fact that Mogart was there makes me think that we might have some kind of Bushman illusion or situation as we go forward, because also in this episode, Harrow hints at what happened to Laila's dad on this archaeological quest, and we also know that in Moonnight's origin, as you've mentioned before, he was part of a kind of terrible tragedy in the desert, and we know that in this

show Mark Spector was accused of murdering an archaeologist. So I think we can put together some clears that there's going to be a tragic situation going on, and.

like coast to coast and internationally, I don't know. But this guy was a very busy guy, and he spent a lot of time living in Madopoor under this persona of Patch who is this kind of Rapscallion bar Denizen later club owner who rubbed elbows with pirates and various gangsters, but was a good guy. And you know, honestly, most of Wolverine is set there. So whenever magicpoor comes up, I'm thinking, oh gosh, here comes the x Menter.

see that, Like that's a relationship I want to know about. Like, so I think they this is an episode where it seems like it's just this action packmom superhero, but it seems like they're they're spreading a lot of seeds that could kind of sprout into different things, whether they're in this show or in The Great or MCU.

the statue. I wonder, when Mark slash Stephen wake up where we are? Like where we are? Is that a moment when Jake or whoever the other personality is comes through. But I think I would expect that we're going to a new kind of place in the next episode.

Stephen and Mark run around and do things until like there's an emergency and they need to take control. So it would suggest that whoever that other personality is, they are moving pieces around in a more direct way than either Stephen or Mark and have more of a full picture maybe than Steven or Mark.

meeting the priests of Konshu by gaining an artifact. So I think that the idea that there may be more puppet master alter or a different person who is more in control and is allowing them to kind of have their fun where they can until it becomes dangerous would make a lot of sense.

and I've enjoyed it. But I just don't think that I can I can possibly give her money anymore or take part in any kind of situation that would potentially give her money, particularly with the kind of climate in society right now towards trans people and the increasing peril and aggressive language that the lgbt q AI community writ

large is being faced with. So we wanted to take this opportunity to just talk about other authors, other creatives in the sci fi fantasy space, with a focus on queer creators, creators of color, just like a more diverse set of sci fi and fantasy creators. That's what we I wanted to do. So with that, gosh, do you have any thoughts on the New Fantastic Beast movie and JK. Rowling in general and this whole situation that we find ourselves in.

that I now can no longer enjoy. It's something I used to cover. It's part of what my knowledge base

is the same as you. That was part of my career, and there's just you know what, there's better stories out there told by people who aren't actively harming communities that I love and care about, and we're going to talk about them, and it's going to be amazing, and I feel incredibly lucky to share this space with you, someone who cares about this stuff and understands exactly why we're folks on something else.

And I absolutely agree with you, it's it's it's time to push back on it, and it's time to celebrate other stuff that lifts people up and and open spaces for people and changes people's lives in a positive way rather than a dangerous one.

I was sobbing at the end of that book. And then it became quite clear like in not recent years, but I would say in the last like eight years or so, that Orson Scott Card had some really terrible views, particularly on the issues of homosexuality and LGBTQAI issues, and it just, man, I just had to drop that. I just had to drop that series that not not interact with any Orson Scott Card content anymore. And I gotta

say you, I love Enders Game. I think it's a great book still because none of that toxic ideas that he has are you know, it's been a number of years since I read it, but it seemed present in the book at the time.

But one of the first books that I ever really remember that was like deep when this was when I was a little little kid, when I was deep into that felt that you were really going into space is Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which is the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Rodahl, who it turns out, is like a massive anti semi But like

when I was a kid, I remember that book. He goes up in the elevator right with his family and they go on the US they end up on a space station, and that was one of the first interactions I had with sci fi. But again, you learn these things and then you're like, well, let me find someone else.

And luckily there are like a ton of amazing creators who are who are doing the opposite, who are using doing the thing that people have always done with sci fi, which is and fantasy, which is to make analogous stories about real wild depression and find like the important way to kind of talk about it.

gonna support this. I'm not going to be buying the legacy of Hogwarts game, I'm not gonna be covering the stuff. But when it comes to like what happens? Can I reread the books that one is more, I kind of feel like seizing these works from their author is like

a kind of like a revolution For me. It feels like a revolutionary act of like, fuck you, you don't own this anymore, in the sense that like the people whose lives were touched by this and who found other connections through these stories, they should not now have to

vacate this space because it turns out are bad. What should happen is they should then seize this space from you and continue in their cultural relationships, the bonds that they have with the communities they've created, and they should just like seize this story from me. So that's like how I feel about it when it comes like, you know, there are chapters still in Harry Potter that I like to read, but I just will never give her money anymore. I just can't.

it means like to separate that from the eyes. I mean, I personally don't get any joy out of rereading them anymore, but I used to. There was there was chapters in Harry Potter that that was the only way I could go to sleep as a kid, was to read the chapter where he's on the night bus and he's got the hot chocolate and the hot water bottle. Yeah, and he's on his way. You know, that was And it's it's sad to lose those things, but that's the power

of the singular author. Right, Yeah, that's power of it.

is just so wonderful. It's about a boy called Yadril who wants to become a Bruha and tries to summon a spirit to prove it, but ends up freeing a different spirit and then it becomes this kind of really dynamic exploration of love and friendship and legacy. And I just that book is so wonderful and it's very much to me like the kind of power of when somebody gets to tell a story that represents who they are but is also just absolutely unburdened and it's just allowed

to be completely free and adventurous and fantastical. I think that's kind of the power ironically that actually a lot of Harry Potter and stuff was missing because Harry Potter is like it takes from a lot of different stories, but those stories were often the same stories being told by the same people. So symmetry boys is I always tell everyone just go and buy that book. It's it's so good.

love is The Space Between Worlds by Makaia Johnson. I think it's her debut novel, and it is a really wonderful here's that word again, multiverse story, high concept in which people from let's just call it like Earth one travel to various closely related dimensions in order to see, Oh, of there are there any technology that they've developed that that can help us deal with the ecological disaster that our current planet is under, or you know, help us

you know, grow food more efficiently, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There anything we can learn from these other worlds in glean and bring back to our world. All through that, there is the idea there is you know, You're left to wonder as you read the early parts of this story, like, okay, but is it happening in reverse? Are there are there people from the other Earth coming to it? And so all of those questions are things that get answered. It's

a really amazing story about about class, about race. It is a wonderful sci fi tale, really like heartbreakingly told. Just a really good, really good book, really surprising, and a great multiverse story that unfolds in a way that you're not expecting.

focused on different kinds of people. Tillie Walden, who is like one of our greatest living cartoonists and who is painfully talented for someone in the early twenties, made this unbelievable hundreds of pages long web comic called on Sunbeam, which you can also buy in a beautiful bound edition, but they never took down the free web comic, which I love, and it is the most sprawling, strange, beautifully illustrated story about these kids on this spaceship and this

kind of ongoing journey that's about them and about the journeys they're going on in their relationships, but it's also about the journey of growing up. But it's also just a really cool, weird, quiet space story. But there are elements of magical school fantasy to it. The spaceship kind of grows and shifts and it's so wondrous and when you read it you don't really realize till the end. But there is a very specific focus on a certain kind of character, and there is a very specific decentering

of like the usual male heroic protagonist. And it's one of the most sort of subtly radical books that I've read in a long time. And it's also Tilly's art is so beautiful and intricate, Like this is one of those comics where you can really go back and just read it a million times and you always notice something different.

Hill that I think about all the time. I reread all the time because they're just about you know, like I came to like, I think a lot of people comic books in sci fi and fantasy, because like there's this feeling of like outsider news, like you're looking for you're looking for a place where your own personal strangeness and the way you don't fit, like the piece about you that maybe don't fit. You're looking for the way that world where they do kind of fit.

and their work is seen as somehow lesser work. There's a great, really evocative, very small moment where like a certain warrior who is having a dalliance with one of the women characters, offers to help her, you know, bring some of the washing in. But as long as it's night and no one will see that he is helping her with like women's work, you know, in exchange for

them hanging out longer. Like there's all these little moments that bring you into the power of the people like who are overlooked, And it's just like a really really

really really amazing book, really really amazing books. That's like there's some great plot turns, really hard like pounding like suspense and action, but all these also these really like internal quiet moments about noticing the way people interact, Noticing the way people treat the main character, Notice how they treat each other, Notice how they act when they're anxious. It's a lot about noticing, which is what I love about it.

find that community. And I think that's such a powerful thing kind of about all of these books and what we look for. Strek is going to be like one of the most This is one of the books I think about the most that I've read recently, which is called Pet by a quakm Ezi, and it is like, this is like the kind of transgressive fiction that I

feel like doesn't often get published, but this did. And it is a kid's book, but it's also an adults book, and it is set in a futuristic world where where monsters don't exist, but then a monster escapes out of an artist's canvas and suddenly this young black trans girl who is the protagonist begins to question whether or not these monsters do exist, and whether or not what the society has done by kind of shunning them. And it's

really analogous to all this incredibly deep stuff. And as you read it as an adult, I feel like there's so many terrifying, emotionally wrought layers to it. But it also imagines a world where, in you know, the beginning, a black trans girl is safe, and in that way, it's this incredibly utopian. It's that use of radical imagination that we will talk about a lot like to make

a better world, you have to imagine it. And I feel like in a way, Hill does that in a historical way where it rewrites history and broadens the scope of who was involved, which is just true because the people didn't not exist, they were just written out. And Pet does it in a way where it helps us to imagine like a future. And I just that book

I think about so much. I feel like it's one of those books where in years to come it will become a kind of you know, I always think about very different book, but Neil Gaiman Stardust, that's a book where you could give it to a kid and you could give it to an adult, and two people would read it in totally different ways. And Pet really feels like a great contemporary version of one of those kind of timeless, ageless stories.

and it's about how in modern life. It's kind of a companion to her essay on photography, just like about what it means to like regard images that have been mass produced and moved from different places. And it's a companion in that it posits that in the modern world, like it's never been easier for us to see and engage with images that depict other people suffering, other people's pain, et cetera. And so like, how do we deal with that? How do we sit with that?

reimagining of the magical story, like magical school story. It's about a girl called Ella who goes to this Arkanam training academy for Marvelers and she is a conjurer at this school in the sky. But she's the first ever conjurer to attend, and that means that she is the target for people who don't trust her, who are suspicious of it. And it is this kind of it's so magical and it gives you that feeling of walking through

the halls, those magical, cozy feelings you want. But it's also a book that deals with racial integration, it deals with generational trauma. But all the while is it feels like this huge moment for fantasy. Kids from all around

the world study at these schools. You know, there's different notions of what it is to be magical and to be from a different place that feels just miles away from the stereotypes of old And I think it could be a big moment for people like us who love these books, and hopefully for kids who love these books. I feel like The Marvelers could be that.

but they can't really tell me. Everything is new to a child, right, you're three. You've never seen a bunny before, so you don't know a bunny can't talk, so talking rabbit, it's like, that's perfectly normal. But I never is some part of me. I don't think I ever let go of that. I feel that way also about nature. I felt the same kind of thrill going for a walk under the trees that I do getting lost in a story.

It's the same kind of journey for me. It's a getting lost, finding my own way and discovering things about me in this other place, whether it's a story or an actual geographic location. And to me, story writing stories is really the very best way to capture both those things, and I think it's probably why almost everything I write has a lot of nature in it. I hope that makes sense. I hope I'm answering the question because I.

I think one of the things that I love about your writing is how how you bring the reader into the way characters notice things, in particular the way characters who aren't close to power are in power notice things that the people in power don't. I think in particular, there's a scene in Hild where where hilled Is has noticed that Edwin, the king is nervous about something is having a lot of meetings, but she can't quite unpack what.

And then she asks one of his guesses, guesses, one of his warrior companions, so what's going on in the meetings? And the warrior companion is like, I don't know, it's

boring old men talking about stuff. So she's like, okay, let me get this guy some food, men off and open up when they when they're when they're not hungry anymore, and then she just talks to him about different things that perhaps he's noticed, and then she's able to kind of through this unwind what it is that is gnawing at the king, and then she's able to in a in a very power powerful way, use that information in a way that's a little manipulative but also is very

smart in the way that she's getting the thing that she wants, but also getting the king the thing that he wants. How much do you think about that when you're when you're writing It's it's just something I love about the way you write.

with Hilt. I knew she needed a moment where she had to bring everything she had learnt together in this one, like she had to behave like a seer, as though she had magic, but of course she doesn't, because it's not a fantasy booky, even though it reads a bit like that, she had to make other people think that she was magic, and she had this prophetic gift. And so before I wrote that scene, did I know exactly how she was going to do that? No, I really

had no clue. I just had a feeling. I just knew what the place felt like and how she felt, and what it might be like to be surrounded by all these yesses with swords and spears and she's got nothing except well, now by this time she has her little sex. Actually not that little bit. So I suppose it's a bit like saying, how where does inspiration come from? I don't really know. It comes from a lot of

work and putting clues together. Basically, you're seeing in this book through hilld my process as a writer, which is part serendipity, part smart, part research, and part just trusting that it will be there when you step off the edge that you're building your bridge. As you walk, there's this chasm and you're heading towards it, and you just have to have faith that there'll be something there when you get there.

and went to Whitby. And I'd heard obviously, I'd read Dracula, I'd heard of Whitby, so I was expecting all the steps. I was expecting the abbey. What I really was not expecting was what happened when I got to the abbey,

which is back in the day. It's changed now there's much more control about who can go in, But back in the day you just kind of walked through it and there was this stone threshold and I remember crossing that threshold and it was like history just came fisting up through me, and I was just it just turned

me inside out like a sock. Suddenly. It's like, I don't know, if you're familiar with there's a kind of New Age theory that some parts of the earth that the layer between the world and the other world is very thin. I think Whitby is if you buy into that, is one of those thin places. There's a real sense of imminence and otherness there. And so I just walked into it and it was like it was like sticking my head into a perfectly ordinary wardrobe and finding I

was in Narnia. It was just I was blown away, and so I had to I had to know what is this place? Who built this place, where does it come from, why here, what's it about? What does it mean?

And so I went to the little tourist place attached to the abbey, which is much bigger now amazing, but then it was just like a tatty little place next door, and they had a few little brochures, and I read that the abbey had been founded fourteen hundred years ago by this woman called Hill, And I knew a bit about history at this point, and I thought, well, fourteen

hundred years ago, that was the quote Dark Ages. So how come a woman in the Dark Ages, when Mike was right and women supposedly were just chattel and had no power, how could she possibly have created this amazing place and done such things and still be known today, well partially known today. And so I went to try to find a book about her, and there wasn't a book about her. There's no scholarly monograph, there's no TV series, there's no cartoon, there's not even a racy romance novel.

There was nothing, ringing silence. The only thing I could find was Venerable Beads, History of the English Church and People, and that has less than five pages about her, and most of that is really typical Saints stories that could apply to anybody, so that it's not real information. And there was there was no information. So now by this

time I'm on fire with curiosity. So I researched that book on and off for I would say, fifteen years, because I went to Whitby in the eighties and it was in the back of my mind all that time. And then gradually, sometime in the nineties, I started picking up history books and actually reading and working my way

back through notions of history. So I started with old fashioned mid twentieth century history, and by the time I'd finished researching, although toupy Frank, I'm still not finished researching. I'm going to be researching this for the rest of my life. By the time I got to the point where I was ready to write the book, shall I say, the first book, I was talking to the people doing the research before it was published in two thousand and eight,

early career researchers. They were discovering blogs and so you could you could just go online and find these people and what they were doing and talk to them in the comments. And they didn't know who I was. They didn't know whether I was amazingly famous or nobody or a lunatic, and so they were very cautious at first, so I would have to elicit information from them. They

didn't like risking stuff. They didn't like to say something unless they could give you ten footnotes, and so I remember one time I was trying to find out what the Anglos Saxon's thought about dogs, what was their attitude to dogs, and there was like, we know nothing about dogs. I said, okay, so if Hill had a Pekinese, and they're like, she wouldn't have had a Pekinese, that's just no. And I said, well there, you see, you do know something. So what kind of dog might she have had? So

and then we went from there. But oh, it was like blood from a stone at first, getting this information from these people. So anyway, that's how it began, that's how I really needed to do it. And like I say, there was just no information. So I researched everything. I researched flora and fauna and building techniques and textile production and agriculture and the weather. Everything. Everything was different then. And I decided I was just build the seventh century.

I was going to build the whole goddamn century, and then I was going to put Hilp in it and see how she behaved, what happened, How on earth she could have done this? And the only way to do that was by making her a child so I could discover along with her. But that that wasn't a deliberate choice. What happened was I got basically got drunk one day and I thought, oh, you know, screw this, It's my birthday tomorrow. I cannot go another year without starting this

goddamn book. I thought, right, I'm going to start, and I had no idea what's going to just I'm going to write a paragraph, and so I began and there she was. She was, this three year old girl under a tree, and I thought, holy shit, that that's the key to everything. And then I was off. So, yeah, a mix of hard work, guessing, and alcohol, I suppose how I did that.

For example, my first book, the question I was trying to ask, trying to answer, was a question I saw being asked all the time in science fiction and not answered satisfactorily, not giving me the answer I wanted, which is, basically, are women human? I mean, because most science fiction books, if you had a world only of women, they behaved like half a thing, they didn't behave like whole human beings. And I thought, you know, no, I don't buy that answer at all, So I'm going to have to figure

this out. So I wrote EMM and I basically to answer that question slower ever, came from a different kind of question, a much more personal question actually about who are you when you have nothing left? Is there such a thing as an essential self? And then the three

out books those came from a dream. I had this dream that there was this woman, completely naked, sprawled on the carpet of an absolutely empty apartment, but sprawled in a really you know, like a lion on the velt, actually not afraid of anything, sprawled and it was absolutely empty apartment. I mean there weren't even light fixtures, it was that empty. And I was thinking, well, that's odd

in my dream. And then the next thing I know, this woman wakes, is woken up by a gun to her head, and instead of going or freaking out even she just sits right up with a big flashlight and breaks the guy's neck boom like that, split second, no hesitation, and I going, whoa, well, who was who's that?

I think. I think the only book I've ever written that is not about answering a question but more about just getting stuff out because it needed to be out was So Lucky, my book about the woman diagnosed with their mess.

it's not my usual thing. And also it doesn't do what every other book I've ever done does, which is to basically center what most people would consider the other because in So Lucky, it's the only book about the difference of the character about her being disabled. Or my other books, you've got disabled people, you've got queer people, you've got women, et cetera, and it doesn't matter, it doesn't make any difference to the character them. It's all

her blue eyes rather than green eyes. It's a nothing, Whereas So Lucky was very much that the difference was a something.

justice and equity. And so I needed to find a way to write that but still make it our theory. And so that's how I did Spirit. That's why I wrote Spear, and also because it seemed like a really nifty idea. Honestly, to be honest, I really thought it was going to be a short story. I thought it would take me two weeks. I set the Hill sequel aside. I thought, okay, I'll get this done in two weeks, get back to Meanwood, and this thing just rowed out.

I mean it just I can't tell you. After I wrote Spear and then I went back to Memewood, I wrote more in the first year of the pandemic in one year than I have ever written. I wrote two hundred thousand words. Wow, I think they were all good words. I wrote Spear, and I wrote a lot of Meme. I finished Meanwood, which is a very large book, and I just it just I was just really fired up. And the pandemic meant that I didn't have to stop to do things like even go to the doctor because

no one was going to that. I didn't have to go out for dinner with anyone. I didn't have to go to conferences. I just got to stay at home and live in this early medieval world and it was wonderful. So, yeah, Spear was a confluence of all the things I love, all the things I love about Hilt, but also then completely free a lot of Hilt's exterior stresses. I mean, Parite is not. She doesn't have to worry about taking care of anybody. Really, She's young and free and makes

the most of it. And I loved that. It felt really good.

of resistance in more mainstream literary presses. What they want if you're disabled and you've got a disabled character, they want the book to be about the character's disability struggles. They don't want to just see them going whoo, you know, and whacking someone's head off with the sword. No, they want they want authenticity and their notion. Because they are ableists and most of us are honestly ablest, they think that the authentic experience is suffering.

disabled people. I mean, I get so tired of seeing these books by non disabled people about disabled characters who kill themselves yep, and calling it wonderful and authentic. And I'm thinking, ah, well, I shouldn't say what I'm thinking. It's unprinciple. I would have to be considerably bleaped. But I'm not happy. I mean, I remember having a conversation with a writer who'd been sent one of these books to review, I think for the Washington Post, might be

in the New York Times. She's like, I'm having a really hard time with it. So we talked about it, and I said, you need to say it. You need to say why it's wrong, why it's bad. And that was very difficult for her because her stance to reviewing is always lift up the writer. And I said this, you cannot lift her up for this, lift her up for every single thing in the book. Accept this. Yeah, and she did, and I was so pleased. So I was really grateful and glad. But that's what we need.

We need more of that.

because it will be like good for his family. And that was a book that they legitimately gave to disabled kids, to people I know who had cerebral palsy like and that is still going on twenty years later, and and it kind of blows my mind.

It's there's a whole set of different articles, so each article takes a different stance, but it's fascinating to see how much really serious scholarship has gone into the whole are a legend? I really wish I'm actually I say, I'm really glad I hadn't read that book before I wrote Spear, Otherwise I might say, well, were you not taking it? But let me see what have I read in the particularly the queer and fantasy space in the

last year or two. It's I read Alex Harrow for the first time last year, so I read her novella A Spindle Splintered, and she's got a new one coming out, I think in a couple of months, called The Mirror Mended, and that it's really great. It is another kind of retelling, and so I want to get back to this notion of retelling in a minute. Also Samantha Shannon, who wrote The Priory of the Orange Tree. Yes, I'm drawing a

bit of a blank. What I tend to do when I'm in writing mode is I read nonfiction and then I reread old favorites and poetry. I read poets. So I've basically subscribed to Poetry Magazine and just read that every month, you know, I read a couple of those and then go to sleep.

big moment. And there's other big moments like this, And when I'm reading them, all was thinking, God, for a child to be there and bluff the king to the point that the king is saying, Okay, well, we're going to do this thing that you're telling us to do, but if you're wrong, I'm going to feed you to my dogs. What is it like to write these scenes where you're just putting this child into these into these positions of great, great peril because I'm always so much more nervous than she is.

wanted to live a big life. I wanted to do amazing things, and to me Hill there is that opportunity to do that, and so I didn't have a lot of fear as a seven year old, and so I give hild the kind of fear and caution I had as a seven year ol, which is she kind of knows that she's in great danger, but it doesn't freak her out. You know, she doesn't have a thundering heart, and she doesn't get sweaty. She's not part of her Her body doesn't really believe it. Her mind does because

everyone tells her. But really, deep down, she knows she's immortal, like all kids do. We all think.

It's such a It's the best job I've ever had in my life, and I expect to have it till I dropped dead, which hopefully won't be for a really long time because I'm having too much fun and I have too much, too much to write.

And the two of these guys decided between them that they were going to ask the question not which of these conspiracy theories are true, but rather what if all of them are true? And these books, this trilogy is conceived as a sort of journey through what if every single one of these conspiracies were true? What if not only someone other than who we think killed John F. Kennedy, What if a bunch of people killed John F. Kennedy altogether?

What if John Dillinger is still alive? What if Adam Weishaupt killed George Washington and replaced him in order to bring the Bavarian Illuminati into power in the United States and either spread or stop the spread of cannabis being grown by George Washingrington and Thomas Jefferson. What if the MC five were spreading secrets with their song Kick Out the Jams. All of these things, all of these conspiracy

theories are treated as completely real in these novels. The three books that make up the Illuminatus trilogy, The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan all kind of work together, spinning this wild, drug fueled narrative building towards a gigantic music festival that has the names of hundreds of made up bands, some of which are now real bands. They all together craft a story of talking dolphins and an Atlantis that's real, built with Lovecraftian monsters.

Novels from Pension and Vonnegut are referenced. This is the kind of stuff that will blow your mind and probably heard it more than just a little. These books are extremely important to some of our favorite writers and TV writers. Damon Lindelof, You'll see elements of this in Lost in Fringe. You see this from Chris Carter in The X Files.

Alan Moore has called Robert Anton Wilson an inspiration. We see this also from people like Grant Morrison, and now with the rise of what may be the Illuminati in our new doctor Strange trailer. We know that this may be the origin of that term coming back into the narrative once again. So check out these books. They're great. You will absolutely love them.

since the eighties, So just generally good stuff. So go check out Vidiots. Support them. They're in the support mode at the moment because they're still building the new location. So yeah, that's that's my big pluck it. It was very cool.

is coming, folks. Doctor Stranger in the multiverseit of Madness, which I think we both expect to see a lot of the repercussions of the events of WandaVision in that movie. Be sure to send out your nerd out submissions to x raycrookd dot com instructures during the show notes and don't forget we love the five star ratings, folks. We love them, We absolutely love them. We thrive on them. Please send us the five star ratings. If you're thinking about like a four, don't even think about it. Give

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