Podcast recommendation: Crafting With Ursula

The podcast I've been binging this weeks is Crafting With Ursula. There are only six episodes of this flavor of a larger literary podcast, but they've been fascinating.

Episodes I've listened to so far:

adrienne maree brown on Social Justice & Science Fiction 
"...social justice and science fiction are intricately linked imaginative acts, acts that have real effects in the world at large."

Kim Stanley Robinson on Ambiguous Utopias
"...why has this genre become a particularly vital form and even a critical tool of the human imagination today?"

Incidentally, Kim Stanley Robinson tells of going to watch the original Star Wars with Ursula Le Guin and her other students, and how none of them realized how much the movie was going to change what people thought of as sci fi. He speaks of it with great regret, and I realize he (and she) were on the OG side of the argument, where as I've been convinced it was a good thing to widen the genre.

Review: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

 

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake.  I found the premise to be quite unbelievable: none of the six initiates asked the obvious question, and it turned out to be an important one.  However, I did like how the magic was interwoven with science, and how each person has a particular specialty instead of all just being witches and wizards. Ultimately, a huge twist which was slightly hinted at made it worth reading to the end.