This week we hosted
, a literary critic who writes about the health of the prestige publishing ecosystem and the value of reading the Great Books on her Substack . She is also an accomplished speculative fiction author, with stories published in major outlets like Clarkesworld and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.Our discussion focused on the short story as a form, both in general and within the context of speculative fiction. We also discussed sentimentality in literature, the surprisingly messy origins of the novel, and, of course, Scott Alexander.
Whether you’re a new reader from the Scott Alexander post or you’ve been listening to us for a bit, we’re happy to have you! Thanks for listening!
TIMESTAMPS
00:00:12 - Introduction
00:00:52 - What is a “tale”?
00:02:06 - How has the way that we tell stories changed?
00:04:44 - Do the novel and the short story still have life left in them?
00:07:48 - Short stories as an indicator of institutional trust
00:09:59 - Scott Alexander as a literary author
00:11:51 - Short stories as “assassinating the reader”
00:16:46 - Misdirection and realism in the tale
00:19:22 - Storytelling formats that are lost in cultural translation
00:20:24 - Predecessors to the novel that have gone extinct
00:24:02 - Is Moby-Dick a novel or a really elaborate whaling facts book?
00:25:50 - Ted Chiang's “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”
00:26:46 - Are we moving from a written to an oral culture?
00:30:36 - Sentimentality in speculative fiction
00:33:43 - Naomi would like to see sentimentality come back to high literature
00:36:37 - Have sentimental novels been crowded out by other forms of entertainment?
00:38:31 - Are biographies the new sentimental novel?
00:40:51 - The ridiculously sentimental moment in Death's End by Cixin Liu
00:43:56 - Chengdu WorldCon and its consequences
00:46:32 - Treating literary conventions as inevitable
00:49:51 - The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
00:51:05 - The “shadow canon” of science fiction and its potential longevity
00:55:29 - Conclusion and final recommendations
00:56:09 - Synthesized Sunsets Backstage begins
01:00:22 - Gordon thinks that classic books are in some ways worse for modern audiences than their contemporaries
01:06:35 - Have we made mysteries worse for ourselves by getting too good at solving them?
01:07:22 - Kevin's article "The Most Underrated Speculative Fiction Writer of the 21st Century is... Scott Alexander?"
01:12:08 - “IT WAS YOU WHO MADE MY BLUE EYES BLUE” by Scott Alexander
01:15:08 - How much does Scott Alexander's nonfiction enhance his fiction?
01:16:59 - Scott Alexander is really good at injecting ideas into the idea space
01:18:54 - Conclusion and final recommendations
LINKS
- on the Internet as an oral culture
“Sort By Controversial” by Scott Alexander
- on the “shadow canon”
“IT WAS YOU WHO MADE MY BLUE EYES BLUE” by Scott Alexander
“Book Review: Albion’s Seed” by Scott Alexander
Naomi Kanakia’s profile on Lightspeed (story forthcoming)
Share this post