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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Disaster movies can be fun. They can be scary or thought-provoking. And they can be really, really bad. But how close are they to the science of real disasters? I talk about recent landslides and earthquakes, my own experience with natural disasters, and a model for risk communication.

Follow the podcast on Twitter @factandscifi and find the transcript to this episode on factandsciencefiction.com

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In this episode of Fact and Science Fiction, I'm discussing the science and science fiction of parallel universes. I review the famous Many Worlds Interpretation, the theory of bubble universes and more. I use examples from The Dark Tower, Golden Compass and Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse to understand why parallel universes are just so fascinating to science fiction fans.

I used research from the Khan Academy course video on Quantum Wavefunction, The Case for Parallel Universes in Scientific American and PhilosophyNow.org

Subscribe to the podcast in your podcast app or leave a review! Transcript for this episode is live on factandsciencefiction.com

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In this episode I'm sharing types of animal mimicry. From owl butterflies to cuckoo birds, to the "thing" from space. I discuss defensive mimicry, aggressive mimicry and even mimicry humans have contributed to. It turns out there's no greater inspiration for horror than the natural world.

Research from this episode is from my ol' pal Wikipedia and

C. Blut, J. Wilibrandt, D. Fels, E.I. Girgel & K. Linau's 'The 'sparkle' in fake eyes - the protective effect of mimic eyespots in lepidoptera' in the journal Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata

Dream/Flashback effect from Zany Madcap

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We are obsessed with super suits. It is the peak of imagined technology. It’s like we have recognized the limits of the human body - and we have decided that all we need to become super strong, fast and flying is robotics. From Iron Man, RoboCop to the Gundam franchise, they are known as mechsuits, exosuits, and mobile suits. I wanted to know what exactly these suits do, how can we break them down into different parts of technology. What real world tech is out there that would be familar to science fiction fans. And how far away are we from the ideal super suit. 

Sources

• The Science of RoboCop http://collider.com/robocop-science/
• Friedl, Karl & J. Buller, Mark & Tharion, William & Potter, Adam & L. Manglapus, Glen & W. Hoyt, Reed. (2016). Real Time Physiological Status Monitoring (RT-PSM): Accomplishments, Requirements, and Research Roadmap.

Give the podcast a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher

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There have been several pandemics in human history and few are as misunderstood as the flu. In Stephen King's The Stand, a flu epidemic wipes out most of the human population. How is it different from the actual flu? What are some misconceptions about the flu? How can you protect yourself? This episode goes into those questions and more.

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